It was school pick-up time. Mira put on her jogging tracksuit. Before she left for the recreational ground, she popped a couple of chocolate biscuits into her pocket and wrote Gone to get milk! on a Post-it that she stuck onto the kettle for Barry. She removed the unopened carton of full fat from the fridge door and brought it with her.

Before she turned right into the main road, she ducked down and stuck the milk into the hedge on the corner of number seven.

On the recreational ground, her heart was going to burst in her chest. Whether it was the running or the anticipation of seeing Rosie again, she didn’t know.

The second lap up the pitch gave her a view of the wire back gate of New Hall Prep. She watched for signs of children. There were a few parents milling about chatting.

When the children started to pour out, Mira slowed down, almost jogging on the spot.

Just as she saw Rosie’s washed-out little face bound through the gates with her black mane of hair swinging, an older lady stepped towards her with her arms outstretched. Rosie flew into this woman’s arms. It was like a knife in Mira’s back. She felt winded, paralysed. Noah emerged and charged at this woman with similar gusto.

As this unit of three walked towards her in the dusky winter gloom, the woman bent a little to hear what Rosie was chatting about. Mira inspected her for family resemblance. She was not tall and broad like Rosie, she was slight, like Gemma, with shoulder-length crispy dark hair that stuck out from underneath an eccentric velvet hat. Her bone structure was pronounced, almost beautiful, but her eyes – a milky blue – sank a little too far into her small bird-like head, as though they were shrinking away from life, warily, frightened of what might jump out at her. Mira decided that a woman who was so frail and timid must have led a sheltered life. She didn’t like the look of her one bit. And when she saw her boney hand clasp Rosie’s, Mira felt a wildness come over her, and she winced, the wind sharp on her gums.

But she recognised a more powerful enemy when she saw one, and she retreated out of the grounds, her disappointment acute. While the police investigation was underway, Mira had been determined to be the back-up Rosie might need to see her through such uncertainty – and potentially Gemma’s volatility – but plainly someone else had stepped into the breach, possibly as part of the safeguarding plan DC Miles had mentioned to her on their follow-up visit.

Never one to mope, Mira set about thinking of other ways to get in touch with Rosie. By the time she had made it home, the plan was there, as easy as pie.

‘Hey love,’ Barry said, with his head in the fridge. ‘Cuppa?’

‘I could murder one.’

‘I thought you’d given up on that jogging business.’

Mira had forgotten about her tracksuit. ‘I just wanted to be comfy.’

‘Got the milk?’

‘What?’ she asked, remembering that the milk was in the hedge at the bottom of the close. In her agitated state earlier she had run past number seven, quite forgetting the ruse.

‘Didn’t you go out to get milk?’

‘Oh, I left it in the car.’

Before she had a chance to run out, Barry piped up. ‘Didn’t you walk?’

Mira wished he would just shut up. ‘I just left it there while I checked on the chickens.’

Her breathing was ragged when she returned, having run all the way there and back.

‘You took your time.’

Drops of tea on the floor marked Barry’s journey from the kettle to the bin. Two mugs sat steaming on the side, waiting for their blasted milk.

‘For Pete’s sake, Barry, sometimes I think you let the bags drip on purpose to annoy me,’ she puffed, pushing Barry’s legs away from the under-the-sink cupboard where the floor cloth lived.

‘By the looks of you, you need to get out jogging more often.’

She wiped the droplets away with more rigour than was necessary. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘The car’s only a few feet away from the front door and you’re huffing and puffing like you’ve run a marathon.’

‘I put the bins out,’ Mira lied, telling herself to remember to do it later when he was snoozing in front of the television. It was too dark now to see out, so he wouldn’t notice.

Barry handed her a cup of tea and his eyebrows raised up above his bottle-top glasses. ‘Everything okay, love?’

‘It feels like the Spanish bloody Inquisition round here,’ Mira huffed, grabbing the mug and leaving him standing in the kitchen. She called over her shoulder. ‘I’ve just got to write a thank you note to little Sam for making me that collage.’

‘Right you are. I’ll put the casserole in.’ He seemed placated.

The bureau drawer was a little stiff and the card with the robin on the front smelt musty. She worried that a girl like Rosie, with so many privileges, would laugh at the card. The other option was the embossed writing paper, but that seemed too formal. The robin card was more suitable for a ten-year-old.

