Cosy Nights & Snowball Fights (Little Duck Pond Cafe #36)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I swallowed, my mouth suddenly as dry as the desert. It was a story about the house fire that almost killed us. And reading it after all this time took me right back to how I felt that night – a terrified ten-year-old who’d had to somehow save her mum.

I’d come home from school that day to find my mum slumped in her favourite old armchair, dead to the world, an empty bottle of vodka on the sticky-surfaced table beside her, along with several dirty glasses. I must have done my homework then switched on the TV, with my mum still asleep in the chair. I always kept the volume low because while she was sleeping, she was safe, so I didn’t want her to wake up. I must have made myself a sandwich to eat – I’d become an expert by then at feeding myself – and then I remember her waking up and reaching for her cigarettes. She’d recently started smoking and I remember hating it because I knew it might kill her.

It’s funny the things you remember. She got quite sentimental then and started telling me how much she loved me and that having me was the best thing she’d ever done. I guess I remember that quite clearly because I wasn’t used to her showing me affection like that.

What happened after that was a blur. I just remember the panic, the leaping flames and being really scared that my mum was going to die if the firemen didn’t come soon to rescue us.

Now, I found myself trembling as I read the newspaper story. It was an odd feeling, reading about your life... the bits you’d forgotten about. I was fascinated to read it. My memory of that night had always been patchy, but this newspaper report was filling in the blanks for me.

I’d told the reporter that my mum had gone to bed, and I’d gone upstairs myself soon after. But I was woken later by a horrible smell of smoke, and when I ran onto the upstairs landing and looked down, I could see flames leaping up through the open living room door and travelling into the hallway. I’d run for the stairs in a panic but halfway down, the heat from the fire stopped me going any further. I do remember running into Mum’s room and trying desperately to wake her, and then doing what I’d learned I should do in these situations from medical programmes on TV – I dialled 999.

I stared at the clipping as it shook slightly in my hands.

I’d forgotten all about the woman photographer coming that day, with the young man who, looking back, was obviously the reporter who’d written the story.

All I knew at the time was that a nice man wanted to talk to me about the very frightening thing that had happened, and what I’d done to save us. He kept saying how brave I was to have kept calm when I saw that the place was on fire, and how clever I was to have called the emergency services. According to the story, I’d woken my mum up and got us both onto the tiny balcony off her bedroom at the back of the house, away from the thick smoke that was filling the house.

After the fire, everything changed. I didn’t see my mum for a long time and instead, I went to live with some people in the same town, who were my new foster family. The couple were already fostering three other children, so I think it might have been just a temporary measure to place me there. I just remember a lot of noise and chaos in that house, kids running around everywhere. I cried a lot, missing my mum, and Jo was the friend I clung to in my confusion. I remember Jo’s mum being brilliant and telling me I was welcome there any time. I thought how lucky Jo was to have her for a mum.

After a while, I was moved to another house, where I was the only child. I remember liking my foster parents but feeling very lonely there. At least at the other house, there’d been other children to play with.

It was all so bewildering, looking back, and I never felt like I belonged.

But then finally, when I was eleven, I was taken to meet the lovely people who would eventually adopt me. Sally and Keith had been unable to have children of their own, and they welcomed me with open arms. The bond between the three of us was established on day one and grew ever stronger in their care. After that, I never looked back... until I turned eighteen and I decided I wanted to see my biological mother again.

Auntie Viv had taken me out for lunch to celebrate and she told me she’d been to see Jackie and couldn’t believe the difference in her. She’d managed to get her addictive behaviour under control and even had a job now, working as a receptionist at a hairdresser’s. Viv said she was cautiously optimistic that Jackie had turned her life around for good. Apparently, she’d talked a lot about me... wanting desperately to see me. But she was scared I’d reject her after everything that had happened in my childhood.

The following morning, knowing from Viv that Jackie would be at work, I went back to the old house (I still had my key) and I rescued a few things that I’d left behind, like a box of photos and some of the books I’d lost myself in, during all those lonely nights when I was on my own, so little and afraid. The newspaper clipping I’d just found was probably in the box of photos I’d carried away. Someone must have cut the story out of the local paper at the time.

The books I took had given me comfort during the worst of times and one day, I planned to read them to my own children if I was lucky enough... little ones who wouldn’t be forced to grow up fast, but who could just be children. Children who would never once doubt how much they were loved...

After visiting the house in secret, I then went to visit Jackie – with Viv that first time – and she cried and seemed overjoyed to see me again.

The Jackie I found had indeed changed. She was bright-eyed and well-groomed and seemed to really enjoy her job. She told me she’d been going to meetings for people with addiction and she’d been clean for over two years. I believed her when she said she was getting her life back on track, and that she was so sorry for everything that happened. She begged for my forgiveness, saying her dearest wish was that she could turn back the clock and be a proper mother to me. She’d had a taste of what life could be like being free of her alcohol addiction, and she would never, ever go back to her old ways.

I remember telling her that we could wipe the slate clean and start again, and she swore that she’d make it up to me and try to be the perfect parent from now on.

And she really did try. It was all good between us for quite a while, and gradually, my trust in her was growing.

Until the day of my graduation from beauty college when it all went wrong again...