I’m sitting in the corner of the TV room on my own when a girl I’ve seen around but never spoken to comes running in.

‘Are you Clem?’ she says, breathless. ‘There’s a phone call for you.’

I look at her, not understanding, though her English is good; it’s my brain that’s slow. She gestures impatiently with her hand held to her face: phone.

‘Downstairs. For you.’

‘For me?’

‘Your mother.’ She smiles as I gawp at her and takes my hand. ‘Yes! Your mother!’

But I sit, unable to move, and stare at her, trying to take in her words.

My mother. On the phone.

My mother?

‘You must come, now.’

My brain tries to catch up, slower than my feet, as I let myself be pulled along the corridor to the top of the stairs.

Mum. On the phone. Waiting to speak to me. Now.

What will she say?

What will I say?

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Stop. I just need to…’ I hold on to the stair rail, dizzy suddenly, a little sick.

I cling to the bannister and try to catch my breath and my thoughts.

What can I say to her, to my mother who left me, who I now need to save me? What words will I possibly find?

I know you probably don’t love me but please can you help me anyway? Because I haven’t got anyone else.

Or:

I hate you.

Or:

Did you swim in the sea like you wanted?

‘Come,’ the girl says, anxious. ‘Or she may be gone.’

‘Yep,’ I say. ‘That’d be about right.’

I go downstairs, I stop outside the door of the office and I take a deep breath.

Everything has that too-real feeling, like when you’re at the optician’s, everything blurry, and they slot a lens in and suddenly everything is clear. I feel my heart beating. I’ll say hello. That’s all I need to do. The rest is up to her.

I walk into the office and Polly’s there, holding the phone out to me, smiling and nodding encouragement. I hesitate and then take it from her.

‘Hello?’ I say. It comes out croaky, not calm and grown up, and just a tiny bit bored like I’d heard it in my head.

And then there’s silence.

And then a voice says, ‘Hello?’

And with a shock of familiarity, I realize her voice is one I know.

Not the voice of a stranger, as I’d expected.

Distant from myself, I think: Does this mean I remember her? Or do I know her voice because she’s part of me, I’m part of her? And I notice, from my distant viewpoint, that I’m pleased.

I don’t mean to be. I don’t want to be. But I am pleased that her voice is familiar because it means we know each other, really know each other, and so mine will be familiar to her too.

And then, all in a slowed fragment of a second, I know that’s wrong.

That’s not why her voice is familiar.

‘Hello? Clem? Is that you?’ the voice says again, and even though the line is terrible, I can hear this voice is shaking with the effort of not cracking. ‘Can you hear me, love? Are you there?’

And everything, in that elastic fraction of a moment, seems to disintegrate. It falls apart and I fall with it. I close my eyes, and when I open them the world has put itself back together in a completely different shape.

And I’m so overwhelmed with relief and disbelief and with guilt and fear and with something else that I’d forgotten I could feel, that everything blurs and I have to lean against the wall by the desk to keep from falling.

‘Claudia,’ I say, my voice sounding far away from where I am.

‘Clem!’

‘Claudia, oh my God.’

And I’m crying. Not pretty crying, like on films. Scary-sounding crying that sounds nothing like mine, not even much like a person’s.

‘Oh, Clem,’ Claudia’s voice says, ‘Clem, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’ve found you.’

‘Billie,’ I manage to say. ‘Billie… She—’

‘I know,’ she says, and her voice is cracking now. ‘Oh, Clem.’

She can’t speak. She sobs.

I have never heard Claudia cry like this. I have never heard anyone cry like this.

And it’s my fault. I promised I would take care of Billie for her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say but it’s not enough, nothing can ever be enough, but I can’t stop saying it. ‘I’m so sorry, Claudia, I’m so sorry—’

‘No,’ she says. ‘No, no, no. Don’t be sorry.’

‘It was my fault.’

‘Never say that. Never, never say it. Never think it, Clem.’

‘But—’

‘No. It’s not true. I know it’s not true. None of this is your fault.’

I try to breathe, gulping in air.

‘I thought you’d hate me.’

‘Oh, Clem. How could you think that?’

I feel weak with relief and then with fear.

‘Dad…’ I say, not wanting to hope. ‘Do you know what’s happened to him? I’ve heard nothing all this time.’

There is a pause.

