Set Me Free Read online

  “And after the summer?” she asked in a small voice. “What’s going to happen?”

  “You don’t need to worry about a thing, Lara. Whatever happens, both Dad and I love you so much and we’ll always be there for you.”

  “But Dad is not there for me. He doesn’t care about Leo either.”

  “Of course he does . . . he just doesn’t know how to show it. I think he never had much love when he was growing up . . .” I was furious at myself for feeling the tears gather in my throat again.

  Ash. My Ash, and all our history, all the years we had together.

  My Ash, mine no more.

  “I know. I know unloved when I see it,” Lara said in one of those moments of insight where she was fourteen going on forty. “Oh, Mum, don’t cry . . .”

  “I’m fine. Really, I’m okay. Everything will be fine. Promise me you won’t worry about anything,” I said. She took off her glasses and rested them on her bedside table. Without them she looked younger, with her thin face and big blue eyes. She looked just like her birth mother in the picture I’d seen, with bones like a bird’s and wavy, dark-blond hair.

  “I promise. Goodnight, Mum.”

  “Goodnight, sweetheart.”

  I turned around to glance at her one last time. By the sliver of light that came from the corridor I could see her hair fanned on the pillow, her small body curled under the blankets like a blossom waiting to unfurl. I hoped she would sleep through, the same hope I had every night, though I knew it was unlikely. I was so relieved she had agreed to go to Glen Avich; we would all get away from this house where there had been so much conflict, so much heartache, at least for a while. Once again I thanked in my heart whatever or whoever it was that had brought her to me – God, or the universe, or fate. If karma existed, I thought I must have done something very, very good in my previous life to deserve my children.

  Before going to bed I went to check on Leo. Every time I went to see him through the night I found him tangled with the duvet and never actually under it. His little, dense body was relaxed like a sleeping puppy, and his hair smelled of puppy too, I often thought, especially when he slept: warm, tender, not quite fully human yet. A man cub. My man cub.

  “Night, baby,” I whispered in his ear and leaned over to kiss him. I tucked him in; I knew he was going to wriggle out of the blankets once more, but I did it anyway. He turned over and slipped his thumb into his mouth. I knew he was too old for it, but hey, who was there to see? And with all the upheaval we had ahead of us, he needed all the reassurance he could get.

  5

  Dawn

  Margherita

  The next day, with Lara in school and Leo in nursery, I sat at the kitchen table, ready to make two phone calls. The first one was the hardest.

  “Oh, Margherita.” Ash said my name like a sigh. Like a chore.

  Was this really my husband? Was this really the man I’d loved so much? This man who sounded like he felt nothing for me any more?

  Nobody, nobody in the world had the ability to make me feel as cold as he did.

  “I just wanted to let you know I’m taking the children on holiday,” I said. “We’ll go to my mum’s for the summer.”

  A pause. “To Scotland?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure it’s a good idea to uproot Lara for so long? With her state of mind . . .”

  “It’s hardly uprooting. It’s just for the six weeks.”

  “Look, nobody wants you to go so far away.” Oh, how he loved patronising me.

  “Maybe I want my family around me, Ash. Have you thought of that?”

  “Your sister is here, and you spend a lot of time with her, certainly more than you do with me.”

  “Now you’re jealous of my sister? You’re never around, Ash. Who else should I spend time with?” It was starting again, and I hated myself for letting him get to me. “I just want to see Mum, Ash, that’s all.”

  “At the expense of your daughter?”

  “I’m taking her on holiday to Scotland, not to a labour camp! And I notice you didn’t even mention Leo.”

  “This again.” A deep sigh. “Leo is always at the top of my priorities.”

  “You hide it well,” I said, recalling all the times he’d let Leo down, all the times he’d shown his indifference, openly and unashamedly: like when he missed his first Nativity play in nursery; like when he left him at a party for an extra hour because he had something urgent to do. Once, Leo had drawn our family: there was me, him and Lara as stick people under a tree dotted with apples, and far away, in a corner, was Daddy. Leo was extending a spindly arm to him, but Daddy’s arms were at his sides. I left the drawing on the kitchen table, hoping that he’d see it and maybe do something about Leo’s feelings, but he never showed signs of having seen it. This made it all the more heartbreaking: that Leo knew. He could feel with a child’s instinct that his father had somehow rejected him.

