The Stolen Girl by Renita D'Silva Read Free Book Online Page B

giant hoax?
    Her smile disappears, a desperate anguish taking its stead. ‘I am so sorry, Diya. I should have made it clear. The woman who gave birth to you. She’s staying at…’
    I do not, cannot hear any more. I put my hands to my ears to shut out her words but they reverberate inside my head, going round and round like a hamster in its wheel. The woman who gave birth to you.
    ‘I am sorry,’ the social worker is saying, her eyes shimmering. ‘So sorry.’
    She reaches a hand out to touch me. I jerk away.
    ‘I do not want to stay with her. I do not want to see her,’ I yell. ‘She is not my mother. My mother is… She is…’
    I cannot say any more. I rush to the toilet, heave my agony into the bowl. I heave and heave even though nothing comes. I am empty inside. Wrung out. Bare.
    ‘When can I see her?’ I ask when I stumble out of the loo and have to face the social worker sitting on the little foldable dining table the previous owner left behind, gazing at me with her tragic eyes. The drone of the policewoman’s radio crackles from the sofa. This flat has never seemed smaller that it is now. There is no escape.
    The social worker attempts a smile. ‘You’ve changed your mind? We could go now. Or do you want to have the tests done first and I could take you after we’ve been to the hospital?’
    The rage comes from nowhere. I feel like grabbing this woman and shaking her until her teeth chatter so much they fall out of her insensitive mouth. ‘I do not want to see that woman. I want to see my mother!’ I yell, so loud that the policewoman looks up from the perusal of her phone, swivelling towards us so that the sofa creaks.
    We used to giggle about the rude noises that sofa made, Mum and I. She would twist and turn, the sofa emitting all sorts of funny sounds that sent me into peals of laughter. I close my eyes and sway on my feet. I yearn for her, for her arms around my body, for her mouth to whisper endearments in my ear: ‘Just a nightmare, Diya. Go back to sleep.’ I wish…
    ‘We… I’ll check with the team…’ the social worker says.
    ‘What team?’ I screech, hardly recognising the high-pitched shriek produced by my vocal chords.
    ‘The team responsible for your care.’
    I make my hands into fists. ‘Why do I need permission to see my own mother?’
    The social worker squeezes her eyes shut and speaks softly, as if each word hurts. Why does she hurt when I am the one who is suffering? I am the one bereft. I am the one lost. ‘She is under arrest as we speak. It is highly unlikely that you will be allowed to see her until her hearing is over and she has been moved to a more permanent…’ She stops but I know what she was going to say. Prison. My mother is in prison. My sweet, loving, anxious, fearful mum. No wonder her eyes were never at rest, no wonder she was constantly worried. Be careful what you worry about, it might just come true.
    I hug my stomach tight to hold in the pain that threatens to burst out of me in never-ending howls. I cannot fathom my mother in prison. I cannot fathom any of this…
    ‘How can you decide what’s best for me? I will tell you what’s best. I want my mother. I want to see her,’ I manage before nausea overtakes me and I rush to the bathroom again.
    I stick to my strategy during the interminable car ride to the hospital, looking out of the window at nothing in particular, chewing on one of the caramel toffees from the pack I brought with me, clutching it tight on my lap. We pass a cramped street of similar residences, narrow, squashed-looking buildings. I picture a giant plucking the houses and pulling them lengthways to give them some height before gently setting them down again. I sympathise with the houses. This is exactly how I feel too, like a giant hand is orchestrating my life, pulling it this way and that at whim.
    We are passing along the high street now, the shops closed for the night, bleak ghosts, formless shadows of the selves they