How To Be Brave (4 page)

Rose went missing six days after we got home.

Like a shadow at dawn, she slipped away while I slept. I’d been dreaming of the ocean again. This time the sun joined me, bathing my surroundings in sharp gold light, and I could finally see the vessel I’d drifted in night after night. It was a crude and weatherworn wooden lifeboat, perhaps twelve feet by eight. Masts at either end had greying sails attached, dangling forlorn in the windless air. The steering oar behind me was broken; without it navigation was impossible; and with the useless, threadbare sails, the travellers in this boat were at the mercy of the sea.

Except for me, it was empty. I wished for my ethereal companion and looked about for him, but there was nowhere to hide on this small craft. I stared out over the sea, rippling with jade and turquoise and amber, and then settled back against the wood and waited.

Water gently licked at the boat’s edge; kiss, kiss, kiss. High now, the sun hypnotised me. I closed my eyes briefly and when I opened them again, after what seemed like forever, a flash of burnt orange caught me by surprise. On the opposite bench was a cushion. I recognised it at once – how many times had Rose sat on it, cross-legged, pages open, waiting for a story in the book nook?

But what was it doing here?

Wasn’t I supposed to be looking for a book?

I might have slept on longer, and discovered who’d brought the cushion from home, but my phone vibrated on the bedside cabinet and pulled me away from the cruel sun, watery kisses and confusion.

‘Hello,’ I croaked, my throat parched.

How could a dream have such an effect? It felt like I hadn’t had a drink in days, even though I’d had half a glass of water after doing Rose’s finger-prick test at 3 a.m. Was this how Rose had felt?

‘It’s me,’ a male voice said.

‘Jake.’ I sat up straight, dreams forgotten. ‘Oh, Jake, I’m so sorry about how I was at the hos…’

‘Forget about that,’ he said, like I’d known he would. ‘I know how that must have been for you and I’ve felt bad that I couldn’t call sooner. Look, I might not have too long, so how are things? How’s Rose?’

‘She’s…’ I didn’t know how to describe it.

The first three days back home Rose had ignored me, and the last three she had fought me as passionately as she’d previously disregarded me. At least in conflict I could see the child I knew before diabetes, the one who questioned everything I suggested and listened carefully to how I thought something should be done but then went and did it completely the opposite way.

Her middle name should’ve been Wilful
, I’d often said to Jake, knowing the moment I’d finished that last syllable he’d say,
Just like you
.

Oh, she was headstrong. She challenged my patience. But this made her sweetness all the more potent. The times she’d stilled my hand from scrubbing a curry-stained pan or stolen my breath for a moment with some sensitive observation or compliment.

‘She’s…’ I tried again.

‘God, I feel so useless.’ Jake’s quiet words supressed what I knew was killing him. ‘I can’t even do any research on diabetes out here. I talked to a few of the lads – I
had
to – and one said his mum has it, but she lost her … well, you don’t want to know about that. Is Rose getting better? Is the insulin stuff working? Does she let you give her it?’

I nodded, said, ‘Yes, we’re doing the insulin.’

When she’d sat cross-legged on her bed the first morning at home, and held out a limp hand for finger pricking, I’d expected her to resist.

‘You’re okay with me doing it?’ I’d asked, scared to pierce her tiny finger.

What if I did it wrong? How could I do properly what the nurses had been doing for years? I’d tried to think of anything except what I was about to inflict on her and my mind settled on the pumpkin still rotting on the kitchen work surface, its candle inside mysteriously dead. I saw the ridges and haphazard teeth and the crooked lid. Picturing it, I’d prepared the device, put the lancet in, clicked the lever back and held it clumsily, a student nurse trying to act like she’s a pro. I knew that however scared I felt, Rose was the one truly enduring it.

When she gave no response to my question, I’d gently touched her cheek, tried to turn her to look at me. She’d acquiesced, but her eyes were dead.

‘She was so compliant,’ I told Jake.

‘Well, isn’t that good?’

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘She wasn’t
there
. For three days she just gave me her fingers … let me inject her little legs. Oh, her legs – like two twigs. It was like some floppy, silly, obedient creature had replaced our daughter! But oh, she’s back now.’

