‘Emily, don’t do that,’ I said, and to the social worker, ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘I’m really glad I’ve met you at last.’

  She looked at Emily and reached out a hand. ‘Are you better now? I hear you were poorly. My wee boy is the same age as you. He had a bug last week. I hope you’re much better.’

  Emily moved closer to me.

  ‘The purpose of this visit is to check the family unit is doing okay. To follow up from the incident in the car park. The police always pass these cases to us. It’s a matter of course.’

  ‘The family unit is fine thanks.’ And then I said, ‘People do it all the time but they don’t get caught.’

  ‘Just let me go over these first few things. You’ve not long moved here, have you? Who’s at home? Is it just you and Emily?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you in contact with her dad?’

  ‘No.’

  She made a note.

  ‘Do you have any family?’

  ‘I have a mother in London.’

  ‘So you’re completely alone here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She made another note.

  I didn’t need to tell the social worker it was my intention to be alone, that I was giving my mum a break after nearly five years, that I thought she had compassion fatigue and longed for an empty house so she and Alan could eat steak and he could stay over without being woken at six in the morning.

  ‘Emily is four, five in April. Did she go to school in England?’ the social worker asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. Why not? How does she feel about starting school here in August?’

  ‘We won’t be here in August.’

  ‘Oh. Where are you moving to? You’ll need to enrol her wherever you go. She should be at school or registered for school at her age.’

  ‘I know.’

  I said no more and the social worker said, ‘We’ll revisit that.’

  The question irritated me. Starting school was something my mum and I had argued over. I’d deferred Emily for a year citing exceptional circumstances. One of the dancers on the ship had talked about home-schooling her children and until I moved to Lennoxtown I’d liked that idea. I wasn’t going to think about schools until we’d cleared Audrey’s flat, had our holiday in the hills and moved on.

  Emily found my phone and asked to look at photographs. I let her.

  ‘I know you’re registered with a doctor, that’s good.’

  ‘It was tonsillitis Emily had. She got antibiotics.’

  We both looked at Emily who swiped her finger across my phone.

  ‘Which is why I left her in the car. I made a judgement. She was sick. Are they going to prosecute me?’

  ‘I’m not the police. I can’t speak for them.’

  ‘But they said they’d be in touch and they haven’t.’

  She might have shaken her head, I couldn’t tell. ‘Technically the police could prosecute if they felt there was good reason. It’s called “Abandonment”. But I don’t have anything to do with that. My job is to look after Emily. And you, obviously.’ I could tell she was trying to reassure me, to keep me away from subjects that might make me troubled. She must have seen women like me before.

  ‘I didn’t abandon her.’

  ‘A child could be in danger of overheating, she could be left for an extremely long time, she could be particularly distressed.’

  ‘She was none of those things. She was asleep.’

  Sara leaned towards me, resting her elbows on her thighs. Conspiratorial. ‘Sometimes the car is hit by another car. Sometimes, and one of my colleagues has had this, the car is stolen with the child in it. Remember, your child is a minor. Whatever you do and wherever you go, you are responsible for her. What if that thief had taken Emily? What if the glass had cut her?’

  I nodded. ‘I didn’t mean for anything like that to happen.’ Obviously. The glass didn’t smash properly anyway.

  ‘I know. I’m telling you some of the consequences of leaving a child in a car. It really is always best to take them with you.’ She sat straight then pulled a diary from her bag. A sheet of folded paper fell to the floor.

  ‘They were horrible, those people in the car park. They had no right to treat me like they did. Emily pass up that piece of paper.’

  Emily ignored me, absorbed with the photos on my phone, so I reached for the paper and handed it to Sara. We were quiet. I’d seen the way she looked at me when I spoke and I think she believed me, I think she did.

  Emily said, ‘Mummy look at that one,’ and showed me a picture I’d taken of her outside her nursery. ‘Look at that one, look at that one.’ I had to look.

  ‘I can tell you care about your daughter.’

  ‘I do.’

  She had a skill, that social worker, to calm me down without appearing to try. I began to relax as we talked about the ongoing winter. Sara told me she couldn’t ever count on March because as well as daffodils, it brought hailstones and hurricanes and snow. She talked about her son’s love of snow.

  ‘Will he be starting school in August?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you leave him alone in the car?’ The question seemed to surprise us both.

  I could tell Sara was a woman who thought before she spoke, unlike me.

  ‘Before I worked in child protection, I possibly would have, but not now,’ she said.

  The room became darker. I stood up to switch on a light and saw thick clouds over rooftops.

  The doorbell rang again. We’d never had so many visitors. Emily looked up from the phone. ‘Hide! Shush!’ she said and put her finger to her lips.

  ‘We don’t need to hide,’ I said, pretending to laugh, but Emily climbed onto the armchair and curled up with her hands over her face. She leaped off when the doorbell went again and froze with her arms outstretched and her eyes moving comically.

  There was a shout through the letter box: ‘Anybody home? Hello. It’s Paul. The plasterer. Aidan Watt sent me. You want me to look at your walls.’

