‘It wasn’t a youth club.’
A red stain crept over her skin and yet she kept talking to him. It suddenly occurred to him that this was Effie trusting him.
‘It was an adult snooker hall. When things were bad at home, or a foster home, it was sometimes better to be elsewhere. It was safer—and warmer—than a park bench.’
‘You slept on a park bench?’
‘A few times,’ she shrugged, and he wondered what that meant.
Once? Five times? Twenty?
‘One night I realised I could sneak into the club and hang out in the warmth until at least two in the morning when it closed.’
‘How old were you?’
‘At that time? I guess about thirteen. The same age that Nell is now.’
Tak’s fists clenched, and it was all he could do not to identify the emotion which charged through him in that moment. ‘And no one noticed you?’
‘The owner did.’
She shrugged, as though it was no big deal. As though she didn’t feel any of the anger which constricted his chest, choking off his ability to breathe with ease. He couldn’t have spoken if he’d wanted to. All he could do was listen and wonder why it rattled him so much. Why this woman’s past got under his skin as it did.
‘But she turned a blind eye at first—except for warning some of the guys that if they went near me she’d kill them. Then, when my mum started going through her bad spells, and they became more frequent than not, she put a couch in a back office with what she called “leftovers”. She said it was hers, but that I could use it if she wasn’t in there.’
‘Let me guess—she only put it there for you to use?’ His smile was bittersweet.
The woman’s kindness was touching, but the fact that Effie’s childhood had necessitated it was saddening. But for the circumstance of money they had both suffered because of weak mothers. How easily could this have been his life or his life been Effie’s?
‘Right.’ Effie lifted her head a little, as if she was making a point of not letting her memories pull her back under. ‘We both knew what she was doing, but neither of us ever said it aloud.’
‘So she was the one person who didn’t make you feel like you had to do cartwheels?’
‘Pretty much.’
Her voice sounded thicker. Clogged. He wanted to know more but he didn’t want to put her through it.
‘How long did that go on for?’
‘Every time my mother went through a bad patch I would go there, and Eleanor would see to it that I had food, clean clothes, a warm bed. Then, as the years went on, we began to talk—until eventually she gave me a key to her house and I could sneak in whenever things got bad at home.’
‘She wasn’t a foster parent, though?’
‘No, but she was the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever had. She was the one who saw I was bright but that I’d slipped behind because of my circumstances. She worked with me—even got on to one of the snooker players whose day job was a teacher to come and give me some private tuition. She paid him by giving him a year’s annual pass.’
‘She got you to believe in yourself?’ Tak realised.
‘Yes. I’d always dreamed of being a doctor—God knows where that came from—but she was the one who convinced me I could get into Oxford.’
‘So what happened?’ The need to understand burned so impossibly hot inside him. ‘Did she get mad about you getting pregnant with Nell?’
He felt something shifted in an instant. He couldn’t shake the fear that Effie was about to shut down again. Thrust him away. But slowly, eventually, she lifted her gaze to his.
‘She never knew about Nell, Tak. Eleanor died two days after she’d received confirmation that she could officially adopt me. I went off the rails for a few months. I mean I really went all out. Which is when I fell pregnant.’
The cruelty of it slammed into him with a truly brutal force. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. What words existed?
‘Eleanor was the first person who’d ever made me feel wanted. Cared for. Loved.’