His Kidnapper's Shoes Read Free Page B

off the alcohol, her inability to be a mother a piercing regret to me.
    Afterwards, you’d sit on my bed and brush my hair.
    ‘Almost long enough to tickle your hips,’ you once told me, the tug of the bristles against my scalp a panacea to my drunken mother snoring in the next room. ‘Like soft golden caramel and every bit as thick.’ You reached behind my ear and conjured up a sweet wrapped in shiny gilded paper, and I laughed, even though you’d pulled that trick so often before. You peeled off the wrapping and held the caramel up against my hair.
    ‘See, Laura? Look how the colours match.’ My hair was paler, I thought, but there wasn’t much in it. You popped the sweet into my waiting mouth, and then patted my cheek, the oversized ring on your finger next to my eyes. ‘Would you believe it? Another perfect match. Eyes of opal blue.’ You stroked my caramel-coloured hair and for a while, I forgot I had a mother who was drunk and incapable of being a parent to me. You made it all go away, Gran, and that was the real magic you had for me, more powerful than any sweet.
    ‘Why does she drink so much?’ I remember asking you once, desperate to dig beneath the surface of the enigma that was my mother.
    You sighed, at a loss to find the words to explain the truth to the unworldly eight-year-old who you loved. You were right; I was too young to understand the ugly reality of what had happened nearly ten years ago. I needed to be older and a lot wiser before I truly grasped the reason why Mum drank the way she did.
    Sadness darkened your expression. You chose your words with care. ‘Sometimes, Laura, men can appear nice on the surface, even when they’re not. Especially when they want something from a pretty girl.’
    ‘Like what?’ I had no idea what you meant.
    You didn’t answer directly. ‘Your mum was beautiful when she was younger. Too beautiful, Laura.’ Anger seeped into your voice. ‘She ended up attracting attention from a group of men, the type of men who aren’t so nice on the inside. She didn’t want to give them what they wanted, so they took it anyway.’
    I had no concept of sex back then. I nodded, pretending I understood.
    ‘They hurt her so badly.’ Something in your expression told me you hadn’t meant to say that in front of me. You said she’d needed to go to the hospital; she’d begun drinking heavily as soon as she got out.
    ‘You see, Laura, my love, when your mum drinks, she’s able to forget what those men did; for a short while, the world becomes a better place for her.’
    I nodded again. That part wasn’t difficult to understand.
    ‘Your mother was never the same afterwards, sweetheart. Although she didn’t want to let those men have what they were after, when she came home from the hospital, she started to give it to anybody who did. It can happen when women don’t think much of themselves.’
    You told me how you tried to talk with her, but you two were never close and she’d already built a wall, high and impenetrable, around herself. Then she got pregnant by one of several possible men and nine months later, I arrived; for a while, my mother seemed to get better. She took care of me, stopped buying the wine and you hoped, really hoped, she would be all right.
    Slowly, though, she slipped back into that dark place where only a bottle of cheap red could make her forget and then you knew she’d never get over what had happened to her.
    By the time I turned twelve, I had you to be concerned about as well. I ignored the signs at first; how thin you’d become, how tired and frail. So long as I didn’t ask you, I reasoned, I wouldn’t hear the words I dreaded. You, being ever practical, didn’t let me get away with the head in the sand approach. You sat me down one day, doing your best to explain your illness so I wouldn’t get too upset. I was a young twelve, after all, still unworldly.
    ‘Laura, my darling.’ Your voice, calm as ever, contrasted with the words