shuts her bedroom door.

  In the half-lit room

  I sit with Moon Tiger

  until sleepiness creeps through me

  and I can’t keep my eyes open

  for the last chapters.

  Electricity buzzes in the room.

  Something crackles.

  But Marla does not return.

  She stays asleep.

  And here I am alone in her home,

  reading her books,

  pretending to be someone I am not.

  She will see through me tomorrow.

  But I suppose that doesn’t matter tonight.

  I have a bed

  and the doors in this house

  are locked tight.

  I can’t go home.

  So I am staying.

  Too Long

  I hadn’t known he was in a hurry

  until he was

  behind me in my room,

  glaring back at me in the full-length mirror.

  I’ve been waiting, he said.

  Kelly-Anne loitered on the landing.

  Is it cold out?

  Are either of you taking coats?

  She was wearing a new dress.

  Dad ignored her.

  Nearly ready, I said,

  running a brush through my hair

  to the ends,

  tying it up high onto my head.

  Are you taking a coat? Kelly-Anne asked again.

  She was in the room now, next to Dad.

  He stormed out.

  She made a face.

  Dad returned

  with a pair of scissors,

  and before I could jerk my head from him

  he had hold

  of my ponytail

  and was cutting it,

  cutting it,

  cutting it,

  until he was holding the whole length of my hair

  in his hands.

  Kelly-Anne gasped. Marcus!

  Too long, he muttered.

  I nodded.

  But I didn’t know what was too long:

  the amount of time I’d made him wait

  or the length of hair

  he’d just stolen from me.

  Cleaner

  As I come out of the toilet,

  Marla sees me and screams.

  Who are you?

  She covers her face with her fingers

  for protection.

  I step into the hall light,

  holding up my hands,

  about to tell her

  I am Toffee.

  Marla steps back.

  Who are you?

  I stare at her.

  Who am I?

  Who? Who?

  Think, Allison, think.

  I was just here to clean, I mutter.

  I sit at the bottom of the stairs and

  slip on my sneakers.

  Cobwebs hang beneath the hall table.

  Marla reaches for an umbrella,

  waves it at me.

  I don’t need a cleaner.

  Don’t come back here.

  I’m well able to do my own polishing.

  I understand.

  She holds the umbrella aloft,

  and clumsily,

  unluckily,

  it opens.

  I step closer.

  I haven’t been paid.

  I hold out my palm.

  She seems to smirk at my audacity.

  Do I look like a bleedin’ cripple?

  I’m not.

  I can push a broom around the place

  and I’d break someone’s back with it

  if they messed me about,

  don’t think I wouldn’t.

  You haven’t been cleaning.

  I’m owed twelve quid, I tell her.

  I’ve got no idea why I’m insisting,

  why I don’t just go away

  and come back later.

  She chews her tongue.

  Your handbag’s in the sitting room.

  My voice is lined with ridicule,

  my expression hard.

  Leave, I tell myself.

  What the hell are you doing?

  You aren’t getting any money from me.

  She isn’t messing around.

  I march past her

  into the sitting room,

  where I collect her bag

  then come back out and hand it to her.

  Twelve. Pounds.

  My knees are shaking although

  she is watching me less confidently,

  perhaps with a thread of fear.

  How many hours were you here?

  Two. It’s six pounds per hour.

  She looks up at the ceiling,

  puts the open umbrella aside.

  I don’t want you back here, madam.

  Don’t let me see you in this house again.

  You hear me?

  If I see you back I’ll get the guards.

  Don’t think I won’t.

  She glances at the rotary telephone.

  It is black, dusty.

  I shrug.

  She hands me a ten and two coins.

  See you later, I say.

  Caught

  I don’t have a waterproof coat,

  and quickly it goes from cloudy to torrential,

  rain sweeping across the sky in

  thick panels.

  Cold comes in from the ocean.

  My cheek stings.

  I wedge myself between

  two lopsided beach huts

  to keep dry

  and look up

  only when a pair of Hunter rain boots

  comes to a halt in front of me.

  A girl with a silky Labrador frowns down.

  The dog’s tail wags,

  flicks rain.

  Water drips from the hem of the girl’s hood.

  Are you hurt? she asks.

  What happened to your face?

