For my part, the choice has already been made. Having the children taken into care is something I have been trying to guard against since the age of twelve. No sacrifice is too great to keep my family together, yet the long path ahead looks so rocky and steep that I regularly wake up at night fearing I will fall. Only the thought of Maya at my side makes the ascent seem possible at all. But lately the sacrifices just seem to be getting bigger.
Our mother has been desperate to marry Dave from the moment she set eyes on him, yet Dave, even with his divorce now finalized, has not proposed, clearly not prepared to take on the extra baggage of another large family. Our mother has already made her choice – but now I’m about to turn eighteen and legally become an adult I fear she may cut us off completely in a final bid to get that ring on her finger. Every time I force her to part with some money for the basics – food, bills, new clothes, school things – she starts yelling about how she left school and started work at sixteen, moved out and asked her parents for nothing. Reminding her that she didn’t have three younger siblings to care for is her cue to go on about how she never wanted children in the first place, how she only had us to please our father, how he’d wanted another and another until, tiring of us all, he’d run off to start anew with someone else. I point out that our father’s desertion does not somehow magically give her the right to desert us too. But this only provokes her further, prompting the cheap-shot reminder that she would never have married our father had she not accidentally got pregnant with me. I know she says this out of drunken fury, but I also know it’s true: this is why she has continued resenting me, far more than the others, all my life. This then leads to the usual tirade about how she works fourteen-hour days just to keep a roof over our heads, that all she asks of me is that I look after my siblings for a few hours after school each day. If I try reminding her that although this was the initial set-up when our father left, the reality now is very different, she starts screaming about her right to a life too. Finally I find myself reduced to blackmaiclass="underline" only the threat of us all turning up at Dave’s, suitcases in hand, will force her to part with the cash. In many ways I am thankful she has finally gone from our lives, even if it means that thoughts about the future, our future, weigh heavily upon me.
Sleep evades me once more, so in the early hours of the morning I go down to the kitchen to tackle the pile of letters addressed to Mum that have been accumulating on the sideboard for weeks now. By the time I finish opening them all, the kitchen table is completely covered with bills, credit card statements, payment demands . . . Maya touches the back of my neck, making me jump.
‘Didn’t mean to startle you.’ She takes the chair beside me, resting her bare feet on the edge of mine, circling her knees with her arms. In her nightdress, her hair hanging loose and smooth, the colour of autumn leaves, she looks up at me with eyes as wide and innocent as Willa’s. Her beauty makes me ache.
‘You look just like Tiffin when he’s lost a match and is trying to put on a brave face,’ she comments, laughter in her eyes.
I manage a small laugh. Sometimes, being unable to hide my emotions from her is frustrating.
The laughter leaves an unsettling silence.
Maya tugs gently at my hand. ‘Tell me.’
I take a sharp, shallow breath and shake my head at the floor. ‘Just, you know, the future and stuff.’
Although she keeps smiling, I see her eyes change and sense she has been thinking about this too. ‘That’s a big topic for three o’clock in the morning. Any part of it in particular?’
I force my eyes to meet hers. ‘Roughly from here up until the part where Willa goes off to university or starts work.’
‘I think you’re jumping the gun a bit!’ Maya exclaims, clearly determined to snap me out of my mood. ‘Willa is destined for greater things. The other day I had to take her to Belmont with me to pick up some homework I’d forgotten and everyone turned to mush! My art teacher said we should get her signed up with a children’s modelling agency. So I reckon we just invest in her, and by the time she’s eighteen she’ll be on the catwalk and supporting us! Then there’s Tiffin. Rumour has it, Coach Simmons has never seen so much talent in one so young! And you know what they pay footballers!’ She laughs, frantic in her efforts to cheer me up.
‘Good point. Exactly . . .’ I try to imagine Willa on a catwalk in the hope it will prompt a genuine smile. ‘That’s a great idea! You can be her, um, stylist and I can be her manager.’
But the silence descends again. It’s clear from her expression that Maya is aware her tactics haven’t worked. She skims her nails over the palm of my hand, her expression sobering. ‘Listen, you. First of all, we don’t know what’s going to happen with Mum and the whole financial situation. Even if she does marry Dave and tries to cut us off financially, we could just threaten to take her to court and sue her for neglect – she’s too stupid to realize we’d never go through with it because of Social Services. And by our mere existence, we’ll always have the potential to mess up her relationship – the threats about turning up at Dave’s in order to get her to pay the bills have worked so far, haven’t they? Thirdly, by the time you finish uni, a lot will almost have changed. Willa will be nearly nine, Tiffin will almost be a teenager. They’ll be going to school by themselves, will be responsible for their own homework. Kit may have grown a conscience by then, but even if he hasn’t, we’ll insist he either goes out and gets a job or takes over his fair share of the chores – even if we have to resort to blackmail.’ She smiles, raising my hand to her mouth to kiss it. ‘The toughest part is happening right now, Lochie – with Mum suddenly out of the picture and Tiffin and Willa still so young. But it’s only going to get easier: things will get better for all of us, and you and I will have more and more time together. Trust me, my love. I’ve been thinking about it too and I’m not just saying all this to try and cheer you up.’
I raise my eyes to meet hers and feel some of the weight lift from my chest. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that . . .’
‘That’s because you’re always busy thinking of the worst-case scenario! And because you always do your worrying alone.’ She gives me a teasing smile and shakes her head. ‘Also you always forget about the most important thing!’
I manage to match her smile. ‘What’s that then?’
‘Me,’ she declares with a flourish, flinging out her arm and knocking over the milk carton in the process. Fortunately it is almost empty.
‘You and your ability to send things flying.’
‘Well, exactly,’ she concurs. ‘And the very important fact that I’m here to worry with you and go through all of this – every little bit of it by your side: even your worst-case scenario, should it somehow come to that. You wouldn’t be doing any of it alone.’ Her voice drops and she looks down at our hands, fingers entwined, resting on her lap. ‘Whatever happens, there will always be us.’
I nod, suddenly unable to speak. I want to tell her that I can’t pull her down. I want to tell her that she has to let go of my hand in order to swim. I want to tell her that she must live her own life. But I sense she already knows these options are open to her. And that she too has made her choice.