  ‘I need to get this,’ I said to Sara and I nodded at Emily who unfroze, ran down the hall and slid on her bum down the stairs. In poured the bleak daylight as she opened the door.

  Paul wore white overalls and carried his phone in his hand. I saw the weariness in his face change to surprise as he clocked me, tall, in front of him. I notice these things.

  I let him in and he put a hand to the walls. His fingers were pink with dried plaster.

  ‘Are these the ones?’

  ‘Yes, it’s these and the bedrooms. Aidan wants you to give him a quote to get rid of the Artex and fix up the holes. There are some big chunks missing from some of the walls.’

  ‘I can skim the Artex for you, aye. I can do your painting for you too, not a problem.’

  In the living room, he nodded to the social worker who sat where I’d left her, on the sofa. He touched the walls and looked at the ceiling. ‘Not a problem,’ he said again. He half smiled at the rectangles of clean wallpaper and said, ‘I’ll paint over this, will I?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ I showed him the kitchen that needed painting and then we walked to the door. Emily told me I’d forgotten about her toast. I had.

  ‘How long will this work take?’ I asked. ‘Because I don’t want to be here for much longer.’

  ‘I could come over at the end of next week.’

  ‘No sooner?’

  ‘I’m fully booked.’

  His phone rang and he answered it, turning away to speak. ‘I’ll phone you back,’ he said and he looked at Emily when he’d finished.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘My wee girl’s seven. Do you go to the nursery? Holly goes to the primary school next door.’

  Emily wouldn’t answer so I said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I haven’t seen you up there.’

  ‘We’re new.’

  ‘Mummy, you said you’d make me toast.’

  He smiled at me. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Tell Aidan I’ll email him a quote.’ He had a carefree end of the day energy about him as if he liked the sound of a can’s opening. I liked that. He took another look at the walls and the ceiling in the hall and I observed the blackness of his lashes, heard him feel for his keys in his pocket.

  When he’d gone I went straight to Audrey’s bread bin and put a slice of bread in the toaster, calling out to the social worker that I wouldn’t be two minutes. As I was buttering the toast, she came into the kitchen. ‘I won’t keep you much longer.’

  ‘Here, Emily. Go and sit on the sofa. What do you say?’

  ‘Thank you.’ She held the plate in front of her like a gift.

  ‘Are you managing financially?’ the social worker asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I wasn’t. I had my child benefit and my tax credits and no rent to pay. I’d lived like this for nearly five years in London, staying with my mum, earning bits of money from bits of teaching, but my mum paid most of the bills and Aidan was doing the same here. If I was left on my own I would sink.

  She’d put on her coat and I walked her to the door. ‘I am going to need to come back and have a chat with Emily when it’s convenient for you,’ she said as she stepped outside, holding her diary.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s something we must do.’

  ‘How did you know she was registered with a doctor?’ It occurred to me, just then.

  ‘It’s a check we make.’

  She put her hood up because rain was falling softly now. On another day I might have looked for a rainbow.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘To see if they have any concerns about Emily.’

  ‘Like what? I left her in the car for five minutes.’

  Her assertive voice, the calm, straight-talking manner. ‘When somebody avoids contact with social work, as you did – the unanswered phone calls, nobody at home – I have to do a bit of digging to see if any other services have concerns.’

  I heard rain on her coat and car roofs.

  ‘And the GP gave us no cause for concern.’

  ‘Good!’

  ‘But I will be speaking with the nursery.’

  ‘Oh my God! Why?’

  ‘It’s all part of our procedures. I’m concerned that you have no family here to support you. Do you have friends? Are you getting regular breaks from Emily?’

  Was I? She went to nursery. Most people had less time apart.

  ‘No, but I’m fine. Emily was sick. She had a temperature. We had nothing to eat so we went to the shop and she fell asleep in the car. I did it as fast as I could but there was a man in front of me with five hundred lottery tickets and when they finally put someone else on the tills I realised I’d forgotten the milk so I asked her to wait and I raced to the back of the shop to get it because they always put the milk at the back for some fucking reason. And I paid the money and she took ages to pack my bag then I ran out of the shop and there they were crowded around my car. She was asleep for God’s sake. There was no harm done. Absolutely no harm done. I would have driven home and lifted her out of the car and put her in her bed and she might have slept on if those interfering bastards hadn’t held me up and summoned the police.’

  See. I told the story again and again. And I put in swear words too.

  ‘And while I’m on the subject, the police treated me like I was a piece of shit. Utter contempt they had for me.’

  She nodded her head.

  ‘Who else?’ I said. ‘Who else have you spoken to?’

  She tried to hand me her business card. ‘Liz, if you need support from anyone – me, your GP, the nursery staff – it’s all there for you.’

  ‘I don’t.’ Did I? Did I? I was managing. I was coming off my tablets. That was a good thing, despite the shooting stars.

  ‘I’ll contact the police and tell them we’re monitoring things. Prosecution is highly unlikely.’

  ‘Prosecution!’

  ‘Please don’t get yourself worked up. I’m trying to help.’ Her fingers hovering near my arm. My eyes hissing at her open face.

