She peels a banana and starts to eat it, looking on at my efforts like I’m some kind of performance art installation.
“Thanks for your help,” I say, once I’ve finally cleared the table, my fingers now coated in soggy, mushed up kitchen towel.
“You’re welcome,” she replies casually, throwing the banana skin at the bin and missing. It splats onto the floor, where, given her teenaged angst and my superlative housekeeping skills, it might stay forever.
I sit back down, and squint through the sunshine at her face. It’s the third week in August, and the weather is still bright and gorgeous. The kitchen faces out onto our small patio garden, and the light streams through the window in vivid golden streaks, striping Martha like a tiger. I see that she’s at least managed a shower; her face is free of last night’s zombie movie make-up and her hair is hanging wet and clean over her shoulders. She’s wearing an old Glastonbury hoodie that I recognise as Kate’s, and that immediately softens my attitude.
I remind myself, as I seem to need to do several times a day, that she’s just a child. A child missing her mother. A child I love. I was there when she was born, screaming and bloody, and I was there when her mother died; and I’m still here now – right where I need to be.
“This,” I say, pointing at the screen, “is a place called Budbury. It’s in Dorset. And I thought we might … go there.”
I let the words float out casually, but hold my breath as I wait for her to respond. There’s a battle royale coming, and it’s one I intend to win.
“What, like, for a holiday or something?” she asks, screwing up her face in disgust as she looks at the photos. Budbury is on the Jurassic Coast, near to the border with Devon, and is absolutely picture perfect. There’s a small village with a hall and shops and even a pet cemetery; there’s a few pubs and a gorgeous-looking café perched on the side of the clifftops, and there’s a college just a few miles away. That was an important factor, the college.
We’d both received a letter the day before from her old school, ‘regretfully’ informing us that the sixth form courses she wanted to do were now full. I suspect that isn’t true – they just don’t want her back. I’m angry on her behalf, but kind of get it – she’s been a great big handful of trouble this year, and I’ve spent what feels like hours sitting across the desk from the head teacher, squirming on the naughty chair, listening to her witter on about Martha’s problems.
I’m not at all surprised that they’ve declined to have her back. Martha’s pretending not to be bothered by it, but I suspect the letter inspired last night’s binge. It was proof that everything has changed – and not for the better.
She’s staring at my screen now, frowning. The scenery around the village is astounding – a million light years from our admittedly cosy little corner of Bristol. Even looking at the beaches and the tiny little coves and the pathways clinging to the sides of the cliffs makes me feel better – makes me yearn to be there, in the fresh air, walking and breathing and just … being. Maybe I’d get a dog, and learn to surf, and write beautiful poetry and drink scrumpy.
I’m guessing, from the look on Martha’s face as she flicks through the slideshow, that she doesn’t exactly feel the same.
“Looks like something from a horror film,” she says, dismissively. “Like the Village of the Damned. I bet it’s stuck in a time warp as well – they probably don’t even allow gingers in because they think they have no soul. Which might be a valid point.”
I self-consciously tuck a tangled strand of red curls behind my ear, and bite the inside of my lip. Here we go…
“I’m not suggesting we go there for a holiday,” I say, getting up and depositing the banana skin into the bin. I’m that nervous. “We’re going there … for a while.”
It’s now almost midday, and I’ve been up for hours, planning our new lives. Lives full of happiness and laughter and recovery – building up, moving on, going forward instead of backward. For some reason – possibly desperation – it’s become a symbol of everything I think we need. This major life change is, though, news to poor Martha.
“No way. No way! I wouldn’t even go there for the weekend, Zoe, never mind to live. And you can’t make me. I’m 16, and you can’t make me.”
I fill the kettle. I need another coffee – I’ve only had seventeen so far today. I stay silent, gathering my thoughts, listening to Martha fizz and pop in the background. She’s so loud I fear for the safety of my eardrums. For a moment, I fear for the safety of my laptop as well, but I realise she’s just closed the lid, with a thud. Like that’s the end of it, and Budbury will now fall into the sea and float out into oblivion.
She is 16. And I can’t make her. This is a replay of a conversation we’ve had many times. It is her ultimate weapon – and one I need to let her keep, because she really doesn’t have many left. If I take away her ability to harm me, she will revert fully to harming herself.
I remember myself at 16: sofa surfing at friend’s houses, hiding in Kate’s garage with a sleeping bag until her parents found me and kicked me out, no money, no job, no home. All I had was my spirit – and the determination that I would escape the world I’d grown up in, and find my own way in life. If someone had taken that away from me, that hope, that belief in my own independence, I’d have been left with nothing.
Martha isn’t me. She still needs me, no matter how much she refuses to acknowledge that. Inside, beneath the make-up and the piercings and the attitude, she’s still a baby – still bloody and screaming – and I have to remember that.
“I know I can’t make you,” I reply, my face clouded in steam from the kettle, “but I can at least talk to you about it, can’t I?”
“You can talk about it, but don’t expect me to listen!” she yells, arms crossed over her chest in what she thinks is defiance but actually just makes her look scared and defensive. “My home is here. My friends are here. My life is here – and you’re not dragging me away from it all just because you’re having some kind of mid-life crisis, all right?”
I pour the water onto the coffee, splashing my hands with scalding liquid. She may have a point there. I think I’m doing this for her – but is it actually me who needs to get away? To escape from the pressures of this place, and all its memories; from a past that makes me cry and a future that makes me panic?
“Look, Martha,” I say, in as quiet a voice as I can manage, “I know I can’t make you do anything. And I know you don’t even want to listen to me. But your mum asked me to look after you, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
I know immediately from the look on her face that I’ve said the wrong thing. It has always made her angry, and probably sad: being left to me in a will. Being trapped here with me, without access to any of the life assurance money or the profits selling the house would bring, without the independence she thinks she wants.
“And anyway. That’s not why I’m here,” I add quickly, before she can start a rant. “I’m here because I love you. Feel free to mock, or spit in my eye, but it’s true – I love you. I’ve known you since you were a baby, and I will always love you. I know I’m not your mum, and never will be, but please don’t ever think I’m only here because a lawyer asked me to be. I’d be here anyway.”
I see tears spring into her eyes, and she angrily swipes them away. Crying is a sign of weakness to Martha, and seeing her fight against it fills me with emotion. I want to take her in my arms, and stroke her wet hair, and tell her that everything will be all right. But I know she won’t let me do that. It would push her over the edge, and she wouldn’t forgive me.
“Okay, I know that. I know you would …” she mutters, her fingers screwing up into tight fists