  I dreaded the day he’d be old enough to ask me why, and I would have no answer.

  “Talking to you is just impossible, Margherita. All you do is throw accusations at me.”

  “Well, all you need to know is that we’re going to see my mum and Lara will be fine. You’re welcome to come and see them if you want.”

  A pause. “I’ll be very busy, workwise . . .”

  Of course. Of course.

  “Bye, Ash.”

  “Right. Fine. Bye.”

  I put the phone down and I felt empty. I hoped that the second call would restore me a bit, but first I needed coffee. I made myself a cappuccino and sat at the table once again. I dialled the number for La Piazza. It rang a few times and I began to feel apprehensive – would it be okay to go to Glen Avich for so long? Had I made a mistake to assume she would have us? Oh God, I should have asked her first, before telling Lara and Ash . . .

  But my doubts melted as soon as I heard her voice. That was my mum, my ally and best friend through thick and thin. She would not let me fall.

  “Hi, it’s me,” I said, stirring my cappuccino, hoping it would keep me going after the sleepless night.

  “Margherita! What’s wrong? You sound stressed.”

  “Yes, well, I am. Oh, it’s Ash, it’s a million things, really. But mainly . . . Lara is having some trouble in school. She needs a change of scene. I need a change of scene. So I was thinking—”

  “Of course! Nothing would make me happier.”

  I smiled. “You guessed! I was going to ask you if I could come up.”

  “Please do. Please, please do.” The joy in her voice was like a balm for my aching heart. “It would be such a treat to have you up. How long are you coming for? Why not the whole summer?”

  “I was hoping so. But what about Michael?”

  “What about him?” she said, and I could hear the fondness in her voice.

  “Will he be okay with us being there for so long?”

  “Of course! He’ll love having you around. You know his daughter and his grandchildren are in Canada, and he misses them a lot. Honestly, he’ll be delighted to have you.”

  “Thank you, Mum,” I said tearily. The strife of the recent months was really getting to me – I was crying more often than ever in my life, even more than when I was going through fertility treatment.

  “No need to thank me. I’m so glad also because I won’t be seeing either of your sisters. Laura is working all summer and Anna—”

  “Yes, she told me. She’s going to Colorado to see Paul’s family. I’ll miss her.”

  “So, will I be expecting you tomorrow?” she said hopefully.

  I couldn’t help laughing, even between my tears. “Tomorrow? I haven’t even packed yet!”

  “Sorry. It’s never too soon . . . I can’t wait to see you. The day after, then?”

  I smiled again. “Schools break up next week down here. I’ll be there next Saturday.”

  “Okay, then. I’m so sorry this is happening to you . . . but I’m so glad to have you up for so long! I�
��ll get the cottage ready and everything sorted for you.”

  The cottage was a miniature two-room building at the bottom of their garden. They were once stables, but my mum and Michael had had them done up for us and for Michael’s daughter to come and visit.

  “Thank you. Really.”

  “Are Lara and Leo happy to come up?”

  “Lara jumped at the chance. She wants to leave her friends . . . her so-called friends behind. They have been vile to her, after she started having trouble. Especially Polly and Tanya, you know, the girls who were supposed to be her best friends? The ones she’d been in class with since Reception.”

  “Vile indeed! Girls can be so cruel. And is she eating okay?”

  “We’re up and down with that too. She’s so small, like a bird.”

  “We can work on that,” my mum said, and I imagined her rubbing her hands in glee. She loves nothing more than feeding people, and she has passed on her love of food to my sisters and me. Laura is tall and slender and she seems to stay that way even if she works as a chef; Anna eats like a horse but sweats all the calories off with her love of sport; and I happily accumulate them on my five-foot-two frame. You only live once, after all.

  “I hope Lara will relax a bit, up there. She’s not sleeping well. She never did, but recently it’s got worse. I think she should see someone. I really do.”

