The Stolen Girl (4 page)

I so want her to like it. That is why I was going to invite her in the half term,
this
half term that has, in the space of a few measly hours morphed into a nightmare. Our plan, Mum’s and mine, was to clean it thoroughly, to get rid of all the cobwebs and the lingering smell of stale curry, replacing the bed sheets and mopping the floors, before having her over.

All my life, I never felt the lack of a friend. I had my books, I had food, I had Mum. But even though my mum is my best friend in all the world, now that I have a friend my own age, I find that it is different. For example, I cannot tell Mum about the gigantic crush I have on Bhim, who sits in front of me in maths. That even though he hasn’t looked at me once, I entertain this wild hope that one day he will see
me
, see past my overweight exterior to the person I am beneath. I like his studious appearance, the thick glasses and the tucked-in shirts and pressed trousers. I like that no matter how much the bullies rile him, it never affects his calm reserve.

When I told Lily, she laughed, and punched my arm fondly. ‘Bhim? But what about Alex or Jacob or Raj?’ But she went along with it, excited, getting into the spirit of things. ‘Why don’t you write him a note?’ she asked. ‘Why don’t you…’ Each suggestion more outrageous than the last.

I couldn’t do all this with Mum. I just couldn’t. She doesn’t know Bhim, for one, and secondly, she would be angry with him for not taking notice of me.

I am thinking of everything except what happened. I have shredded the wrapper of the Dairy Milk bar to bits and it is littering the floor, silvery blue slivers on beige, like the reflection of water on mud. The policewoman is still here, sitting at the little table in the corner of the living room, watching me, worrying about what I will do next.

I do not want to think about how the only person I have in the world has been arrested for kidnapping me when I was just a baby, from India at that. I do not want to think about what will happen to me now, without her. I do not want to think of what the policewoman said, of someone searching for me for thirteen years. Not someone. My real mother.
No, no.
My real mother is the one I have known all my life. And she is gone. What will I do now? Where is she? What are they doing to her?

Her face flashes before my eyes, her eyes anguished when I refused to move, her voice, ‘Diya, wait,’ following me down the stairs when I ran away in anger, her shocked expression when she saw me running back up, the wall of police between us, her words, ‘I am your mother, Diya. You are mine. I love you, Diya, my darling girl, light of my life.’ Echoing up the narrow corridor in a blast of panic-scented, sorrow-tinged air.

My stomach hurts. I hurt, everywhere. I put my head between my knees and I rock, my mouth producing those weird keening sounds again. The policewoman pats my back, ‘There, there.’ She tries to hold me.

I push her away and rush to the cupboards, rooting around inside until I find the pack of Haribo Starmix I shoved in the other day when I heard Mum’s key in the lock, and the six-pack of crisps I keep with the spare toothbrushes that we never need to use, but if we do, it is my responsibility to find them as Mum always forgets where she puts them.

I sit on the sofa and eat my way through the pack of Haribo and some of the crisps, dropping wrappers and crumbs everywhere, not offering any to the woman who I am pretending isn’t there. Even though I am partial to sweets and crisps, I do not usually eat in this uncontrolled manner, without caring how much junk I am stuffing into my body. Normally, I am careful, rationing my treats, saving them for when I really need them, for when the bullying has been particularly bad, say. And if this doesn’t qualify as an emergency, a time when I really need the sustenance, the comfort of junk food, then I don’t know what does. Food is the only thing I can think of now that can tide me through this nightmare, bite by bilious bite.

I crunch and chew and swallow and these sounds drown out the clamour in my brain, all those questions and worries and hurts spilling out and demanding answers. I eat without tasting a thing; everything is dark blue, the colour and texture of grief. I eat until there is a knock and I jump up and rush to the door on wobbly legs that refuse to move fast enough. I push it open and begin to say, ‘Mum. I knew they would let you go. I knew they had made a mistake…’

It isn’t Mum. I knew it. I did. Somewhere deep down I knew.

As if from afar, I hear the policewoman say, ‘This is your social worker,’ her voice incredibly gentle, like a glass vase that might break from too much pressure.

