Roxy's Baby by Cathy MacPhail Read Free Book Online Page B

thought.
    â€˜Hello Sula,’ Roxy said.
    Sula smiled. ‘I go home.’
    Babs turned to Roxy. ‘That’s just about the only English she knows. And she says it all the time. “I go home.” She would drive you potty.’
    Sula still smiled. She seemed to know there was no real criticism of her in Babs’s tone. Babs leaned acrossthe table and touched her hand. ‘That’s right, Sula. I go home.’
    Sula smiled even wider. Her teeth were off-white and crooked. ‘I go home,’ she repeated.
    Anne Marie told Roxy in a soft voice. ‘Sula’s an illegal immigrant. She was brought here to work, but she didn’t fancy the kind of work she had to do, and luckily for her, the Dyces found her – brought her here. But she’s awful homesick. Aren’t you, pet?’ Anne Marie smiled across to Sula, who was watching them intently, knowing they were talking about her. ‘And now all she wants to do is to go back to her mother. Have her baby at home in Albania. And do you know what!’ Anne Marie paused dramatically as if she was daring Roxy to disagree with her. ‘The Dyces arranged that too. They’re sending her back home safely. Don’t ask me how! Those two could perform miracles if you ask me anything. Sula’s going home.’
    Going home. Roxy lay in bed that night, watching the moon as it hung in the sky, a full fat moon.
    â€˜No matter where you are in the world,’ her dad used to say, ‘when you look up at the moon, just remember I’ll be looking at the same moon and thinking of you.’ He hadn’t known he wouldn’t be here longenough to look at the moon with her tonight. Was her mother looking at the moon tonight? Or Jennifer? Were they thinking about her? Imagining her in some drug-laden den, sleeping rough, alone and homeless?
    She snuggled further under the covers and felt quite smug. Bet they’d never in their wildest dreams think she’d be curled up in a cosy bed, after a full meal, with people looking after her.
    Too good to be true
. The words were never far from her mind. She pushed them back. Like Anne Marie said, she should just enjoy.
    She’d show her mother, and Jennifer. She didn’t need them. She could do it on her own. When she saw them again, if she saw them again, she would be completely independent. Looking after herself, and her baby. Her baby. No, she couldn’t, wouldn’t think of anything real growing inside her. She pushed the thought of a baby far back in her mind.
    She closed her eyes. Tired again, so tired. But she couldn’t sleep. Something was keeping her from sleeping. Some thought.
    There was something missing. Something that should be here – and wasn’t.
    She had almost drifted off when she realised what it was.
    Where were the babies?

Chapter Nine
    Roxy was sick again next morning. Sula heard her in the bathroom and came in and knelt beside her, soothing her brow with her cool hands.
    â€˜Better?’ she asked, smiling.
    Roxy leaned back against the tiled wall, exhausted. She nodded. ‘When you go home?’ Roxy asked her, saying it as simply as she could. Not sure if she could understand even that.
    It took Sula a minute to answer her, as if she was turning the words over in her mind, translating them into her own language. She held out her hands. Roxy’s eyes were drawn again to that tattoo. When Sula moved it was as if the snake moved too, as if was already winding its way ever closer towards her face. It gave her the creeps.
    She was almost sick again looking at it. Sula was counting out the days on her fingers.
    â€˜Eight days,’ Roxy said, and held out her fingers in exactly the same gesture. ‘Happy?’ she asked, pointing at Sula. ‘You, happy?’ She beamed her a smile.
    Sula’s smile was answer enough. Then, she asked Roxy. ‘You go home?’
    Roxy didn’t need to think about it.