All the Little Things by Sarah Lawton (the best books to read txt) 📕

don’t bother me.’) There’s a crescent moon where her neck meets her shoulder too, but you can only see it when she’s tanned. I wonder what it feels like to bite someone that hard, feel their flesh split between your teeth. What it tastes like, that much hate.

Molly is still wanging on when I refocus on her. I lose track sometimes.

‘You’re so lucky to have a mum like her, and you just treat her like shit. It’s not fair!’ Oh, great, here we go with the Molly sob story. My mummy doesn’t love me, boo hoo hoo.

‘I don’t treat her like shit, Molly. Where’s Serena, anyway? I thought I saw her this morning.’ I can tell that Molly doesn’t really want to change the subject, but I’m bored of it.

‘No, I haven’t seen her at all, she must be hiding somewhere.’ She starts poking at her lunch again.

This is just another symptom of how messed up everything is. This is Molly’s fault. If she’d kept her legs shut none of this would have happened.

‘It’s our anniversary soon,’ mumbles Molly through a mouthful of food that she’s finally put in her face.

‘What?’ I hate it when she talks while she’s eating.

‘Our anniversary. Six years since you moved here.’

‘Oh, right. I didn’t know you kept count.’

‘It’s not hard to remember, really. We should do something, with Tilly and Serena too. I think we should all do something soon anyway – we need to do something for Tilly.’

‘Yeah, definitely.’ I can’t imagine anything worse. ‘Have you got your history mock now?’

‘Yeah. I’ll see you later.’

I watch her as she stands up with her tray and walks away from me, slim and light-footed. People move out of the way to let her past without even realising it. I can see that her whole life will be like that, people stepping aside while she gets everything she wants. I wish she hadn’t mentioned the anniversary. It means that this time six years ago, I was in the hospital.

That’s not something I want to remember.

I’m walking past the college’s common room after my exam when I see Alex bound out, turning away up the corridor. He doesn’t see me, and I’m about to call out to him when I see Molly come out too. Her shirt is half-undone, and she goes after him.

If she thinks she’s going to do to me what she did to Serena then she’s got another think coming, and it won’t be a good one. Rage bubbles up and heats every part of me as I follow them.

Rachel

I woke up with a start, and a headache. It was later than usual, and the sun shining on the side of the house had turned my room into a sauna. I had to get up and change the bed clothes, they were grimy with the sweat of a restless night of fretting and nightmares.

I managed to shower and choke down some breakfast, clearing away the remains of Vivian’s morning meal. I didn’t understand why she was so anal about tidiness everywhere else but refused to do the bloody washing up. My conversation with Steve was playing on my mind and once more I started to dwell on my relationship with my daughter. Was I too controlling of her? Did I trust her? It was all so hard. I’ve always felt that there’s this monumental lie that people tell you about motherhood. They tell you that you will love your child beyond anything in existence, that the moment you set eyes on them, you will be swept away on this sea of everlasting joy and adoration. The agonies of birth brushed under the carpet, forgotten in an instant. Rubbish.

My whole pregnancy had been difficult. Recovery from the beating Ciaran had given me was stifled by crippling morning sickness. My mother, horrified by the state I had shown up in, wanted me to get an abortion. (‘He did this to you? Ciaran? Rachel, there are options these days, love, you don’t need this reminder of him your whole life. Nothing comes of a bad seed except poisoned fruit – you are still young, there will be time.’) I ignored her of course, revelling in the suffering I so deserved.

And if I’d thought the pregnancy was rough, it was nothing compared to the birth.

Two days and nights of contractions, painful enough to keep me awake, but not to bring her. Six hours of fruitless pushing, I could feel her moving down, and then up, down and then up. Like the world didn’t want her. The midwife had no choice really, but to cut me. I can still hear the snap my skin made. The low cry from Mum as the blood came. That agonising rush, pushing involuntarily when I wasn’t supposed to, the great splitting pain of it and then she was there, on my chest. This skinny, slimy, purple creature with staring, filmy eyes, rolling wildly. Gasping. We both gasped for air, fought for it, looking at each other.

I felt nothing.

There is a photo somewhere, that the midwife took for me. I am on my back, naked, with Vivian on my chest, slick against me, no space between us. I am staring lifelessly at the ceiling, limp, exhausted beyond all feeling. I looked decayed. Where was that joy I had been promised? That light in my face? It wasn’t there. When you are broken, utterly, there are no spaces for love to crawl in, just a vacuum where nothing can live.

I had to have surgery to mend the damage the birth had caused me; had to have, in the end, the epidural that I’d refused out of fear during the labour itself. By the time I was wheeled out of the operating theatre and back up to the ward, Mum had bathed and dressed Vivian. She looked like an actual baby, tiny pink and perfect. I still didn’t love her, but I marvelled at that perfection, had some weird pride in her creation, that