Saving Sophia (16 page)

The final account

I don’t actually do anything about Sophia for a week. I can’t face her. Anyway, there’s Ned’s birthday to look forward to. It makes Mum and Dad tidy up for hours and hours beforehand; Dad even calls in a plumber who fixes the loo so that it doesn’t sing every time it deigns to flush, and Mum moves the scorpions out into the greenhouse.

Encouraged by the comments of the plumber when he comes to call, Dad paints the hall and takes twenty-seven and-a-half pairs of leaky wellies to the dump along with a swampy paddling pool and a trampoline from Freecycle that never worked.

That drives Mum to get rid of her collection of
The Toxicology Month
magazines that she’s been saving up since 1980 and clean out the cupboard under the stairs which leads to a man coming and wiping out the largest collection of woodworm ever seen.

They don’t actually wear suits when Ned’s friends turn up, but they do manage to look fairly ordinary, and Dad cooks frozen pizzas in the stove, even though he’s always called them “money for old rope”.

Ned’s friends love the house, love the slugs, love the snails, love Mum’s scorpions, love the fungi growing over the fridge.

Their parents actually sit on chairs and drink cups of tea when they come to pick them up, and Mum and Dad manage to talk quite normally.

No homemade champagne.

No dead chickens.

When I finally say I’d like to see Sophia, it’s the day after Ned’s birthday. Mum, Dad and Ned all hover in the background just in case I explode and kill her.

I’m not angry any more, just hurt. And puzzled.

She comes with her mum, who sits and drinks tea with my mum, like real mums do.

“What have you been doing since last weekend?” asks Sophia, keeping an arm’s length between us.

I shrug. “Hanging out with Ned, appreciating him as my brother – helping mum with her scorpions, avoiding high places and cars.”

Sophia laughs.

“What about you?”

“Getting to know my mum.”

“Did she understand?” I ask.

Sophia stands and crosses the room. “She did – she apologised – I apologised. We watched TV together, cooked a meal, went for a walk.”

“Why?” I ask, twisting my hair around my finger. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

She stares at the ceiling. It might provide an answer but I can’t help feeling it should be coming from inside her head. “I thought you wouldn’t get it – you wouldn’t get that I just wanted to see my mum. And I wanted you to be my friend. You made me feel safe.”

My jaw quivers as if I’m going to cry, but I don’t know if they’ll be tears of happiness or sadness. “Couldn’t we have told the police, and then got on with being friends? Couldn’t we just have hung out together – chatted, listened to
music, gone shopping – whatever it is other people do?”

“I didn’t think it would work and, honestly, I didn’t have you down as that sort of person. I thought you wanted a challenge. Sorry. I got it wrong.”

“Actually, you didn’t get it wrong. I’m not really a shopping sort of person – I mean – look…” I point at the crumbling plaster and the books crammed anyhow into the bookcase. “This is how I am, this is where I come from.”

“Exactly,” says Sophia. “That’s why I like you.”

“Like me?
Like
me? Then why did you do that to me?”

Sophia doesn’t answer for a long time.

“I’m really sorry, Lottie. I’m really sorry for making you go through all that.”

“Are you sorry for making me climb off that building?”

She nods her head.

“Sorry for making me eat from dustbins?”

She smiles.

“Sorry for nearly killing me in a car crash?”

She sucks in her breath and nods. I see tears in her eyes.

“And Sophia.” I take a big breath. “I’m sorry for not understanding what it feels like to be separated from your family. I think I do now – or at least, I’m beginning to.”

We step out into the garden. The sun’s shining and Dad’s mowed the grass. It almost looks like other people’s gardens.

“We’re moving to Irene’s house,” says Sophia.

“Oh?” I say.

“Mum and me. It belongs to her. She visited it when she was little and she loves it. She wants to repair it. She loves all of Irene’s things, too. Mum showed it all to me and it’s lovely, perfect as it is – well, without the trees in the gutters. What would you think of that?” she asks.

“Me?”

“Yes – you.”

I think about it. Sophia living down the road. Sophia who likes an adventure. Sophia, the girl with whom I’ve had the best fun in my life.

“I’d think,” I say, “that it was a good thing. A very good thing.”