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somehow? Why did I fight with her? Why did I refuse to move? If I had agreed, perhaps… I think of the police car idling on the curb when I ran downstairs. No, we couldn’t have escaped. They were watching, waiting.
    ‘Your real mother has been searching for you for the past thirteen years,’ the policewoman says softly.
    I choke on the last chunk of chocolate and the policewoman rubs my back gently. I jerk away.
    ‘Shut up!’ I yell when I can breathe. ‘Shutupshutupshutup.’
    My mum would be shocked at my language. I am quiet and well behaved for the most part, preferring to bury my angst in food and books. I am never intentionally rude and yet here I am yelling at a policewoman of all people – I could be arrested, for God’s sake. Good. I want to be. At least then, Mum and I will be in the same boat.
    I open the freezer. Root around in the back of the fourth cabinet. Panic. Only when my fingers close around the tub I know is hiding behind the frozen spinach do I release the trapped breath. I pull it out – Häagen-Dazs Cookies and Cream – grab a spoon and eat standing up, stuffing my mouth even though I cannot taste a thing, even though I’m pretty sure I am ingesting my own tears with each gasping mouthful. I keep going until the hot flare of panic is doused by the cool ice cream, until the tub is scraped dry, until all I can feel, all I know is full, the heaviness of my limbs, the sigh of air as it travels down into my numb lungs, the drum of blood trying to make its way to the extremities of my dumbstruck body.
    I think of Lily, wonder what she’s doing now. Probably watching television, worrying the cuddly toy she is never without at home. She misses it at school but wouldn’t dare bring it in – that would be issuing an invitation to the bullies who never leave her alone anyway on account of her thick glasses and frizzy hair, her timid demeanour, the habit she has of chewing her lower lip and bursting into loud, noisy tears at the slightest provocation. But these are the very things I love about her. They are what make her Lily. Underneath it all, she is incredibly kind, extremely generous and loving. Like me, she lives with just her mum, but her mum does not work all hours like mine.
    I have told Mum so many times to apply for work somewhere with reasonable working hours. But no, she will only work at Indian restaurants recommended by the owner of the previous place she worked at. She works long hours for less than the minimum wage, no holidays, no sick leave. And we move every eight months or so, like clockwork. I do not want to accept what just happened; I do not want to acknowledge it – but it makes sense. I can see now why she didn’t work at other places like normal people, like I urged her to so many times.
    And even though I don’t want it to, the memory of the time I was selected to represent my school in an inter-school essay competition inveigles in with the accompanying hot sting of hurt and loss. The representatives from the various participating schools were to be whisked away to Switzerland for a week, where they would take part in a host of competitions and debates. I had been so excited, so pleased, had waited up for Mum even though she was working the late night shift, even though I had to go into school early the next day on account of a trip to a museum, and had shown her the letter. I hadn’t been prepared for her face to fall, her eyes to water, not with joy but with dismay.
    ‘What is it?’ I had asked. ‘Mum, I was selected – me – from everyone in the whole school,’ I had said.
    ‘I am so very proud of you, sweetheart,’ she had replied, her expression that of a wounded puppy, ‘but you can’t go.’
    No amount of persuasion would make her change her mind. I had begged, cajoled, promised to save up my pocket money, but she said we just couldn’t afford it.
    Siobhan, who wasn’t even very good, had gone instead of me and had come back bursting with stories of