My ears are ringing. I am swaying on my feet, like my mum did when she saw me, that moment when the world as I knew it imploded in my face. I picture the globe that represents my world shattering, the confetti of iridescent, dancing particles, the million shards sparkling and glittering and winking up at me. So beautiful and yet so deadly, each little piece fit to draw blood. I picture myself stepping on the tantalising, inviting shrapnel, each shimmering pearl topped with a perfect vermilion globule of my blood, round like an Indian woman’s bindi, like the bindis my mother likes to wear…

The woman standing in the doorway is stout, bespectacled, with greying hair and kind eyes. Someone’s mum. Just not mine.

I turn around and rush to the bathroom, making it just in time. I am violently sick, again and again, and the feeling is welcome. It is much better than shock and numbness pierced by pinpricks of hurt, stabs of pain, incisions of grief and, worst of all, notches of acceptance. In a corner of my mind, I know.

I know because of the way my mum looked at me, the resignation in her eyes as she was led away. I know because of the way her eyes were constantly flitting everywhere, forever checking, only ever at rest when it was just her and me in the confines of our flat, the curtains drawn, phone off the hook: ‘So no one will disturb us; I need it after the day I’ve had.’

I know because of the way her hand used to grip mine tight sometimes when we were out, how she used to whisper, ‘Come on,’ and lead me down this alleyway and that, urgently, her little feet making huge strides so I struggled to catch up, her palm locked in mine, gaze darting like a startled fox in search of cover, until we were completely alone. Only then would she stop, making sure, once again, that there was no one about. Then we would bend double catching our breath, having lost our bearings, standing in a deserted road in the middle of nowhere. She would laugh a fake laugh that sounded more like a sob and say, ‘That was fun, wasn’t it? An adventure. Now, let’s see where we are.’

I know.

And I don’t want to. I don’t want to.

B
reakfast
: Cereal: Bran Flakes – 30g, with a dash of skimmed milk.

Mid-morning snack: Orange.

Lunch: 1 boiled egg, 1 slice of wholemeal toast (400g loaf) – no butter, and a banana.

Afternoon snack: Apple.

Supper: Mixed salad. No dressing. No croutons.

W
riting
in her food diary comforts Aarti. She started the habit in the clinic as part of her programme, when she was hospitalised, after…those terrible, black days after.

She still finds it hard to force food down past the barrier in her throat, but she makes sure she eats something at the requisite times; she makes sure she eats enough so she can pen it down in her diary, her lifeline. There is an entry for every day, going back thirteen years. So many books, charting what she has eaten each day of her life for the past decade and a bit. So much unsaid; the gaps in between breakfast, lunch and dinner, speaking of longing and yearning, hurt and loss, the cavernous emptiness of a wasted life.

She has not binged since her interlude at the clinic and she has not made herself sick. She was sick the other day of course, retching and welcoming that long-lost feeling, the comfort it gave her, but that was nerves. She is proud of how she got to the very edge and bounced back, how she has survived despite the devastating blow that life, via Vani the traitor, has dealt her.

And now, the culmination. Vani, that bitch, the very thought of whom is like harbouring a burning, stinging mouthful of raw chillies, is in prison where she belongs. And Aarti’s child, her child… This part she doesn’t understand. This cold, grey country with its incomprehensible laws.
She
is the mother; surely her child should have been brought to her once her kidnapper had been apprehended? But no, not here apparently. Instead,
her
child has been shipped to some stranger.

‘Because she doesn’t know you, you see,’ her lawyer had explained patiently. ‘And she’s undergone a lot of…’

‘And she knows them, the people she’s currently with?’ Aarti had asked, unable and unwilling to control the rising shriek in her voice.

‘She has been through so much; she needs to come to terms with what’s happened. The trauma… She will come and see you soon. Give her time.’

‘What about me? The trauma I have suffered?’ Aarti had yelled. ‘I have been waiting thirteen years for her.
My
child. Mine.’

Silence at the other end.

And so, she is waiting, walking the fifteen paces from one end of the room to the other, waiting for her daughter to deign to visit her, giving her time.

S
trategy

Noun:
a plan or method for obtaining a specific goal or result
.

Synonyms:
approach, manner, system, technique, way.

