“Hello?”
As she stepped into the room, the figure in the bed turned its head, painfully slowly. Nina nearly gasped. It was an old woman—wizened and completely ancient. Then she looked closer and realized that the woman wasn’t that old, but that her face was marked with deep lines of pain, her neck twisted at a strange angle.
“Hello,” she said in a very soft, gravelly voice, still with the Highland musicality, that sounded as if she was having trouble finding the breath for it. “Excuse me for not getting up.”
“Are you Mrs. Clark?”
“Are you from the social services?”
“No,” said Nina.
“The school? I had a word with the school.”
“No, no, I’m not from the school . . . I’m from the book bus.”
“Oh, that van?” said the woman. Her breath rattled as she spoke. She looked intensely unwell. “I heard about it. It sounds great.”
“I’ll . . . I’ll bring you something to read,” said Nina. She risked a step closer. “It’s just . . . it’s just I was a bit worried about Ben.”
“Oh, he’s quite the tearaway,” said Mrs. Clark slowly. Every word seemed to be torn from her throat. The room felt oppressive, and Nina’s skin prickled. She forced herself to move closer to the bed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But what’s wrong with you?”
“MS,” said the woman. “I have good days and bad days, you know.”
She didn’t sound like she had good days. Nina moved closer.
“But you can . . . you should be able to get up and about in a wheelchair with MS,” she said. “Do you have someone coming in to help you?”
“Naw,” came a sharp voice behind Nina’s back. She turned. It was Ainslee, eyes bright and burning. “Naw. We don’t need anything like that.”
Nina blinked. “But some social services care . . . someone to help look after you . . .”
Ainslee shook her head sternly. “What, have some interfering old busybody come in and tell me I can’t look after my own mum? No chance.”
“That’s not what they do,” said Nina. “They help with the cleaning and—”
“I’m not sixteen,” said Ainslee fiercely. “You know what they’d do? They’d pack us off to a children’s home. Me and Ben, to separate homes. Have you heard what goes on in those types of places?”
Nina nodded. “But it wouldn’t . . . it wouldn’t be like that. I’m sure they’d do everything they could to keep you at home with your mum, or to keep you together.”
“No they wouldn’t,” said Ainslee. “I can look after her. I can look after her just fine.” Her voice was tight.
“She’s a great girl,” said the woman in the bed.
“I know,” said Nina. “I know she’s a great girl, she works for me, too. But honestly, she should be taking her exams. And Ben needs to go to school every day when they start back.”
“I DON’T WANT TO,” came a loud voice from outside.
“I know, I know,” said Mrs. Clark, letting out a deep retching cough. “But I need them so much. When we’re all together, we just curl up on the bed, and we don’t need anyone else, and we have a nice cozy time. We don’t need to go anywhere, do we? They’re not nice at that school anyway.”
Ainslee nodded. “We’re fine.”
Nina moved forward. “There are definitely things that can be done. It can absolutely be better than this, I promise.”
“But I need them,” said the woman plaintively.
Nina shook her head. “You need help,” she said. “But not from them.”
“They’re my family.”
“They are,” said Nina. “But they have to have their own lives, too.”
There was a silence, and Nina was horrified to see a tear start to steal down Mrs. Clark’s waxy cheek.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No,” said the woman. “It’s all right for you. You’re not ill. You haven’t got kids who love you. You don’t know what it’s like.”
Nina shook her head. “I don’t,” she said. “But there has to be a better way than this. You deserve people who can look after you properly.”
She could feel Ainslee bristling behind her and stood stock-still. Mrs. Clark sighed.
“Ainslee used to be so good, didn’t you, Ainslee? You was happy to do it all. Cleaned and changed the beds and made the dinner . . . I don’t know why you stopped.” She looked around as if seeing the horrible mess for the first time. “I don’t even know how it got so bad.”
Ainslee let out a sigh.
“Haven’t you been making Ben go to school?” said the woman. “He has to go to school, Ainslee. You used to be so good at it.”
“Aye,” said Ainslee. “Aye. But that . . . that was all I ever did. That was all I was ever going to do. Be your slave. Be stuck here forever. Cleaning and washing and scrubbing. I don’t . . . I don’t want to do that. I want to do other things.”
She looked angrily at Nina.
“I like working for her.”
Mrs. Clark’s tears were falling swiftly now. “But I thought . . . you always said you didn’t mind.”
“Because I didn’t want them to take me away. Or Benny. But I thought . . . when I was little, I thought you were going to get better. I didn’t realize you were always going to be the same. Forever. I didn’t know that. That I was going to be here forever.”
Both of them were crying now, and Mrs. Clark reached out a hand. Ainslee took it, and grasped it, hard.
“We can fix it,” said the woman, looking at Nina. “Can’t we?”
Nina looked around. “Well, I think I know where we can get started,” she said.
She couldn’t get Ben to stay in the house with his mother and sister; instead, he trailed after her, asking lots of questions in a frightened voice. Nina tried to placate him as best she could, then finally got him to keep quiet by letting him sit up front in the van, which he absolutely loved. Even better, he saw some of his school friends playing in the swings park, and Nina let him honk the horn so they all turned around and he waved furiously. Nina smiled, seeing how quickly the mood of an eight-year-old could turn.