‘He was arrested, Clem, that’s all I know. A few months ago. I don’t know where he is now. But we will find him, I promise.’

My whirling brain starts to slow and settle. There are so many things I need to ask her.

‘Where are you?’ I realize I’m imagining her back in our kitchen, phone balanced between her ear and shoulder as she makes coffee or types on her laptop or hunts for some missing item of Billie’s school uniform. But that’s impossible, of course. That life is gone.

‘I’m in Ireland,’ she says. ‘It’s a long story. But I can live here, Clem, until it’s safe to go home. And so can you. It’ll take a while to sort out but we can be together.’

I tried to take it in. ‘Could we? Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. Look, I’ve got to go but I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?’

I don’t want her to go. I want to keep her with me.

She is part of me. I am part of her. The careful not-mother-daughter almost-love we had before is gone. We’re bound now by something more than that, something greater even than love.

I step out of the office, dazed. Polly sees my tears. She hugs me.

‘Claudia,’ I say at last. ‘It was Claudia.’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought it was my biological mum.’

‘You thought…?’ She puts her hand to her mouth as she understands. ‘I’m so sorry, Clem… You’re okay?’

I realize she means do I mind that it wasn’t Seren, that she is still as disappeared as she ever was, as absent when I needed her as she has been all my life. Well, do I mind? I pause to consider it and, yes, I do, a bit. Of course I do. But it’s nothing new, that hurt. An old scar, not a wound. And I find it doesn’t really matter now. Hearing Claudia’s voice, I felt safe for the first time in a long, long time. And something else too. I felt love. More than I could ever feel for Seren.

‘Claudia’s alive!’ I say, and I feel the tears come again. ‘I’m going to see her.’

Polly smiles. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Soon.’

‘She knows. And she doesn’t…’ I was going to say, She doesn’t hate me, but I stop myself.

Somehow, the way Polly looks at me, it’s like I said it anyway.

‘Clem,’ she says, ‘can I ask you a question?’

I look at her. I know what that question will be.

It is time for me to let go.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘You can ask me.’

I wait. We’ve both been waiting for this moment, for this question, and its answer, to be spoken out loud. We’ve waited ever since we met.

‘Where is Billie?’ Polly asks at last.

Her words make the air strange and alive, like the moment before lightning.

Where is Billie?

Is she outside with the others?

Is she making up some nonsense song? Talking to her friends in a made-up mix of Arabic/English/Hungarian with lots of handwaving and actions like charades at Christmas?

No.

Is she sleeping? Perhaps she’s asleep. I have hoped this before.

The words won’t come. I close my eyes.

It’s the day I left London.

I’m saying to Dad: I can’t go. I can’t leave without her. It was supposed to be both of us.

And Dad says: You’re not leaving her, Clem! She’s with you. She’ll always be with you. You know that. But you have to go. I need you to. I need you to be okay. Do it for me. Do it for Billie.

That is the truth.

She is with me.

I see her across the room now, nose pressed to the window, looking out at the cat on the flat roof opposite, laughing; saying, ‘Eww, Clem, look at the kitty-cat! He’s licking his bum. I still love him though.’

And she’s outside, in her red raincoat, waving at me with the new friends she’s made, because she always makes new friends wherever she is, sticking her tongue out and telling them all to do the same in various languages, real and invented.

And she’s in one of the rooms downstairs too, along the corridor, but I can still see her, carefully folding a paper crane from coloured paper, her tongue sticking out in concentration.

It’s true. But it’s also a story.

‘Will you tell me what happened to Billie?’ Polly says.

Will I? Can I?

Once there was a girl who

I’d rather leave it unfinished.

But every story has an ending.

  

LOST

Unable to find your way. Not knowing where you are or how to get to where you want to go. That which has been mislaid, taken away or cannot be recovered. Without hope.

Up the steps from the shadowy Underground station into the sharp, silver light, the hum and chatter and shout of the crowd, the smell of frying onions and cigarette smoke.

‘I didn’t realize there’d be so many people,’ says Mischa.

Oxford Street bathed in sunshine.

‘You hold too tight,’ Billie whines. ‘Your nails dig in.’

‘See you in a minute.’ Mischa calling over her shoulder, turning and walking away. ‘I’ll bring you some fries, B.’

Dad’s voice on the phone, the garbled message. We need to get away.

