Toffee

for a few extra seconds,

  feel its flutter,

  the fragile panic.

  I could have crushed and killed it,

  or gone outside and

  released it

  into the dandelions,

  and knowing I had this power

  always made me feel

  a bit sick.

  Beach Day

  Marla roots under the stairs,

  uncovers

  a bucket and spade

  laced with spiderwebs.

  She holds them aloft.

  I can’t dance all day long,

  I’ve only one pair of knees.

  I need to get out of the house.

  So do you.

  No way. It’s tipping down, I say. No way.

  Marla finds a raincoat and hands it to me.

  I want to build something, she says.

  I want to get dirt in my toenails.

  I live near the beach, don’t I?

  I can smell the sailors.

  I hesitate,

  watch her hopeful eyes,

  wonder whether or not to lie

  about how close we are to the sea.

  I mean, I could.

  I could easily lie.

  Brief Encounter

  The rain keeps the sand wet

  so we can build

  things that

  do not

  blow away with the wind.

  We dig a hole,

  line it with

  towers,

  sharp battlements.

  People watch us,

  the teenager and the old woman

  sitting in the sand,

  hands and hair dirty.

  A little girl helps,

  digging the hole deeper

  so we can hide from pirates.

  I am a mermaid, she tells us.

  I am trapped on land. Help! Help!

  Help! Marla repeats.

  Help! I repeat.

  Help. Help. Help.

  The tide creeps towards us,

  waves licking the edges of our fortress.

  We have spent the afternoon building

  but no one will remember

  the work that went into it

  or how bewitching it was –

  how strong, solid.

  Everything

  eventually

  will be washed away.

  Captured

  We wait and watch

  until everything

  has been flattened.

  Until the sea has

  captured the castle.

  You Are Mine

  I slip the key into the lock.

  Marla says, Where are we?

  Home, I say,

  switching on the lights,

  the white hallway

  tinted green from the lightshade.

  Marla blinks at me,

  blank.

  Toffee, I remind her.

  I want someone else. Who do I want?

  She traces a wonky line

  in the woodchip wallpaper

  with her fingernail.

  You don’t want me here? I ask.

  I want to know the answer.

  Tears pool in the corner of her eyes.

  I do, she says.

  But I want someone else too.

  After the Summer Fete

  When I introduced the goldfish to Kelly-Anne

  she acted as though I’d adopted a baby.

  Jesus Christ, Allie, are you crazy?

  I need a bowl, I told her.

  I was wearing face paint like a zebra.

  I’d spent the day castle-bouncing

  at my last summer fete before secondary school.

  Kelly-Anne scattered chicken nuggets

  on to a baking tray and

  lobbed the lot into the oven.

  A bowl and a new brain.

  Have you even met your father?

  She rummaged

  under the sink

  anyway

  and found a dusty round vase.

  Hide it, she warned.

  And I know nothing about this.

  Her name is Iris.

  I kissed the side of Kelly-Anne’s head.

  She smelt of hairspray.

  I was so glad she was my almost-mum.

  Iris survived in our house

  much longer than I expected.

  Years.

  We all did, I suppose.

  Iris

  Get in here! Dad shouted

  like I was some disobedient dog.

  My skin started to tingle.

  What had I done wrong?

  I wasn’t late,

  didn’t leave him with an untidy house,

  even made tuna sandwiches –

  covered them in cling film to keep the bread from

  drying out,

  the corners from curling.

  I found him in the bathroom

  holding the vase I used as a fishbowl

  over the toilet.

  A vein in his neck throbbed.

  And

  I knew what was coming.

  Didn’t we talk about pets? he asked.

  I watched Iris swim in gulpy circles,

  stupidly unaware her life was on the line.

  I envied that about Iris:

  she couldn’t remember, or plan, or worry.

  Some nights I watched her

  circling, circling, circling,

  deleting her memory as she swam,

  two fins up to the future.

  I always wanted to be like that,

  but my stubborn brain stockpiles everything –

  the good, the bad and the boring –

  and when I’m alone

  I scan,

  left and right,

  looking at my life,

  never able to find any safe place.