I
have a strategy
. I am not going to think about it, any of it. As strategies go, it’s not the best. But I do not have the energy to think of something else. I am drained. It will have to do.

I stick to my strategy, ignoring the stinging in my eyes, the vacuum in my heart, ignoring the social worker who talks me through what will happen, in her soft voice that washes over me like water tripping over stones and makes me think of marshmallows, pink, fluffy, melt-in-the-mouth.

I stick to my strategy until she says, ‘She is here, staying at a hotel nearby. She would love to have you stay with her, of course. Or, we could arrange for emergency foster…’

‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘who?’

The social worker blinks, startled by my sudden input, and then she smiles, her eyes tender as she looks at me. ‘Your mother.’

My weighted heart perks up, does a tango in my chest. ‘Mum is at a hotel?’ Was this all some sort of giant hoax?

Her smile disappears, a desperate anguish taking its stead. ‘I am so sorry, Diya. I should have made it clear. The woman who gave birth to you. She’s staying at…’

I do not, cannot hear any more. I put my hands to my ears to shut out her words but they reverberate inside my head, going round and round like a hamster in its wheel.
The woman who gave birth to you.

‘I am sorry,’ the social worker is saying, her eyes shimmering. ‘So sorry.’

She reaches a hand out to touch me. I jerk away.

‘I do not want to stay with her. I do not want to see her,’ I yell. ‘She is not my mother. My mother is… She is…’

I cannot say any more. I rush to the toilet, heave my agony into the bowl. I heave and heave even though nothing comes. I am empty inside. Wrung out. Bare.

‘When can I see her?’ I ask when I stumble out of the loo and have to face the social worker sitting on the little foldable dining table the previous owner left behind, gazing at me with her tragic eyes. The drone of the policewoman’s radio crackles from the sofa. This flat has never seemed smaller that it is now. There is no escape.

The social worker attempts a smile. ‘You’ve changed your mind? We could go now. Or do you want to have the tests done first and I could take you after we’ve been to the hospital?’

The rage comes from nowhere. I feel like grabbing this woman and shaking her until her teeth chatter so much they fall out of her insensitive mouth. ‘I do not want to see that woman. I want to see my mother!’ I yell, so loud that the policewoman looks up from the perusal of her phone, swivelling towards us so that the sofa creaks.

We used to giggle about the rude noises that sofa made, Mum and I. She would twist and turn, the sofa emitting all sorts of funny sounds that sent me into peals of laughter. I close my eyes and sway on my feet. I yearn for her, for her arms around my body, for her mouth to whisper endearments in my ear: ‘Just a nightmare, Diya. Go back to sleep.’ I wish…

‘We… I’ll check with the team…’ the social worker says.

‘What team?’ I screech, hardly recognising the high-pitched shriek produced by my vocal chords.

‘The team responsible for your care.’

I make my hands into fists. ‘Why do I need permission to see my own mother?’

The social worker squeezes her eyes shut and speaks softly, as if each word hurts. Why does she hurt when I am the one who is suffering? I am the one bereft. I am the one lost. ‘She is under arrest as we speak. It is highly unlikely that you will be allowed to see her until her hearing is over and she has been moved to a more permanent…’ She stops but I know what she was going to say. Prison. My mother is in prison. My sweet, loving, anxious, fearful mum. No wonder her eyes were never at rest, no wonder she was constantly worried.
Be careful what you worry about, it might just come true.

I hug my stomach tight to hold in the pain that threatens to burst out of me in never-ending howls. I cannot fathom my mother in prison. I cannot fathom any of this…

‘How can you decide what’s best for me? I will tell you what’s best. I want my mother. I want to see her,’ I manage before nausea overtakes me and I rush to the bathroom again.

I stick to my strategy during the interminable car ride to the hospital, looking out of the window at nothing in particular, chewing on one of the caramel toffees from the pack I brought with me, clutching it tight on my lap. We pass a cramped street of similar residences, narrow, squashed-looking buildings. I picture a giant plucking the houses and pulling them lengthways to give them some height before gently setting them down again. I sympathise with the houses. This is exactly how I feel too, like a giant hand is orchestrating my life, pulling it this way and that at whim.

