Page 34 of Somewhere Only We Know

‘So what’s your story?’ asked a girl called Naomi, setting a beer in front of me.

I puffed out my cheeks. ‘Honestly? My daughter died at twenty-three. This was meant to be her gap-year trip. Now it’s her mum’s gap year instead.’

The group fell quiet.

I could have kicked myself for ruining the mood. ‘Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘Oh Maggie, that’s so sad,’ said Izzy, jutting out her bottom lip.

‘Mums are great, aren’t they?’ mumbled a curly-haired boy called Colin.

‘Yeah,’ said a couple of the others morosely, as if suddenly hit by a wave of homesickness.

‘To mums!’ Naomi cried, raising her beer bottle.

‘To mothers everywhere.’ Another boy drummed on the table with his fingers and whooped.

‘To mums!’ yelled everyone else.

I raised my beer bottle but kept quiet; I couldn’t bring myself to toast my mum. Even after all these years.

Chapter 10

Maggie, England, 1992

I was so trembly with hunger when I got home from work that it took me ages to fit the front-door key into the lock. It had been a long day. I had a Saturday job at a local hair salon, and I worked from the moment it opened until the last client had gone, the basins had been washed and the floors swept. I worked too long for a fifteen-year-old, but I wasn’t complaining because I needed the money. The hourly rate was low, but I earned big tips by making tea and coffee, always with a biscuit, and remembering the names of their pets and children. I never took lunch with me, because usually someone bought cakes in to celebrate something. But today there’d been nothing. And there were only so many complimentary biscuits you could eat without feeling sick.

As soon as I opened the front door, I smelled food. Really nice food.

‘Come in, sit down,’ Mum shouted from the kitchen, ‘you’re just in time for Chinese takeaway.’

I hooked my coat over the others at the end of the stairs. This was weird. Firstly, Mum sounded really happy. Secondly, we never had takeout food.

‘Wow, Mum.’ I stood in the doorway staring at the steaming cartons on the table and gave Kat a questioning look to see if she knew what was going on. ‘That’s a lot of food.’

Last night we’d had so little in the house that my sister and I had had to get creative with a vegetable stock cube, handfuls of dried pasta, the last squeeze of the tomato puree tube and the stalk of broccoli which I’d insisted on keeping after Mum had cut tiny florets off it. We’d made soup and pretended it was delicious. Tonight, it seemed we had enough money to buy a banquet for six, despite there only being three of us.

‘I thought we deserved a treat. Me and my girls.’ Mum beamed, wafting a hand grandly towards the table. She was very glamorous, my mother. All my friends were in awe of her. Today she was wearing a satin kimono and had a big dragonfly clip in her long hair. She had an eye for spotting good clothes from charity shops; her wardrobe was bulging with beautiful, if impractical, clothing.

‘Mum sold something. So we’re rich.’ Kat’s cheeks flushed with excitement. She crunched into a prawn cracker and closed her eyes. ‘Mmmm.’

At ten years old, Kat was easily impressed by Mum’s grand gestures. Lucky her. I, on the other hand, was immediately suspicious.

Mum tutted at her. ‘Trust you to blab.’

My stomach lurched. Not again. My eyes roamed the kitchen, looking for clues. What had she sold? She had nothing of value left, at least not that I knew about. Her jewellery was long gone, and what we did still own was second-hand. I poked my head into the living room. Everything was still there. Although I couldn’t imagine her being able to sell our ratty sofa which the previous owner’s cat had scratched to shreds, or the TV which only had two working channels.

Mum’s ethos in life was that everything would work out in the end and there was no need to stress. She paid bills only when she’d had at least two reminders and legal action was mentioned. She spent money as if it would spontaneously combust if she left it in her purse. Kat and I had a small savings account, but Mum couldn’t get to it. Dad had made sure of that before he packed his bags and moved out declaring that she was impossible to live with – but handily forgetting that we would still have to. Dad, I’d come to realise, liked a drama-free life. Why he’d ever thought Mum would be the woman for him was beyond me.

The only thing left that I could think of which might be worth something was not hers to sell. Not even Mum would dare touch that.

‘Mum?’ I demanded. ‘What have you sold?’

She sighed theatrically, avoiding my eye. ‘Let’s enjoy our food, shall we? I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to fetch this. Can we, for once, not ruin the occasion by talking about money?’

No. I stared at her, feeling sick. Please say she hadn’t.

I bolted from the kitchen, took the stairs two at a time and flung open my bedroom door. I knew straight away that she’d been in there; the cuff of my winter coat was sticking out of the wardrobe – I’d never have left it like that. I dragged my chair to the wardrobe, plunged my hands right to the back of the top shelf. It wasn’t there. The box containing Granddad’s World War Two medals had gone, his standard-issue Bible, even the little silver frame with the photo of him in uniform. I polished that frame once a month with a special cloth to keep it shiny. His collection of commemorative coins had gone too.