“Yeah. Yeah, I’m still seeing him, so what?” Charley stood with her back against the wall, fists clenched in front of her as if trying to surreptitiously protect her abdomen
“After everything with you and to Mars?” Megan shook her head, glancing towards Tom for a moment. “You don’t think he just wants to take advantage of you again?”
“That, again! It was his friends, not him, he’s said sorry, and it wasn't that big of a deal."
"They threatened Mars!"
"They didn't mean it, they just knew if he said anything you'd make a stupid fuss. And you did. We're both fine, stop going on about it."
Megan hesitated before answering. "You know about Mars' anxiety. You know how much worse it's been since then. He's not fine, even if you are..."
Charley interrupted with a snort. "Should have realised. It's all about Mars and his bloody anxiety. He wouldn't be so anxious if he hadn't fucking told - after he promised he wouldn't."
Megan took a deep breath. "What's upsetting you, Charley?"
"I'm not fucking upset!" She scowled. "I just wanna be with someone who actually gives a shit about me. I want my life to not fucking suck all the time.”
“That's the problem, Charley, he doesn't..."
Charley didn't let Megan finish the sentence. "You don't even know him!"
Megan shook her head. "That’s just what he wants you to believe. There are lots of people like him, who take advantage of teenagers like you. There are plenty of people out there who love you for who you are, not just because you're useful for them and they see you as an easy target.”
Charley glared. “I’m not a fucking ‘easy target’, the fuck does that even mean? They gave me work, and paid me, that's all. Just because you’re jealous, you don’t... you don't like the idea someone might actually give a shit about me…”
“Why would we be jealous?”
“Just because I’m not all yours, you can’t make me do what you want. I don’t fucking need you.”
“We don’t want anything of the sort…”
“Stop acting like you know best all the time! I'm not like the others. You’re trying to keep me inside, stop me from seeing the people I want to see. Stop me doing stuff I want to do. Just ‘cause you’ve got the others thinking you care…”
“Charley…”
She set her chin. “I’m not like them, I’m not pathetic, I can handle myself. You don’t fucking like that, do you? That’s why you want to stop me seeing the one person who actually cares!”
“What are you on about, Charley? What makes you think we don’t care about you?”
She kicked the wall behind her. “You just keep me around to make yourselves feel like fucking heroes. Some Christian charity bullshit or something.”
“That’s not true at all.”
“You’ve even got Mars calling you mum. And I bet you’ll have Mika soon. And Liza, she’ll do whatever the fuck you want, just wants to make you happy. It’s just me, you don’t like that I don’t play your fucking game, that’s why you want to stop me…”
“Charley, we want nothing of the sort. We’re worried about you, that’s why we don’t like seeing you being taken advantage of. We don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Yeah, like you can do anything.”
“We can’t if you won’t let us!”
She glared. “That’s because you’re fucking useless. I don’t need you, I was going to leave anyway, I fucking hate it here. At least Mark gives me shit that makes me feel better, but you clearly don't like that. So why should I stay? Why would I fucking listen to you? Even Da couldn’t make me do what he wanted, in the end, and he actually tried.”
“Charley, take some time to calm down if you need to.”
“Stop acting like I'm fucking irrational! Trying to pretend you care.” Her whole body was shaking now. “You’re all the same. You all just want to control me. Fucking want me to be a good little girl who does as she’s told. Well, here’s a story for you, it’s not fucking happening. I didn’t do it for Da, I won’t fucking do it for you. I’ll see who I fucking want, when I want, and you don't fucking like that… well you know what, I don’t fucking like living here. You're stupid and I fucking hate you.”
“Charley, please...”
“At least I’m choosing to live with Mark, I never chose for you to come in and start trying to fucking control me…”
“We never tried to make you do anything. You chose to come and live here.”
“Like I had a fucking choice.”
“That’s not true. Charley!”
“Oh, so now I’m a fucking liar?” She wrenched the door open. “Give up. I’m not fucking living here anymore. Mark wants me to come and live with him – he actually wants me. And he’ll let me do what I fucking want, let me see who I like. Won’t try to fucking rule my life.”
She slammed the door and stomped up the stairs, and Megan looked at Tom, tears in her eyes. There was a long silence before either of them spoke.
“I fucked that up.”
Tom held out his arms, and she nestled against him. “There’s nothing wrong with what you said. I'd have helped, but... I couldn't think of anything to say. She'd already decided, it would have happened anyway.”
“She can’t go… to that… that man.”
“We can’t stop her.”
“But… she’s a child.”
“And she’s been fending for herself most of her life. Because you can bet ‘Da’ didn’t look after her.”
“I hoped…”
“So did I.” He stood up. “I’ll see her out.”
Charley’d packed already, confirmation that leaving hadn't been a sudden decision, and he met her at the bottom of the stairs.