  “I think the summer in Glen Avich will do her a world of good. And you too. And after that, you can decide what to do about Lara.”

  “Yes. Leo doesn’t know yet. I’ll speak to him later, but he’s so young, I’ll just tell him we’re going to see Nonna and he’ll be happy. Six weeks is a long time to be away from his dad, but he never really sees him anyway.”

  “Is Ash still coming round every weekend?”

  “No. Something always comes up. It’s been every two weeks for a little while, now it’s if and when. He wasn’t involved at all with Lara’s school either. It’s so sad to see, you know . . . Every time Ash is around Leo follows him like a little shadow. He tries to catch his attention and never quite manages.”

  “Well, he’ll get plenty of attention here; we’ll give him a really good time, I promise. There are quite a few kids his age in Glen Avich and there’s a really good play park just across the road from our house, he’ll have plenty of little friends to play with.”

  “That’s good,” I said in a shaky voice, and took a sip of my cappuccino. The caffeine was slowly waking me up after the sleepless night.

  “Margherita?”

  “Yes?”

  “You told me something happened at Lara’s school, but never the details . . .”

  I swallowed the coffee through the lump in my throat. “She shouted at her English teacher. Apparently she was about to hit her.” It was horrifying to say it aloud.

  “Lara?”

  “Yes.”

  “My poor little girl . . .”

  “Yes. She’s been through a lot.”

  “I meant you,” my mum said. “Don’t worry, tesoro. We’ll sort things out, okay?”

  “Okay,” I whispered, feeling like a little girl for real. And a lost one, at that. I was a thirty-eight-year-old mother of two, but I wanted my mum.

  6

  Roots

  Lara

  Dear Kitty,

  I can safely say that things have been a bit rubbish recently. I’m not sure what’s up with me, but I can’t sleep. I get these night terrors, they’re called, and this makes me grumpy during the day. Extremely grumpy. As in, shouting-at-people grumpy. I get so angry, and I don’t even know why. I ended up screaming at Mrs Akerele and it was horrible. I have no idea what comes over me. Maybe in a way I know myself what’s wrong with me, it’s that it feels like I’m boiling inside, and every once in a while it spills over. I was always able to keep it locked inside me, but it’s coming out and I can’t stop it. It’s scary.

  In less freaky but still distressing news, I think Ian likes Polly. It’s okay because I don’t fancy Ian any more. I’m over that kind of thing now. Nobody wants to hang out with me in school anyway. Since the incident with Mrs Akerele, Polly and Tanya have been avoiding me. Polly’s mum said to Tanya’s mum that I’m not the best influence on their daughters. Tanya told me when I asked her why they’re not sitting with me at lunch any more. It’s okay because I’ve sort of lost my appetite, so I just avoid the cafeteria altogether. I eat on my own on the bench by the football pitch, how pathetic is that? Or I don’t eat at all. Everyone thinks I’m a freak. It feels like they’re right, because there’s something wrong with me, but I’m not sure what. Even Mrs Akerele doesn’t look into my eyes now. She sort of looks away. I apologised, but she’s shell-shocked. I can’t blame her.

  On the other hand, Polly was always mean. I can’t believe she was ever my best friend. She always said that me wearing glasses and having my head stuck in a book most of the time meant nobody was ever going to like me, as in no boys were ever going to like me, and I used to believe she said those things for my own good. What was I thinking? She believes she knows everything, and she speaks in a funny way. Her voice goes up at the end of every sentence, like she puts question marks everywhere. She’s ridiculously pretty. While everyone else is straightening their hair, she has what she calls a bedhead, all messed up but on purpose. My hair is messed up full stop. She even looks good in her school uniform, and that’s not easy because we have to wear these enormous blazers at all times and we’re not allowed miniskirts. She still looks great. So Ian is going to ask her out, obviously. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure it will, especially now that I’m way off his radar. I did say to Polly that I fancied Ian and I hoped that would make him off limits, but of course it didn’t. I should have known.

