Indigo Blue (14 page)

‘Everything OK, Indie?’ he asks.

It’s too long a story to even get started.

‘Yeah, sure,’ I say. ‘Everything’s fine.’

When I get back to the flat, Max is eating the big rainbow-coloured gingerbread man I made specially for Mum. He snaps its head off, chewing noisily. He dunks its blue icing feet in his second mug of coffee.

‘Good stuff, Indie,’ he says with his mouth full. ‘You must have known I was coming.’

I wish.

We could have run away, or hidden in the bedrooms until the doorbell stopped ringing. We could have gone sofa-shopping with Jane, or flat-dusting with Ian. We could have gone out to the park and stayed till dark, creeping home only when the streets were quiet and empty and clear of big blue vans.

It’s too late now. Mum’s shining Saturday-morning face is closed and pale and anxious, her eyes tearful, her lips trembling.

‘Come back,’ Max says. ‘Come back, Anna.’

‘It’s not that easy.’

‘It
is
that easy. It really is,’ Max says. ‘Just fling a few things in a bag, hop in the van. We’ll be home in ten minutes. We can come back next week, move the rest of your stuff – or ditch it – and everything’s back to normal. The way it should be.’

Mum stares down at the table top. Misti, asleep in a sprawl in her arms, shifts silently, finds her thumb and starts to suck.

‘What’s stopping you?’ Max says.

Mum shakes her head, buries her face in Misti’s hair.

‘Think of the kids,’ Max appeals. ‘What are you doing, Anna, making them live in this mould-ridden dump? Look at it.
Smell
it. It should have been condemned years ago.’

‘I like it,’ I say loyally, but Mum’s urgent look silences me. It is a dump, I think sadly. It
does
smell, it
is
damp, and the furniture looks like we found it on a skip. But I like it.

Max doesn’t take his eyes off Mum. ‘Look, I made a mistake, I know it,’ he says. ‘I’ve changed, Anna, believe me. Come home. I want you home.’

I walk to the bedroom and switch on my CD player. I turn up the volume till I can’t hear Max any more. I play the same CD three times over before I hear the door click shut. I peer out of the bedroom and see Mum alone at the table, her head in her hands.

It’s OK, Mum,’ I say. ‘He’s gone.’

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she says. ‘I don’t know how to make him
see.’

‘You don’t have to,’ I tell her gently. ‘He’s gone.’

‘No, Indie,’ Mum says. ‘He’s coming back.’

Max is taking Mum out for a meal, so they can talk properly. He wants to show her how much he’s changed, how much he cares. He’s going to talk and talk at her till he wears her down, wipes her out, makes her back into the person she used to be.

He’s going to make us move back in.

‘Don’t go, Mum,’ I say. ‘Just
tell
him. We’re OK here, aren’t we?’

‘Mmmm. But I have to go, Indie. Don’t be scared – I’m not going back to him, I promise I’m not. I just need to explain, make him
see
. He’s not a bad man, Indie, but it was a bad relationship. We’re better off apart. I need to make him see that.’

Mum sounds so sussed, so strong. I almost believe that she’s right, that she can do it. But then I remember Max, and the way he makes her curl up inside herself, sad and lost and weak.

I know it’s not going to work.

Mum goes out to the phone box and calls Jane, to see if she’ll come over and sit with us, but Jane isn’t back.

‘Maybe Misti and I could go up and do the video and pizza thing with Ian?’ I suggest.

‘I don’t think so,’ Mum says. ‘His car’s gone. He must have gone out. Anyway, Max wouldn’t like it. No, I’ll ring Jane back later.’

Max wouldn’t like it?

And?

We search through Mum’s cupboard to find something beautiful, blue and posh enough for a smart restaurant. Misti unearths a battered felt hat with a curling blue feather, and pulls it on. Her face disappears, and she squeals with glee. Mum lets her wear an old pair of floral blue Doc Martens to match.