“What? You’re going to fucking try and stop me too?”
“Please don’t go, Charley.”
She sneered. “You’re so fucking useless. At least Da actually tried.”
“I’m never going to strike you, Charley, or force you to do anything.”
“Then you might as well get out of my way.” She pushed past, and he followed her to the door. “Give up.”
“You can always come back. We’ll always be happy to see you.”
“Give. Up.”
“Even if I’ve moved… the internet will tell you where I am. Or anyone in the Church of England, they’ll be able to find out. It'll be in Crockfords.”
“Look, you’ve failed, just accept it.”
“You have my number. Call me, any time, anywhere. Even in five, ten, fifteen years. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.”
She hesitated just half a second, then turned away to go down the steps. Full backpack, an overloaded carrier bag in each hand. At least… at least she wasn’t leaving with nothing. He felt Megan’s hand on his shoulder, and placed his own hand over it, and they stood there together, watching her go. And then shut the door, and she buried herself in his chest.
“Dad? Mum?”
He looked up. “Hi, Mars. Get Mika and Liza, there’s something we need to tell you.”
“I’m here.” Liza, a little further up the stairs. “I’ll get Mika.”
Megan had done enough talking, it was his turn, as the children sat nervously spaced out on the sofa.
“You probably heard Charley shouting. She has decided she doesn’t want to live here anymore.” So final, to put it in words. “She’s been planning it for a while. She’s gone to live with her boyfriend instead.”
“With... Mark?”
“Yes, Mars, with Mark. I know, but it’s her choice... Remember your breathing, sweetheart. Have you got a fidget?"
Mars nodded and took it out of his pocket, and as his breathing started to stabilise Tom went on.
"In the end, if any of you choose to go… we can’t stop you. You don’t have to stay here, however much we want you to. And Charley… didn’t want to stay. Hopefully she’ll come back, though I don’t know when. If any of you see her around… you don’t have to talk to her, but if you do, try to be nice. And let us know, we’d like to know how she’s doing.”
“But… why would she want to go? With him?” Mars didn't look up as he spoke.
“I don’t know. But she’s been through some very difficult things, and it makes it hard for her to know who to trust. We tried to persuade her not to go, but it’s her decision.”
“But it’s nice here. It’s safe.”
Megan held out her arms, and Mars and Mika climbed up, Mars squeezing between them and Mika on Megan's lap. Liza hung back, until he gestured to her, and she sat on his other side with her head on his shoulder.
“We’re not going anywhere.”
“No, Liza.”
“Thank you. For taking us in, for giving us a safe place, for giving us… everything. A family. Charley might not… Charley…”
“Thank you, Liza. Thank you, for being… your kind, wonderful self.”
Mars shifted slightly. “So… what are we going to do now?”
He sighed. “I don’t know, Mars. We’re going to… carry on. You’re going to go to school, and come home, and do your homework, and go to your clubs, and see your friends, and all of those things you always do. I’m going to go to work, and come back, and spend time with you. Megan’s going to carry on feeding you, and doing your laundry, and going to the shops, and looking after a million things most of us don’t even see, and being here for you, and finding all the best ways to help you, and holding us all together. And Megan and I are going to get married, and we’re all going to move to the other house…”
“And we’re going to become your real adopted children?”
“Yes, if you want. And we’re going to keep on growing older and wiser and living our lives, and maybe one day Charley will come home. It might be soon, even this evening. Or in a few years. Or never.”
“You can’t… ask the police? Or anything?”
“There’s nothing they really can do, though we'll tell them. There used to be people who deal with this sort of thing, but... not really, anymore. We’ll tell her school – you might see her there, Mars. More likely she'll stop going to school. That’s how it works, all of you. Nobody can force you to do anything you don’t want to. At least, if they can, it’s bad and illegal. Unfortunately that means you can do things you shouldn’t, which are bad for you. We’ll do our best to stop you, of course, but… it’s your choice in the end.”
“But… what if we make the wrong choice? And can’t change it later?”
“Well, we’ll try and stop you. But who else do you trust to make all of your decisions for you? What if that other person makes a wrong choice? No, you have to do your best not to make a bad decision you can’t undo later. That means listening to us, and to other people, like your teachers and the police. But also, you have to remember that it’s easier to go back than you think. We’ve told Charley, as clearly as we can, that she’s always welcome to come back. And in other situations, too, you can nearly always go back and say sorry – so long as everyone’s still alive, everything else is fixable. And you know whatever happens, we’ll always try and help you fix it.” He squeezed Mars. “Of course, Charley might be back in a few hours. Or tomorrow. But she might not. And that’s going to be difficult for all of us, isn’t it? Because she’s one of us.”
“Even when… even when she’s…” Liza buried her face in his shoulder, and he hugged her close.