  Anyway, I’m not even thinking about Ian any more. He looks at me like he feels sorry for me, which makes me feel so ashamed. I wish nobody knew about the Mrs Akerele thing, but it happened in the middle of class and people spread the word. Everyone loves a good story and Lara freaking out at the teacher was the story of the day. “Nobody was expecting you to flip,” Tanya said to me like it was all a lot of fun. She said it with one of her smiles, you know the ones where she opens her mouth and you can see all her teeth.

  It gets worse. Somebody, I’m not sure who, put pictures of me on Tumblr with funny speech balloons like “I’m mental” and “Watch, she’ll stab you” and it went viral. Everyone in the school saw it. I cried. I showed my mum and she said she was going to strangle the whole lot of them – if I hadn’t been adopted, I’d say that my temper is genetic.

  So yes, I can safely say things are rubbish.

  To top everything off nicely, Dad has gone AWOL. When he first left, he came back every week, then every two weeks. Now we barely see him, and when we do, they argue all the time. My mum cries a lot.

  I don’t think my dad likes me much, especially since what happened with Grandma, which is rotten because he’s my dad and it feels like he’s giving up on me. So anyway, the long and short of it (like Nonna says) is that we are going to Scotland. Which is just as well because nobody in school wants to be seen with me. Especially not after those pics. Not that I’ll be missing out on much. If we stayed it would be a case of going to the shops practically every day – or going to the mall, like Polly says because she wants to sound American. I would have to oooh and aaah while Polly and Tanya and the others try on clothes I’m too skinny and self-conscious to wear – in their book, skinny is good, but I’m not the right kind of skinny, apparently – and stand there while they take selfies. Just kill me. If I stayed in London, I’d rather be at home with a book and hide away all summer, but my mum wouldn’t let me anyway, and also I don’t want her to think I’m sad again like I was when my dad died and I saw a picture of my real mum, and then I was so low for weeks they sent me to Sheridan to “talk things out”. So I’m not going to do that again.

  Going to Glen Avich: a win–win situation. I love Nonna, AND I love Glen Avich (though it’s really co
ld there, like ridiculously cold). I was there only once for a few days, but it was amazing.

  We all thought Nonna was crazy when she decided to leave London and move to the back of beyond with this guy called Michael, to open a coffee shop. In the Highlands of Scotland, which sounds so romantic but it’s really very far away. We couldn’t even pronounce the name of the place – Glen Avich, that strange ch sound that Scots make at the back of their throats. I practised because I like to do things properly, and now I can say it: Glen AviCH. The sky is so dramatic there, you feel like you’re in a novel. Bride of Shadows by Megumi Henderson, my favourite book of all time, is set in Scotland. Coincidence? I think not. I think it’s a sign.

  B of S is the story of a girl born in a magical clan who falls in love with a boy from a rival clan, Damien, and it’s just the Most. Amazing. Book. Ever. Written. Mrs Akerele says that it’s commercial fiction and I should be focusing on the classics, but she doesn’t understand what that story means to me. She says that Megumi Henderson is not a very skilled writer but “she spins a good yarn”. I think Megumi is the best writer of all time, and Emily Brontë the second best (narrowly). I want to be a writer and I want to be skilled and also “spin a good yarn”. Mrs Akerele says she thinks I do have talent, but I should stick to writing what I know and stay away from vampires and werewolves. I say I’ll write whatever I want and what I don’t know I can make up, and I don’t really like stories of vampires but I love werewolves and I can put whatever creatures I want in my stories. She said that if I’m wilful I’ll never get anywhere and I should listen to advice. I want to listen, but I think I can only listen when it comes to other stuff. When it comes to books I’ll do my own thing.

  But I digress. I was talking about Scotland. I intend to spend a lot of time with my mum, my nonna and my brother, and also read a lot and do a lot of wandering. I love wandering, just walking without a destination, listening to music on my iPod. I’m off social media all summer, that’s for sure. Otherwise I would have to put up with a Tumblr-ful of Polly’s pouting selfies and that’s more than I could bear. Also, more crappy pictures of me might crop up. And I don’t think I can take it.