Page 1

1
AFTER
HIM
Bitch.
He grips the edge of the paper so tightly the neat lines of carefully written words twist into odd zigzags that crunch some sentences but highlight others, taunting him.
I can’t cope.
You’re too angry.
You frighten me when you hurt me.
I don’t love you any more.
The world is shaking and his breath comes heavily as he scans to the end.
Don’t come after me. Don’t try and find me. Don’t try and find us.
He reads the letter three times before it sinks in. She’s gone. They’re gone. He knows it’s true – he can feel the fresh emptiness in the house – but still he rushes through the rooms, pulling open hollow cupboards and drawers. There is no trace of her, however; no passport or driving licence, none of those important things that frame her life.
Don’t try and find us.
He returns to the kitchen table and crumples the letter, suffocating her words in his clenched fist. She’s right. He is angry. More than angry. He’s raging. It’s a white heat inside him. He stares out through the window, the battered ball of paper damp in his sweating palm. Vodka. He needs vodka.
As he drinks, a seed of a plan takes hold in the dark soil of his mind and starts to grow.
She has no right to do this to him. Not after everything they’ve been through.
He will destroy her for it.
PART ONE
2
NOW
LISA
‘Happy birthday, darling,’ I say, from the doorway. It’s only six thirty and I’m still bleary from sleep, but my kitchen hums with teenage life. It’s like a surging wave hitting me. I don’t remembereverhaving this much energy. It’s a good feeling. Full of hope and confidence.
‘You didn’t have to get up, Mum. We’re just leaving anyway.’ She’s smiling as she comes to kiss me on the cheek, a cloud of apple shampoo and pink deodorant, but she looks tired. Maybe she’s doing too much. Her GCSEs are coming up and between morning and evening swimming training several times a week, spending time with these girls, and going to school, I barely see her any more. Which is, as I keep telling myself, how it should be. She’s growing up. Growingoutfrom me. I have to learn to let go. But it’s hard. For so long it was us two against the world. Now the world is nearly hers to grasp for herself.
‘It’s not every day my little girl turns sixteen,’ I say as I fill the kettle and wink at her. She rolls her eyes at Angela and Lizzie, but I know she’s happy I still get up to see her off to school. She’s at once grown up and still my baby. ‘And anyway,’ I add. ‘I’ve got my big presentation at work today so I need an early start.’
A phone buzzes. All three heads drop to screens and I turn back to the kettle. I know there’s a boy called Courtney in Ava’s life. She hasn’t told me about him yet, but I saw a message come in when she left her phone on the kitchen table last week, a rarity in itself. I used to check her phone occasionally, when I could, but now she uses a passcode, and as much as it pains me to admit it, she deserves her privacy. I have to learn to trust in my bright daughter’s sensible mind to keep her safe.
‘Do you want your presents now or tonight at Pizza Express?’ I ask.
Ava’s clutching little gift bags with coloured tissue poking out the top, but she doesn’t share with me what her friends have bought her. Later, perhaps she will. A few years ago she would haverunto show me. Not any more. Time flies. Somehow I’m nearly forty and Ava is sixteen. Soon she’ll be flying my nest.
‘Jodie’s outside,’ Angela says, glancing up from her iPhone. ‘We should go.’
‘Tonight’s fine,’ Ava says. ‘I haven’t got time now.’ She smiles at me and I think that one day, she’ll be quite beautiful. For a moment, I have a sudden pang of loss in my chest, so I focus on stirring my tea and then check my pre-sentation printouts are still on the kitchen table while the girls gather up their coats, swimming kits, and school and college bags.
‘I’ll see you tonight, Mum,’ Ava calls over her shoulder as they disappear into the hallway and I feel a gust of damp air as they flood outside. On a whim, I get my purse and take out twenty pounds and go after them, leaving the front door on the latch.