  Just got caught in the rain, I say.

  Beach Hut Number 13

  The beach hut has its back to the town,

  face to the sea,

  a full view of the Atlantic—

  a straight line all the way to America

  if you had the guts to get going.

  The wood smells of mint and mold.

  I could live here, I murmur to the girl,

  who is drying off the dog with a dishcloth.

  She laughs,

  tells me about the time her brother

  moved in

  for a week,

  when he was studying for his exams

  and couldn’t stand the sound of drumming.

  Who plays the drums? I ask.

  I do, she says casually,

  like that sort of thing could be ordinary.

  Her name is Lucy,

  and she speaks

  as though the world has always listened to her.

  I can’t look her in the eye.

  I examine the floorboards,

  scrutinize the dog’s paws and

  the jellyfish-patterned rug.

  She glances up at the mute roof.

  It’s stopped raining, she says,

  which I take to mean,

  You can leave now.

  So I do.

  Friends

  Dad didn’t like me having friends.

  He said,

  If I pay for your swimming,

  you’ll think things come easy.

  They don’t.

  Make yourself useful.

  Start with that dishwasher.

  He said,

  You can get a Saturday job

  when you’ve finished your exams.

  I’m a decent father. Don’t you eat?

  He said,

  It’s too late to go out.

  You think I don’t know what goes on?

  I could have invited friends over to the house

  but also

  I couldn’t.

  Sophie and Jacq weren’t the sort of girls to

  keep mum if things were weird—

  Jacq was a worrier, Sophie was a chatterbox.

  I didn’t want them seeing how he was,

  huffing and angry,

  cruel to Kelly-Anne.

  Why didn’t you come to Martin’s? Jacq asked.

  He likes you ’cause he went on and on.

  His brother’s got a new motorbike.

  Said he’ll let us have a go next time.

  Gotta be careful what you wear though

  in case you set fire to your leg on the exhaust.

  Allie thinks she’s too good for us, Sophie said.

  You already got a boyfriend or something?

  What’s his name? Is it Jacq’s dad?

  Shut up, said Jacq.

  She pushed Sophie.

  They laughed.

  Jacq’s dad was living with a twenty-year-old

  in some hovel.

  We pretended his girlfriend was still in elementary

  school,

  that her dad was a weirdo.

  Jacq pretended to find it funny.

  I wanted to come out, I told them.

  Dad’s being a pain.

  So come Saturday, Jacq said.

  We’ll go down to the movies.

  Sneak in.

  Nothing worth paying for anyway.

  Jacq held on longer than Sophie,

  tried really hard to keep me from

  slipping

  away.

  I can’t.

  I didn’t have an explanation.

  The only reason for not hanging out

  was that I was scared.

  But even then,

  I couldn’t exactly explain

  what I was afraid he might do.

  Waiting

  Marla is sitting at the kitchen table

  giving a crossword puzzle the evil eye,

  a lidded pen between her fingers.

  I rap on the woodwork so she won’t be startled.

  I’m back, I say,

  as casually as I can,

  hoping she’ll remember me as Toffee

  not the counterfeit cleaner

  so I can stay.

  Oh, she murmurs, without excitement.

  I need help with six across.

  Abode: four letters.

  I fiddle with my sleeve,

  pull it over my fingers.

  Home, I whisper.

  She counts the tiny boxes.

  You’re home.

  Yes. Home. Okay.

  Crosswords

  Everything Dad ever said was a puzzle,

  blanks and clues,

  words crossing

  v

  e

  horizontally,

  t

  i

  c

  a

  l

  l

  y,

  the answers never evident.

  Crosswords I can do.

  But I could never work out my father.

  Tired

  It was just noise.

  Loud noise that did nothing.

  Loud noise that sounded around me

  then vanished.

  So why did I shake when he shouted?

  Allison! Allison?

  How many times have I told you

  not to leave your shoes lying around?

  I knew my school shoes were next to the couch

  ’cause I kicked them off to read,

  and my sneakers were still in the bathroom,

  where I’d left them after my shower.

  It was before Kelly-Anne came to live with us

  and taught me how to keep out of his way.

  I was seven maybe.

  I wet the bed sometimes.

  Allison? Do your shoes need their own place?

  Allison? Where are you?