We drag out a long, flippy skirt in dark, storm-blue velvet and a matching gypsy top. Its flared sleeves have tiny blue beads stitched along their edges. Mum irons it, then has a bath and gets changed. She looks like a princess.

‘Boots or sandals?’ she asks, and we all vote for the kitten-heeled sandals with the tiny blue-flower trim. Mum pins up her hair and ties a floaty scarf into it, the ends trailing down like a veil.

She takes a whole lot of trouble to look beautiful just to tell Max she’s not coming back.

At half seven, Mum pulls on her jacket and runs round to the phone box. Again, she’s back in minutes, frowning this time.

Jane’s still not in,’ she says. ‘I left a message, but… what shall I do?’

‘We’ll be OK,’ I say bravely, not feeling it.

‘No, no, I can’t just leave you.’

The doorbell chimes and I feel all sad and panicky.

‘Oh, Max,’ Mum is saying. ‘Jane’s not back yet and I can’t think who else to ask. I need
someone
to sit with the kids. What shall I do?’

‘How about your friend with the flowers?’ Max says, his lip curling a little.

‘No, no. I hardly know him. And he’s out tonight. And Mrs Green, she’s just too old, she wouldn’t be able to cope. And the students are never in at the weekend. There’s nobody I can ask, Max. Maybe we should just…’

‘No,’ Max says. ‘The table’s booked for eight o’clock and we’re
going,
Anna. It’s important. It’s our future.’

‘I know, I know…’

‘Indie’s eleven,’ Max says brightly. ‘That’s old enough to babysit. You can look after Misti, can’t you? Just for an hour or so?’

I stare at Max. My cheeks feel pink, and my heart is thumping.

He throws an arm round my shoulder. ‘You’re a big girl now, aren’t you, Indie? You’ll do it, won’t you, to give me and Anna a bit of space? We’ve got stuff to talk about, important stuff.’

I look at Mum. She looks away. I can’t work out what she wants me to say.

‘OK,’ I say at last. ‘Max is right, Mum, I’m easily old enough to babysit. We’ll be fine, won’t we, Misti? Honest.’

It takes another twenty minutes before we convince Mum, but eventually she gives in, her hand wrapped tight in Max’s. She looks back over her shoulder, waving, her face all white and sad and beautiful.

‘Just you and me, Misti,’ I say.

It’s no big deal. I’ve been looking after Misti for months, on and off. And Mum’s been out before and left us alone, even if it was only to walk to the phone box on the corner. No big deal.

Misti peers up at me from under her blue felt hat.

‘Supper time,’ I say.

We eat jam doughnuts and drink milk, cuddled together in the big armchair in front of the three-bar electric fire. I eat three doughnuts and Misti manages four. She gets jam on her face, jam in her hair, jam all over her clothes. She smears jam all down my stripy top, dusts sugar across my nose and cheeks.

Bathtime.

I’ve run half a bath full of water before I realize it’s stone cold. Mum’s used all the hot water. She must have switched the immersion heater off.

I drain the bath, and wet a flannel instead.

Misti doesn’t like flannels, especially not cold ones. She screams and howls and wriggles free, and all I manage to do is dilute the jam smears and spread them about a bit more.

She’s wet too. What with everything that’s been happening this afternoon, maybe Mum forgot to change her.

I check in the bathroom for nappies, but there are none left. I look in the kitchen for the big new bag we bought earlier, but I can’t find it. I hunt in the cupboards, root in the wardrobe, check under the bed. It’s not here. It’s not in the flat.

I think back to when we unloaded the car. We were laughing, joking, messing around. Maybe we forgot to unload the nappies. They’re probably still in the boot of Ian’s car, wherever that is. I stand on a chair and peer out through the high bedroom window. No red Fiat.

I check Mum’s blue suede shoulder bag, in case there’s a spare nappy hidden. There isn’t.

I strip off Misti’s soaking tights and chuck out the nappy. When I try to wash her with the cold flannel, she howls again, kicking and scratching, so I drag on her pyjama trousers anyway and let her go.