She thought hard about what she was going to say before she put pen to paper.

Dear Rosie-Rabbit,

I hope you got back home safely the other night.

I’ll be in the shed potting my sweet peas tomorrow afternoon after school if you would like to squeeze through the hedge for a slice of Battenberg and a mug of hot chocolate.

Needless to say, it might be best to keep this note at school. We both know why!

Love from your friend,

Mrs E.

P.S. Use the blue bucket to reply! It’s on your side!

---

The next day, Mira left the house early to make a detour to the front gates of New Hall Preparatory. The wrought-iron gates and the long winding drive reminded Mira of Manderley in Rebecca.

The Edwardian building was an old manor house, but inside there was that familiar cabbage and smelly-feet tang in the air common to all schools, regardless of how elitist the institution strived to be. However, Mira had to admit that the potpourri and new blue carpets were certainly additions Woodlands could do with in their front hall.

‘Could you please pass this on to Rosie Bradley in Thistles, Year Five, if possible?’ Mira said, pushing the card through the hatch. ‘I’m her next-door neighbour and she dropped it on the drive. Thought it might be important.’

‘Of course, how kind, thank you. I’ll put it in her cubby hole,’ the receptionist said, taking the innocuous-looking little card from her.

‘Thanks ever so,’ Mira trilled as she left, trying to mimic the pretentious ways of her sister Deidre.

She drove back down the drive and out through the wrought-iron gates thinking that there weren’t any gates posh enough or high enough to hide Rosie away from her, however hard Gemma Bradley tried. At ten years old, Rosie had her own mind. At fifteen years old, Mira had not had her own mind. Mira’s mother’s smoke had blown into her quiet mind. The smoke was forever billowing from her mouth, filling the kitchen. Mira spluttered, coughing up the smoke, experiencing again the atmosphere of that kitchen. Willingly, this time, she strained to recall the details as a memory unfurled.

The radio had been turned off for once. There had been a sound of a car door slam. Her mother had jumped up. ‘Quickly, repeat your story one more time.’

Mira had replied dutifully, sulkily, ‘I did it with this boy at a party when I was drunk and then he left. He was at a different school and I don’t know who he is.’

Her mother’s intransigence had worn her down. The long, angry lectures. The stomping about. The irritable tone with the doctors. The tutting while on hold to Social Services. The kicking of the bin that stuck.

If Mira spoke up, she was shouted down. If she cried, she was blanked. It didn’t matter what she did or said, there was no getting through to her mother. If Mira kept this baby, she would be chucked out. Simple. Non-negotiable. Conversation over. Fuck you, you little whore.

‘Now the reasons you want to give it up.’

The silver bottle top was goopy. Mira smelt it. Her stomach heaved, but the milk was not sour.

‘I don’t want the baby. I can’t cope. I’ve stopped eating. I want to kill myself.’ Mira reeled off the reasons as she plonked herself at the kitchen table and poured milk into her mother’s mug of tea and some into her evening bowl of cereal.

The drill. Mira knew it well.

Mira pressed her fingers around the doorstep-cold milk bottle until they were numb at the tips. She imagined the numbness spreading malevolently through her whole body; the creep to non-existence.

Smoke clung to the social worker’s greasy parting of hair. The fumes of old cigarettes were fresh from her mouth with every question. The questions had been brief. The answers fell out of Mira’s despondent mouth. Her mother’s lumpy behind was wedged into the corner bend of the worktop as she let her daughter tell convenient lies.

Ten minutes was all it took. Adoption had been agreed. The social worker was about to leave.

‘Always my little ball of trouble, weren’t you love, right from word go,’ her mother had added, smug with the achievement of the afternoon, rolling her eyes at the social worker who was packing up her things.

Another cigarette was lit at her mother’s lips. The tip burning brightly into Mira’s eyes, the second-hand smoke inhaled, down, down, deep down into her womb where the baby’s tiny lungs were forming.

Mira’s hand was around the milk bottle, squeezing it, her eyes were on her mother’s cigarette, the bottle was levitating above the table, light in her hand, lighter and lighter as it floated above her head, and moved through the air towards her mother, who ducked, holding her hand to her face, the bottle smashing into her knees; soaking, stinking, sour shock.

Triumph and disbelief danced behind her mother’s hysteria. The social worker’s long, greasy day had come alive. The baby’s fate was sealed.