“Even when she’s annoying, or difficult, that’s right.” He looked around them all. “And now, I’m afraid we’re going to have to get on with our lives as best we can. I can see a very sleepy little girl whose bedtime it is…”
Mika wriggled and muttered a protest, but Megan stood up anyway.
“That’s right. Bedtime for you. Now, are we all going to carry on as near normal as we can? Yes, we are. Then if Charley comes home, it’ll all be how she expects. Right?”
“What about when we move house?”
“Well, she knows when we’re going. And even there, there’s going to be bedtime, and homework to be done, and chores, just like we have here.”
Mars snuggled up on Tom’s chest. “What if she comes there and there isn’t a bed for her?”
“Well then, she can sleep on the sofa while we get one for her. No need to worry about what ifs.”
“Oh.” Mars was quiet for a bit. “I don’t like her much, but I hope she’s okay.”
Oh the honesty of a child! “So do I. And we’re all going to hope and pray that she comes back to us safe and sound, aren’t we?”
A solemn nod. Little Mars, who cared so much more for Charley than she cared for him, who would protect her if he could… though she’d cared, too, really, she just… hadn’t known how.
It was a couple of hours later, with all three children in bed or in their rooms, that Megan returned to lie with her head on his chest.
“Did I drive her off?”
“No! No. It’s not your fault, Megan.”
“I didn’t like her seeing him, but at least… she was here. Safer than she is now. I shouldn’t have… I should have known, if I upset her…”
“It would have happened anyway.”
“Would it, though?”
He wrapped his arms more tightly around her. “If we hadn’t said anything? She’d probably still be here, seeing him. For a few weeks, maybe, before something happened, or he told her to jump, and then she’d have gone. She had everything packed already, it wasn’t an impulsive thing.”
“If we’d had… a couple more weeks…”
“If we hadn’t said anything, we’d be having a conversation like this, about whether we should have done more to warn her.”
“I should have let you do it. You’re better at these conversations.”
“I’m not. I couldn’t have done any better than you, it was… impossible. You heard what she said to both of us.”
“You wouldn’t have got her so worked up.”
“She got herself worked up.”
“I shouldn’t have criticised Mark. I should have known it’d upset her.”
“So what? You should have pretended Mark was fine, that there’s nothing at all wrong with their relationship?” He shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself. We can spend the rest of our lives thinking about how we could have stopped it, but… that won’t change anything.”
“I just can’t believe… she’s actually gone.”
He just sat there silently, rubbing circles on her back.
“Did you have any idea… she was planning it?”
“Not until she came back down the stairs with her bags already packed. I should have noticed, but… I didn’t.”
“Nor did I.”
“Neither of us are miracle workers. We did our best, but… hopefully she’ll come back. Perhaps in a couple of hours. Or in the morning. Or she’ll walk back in after school like nothing happened.”
“But she’s not going to.”
“But she might.”
“But she won’t, how can we move on if we’re forever waiting for her to walk back through the door?” And then she was shaking. “How am I supposed to lay the table… with one fewer place? How am I supposed… to do breakfast for four? Mars, doing homework at the kitchen table on his own? Walking to school on his own? And the wedding…”
“Shh.” He wiped her tears away with his thumb. “You’re going to do it because you’re tough. You’re going to get up in the morning and carry on just as you always have, I know you are. I don’t know how you do it, but I know you can, because you’re the toughest person I know, and the other three need you, and you’ll do it for them. And as to the future… we’ll worry about it when we get there. She might be back, or she might not. For now, one day at a time.”
“One day… at a time… how are you so calm?”
“Because I’m so sad I’ve no room for anything else.”
“Oh.” She wrapped her arms more securely around his neck. “Why did we decide to do this? We knew how much it would hurt…”
“Because they need us.”
“I thought… after Justin… it couldn’t get worse.”
“Oh, I know, we’ve had far more than our share. But that’s what we signed up for, when we took them on.”
“If I’d known…”
“Oh I know. I’m glad we didn’t know, though, because then we might not have decided to take it on. And it’s worth it, isn’t it?”
“I dunno… sometimes I wonder.”
“Times like now.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. But when we look back, it’ll be worth it.”
“One day.”
“Yeah.”
“And until then?”
“One day at a time. We just keep going. We’re in too deep to back out now.”
“Not… the most positive way of looking at it.”
“You got a better one?” He stroked her hair.
“Guess not.”
“Well then. We’d better get on with it.”
“And Charley?”
“As I told Mars. We hope and pray.”
“I always hoped… we could do more.”
“We did. But right now we can’t. Only trust God to go where humans can’t.”
“It feels… after all we’ve done…”
“I know.” He stared across the room, at the photo on the wall. Justin in the middle, in Megan’s arms, everyone else gathered around. They’d known, then, that they hadn’t much time. “We’ll get through. Somehow.”
“Yeah.”
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