We are passing along the high street now, the shops closed for the night, bleak ghosts, formless shadows of the selves they are during the day.

Lights twinkle inside restaurants, reflecting off cutlery shiny as New Year resolutions, picking out faces, some happy, some contemplative, some with mouths open mid-conversation, revealing the mush the expensive food is reduced to once it’s chewed. They eat merrily, knives and forks performing an intricate dance between plate and mouth, and I wish I was one of them, although how could we afford it, Mum and I… Ah… The pain is a flower blooming in my stomach. A huge flower whose petals reach outwards into all my body’s many crevices and organs.
Stop, stop. Strategy, Diya, Strategy.

A girl waits by the bus stop, dark brown hair, droopy face, pulling her raisin-coloured coat close around her. Her bruised eyes meet mine, a fleeting communion, and they are expressionless, empty. That is how I should be, I decide. That is the root to not feeling.
Empty yourself, Diya.
I swallow the toffee, stuff a couple more in my mouth, close my eyes and concentrate on drowning out the marshmallow voice of the social worker, the screaming in my brain, the pain in my insides. Instead I allow the smooth caramel sweetness to talk to me, the only sounds I hear being the bite, chew, swallow, bite, chew, swallow, until the car judders to a halt and the social worker gently takes my arm.

I shrug it off with more force than necessary as it brings to mind comfort, the security of a hug from a loved one.
Don’t go there.

‘Well, here we are,’ she says and I follow her stubby legs clad in sensible black trousers into the blinding light, the bustling busyness, the moaning patients, the argumentative relatives, the ringing of phones, the bleeping of pagers, the pain-filled eyes that I recognise, that could be mine reflected back at me, the long-suffering voices of receptionists, the harassed nurses trying on smiles that are in short supply, the screech of beds, the staccato beat of doctors’ feet dancing on lino as they make their way to the next emergency that needs tending, the bitter smell of medicine and desperation, of agony mingling with fragile hope.

I am subjected to all sorts of tests, so many people examining me, kind-hearted nurses sneaking in sweets with reassuring smiles like bolstering a building that has no hope of standing up on its own, the slightly metallic smell and icy feel of machines nudging my body like phantom fingers making contact. Can the machines detect the numbness inside me, the flower of pain that ruthlessly seeks to gain control?

The doctors smile gently and a tad wearily as they prod and probe, their wan faces creased into lines that give testament to the long hours they have spent here, circles shadowing their eyes like ghosts at a funeral come to claim their own. They entertain all my endless questions, a ruse on my part to get my mind thinking about anything but what she might be doing now – where she is, is she scared? – to try and ignore the fact that I feel hopelessly lost. I am falling, like Alice, and the fall is endless and I haven’t quite reached the ground yet.

I do not want to think of what is going to happen to me, what I will do when I am eventually left alone, not surrounded by a dozen well-meaning strangers, and I cannot keep the horror at bay any longer. I do not want to think about the fact that I am terrified. I do not want to face the question that needs answering. Without her, without the truth that she is my mother, who am I?

A stolen baby found thirteen years later, that’s who you are
, a voice in my head screams, slinking out the door in the recesses of my mind that keeps it reined in.
Someone who has been living in a false reality in a false world,
it yells before I push it back into place, bolt the door and lose the key.

But the damage is done.
Perhaps that is why I did not mind the moving,
I think. The constant upheaval suited my mindset, which was never quite settled in one place because I didn’t belong with the woman I believed was my mother.
No. No.
She is my mum. She is. Her face, that look, like she was being broken, her voice overflowing with all the love she feels for me, ‘I am your mother, Diya. You are mine.’

I am doing it again. Thinking of her.
Force everything out of your mind. Strategy is the key.

‘What is it?’ the nurse helping me into my clothes asks, her voice the soft pink of dawn.

‘Nothing,’ I say, willing myself to flash her a watery smile.

And suddenly, surprisingly, I am folded into her arms, into the haven of her soft body that spills all around me, enveloping me into its folds, smelling, weirdly, of dog. I want to stay here forever, sheltered in these unfamiliar arms, warm in the cave of this woman’s embrace. Eventually, I pull away, look up into eyes the dark blue of shadows dancing on water.