How suddenly Rose had changed from not there to absolutely there. On the fourth day at home she leapt out of bed and screamed when I approached her with the box of diabetes stuff. We’d circled the room, her the bull and me the bullfighter, her red nightie tempting me to tame her.

Catch me
, her eyes said.

I did eventually, after verbal begging and persuading, after blackmail in the form of promised money and days out, after finally sitting on her tummy while trying to be kind, gentle, motherly.

Is a mother supposed to do such things? Should she physically force something on her child? Smother her child’s protests, lose her own temper, and cause more pain? Forced flesh resists needle, resisted needle bites harder. But I had to put my guilt in the kitchen cupboard with the tins of beans so I could do what had to be done, and scream into a pillow later.

‘You’ve no idea how strong she is,’ I told Jake.

‘Oh, I can imagine.’ I heard a smile in the words and my instinct was to berate him for being cruel, laughing at my difficulties, but I knew affection shaded the sentence. Suddenly I could smell him as though he’d sneaked up behind me. Clouds of his aftershave and deodorant and man skin enveloped me; loneliness joined it, threatening to suffocate me.

‘She’s never going to forgive me for forcing this on her,’ I said.

‘She will. She
knows
you have to.’

 ‘I’ve already bruised her. I can’t do it today, Jake!’

‘You
can
,’ he said. ‘You’re doing an amazing job. No one could do it like you. She was probably letting you because she trusts you.’

‘I’m going to lose her.’

‘Never,’ he said.

But I already had. Whenever Rose thought I wasn’t looking she glared at me, hazel irises aflame with rage and resistance, and with something I’d no name for but I feared was hatred. She’d scribbled all over the blood readings I had to record in a log book and growled when I said she was behaving like a three-year-old. She’d taken the insulin out of the fridge and binned it. She’d snapped the ends off lancets and cut up the repeat prescriptions before I’d even figured them out and eaten four snack bars instead of one.

Her pancreas was dying, and so was our relationship.

‘Can I talk to her then?’ asked Jake.

I looked at the bedside clock – how could it be nine? Rose should be awake. Even though I’d kept her off school a few days she had still woken promptly each day at seven-thirty, ready for battle.

‘We’ve overslept.’ I got up. ‘I’ll go and get her. Oh, I bet she’ll be happy to wake up to a call from you. Might start the day a lot better.’

I headed across the landing to her room, collecting the dreaded diabetes box from the shelf by her door. In only five days it had become second nature to pick it up but I imagined it would be many months more until I didn’t feel utterly sick with it in my hands.

‘Listen, Jake, can I do her finger prick while she’s talking to you? It might distract her.’

‘Of course.’ He seemed pleased to have a role in her care.

I opened her door but she wasn’t there. The bed was empty; its covers were piled up like snow. Her pillow had fallen in what looked like haste, revealing the place where books used to be. I’d tried every night to tuck one back under her head and she’d say, ‘Dickhead.’ How could I punish her for such language – didn’t I use it every day now?

‘She’s not here,’ I said to Jake, confused.

‘She’ll be watching TV.’

‘Maybe.’ I pulled the covers back, looked underneath. I checked the wardrobe, then went onto the landing again, called, ‘Rose! Come on – don’t play about! Where are you hiding?’

‘Don’t panic, she’ll be downstairs,’ said Jake.

Before diabetes I’d not have panicked – I’d have known she’d be quietly reading in the book nook or lying on the floor in front of the TV. But the house was too quiet, my skin too prickled with goose bumps.

‘Are you still there?’ asked Jake.

‘Yes.’ I headed downstairs, looked in the dining room and then the front room where the big TV is. Both empty. In the kitchen our pumpkin still mocked me, its sceptical eyes a reminder of Rose’s yesterday. I’d bin it today. I had no idea why I’d left it so long. The candle; I’d keep the candle. My thoughts scattered. Unreasonable.

‘Is she there?’ asked Jake.

‘No, she’s not.’ I opened the back door and looked at our long garden covered in gilt-edged leaves, conkers and dead twigs, surrounded by browning bushes and a fence that needed painting. ‘Where the hell
is
she?’

‘Calm down and think about it. She’ll be somewhere. She’s only nine – how far can she have gone?’

‘But I don’t know
when
she went missing,’ I said. ‘Could’ve been hours before I woke.’ I paused. ‘I’m supposed to be looking for a book, not our daughter.’