  Whose house is this?

  I bowed my head,

  hoped that if I seemed sorry he’d settle down.

  Yours, I said. But –

  And what did I say when you asked for a cat?

  He knew exactly what he’d said about a cat

  because he doesn’t have the memory

  of a goldfish either.

  He was making me suffer –

  forcing me to admit

  he was right,

  I was wrong.

  I stepped into the bathroom.

  I got her free at a summer fete

  ages ago.

  I didn’t know what to do with her.

  His lips twisted.

  Yeah, what to do with a brainless goldfish?

  Here,

  let me show you.

  Without a hint of hesitation he

  tipped the vase,

  poured the water

  and Iris

  into the toilet bowl and

  flushed it.

  So that was it.

  Iris was gone,

  drowned in piss and shit.

  You’ll listen next time, Dad said,

  handing me the empty vase,

  storming past Kelly-Anne

  at the top of the stairs.

  I didn’t answer,

  which was always the best way to deal with it.

  And anyway, I knew it wasn’t the last I’d hear of it.

  My punishment had been too quick.

  Birthday

  I hide in my room,

  Donal showing up unexpectedly,

  suiting himself.

  He murmurs a lot,

  about Marla’s unusual tidiness,

  the cups in the right cupboards,

  her hair, smooth instead of nesty.

  Forget it, he says

  over the noise of rugby.

  You will anyway.

  But I didn’t know, Donal.

  If I’d known I would have bought a card.

  Maybe I did. Let me look.

  Seriously, sit down.

  I try to be a good mother.

  Sometimes Mary hi
des things, I think.

  She’s here all the time hiding things.

  Mary?

  Can you zip it?

  Am I a bad mother?

  Donal, talk to me,

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  Donal? Is Mary safe?

  Or maybe I’m thinking of Louise.

  Is Louise all right?

  Louise is fine, Mum.

  She’s had a baby.

  And she’s my daughter.

  No. Granddaughter.

  And how is Mary?

  How’s my Mary?

  Something bangs. A long silence.

  Jesus, Mum, Mary’s dead.

  How many times do you want me to tell you?

  It’s been years. You have to stop.

  I can’t keep breaking the news like this.

  Oh, don’t cry.

  He turns up the TV,

  shuts her out.

  I tiptoe into Marla’s room,

  take the cellophane-wrapped card

  from her dressing table,

  drop it

  into the

  wastebasket.

  The calendar pinged a reminder last week.

  I bought the card from the pound shop,

  golf clubs on the front,

  Happy Birthday, Son.

  But he isn’t getting it.

  Donal isn’t getting any Happy Birthday.

  Soothing

  She can hardly breathe,

  choking on sobs.

  A child’s birth, forgotten.

  A child’s death, gone too.

  Who am I?

  Who am I?

  I stroke her hand.

  You’re still a mother.

  You’re still Marla.

  That stuff doesn’t change.

  Everything has changed.

  I just can’t remember.

  I hold her in my arms.

  Her body judders.

  And by the time she has cried herself to sleep

  she has forgotten what her tears

  were about in the first place.

  So Maybe

  I try to make Marla believe she is a good mother,

  was,

  but I’ve no way of knowing how she

  treated Donal and Mary thirty years ago

  or why Donal seems so angry.

  I trust she was gentle and fun,

  the Marla now living.

  And if she wasn’t, maybe that’s OK too –

  maybe fewer memories means

  she can be kinder,

  forgetting what made her bad.

  Unlike most of us

  she lives in each day,

  not stuck in dreaming or worry.

  So maybe Dad could mellow

  if he got ill like her,

  remembering only the good stuff

  we had,

  the times I made him happy,

  and forgetting all the ugly details of our past,

  his past,

  the reasons for his rage.

  Still My Mother

  I don’t care that I have no pictures

  of me and Mum together.

  And I don’t have memories either.

  Because I lived in her body for nine months

  and knew her from the inside.

  She loved me.

  I know she did.

  I feel it in my gut.

  And nothing will ever stop me

  from loving her back.

  How Worried?