‘Do you have a dog?’ I ask.

‘Now how did you know that?’ she laughs and we spend the rest of the time chatting about Bugbear, her schnauzer, and his antics.

The social worker accompanies me through all the interminable tests. She knows when not to speak, when to leave me alone with my thoughts, and for this I am grateful. I think of Lily. I will have to tell her sometime that the sleepover is cancelled or postponed indefinitely due to ‘unforeseen circumstances’. I blink away the moisture staining my eyelashes and think of her reaction. She will, I know, burst into tears, hug me, offer comfort, want to talk about it. I close my eyes, weary. I am glad I am here, away from everything, everyone I know, glad that I do not have to say anything or do anything; just allow myself to be taken care of by all these kind-hearted strangers.

Finally, the social worker says, blue rings hugging her brown eyes, ‘That’s it for today, Diya.’

The nurse, ‘mum’ of Bugbear the schnauzer, confers another warm hug and an assurance that I look after myself until tomorrow when she’ll be back with more stories.

‘What a day it’s been, huh?’ the social worker says wryly as the cold grey air, punctuated by pulsing lights and punctured by sirens, tasting bitter, of medicine and gasoline and smoke, hits us outside the sliding double doors of the hospital. We both shiver and pull our coats closer around our bodies.

Assorted smokers pace up and down, wearing the cobblestones thin as they take urgent puffs of their cigarettes, their haggard faces relaxing briefly, drawing succour before going inside to offer some. An ambulance lounges beside the A&E entrance to our right. As I watch, another ambulance drives up, sirens blaring. Paramedics jump off, unload a stretcher – a bloated, bloody face, eyes glued shut and weeping, body wrapped in sunny yellow blankets. I shudder.

What are you doing now? Are you okay? I miss you, Mum.
The thought is there before I can chase it away.
She committed a crime against you,
the policewoman’s voice, inveigling in. The policewoman who rushed off as soon as the social worker came, as if she couldn’t get away soon enough. No, that’s not quite right. I am not being kind or fair.

The policewoman had tried to squeeze my hand, had sounded apologetic as she said goodbye. Her radio had crackled several times while she was waiting with me, but she had ignored it. ‘I am needed elsewhere. You take care now,’ she had said, and her eyes had shimmered, leaking moisture. I had looked away from the naked emotion shining in there, afraid that it would start me off. And I had decided that I couldn’t, I wouldn’t cry. Because that would mean accepting what had happened, colluding in it. I had pulled my hand away from her grasp and refused to look at her as she left, as her footsteps echoed down the stairs just before the door closed and I heard, once more, my mum’s voice floating up to me, ‘I am your mother, Diya. You are mine. I love you, Diya.’

A woman, high heels, navy blue dress coat, perfectly made-up face, blonde hair in disarray in complete contrast to the rest of her, comes running out of the doors we just exited, pressing buttons haphazardly on her phone, her polished scarlet nails dancing on the keys. ‘Jake, please come at once,’ she sobs into the phone, mascara running, her fragile composure dropping like a discarded mask.

‘Where are we going now?’ I ask before I can stop myself.

I do not, absolutely cannot countenance going back to the flat. Anywhere but there, climbing up those stairs which echo with her footfall as she was led away by a cavalcade of officers, shackled, handcuffed like a common criminal. The woman I still think of as my mother. The only mother I have known.

Your real mother has been searching for you for the past thirteen years.
The policewoman’s voice reverberates in my ears.

I need to eat. I need food – chocolate, crisps, anything at all.

‘Since you didn’t want to, um…stay with the woman…’ the social worker has the grace to blush.

I am glad she didn’t say,
your mother
. I cannot think of that woman, whoever she is, as my mother. My mother is Vani, and she has been taken, cruelly, from me.
Don’t think of that… Concentrate on your strategy, Diya.

‘We have arranged emergency foster care for you. We are going to your foster carers now. Farah and Sohrab Khan. I showed you pictures and told you about them, asked if you’d rather go straight to theirs or the hospital first and you chose the hospital, remember?’ she says gently. ‘They have two boys, five and seven. Do you want me to show you the pictures again? I will in the car.’