  Not clearing up, that’s for sure.

  He was clomping up the stairs,

  heavy-footed.

  I don’t ask much, do I?

  I mean, do I ask for much?

  A tidy house isn’t a lot to ask for.

  Is it?

  Is it?

  The walls rattled.

  The ceilings came closer.

  I stepped onto the landing.

  I’m sorry, Daddy.

  I’ll do it now.

  I was crying.

  There was snot.

  Choking sounds came from my throat.

  And he relented,

  just like that,

  head tilted like he was working me out.

  Jesus, Al, I’m so tired.

  That’s all it is.

  Don’t snivel. Come on, gimme a break.

  We’re buddies, aren’t we?

  He could have hugged me then

  to show he hadn’t meant to shout,

  to show what love felt like,

  but he didn’t.

  He opened his own bedroom door,

  kicked his shoes and clothes across the floor,

  and fell down onto his bed to sleep.

  And that’s the thing.

  He hadn’t lied.

  He really had been very tired.

  During the Commercial Break

  Marla dozes for a few minutes.

  When she opens her eyes she is afraid.

  Where’s Mary? she asks.

  She presses herself into her chair.

  I don’t know where she is.

  I hold up my hands in surrender.

  I’m starved.

  She points as though I’m the one

  who’s starved her.

  Well, I can make you something.

  What do you want?

  I want Mary. Who are you at all?

  I want my Mary.

  I’m Toffee.

  Marla squints and smiles,

  forgetting her growling stomach.

  For a moment she looks young;

  her face is bright, body bouncy.

  Toffee! Oh, we should practice!

  Practice what? I ask.

  You’re making fun of me.

  Either that, or you’ve had a bump on the head.

  Marla Has Moves

  Marla

  grooves and swivels,

  jiggles and jives,

  not afraid of the high tempo

  or the possibility she could trip and

  knock herself against the stone mantelpiece.

  Come on, Toff, keep up!

  Roger said we need to be ready.

  I hear Moira’s ready. And Frances.

  Those bitches.

  Move, Toffee!

  She drags me by the arm to join her,

  hip dipping one way, then the other,

  music roaring around the room

  from the record player.

  And once the song ends,

  needle in a little crane

  lifting itself off the spinning record,

  she starts the whole thing over.

  Routine

  Right foot forward,

  right foot back,

  quick, quick, quick,

  slow—slow,

  point to the sky, and spin,

  right foot

  right foot

  right foot

  right,

  wink at the crowd, and grin.

  And again but faster:

  left foot now,

  quick, quick, quick,

  slow—slow,

  left foot back, and dip,

  left foot

  left foot

  left foot

  left,

  wiggle three times, and skip.

  Strictly

  Dad worked weekends,

  taxiing drunks from pub to club,

  charging extra if they puked in his car.

  It meant the sitting room was free,

  and the TV,

  so Kelly-Anne and I ordered pizza

  and watched Dancing with the Stars,

  phoned up to vote for our favorites,

  watched the best bits

  again on repeat.

  Once we pretended to tango,

  bodies pressed close,

  arms outstretched,

  strutting from one end of the room

  to the other

  and back again.

  Dad finished early that evening,

  was watching us for ages before

  we noticed him

  there

  by the sideboard,

  recording us with his phone.

  Oh, don’t stop on my account, he said.

  But we did.

  We stepped away from each other,

  ashamed of our friendship,

  ashamed of the fun.

  We were just messing about, Kelly-Anne said.

  Dad pinched the end of his nose.

  Must be nice to have time for that.

  I turned off the TV and went to the kitchen

  to make Dad’s dinner.

  He followed me in.

  Someone’s been sick in the car.

  You’ll have to clean it.

  I nodded and found the rubber gloves.

  Kelly-Anne and I didn’t dance again.

  The Hunt

  When I know Marla is asleep,

  I hunt for traces of Toffee,

  rummage through drawers, cupboards,

  tip shoeboxes onto my lap, and

  scan black-and-white photographs,

  newspaper cuttings for clues.

  In the darkness,

  I search through pieces of the past

  to find a way to jigsaw Toffee together again,

  make myself a girl who was.

  Instead I find Marla—

  in hats and ruffles,

  hair puffed up like a well-baked sponge cake.