  I reread Dad’s last email, his last line.

  Call me, OK? I’m worried.

  But how worried can he really be

  about me

  when he hasn’t found me?

  There are ways to do these things.

  It isn’t easy to disappear.

  It isn’t just diseases that make people

  forget their kids.

  Breakfast

  Marla stirs a bowl of muesli,

  tastes it, spits.

  That’s pure sawdust.

  I’m not eating that.

  Have we any cake?

  I could murder a Battenberg.

  I’ll ask Mary to pick one

  up on her way over.

  It’s not meant to be dry, I tell her.

  I do not remind her Mary will

  never visit again.

  What would be the point

  in making her relive that pain?

  She reaches for the carton of apple juice

  and pours.

  I wait for the reaction,

  and when it is a sneaking smile,

  leave her to enjoy her cereal.

  Imbalance

  Dark.

  Night.

  A knock so sharp I shudder,

  should ignore it.

  Don’t.

  Why?

  Why can’t I

  go upstairs

  and keep the world in balance?

  A knock so sharp I shudder.

  Night. Moonlight.

  Owls hoot. Darkness.

  Why?

  Why don’t I say no?

  Why can’t I ever just

  say

  no.

  What I Don’t Know

  Open up then.

  Lucy presses her tongue to the kitchen window.

  I can’t smell her,

  but I know she’s drunk,

  stupid,

  dangerous.

  What I don’t know until it’s

  too late,

  until I’ve

  opened the back door,

  is that

  she has company.

  A Consolation

  You can’t be here.

  You can’t be here.

  You have to go.

  You have to go now

  before she wakes up.

  Lucy. Stop. Lucy.

  You can’t be here.

  They are foraging in the fridge,

  drinking milk straight from the bottle,

  biting into blocks of cheese,

  laughing,

  comfortable,

  nothing not theirs.

  You already know Jan and Mindy.

  That’s Kenny and Joel. He’s Mark.

  I tear Marla’s tea cosy from a boy’s head.

  Go home.

  Lucy, she’ll be so confused if she wakes up.

  Please. Please.

  Lucy stands soldier straight,

  salutes.

  Right, troops. Be cool.

  Don’t act like savages.

  And to me:

  We’ll be good. I promise.

  A kiss to the tip of my nose.

  They are quieter.

  Sneaking.

  But they are not good.

  They move to the sitting room,

  lie on her sofa,

  loll on her chairs,

  poke fun at her photos.

  They help themselves to booze,

  splosh it on her carpet.

  They find trinkets and pocket them.

  Put that back.

  That isn’t yours.

  But behind me I know something else

  is being taken,

  perhaps something that means more.

  Upstairs nothing stirs.

  Marla sleeps.

  She dreams through it all.

  And it is a consolation.

  Assault

  In the low lamplight

  I straighten the room,

  rearranging cushions,

  wiping down the coffee table.

  But in the bathroom

  I can’t do much about

  the piss-soaked bath mat.

  I take it out to the

  bin.

  On the patio

  one of Marla’s

  porcelain dolls lies

  naked,

  her head

  cracked open

  against the

  concrete.

  In the Daylight

  Marla fin
ds a pair of earphones

  in the pocket of her cardigan.

  She struggles to understand.

  But then again,

  so do I.

  Bad Weather

  Marla is back in bed,

  her head beneath the covers.

  I peel back a corner of the duvet,

  find her face.

  Are you asleep? I whisper.

  No.

  Are you hungry? I ask.

  I don’t know.

  I want to stay here.

  Peggy said I could stay here

  until the clouds have gone.

  It feels very cloudy today.

  I pull the duvet further back,

  climb into the bed next to her,

  both of us fully dressed.

  It’s really cloudy for me too.

  We can get up later, I say.

  I press my forehead against her shoulder,

  feeling my way through the fog.

  Who Did That to Your Face?

  She asks.

  My Dad Did It

  I tell her.

  Sulking

  Kelly-Anne had been gone a month.

  Dad rarely alluded to her,

  went on about other things instead –

  the state of the house,

  traffic –

  as though these were real reasons