Missing Pieces by Laura Pearson

Author:Laura Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Agora Books

11th November 2011

9615 Days After

Bea dragged her eyes from the page for a moment. She’d waited a long time for this. All those years, she’d known there was another sister between Esme and herself, and hadn’t dared to ask about her. She stood and paced the length of her room a couple of times, opened a window and gulped at the winter air. She felt slightly sick. Instinctively, she put a hand to her flat stomach. Was Esme finally going to tell her? After she’d asked her to, on the phone, she’d waited for a text or a call that never came. And then a few days had passed, and she’d assumed her question was going to go unanswered. Of course it was. How like Esme to just stay silent, to refuse to budge an inch. And then an envelope had dropped on to the mat, with her name written in her sister’s handwriting.

Bea didn’t open it at first. She knew that finding out about Phoebe was going to change everything. All her life, her dad and Esme had been this impenetrable unit, and she’d been on the outside, never really understanding why they wouldn’t – or couldn’t – let her in. Before she’d been born, the two of them had been part of a complete family that was nothing to do with her. With her, they’d made a different family, and it had always felt clear that they’d have gone back to the way things were before if they possibly could. Before long, she gave in, ripping open the envelope. Understanding that there was no way back, once she knew.

It seemed as though Mum was gone forever. Dad and I survived on fish finger sandwiches, and every evening Mrs Wilson came over to look after me while he went to visit her, kissing me goodbye on his way out and returning long after I’d gone to sleep. Every evening, I asked if I could go with him, and he reassured me that she’d be home soon.

I was sure that something had happened to my mother, that the truth was being hidden from me. In the mornings, while he buttered my toast and poured me a glass of orange juice, Dad told me that Mum was missing me, that she couldn’t wait to be home.

Mrs Wilson brought baked treats in sturdy cake tins. I would lift the lid, letting the sweet scent out into the air. Brownies, scones, fairy cakes. Something different every day. And each night she tucked me into bed and read a story and when her face was hidden behind the book, I pretended that she was Mum. But her voice was croaky and her hands were wrinkled, and when she turned the light out and closed my bedroom door, I cried.

I didn’t know, Phoebe. I was too young to know that you would be so tiny and so beautiful. That everything I feared would come true; had already come true, while my back was turned. That I didn’t have Mum anymore, not the way I had before.

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