  ‘I don’t need help.’ Did I? ‘Off you go and investigate someone who actually abandons their child.’ Frappé. A fast action with the leg. Never before had I needed a social worker. Never before.

  I shut the door and walked into the kitchen to stare out of the window at the washing line and wet paving slabs in Audrey’s garden. The thought occurred to me then that I should call my mum and get her to take her leave up here with us in this cold-walled house. If I accepted help I’d take it from my mum, not a social worker.

  I checked on Emily. She had crumbs and honey on her face. There was a knock at the door and Paul’s voice shouted through the letter box. ‘I forgot to leave you my number. Probably best not to call Australia each time you want to get hold of me!’

  ‘Just post it through please!’ I shouted. ‘We’re naked!’

  Fuck them all.

  Emily laughed and began to strip.

  It snowed, like the social worker said it would. In the third week of March. The blizzard came early one morning and drove snow and sleet onto the tops of frenzied trees. The wind subsided but snow continued to fall and by mid-morning roads and pavements and the great sides of the Campsies were white. The place ached with white. We discovered soon after that we liked to throw sticks and stones onto the frozen lake by the old hospital. I loved the unearthly sound they made, clattering across the ice. I loved the force of my throws. Yet the stark snow made me feel more exposed than ever, as if I was being watched from all over Lennoxtown, by people who never left their children in cars, by happy families who did activities or baked.

  7.

  I think teaching ballet to people who’ve grafted or birthed or buried and lived long lives is a good thing, no matter how much or how little their bodies can dance, so I’m glad I started my classes at the sheltered housing. I was tempted to cancel them after the social worker came to my house. I didn’t want to be the woman that people talked about, the upstart from London with the slack parenting who thought she could barge into Lennoxtown and presume to teach dance. It was misguided, this jaunt of ours. Perhaps if his gran hadn’t died and Aidan hadn’t asked, I would have continued with my life in London, getting through each day and going some way towards recovery. But I was still at the stage where the mention of Robbie’s name triggered too many feelings, so of course I came to Lennoxtown, the place of his birth. It’s done now. I taught the classes.

  Before I dropped her at nursery Emily saw me take my make-up bag from a drawer. She asked me where I was going and demanded she wear make-up too. I told her to smile and brushed blusher onto the apples of her cheeks. There was toothpaste around her mouth. I licked my finger and wiped it off. I held her under her arms and lifted her up so she could see into the mirror. She weighed nothing. We looked into each other’s eyes and then she turned her face to inspect her cheeks.

  ‘You have your cruise face on,’ I told her. ‘I have my cruise face on too. Except I left off the glitter.’

  ‘Can I have some glitter?’

  I put a dab on her cheekbones and lifted her up again.

  ‘Mummy, you have a line here, between your eyes.’ She touched my wrinkles then stroked soft fingers across my forehead and down my face.

  ‘Yes, but look at my smile!’

  Emily smiled too.

  ‘Wish me luck,’ I said.

  ‘Good luck, Mum.’

  She’d never called me Mum before. I think that was her way of acting grown up. So I had to act grown up too.

  There they were, in the pink-carpeted lounge, waiting for me. I noticed the women I’d met the previous week. June with the turned out feet sat at a table with keys bunched in her fist and Eve, the woman who wanted an art class, was next to her, talking to a man in a dressing gown. A woman sat with her hands clasped on the table in front of her and two more women with the curved backs of age or osteoporosis folded paper napkins and put them in a handbag. A man placed his newspaper on the table, stood up when he saw me and said, ‘We’re here to audition for A Chorus Line,’ and there was laughter.

  I laughed too and sang ‘One Singular Sensation’ a little too loudly.

  June put down her keys and coughed.

  ‘I thought it might have been too early in the morning for you all,’ I said.

  ‘It’s better than sitting in our houses,’ Eve said.

  June said, ‘It’s too early for Margaret. She won’t come.’

  I put my bag on the floor, pushed some tables to the sides of the room and they helped me by catching the vases of flowers before they fell. I asked someone to turn off the radio and I made a barre out of a line of chairs. The chairs were sturdy with strong backs and I had to lean into them to push.

  ‘Have you done any dancing before?’ I said.

  ‘I used to jive,’ said the man with the newspaper.

  ‘Two left feet, me,’ June said.

  ‘That’s where my parents met, at the dancing,’ the younger of the two women folding napkins said. ‘Didn’t you, Mum?’ We stopped to look at her mother who smiled with coral lips.

  ‘Where?’ the man with the newspaper asked.

  ‘Dennistoun Palais.’

  ‘I will have asked you to dance then, Agnes.’

  ‘You will have been in nappies. She’s ninety-six.’

  ‘I’ve always fancied myself as a toy-boy.’

  ‘I’m eighty-nine,’ said the man in the dressing gown.

  ‘And not in nappies yet,’ June said.

  That’s what I remember about them: their loose talk and their great age.

  ‘What about you?’ I asked the woman who sat with her hands in her lap, the only one not to speak.