‘What do you mean?’

I shook my head. ‘No, nothing. I mislaid a book, that’s all.’

Find the book
. After that dream I’d half-heartedly browsed the shelf in the book nook, just in case, imagining something might jump out at me and give sensible meaning to the phrase that now haunted me. But nothing had and now
real
things were lost – Rose.

‘I’m going to be sick,’ I said.

‘Look in the cupboards, places she might hide for a joke.’

I searched around the house while Jake continued to reassure me. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘She’s never done anything like this before.’

‘But you don’t know her,’ I said.

‘Of course I do.’ He was hurt.

‘No, I mean you don’t know her
now
. She isn’t the same girl anymore.’

‘For God’s sake, she can’t have changed completely in just a week. She’s just a little girl and you talk like you hate her!’

‘How can you
say
that?’

Jake didn’t speak.

‘You’re not here,’ I said. ‘You don’t know.’

‘I can’t help that,’ he whispered.

‘Yes, you can,’ I said. ‘You chose something that takes you away from us. No one made you go.’ Jake’s wordlessness, his apparent indifference, fired me further. ‘It’s not my fucking fault – it’s
yours
!’ And again I ended our call abruptly and threw my phone onto the table.

There was no time to feel bad about it – Rose was missing.

Where would she go? What did she like? I’d no clue anymore.

I ran outside, not caring that I was still wearing a sheer nighty. Rows of green wheelie bins on the path. Was it green bin day? I should put ours out. Not now, not now. Find Rose.
Find the book
. I ran up and down the path, up and down the street, up and down our path again.

‘Rose!’ I cried. ‘Please, come out if you’re there!’

April emerged from the overgrown bush that separates our gardens, a huge patchwork shopping bag over one arm and comfy shoes on her feet. She looked up and down at my see-through attire.

‘Did you see Rose?’ I begged her.

‘Out here?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know!’ I wanted to sit on the cold path and put my head in my hands. ‘Did she pass your window?’

‘No, not that I noticed.’

‘She’s gone,’ I cried.

‘Oh dear. Shall I help look? Should I knock on Winnie’s door?’

‘Yes, yes, do that,’ I begged. Rose often went to Winnie’s house because she gave sweets out to the kids in the street. Now she’d have to miss out.

‘I’ll go look in the house again,’ I said. ‘Ring around her friends, the school.’ My voice reached a crescendo. ‘Should I call the police?’

‘No, not yet, lovey.’ April touched my arm. ‘They won’t bother unless it’s been a few hours. Little ’uns tend to be just hiding somewhere or playing mischief. They always turn up, and Rose will. Let me knock on a few doors and then bring us some lemon biscuits.’

Rose wasn’t a toddler, she was nine. She knew where we lived and how to cross a road and to avoid strangers. She knew our number so could call home. I decided I was going to buy her a basic mobile phone. I’d resisted until then, the old-fashioned part of me sure a nine-year-old didn’t need one. But it was different now; she was ill – that was the only way to describe it. Her body was weaker than usual, her mind a mess, and her emotions in turmoil.

What if she was unconscious somewhere? What if she’d collapsed?

I was rooted to the spot.

April said, ‘Look inside and let me check the street.’ I’d explained to her a few days earlier about the diabetes. She’d looked upset and I was touched. She had grown-up daughters who didn’t visit very often, grandchildren I knew she hardly saw, and a husband who’d died years earlier.

‘The green bins,’ I said, my mind a waterfall of worried thoughts.

I ran and opened every one, wincing at the rotten rubbish odour.

‘Natalie!’ cried April. ‘Stop, lovey! She won’t have gone in there!’

I kicked one over and went back inside, stood in the middle of the kitchen. At the cluttered table, I saw Rose yesterday, eating Coco Pops amidst my unwashed supper pots and piles of unread newspapers. I’d said as kindly as I could that she shouldn’t be having those now, they were too sugary – Bran Flakes would be better. So she’d eaten them faster,
faster, faster
, until brown milk had dripped down her chin and chocolatey chips stuck to her cheek like fat beauty spots, and I’d pulled away the bowl. When she tried to escape before I’d got the injection, I grabbed her arm, too roughly, and she turned on me, said she’d ring ‘socialist services’.