Within minutes, she’s wet again and I have to peel off the pyjamas and scrub the place on the cheap blue carpet where she dripped. I dress her again in a clean pair of jammies and tell her it’s time for bed.

‘No,’ Misti says. ‘
No
, Inky. No bed. Want Mummy.’

Her face, tired and jam-stained, threatens tears. ‘No bed.’

I give in. We cuddle up on the big armchair with Misti’s big book of fairy tales. She picks out
Rapunzel
. We’re just at the bit where the wicked witch shuts Rapunzel in the tower when the lights flicker and go out.

We’re sitting in darkness, watching the three-bar electric fire fade from red to orange to nothing at all.

Misti starts to roar.

‘Hey, hey, hey!’ I tell her. ‘Don’t panic, Misti, it’s just that the leccy’s gone. We need to find the spare powercard…’

It’s in my school bag, along with Jane’s purse of emergency cash and the phonecard she gave me weeks ago. I just have to get the torch and find it…

Misti is howling, clinging on to me like a monkey. Every time I try to put her down, she pinches my arms, pulls my hair, kicks out at my ribs, my belly.

‘Inky,
no
!’ she screams. ‘Want light! Want Mummy! Bad,
bad,
Inky!’

‘Misti, let go… I need to find the torch…’

But she clings and screams and scratches and bites, trying to hang on in the dark.

I hoist her up on my hip and hold her as tightly as I can, stumbling around in the dark trying to find the torch. My eyes blink against a blanket of darkness, struggling to make sense of it. I finally get to the stripy cupboard and drag open the drawer.

Papers. Clothes pegs. Address book. No torch.

But this is where it
always
is.

‘Oh,
Muu-um
…’ My voice is a wail of despair.

Misti, hearing the panic, collapses on to my shoulder, limp and sobbing.

I bite my lip and check the other drawers. Tea towels, scrubbing brush, dishcloths. Paints, crayons, brushes, biros, sketchbook. No torch.

I shift Misti on to my other hip, trailing my spare hand around every surface I can find. Dusty window sills. Kitchen worktops. Table. Bookcase. In the bedroom, I trip on a heap of Misti’s dolls and fall. The two of us topple sideways against the wardrobe, hard.

Misti’s stopped screaming now. Her breath comes in huge, long gasps.

I sit on the bed and peel her arms and legs from round me. Her tiny fingers twist into the cloth of my sleeves, my hair. Her knees press into my waist.

‘No,
noo-oh,’
she whispers. ‘Bad,
bad,
Inky.’

‘Misti, I need to find the torch,’ I hiss. ‘I need to find my school bag.’

Finally, I prise her free and fling her down on to the bed, sobbing.

I crash around the pitch-dark room, groping for my bag, the torch. I stumble next door to Mum’s room, stub my toe on a suitcase, read every surface with my fingers like a blind girl. Soft chenille bedcover, plaited rag rug, splintery floorboards. In the distance, Misti’s crying reaches fever pitch.

‘It’s OK, Misti,’ I shout, more to comfort myself than her. ‘I’m still here. I won’t be long. I just have to find my bag…’

I crawl across the kitchen lino on hands and knees. Spilt lemonade. A drip of jam. Misti’s old pyjamas, cold and wet.

No torch. No bag. My heart is thumping.

‘
Ihhh-innn-keee
!’ Misti howls.

In the bedroom again, my foot tangles up in Misti’s tartan blanket. I drag it off the floor, wrap my little sister in its soft, safe warmth. I pull her on to my lap and we sit for a long moment, heads touching, damp cheeks pressed together.

‘I can’t find it,’ I tell her.

‘I want Mummy,’ she whispers back.

I try to think. I hoist her up again and we make slow progress through the dark flat. I bang my leg on the table, skid a little on felt pens scattered across the carpet. I pull open the door, and the cold air rushes in, but also the dim yellow light from the street lights round the front, the orange glow of the city sky.