accident the way young people do, and there’s me in my jogging bottoms and slippers having a sweaty little breakdown. I watch them, try to take them in without them becoming aware of me. I’m an intruder, an intruder in my own home. I don’t want to go barging in there. I’m worried I’ll break the spell. I don’t want to make them all self-conscious. I don’t want to ruin their fun.
But Mark is waiting for his coffee, so I suck in one last deep breath and open the door.
‘So you went in?’ Blue Eyes’ head tips forward; her eyebrows shoot up. You’re doing well, she says, without speaking. Keep going.
The interview room is hot. I take off my cardie and drink half a glass of water. Once I settle again on the sofa, it takes me a second to get back there, to my kitchen full of smoke, to the rushing roar of twenty-odd teenagers all talking at once. The bass thumps in my chest and the smell nearly floors me: sweet weed and fresh sweat, sticky drinks and the hair gels and body sprays young people favour. Fashion’s on a loop, isn’t it? Today’s skinny jeans are just yesterday’s drainpipes, Kopparberg is what we used to call cider and black, and often they’re listening to the same tunes we did, except for them it’s retro. Never thought I’d hear Luther Vandross again, let alone Bon Jovi. Kids think they’re the first to discover everything, don’t they? First to get drunk, first to be felt up in the dark, first to get their teenage kicks right through the night. They think they invented all of it.
In the corner, a semicircle of girls, faces blue in the light of a smartphone. Judging by their sly expressions, they’re gossiping about whoever it is they’re looking at. They wear so much make-up now. These slug eyebrows that are all the rage – what’s that about? – and not one of them has her belly covered up. I suppose it’s for their Instagrams and their Facebooks. They have to be supermodels now as well as everything else. When I was a kid, as long as you scrubbed up OK, you were all right. Quick squirt of Sun-In on the flick, strawberry lip gloss from Woolies and off you went. By the time I got to Katie’s age, Doc Martens were in, so we could walk miles no bother. These kids know what they look like from every possible angle; we had about four tatty photos of ourselves in a drawer. You went to school on foot – that was exercise. No one went to a gym, no one.
‘Mrs Edwards? Mrs Edwards?’ Blue Eyes throws out her hands and fixes me with an earnest expression. ‘You went into the kitchen…’ Get on with it, woman.
‘Sorry, yes. Yes, so I kept my head down like a soldier dodging bullets and made for the kettle…’
I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone, Katie had made that very clear. She’d still not forgiven me for saying ‘the Antarctic Monkeys’ in front of the boyf. I wouldn’t mind – I’d got the right band, just the wrong pole, that’s all, but Katie can get in a nark about absolutely anything, more so lately. Anyway, as I was waiting for the water to boil, a girl I recognised as an old school friend of Katie’s slotted herself between her boyfriend’s spread legs, and while he swigged from a bottle of cheap vodka, she turned her head and stared at me. I was about to wave and mouth hello, but she pulled the vodka out of his hand, closed her eyes and tipped the bottle to her lips.
And I realised she hadn’t been staring at me; she’d been staring through me.
Blue Eyes leans forward. Against her pale skin, her ruby mouth twitches at the corners.
I hear you, Blue Eyes. I’m picking up your impatience even though you didn’t say anything. but we’ll get on to that later.
‘I made the coffee,’ I say. ‘We always have decaf of an evening, though I don’t suppose that’s relevant anymore, and of course I suppose I wouldn’t be allowed near a kettle now.’ A quick glance at her tells me I’m not wrong… What we hear in words, what we pick up…
‘I walked back down the hall into the living room and I… I sat down on the sofa.’ My chest inflates, deflates. My eyes sting. ‘I sat down on the sofa. On the television,