Not My Daughter

He holds me for a moment as he strokes my hair, and I relax into his embrace, into having him know this about me and be okay with it. It feels like a big step – the biggest we’ve taken so far – and it also feels good. It’s a relief, not to carry this by myself. To have it all be known.

‘So what are you going to do about the text?’ Will finally asks.

‘I’m going to ignore it. If she’d said something different, something more real…’

‘Perhaps she’s planning to, after she makes sure you’re still at the same number. I can understand her not wanting to write some heartfelt message when a stranger might receive it.’

I’ve thought of that, but I don’t think it’s the case. I’m not willing to take the risk that it is. ‘She could have said that, then,’ I counter. ‘Something like “just checking this is your number – I wanted to reach out” or something.’

‘True.’

One thing about Will is, he doesn’t push. He’s content to let me come to my own conclusions, make my own decisions, and yet right now I crave certainties. I want someone to tell me what the right thing to do is, to know.

‘I feel as if responding to this text will open that Pandora’s box up inside of me,’ I say slowly. ‘And everything will fly out.’ All the resentment, all the hurt, all the anger, all the grief. I’ve just got my life on a pleasant, even keel. I don’t want to upend it again, and for what?

‘Fair enough,’ Will says. ‘If she has something important to say, she’ll try again.’

I reassure myself that that is the case, but Milly’s text still niggles at me as I head to work on Monday. We’re planning a splashy fundraiser at a luxury hotel at Christmastime, and it’s taking all my energy and focus. I can’t afford to waste time thinking about Milly, and what she might want from me this time.

And yet I do think about her. As I am ordering flowers for the event, or filling in a spreadsheet, or answering calls from donors, I am thinking of her and I am remembering. It’s as if this one simple text has stirred the waters that have been swirling underneath all along, and random memories come floating up to the surface.

I remember walking home from school in year seven, sharing a packet of crisps, our shoulders nudging each other. I remember going as each other’s dates to the sixth-form ball, and having a blast.

But then I remember other things, things I’d forgotten – overhearing Milly talking to her flatmate a few months after I’d started living with them. Her friend had been complaining about me – and in retrospect I remember being a bit of a flake, distant and withdrawn. Milly’s response stays with me now – She’s not that bad, said in a half-hearted voice. I remember Milly barely reacting when I told her I’d been fired, how she had much preferred talking about herself and her bump.

All these memories jostle for space in my mind, and they bring out the worst in me. I’m irritable at work, and restless with Will. Everyone notices, and Cara, the other person who works in my department, asks me if anything is wrong. Will backs off a bit, to give me some space, he said, and I don’t blame him. Whether it’s my fault or Milly’s, she’s not good for me. Remembering our friendship is not good for me.

And so, two weeks after she sent that first text, I finally reply. Sorry, I don’t recognise your number. I think you have the wrong person.

After I send the text, I toss the phone aside and draw my knees up to my chest. I feel a wave of relief even as I fight the urge to burst into tears. At least now it’s done.

Or at least I thought it was – until a few days later, when the doorbell of my flat rings.

‘Anna?’ Through the intercom, Milly’s voice sounds anxious and urgent, and shocks me to the core. She came to my flat? I say nothing, because I have no words. ‘Anna? Is that you?’ Milly’s voice breaks. ‘Please, if it is, let me up. I have to talk to you. It’s important.’ Her voice hitches. ‘It’s about Alice.’

Twenty-Five

Milly

It started with little things, things so small I thought I was crazy even to notice them. I thought I was being the paranoid, over-the-top helicopter mum, but I wasn’t.

First it was Alice’s second eye test, which she failed. Her vision was worse than anyone had realised, least of all me. After a moment of feeling wrong-footed, as if I should have caught something that I didn’t, I readjusted my expectations. Alice got glasses. They had pink frames and she loved them, and best of all, she loved seeing properly.

‘Everything is so clear, Mummy!’ she exclaimed, her face full of joy that made me smile even as it tore at my heart. How had she felt before she’d got them? Why had she never said anything?

‘I feel guilty for not realising she could

n’t actually see very well,’ I told my mum one Saturday afternoon in July. We were sitting in their garden, a blanket over my mum’s knees because she got cold easily, even in the drowsy summer heat.

‘But she’s only four, and why would you think she couldn’t? They have these checks in preschools for a reason, Milly, and you caught it before she started school.’ She reached over to pat my knee. ‘You can’t beat yourself up over these things, Milly. Motherhood comes with so much guilt as it is. She’s fine now. That’s the important thing.’

And I let myself believe her. Like I told Matt, there were worse things than glasses.

But then I began to notice other things. Alice started waking up again at night, the way she had as a baby. I put it down to nerves about starting school. Then, one morning, she told me she couldn’t put on her shoes.

We were running late for preschool, and I fought a sense of impatience as I kept my voice cheerful. ‘Come on, darling, you can do it. You’ve done it before, loads of times.’

‘I can’t, Mummy.’ She thrust her lower lip out, the picture of stubbornness, so unlike her usually easy-going nature.