‘Can I speak to him?’ Billie says.

Shouts and screams and a wave of people, running, pushing, crushing.

‘Billie!’ She stumbles. I grab her, try to lift her up as best I can.

‘Are you okay?’ I gasp. ‘Can you breathe okay?’

She nods with wide eyes.

‘Run,’ the woman in the purple puffa jacket says.

If we can just get to a shop doorway out of the tide of people—

‘Come on, Billie, we have to—’

I look down and somehow—

‘Billie!’

Jesus.

‘Billie?’

Somehow, she’s gone.

‘BILLIE!’ I yell. I look all around. I want to run, but in which direction? I could be running away from her.

‘BILLIE!’ I scream, blind and paralysed with panic. Oh, God. Please. ‘Billie!’

She can’t have gone far. She can’t have. She was there a second ago. I was holding her hand.

‘Billie!’ I can’t breathe.

And then—

And then…

Then someone grabs hold of me and drags me along.

‘You need to get out of here. Fast.’ A man about Dad’s age.

‘My sister! I’ve lost my little sister.’ I’m sobbing and gasping.

‘Shit.’ He looks back at me, reflecting my horror, and then looks around, scanning the chaos of running people, fallen bodies. ‘Look, someone will help her. She’s a little kid. Someone will get her out of here and then you can find her, after.’

‘But what if they don’t? What if—’

And suddenly, there’s screaming and another sound. A crack. Another crack.

I look at the man, not understanding. Is someone setting off fireworks?

‘Plastic bullets,’ he says.

Bullets?

‘They’re only plastic bullets. They hurt you but they don’t kill.’

And then there’s the crack of another shot and a tall guy, middle-aged, in a parka, drops to the ground a few metres away.

I stare, unable to understand what I’m seeing. A dark patch spreads across the ground beneath him.

My insides heave.

‘Shit!’ The man grabs me and pulls me with him and we run. All the time I’m screaming for Billie but she’s not anywhere.

I see a child running but they’re too tall for Billie. I see another in a red coat, hood up like Billie’s, being carried on the back of an adult and my heart leaps, but no, that kid is pale-skinned and blonde. Not Billie.

‘Billie…’ I try to shout but it comes out as a gasp. I can’t run. I can’t breathe. I stand, dizzy, looking around me through the fog of tear gas spreading back behind us the way we’ve come, people swarming everywhere, grey shapes around me like ghosts. Another shot rings out nearby and I’m pulled into a shop doorway where other people are crouched.

I try to run but someone is holding me back.

‘Stay down!’

The crowd has thinned, fractured from a mass into people running, staggering, calling names.

‘My sister,’ I say again, though I hardly have any breath left and struggle to form the words, and I shake off the hands holding me back and run, calling, calling. Billie—

And then I see something lying on the ground.

It’s a child’s toy, an owl. I bend to pick it up. My hands are shaking. There is blood on them. I look up and I know what I’m going to see.

She’s lying in the road, a few metres away, but I know it’s her even through the smoke. Her hair, her clothes. Everything else fades. There is nothing else. I run towards her. One of her trainers has come off and lies abandoned in the road next to her.

‘Billie!’

There’s shouting somewhere nearby and at a distance—

‘Get down—’

‘No—’

Someone’s hand is grabbing my arm but I shake it off and then I’ve reached her small body, lying in the road as if she’s asleep.

‘Billie! Billie, it’s me. Wake up, Billie.’

Then there’s another crack crack and searing pain in my shoulder and the ground slams hard against my back. I’m staring at the bluest sky, dazzling above me, not a single cloud anywhere. My body is heavy and far away, the pain the only part of me that feels real. I concentrate on where my arm must be and force it to move. I feel across the tarmac for Billie’s hand. I find it and clasp it in mine.

‘Don’t let go,’ I try to say. ‘Billie, don’t let go.’

But her hand is limp.

Billie. Don’t let go.

But the words won’t come and the colour is draining from the sky.

I’ll tell you a story, Billie… I try to say, but it’s no good.

I see a bird, I think, flying far above us, far, far away. I want to tell Billie that I’m wishing on the bird and that means it will be okay, but I can’t speak. I just try to fix my eyes on the bird – only now I can’t see it—

Now I can’t see anything.

Don’t let go, I say in my head.

Don’t let go.

Don’t—