Fishnet by Kirstin Innes Page B

movements. I’d held both of them, separately, till they stopped crying, rubbing my thumb back and forth across their temples.
    The baby started crying at about five, before the sun was up. I padded through after a couple of minutes. The shape on the bed didn’t stir, so I picked the basket up off the floor, and said something comforting and instant like shhh, shhh, let’s let mummy sleep, and then I thought about what I’d just said, and who I’d just used the word ‘mummy’ to mean, and I wrapped myself in Simon’s smelly dressing gown and carried her through to the kitchen.
    In all that time, the fifteen consecutive years we spent breathing the same stale air of the same house, I don’t remember once having shown her how to put on makeup or insert a tampon. I was an inadequate big sister, a geeky gawky spotty thing who didn’t speak and didn’t ever help her out, not that she needed it. Ever. Rona always had the skill of mixing with people, but coming out whole and still herself. If I was ready to tell her the secrets of our flesh she’d have heard them, and heard them some years before I had even known. I hadn’t ever fulfilled a need, so she had grown up not to need me. Until now.
    After I’d fed her, the baby stirred and fretted for a while, then I felt her growing limp, watched her tiny eyelids flickering down, felt her nuzzle in to the softness of my chest and fall asleep on me. And I just sat there, overwhelmed, as still as I could. I was scared that if I moved, I’d spoil it, this huge, beautiful feeling. My breath slowed to match hers, and everything about us wasperfectly in unison.
    Half past seven. I needed to have a shower and get ready. So we made two mugs of coffee and we went through to wake up mummy.
    I know Rona, though. I know her. And so I don’t know why I was surprised, as I pulled back that convincing-looking hump of duvet to find a faked body – blankets and couple of pillows. Like a bad joke from a bad film.
    I wasn’t that old, not really. I might have managed three more years on the planet, but I wasn’t ready for this. I wonder if it even occurred to her whether I would be or not. And I needed to pee, and there was a baby beginning to cry again because I’d gripped her too tightly. We went through to the bathroom, and one-handed I pulled out towels enough to make a softish mat. I laid her down on the floor on top of them, and then turned her away so she couldn’t see me. All this seemed very logical. I sat down on the toilet and breathed in and almost collapsed. When I was done I washed my hands for about two minutes so that she wouldn’t pick up any germs. I looked at my palms, my fingertips, and imagined them encrusted with bacteria, so I scrubbed and scrubbed. And the baby started to cry again. And I said oh shit. Rona left my flat sometime between two-thirty and four in the morning, six years ago. She left behind the bag she’d brought, which only contained the baby’s things. There was a possible sighting at the bus station at five thirty am, but the person wasn’t sure. We had word that she might have been seen in Manchester four years ago, but it came to nothing. She hasn’t used her bank account since that day, although she’d cleared it out three days before. Her phone was a pay-and-go, which hasn’t been used; her passport hasn’t left the country. I have no way of screaming at her, or slapping her, or telling her to take her fucking baby and give me my life back.
    After that morning, Beth would only sleep on me. Not lying down. Not on anyone else. And I thought, fine. I’ll take her. You’ve given her to me. But you don’t ever get to have her back.
    Things Nice Girls Don’t Do
    Difficult to know, really. When does it slide over? When do the walls rebuild themselves around you? The first time you have sex for money? It’s not as clear-cut as that,