The Lying Game (10 page)

She did her best to treat Florence the same as always, as if nothing had happened. If anything, she was more attentive than usual, fussing over her, double-checking her sugar levels, driving her
to school instead of letting her walk, as if determined to prove to Oliver – to prove to
herself –
that she loved Florence as much as she ever had. But she couldn’t look
at her without thinking of her
other
daughter, the child whose name she didn’t even know, and wondering if the mother looking after her could possibly love her as much.

Some of what Oliver said made sense – she knew that. If she pursued this and tried to find their biological daughter, she’d be taking them all into uncharted territory. But she
couldn’t just forget about it, even if Oliver could. It had happened. They had to face it. She had to find her child.

She just prayed that one day Oliver would understand.

Florence despised her diabetes. She hated the shots every time she ate, the finger pricks to test her sugar levels, the maths nightmare involved in working out the carb content
of everything she consumed and the consequent amount of insulin she had to inject, the fact that she always had to be aware of the terrifying sugar lows which could kill her in hours, and the
insidious sugar highs which could slowly destroy her kidneys, her nerve endings, her sight.

But what she hated most, what drove her beyond insane, was the way it had turned her mother into a suffocating nightmare. Helicopter parent? She was like a one-woman Black Hawk squadron.

She
never
stopped checking up on her. She pressed glucose tabs into her hand in front of her friends every time she went out. Phoned the school nurse practically every day to ask
whether she’d eaten all her lunch, had taken her insulin, wasn’t running low – as if she was still in kindergarten, not fifteen! And her mother’s constant
guilt,
as
if it was Mom’s fault Florence had diabetes in the first place. She didn’t blame Mom, but she knew Mom thought she did. Every time she took Florence to the specialist, she acted guilty,
and that just made her feel guilty too; and she was
so
over feeling guilty about Mom.

At first, when she’d been newly diagnosed, it hadn’t been so bad. She’d only been six, and hadn’t minded – too much – being looked after and fussed over. But
as she’d gotten older and learned to manage her diabetes herself, Mom hadn’t grown up with her. If anything, she’d gotten worse. She hadn’t been allowed to go to a sleepover
until she was thirteen, and even then Mom had totally embarrassed her by calling every hour to check she was all right. She hadn’t tried it again. It wasn’t worth it.

‘Did you remember your diabetes pack?’ her mother asked now as they entered the hospital waiting room.

‘Yes.’

‘And your insulin monitor? They have to enter that in their computer—’

‘Yes, Mom, I
know.
We’ve come here every three months for, like,
years.
You don’t even need to be here. I can do it myself.’

‘Don’t be silly, Florence. I’m your mother.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ she muttered beneath her breath.

Mom marched up to the receptionist. ‘We’re here to see Dr Magda Lancaster. My daughter is Florence Lockwood. She has diabetes.’

‘They know that,’ she hissed furiously. ‘Everyone here does. It’s a freaking
diabetes
clinic’

She stormed to the far corner of the waiting room and, so that her mother couldn’t sit next to her, deliberately chose a single chair between two other patients, both girls not much older
than she was. Neither of
them
had their mothers with them, she noticed bitterly.

Her mother frowned and then took a seat on the other side of one of the girls. ‘I hope your A1C number is better than last time,’ she said fretfully across her. ‘Your
sugar’s been running high lately. And you know what Dr Lancaster said last time. If we don’t manage it properly you’ll end up with kidney damage or—’

‘Mom,’ she snapped. ‘I get it.’

She grabbed a magazine from the table and pointedly buried her head in it. Her mother subsided, but she could feel the angst radiating from her. She knew her mother worried, she did
get
it, but sometimes all that worrying seemed to be about her diabetes, her schoolwork, her college chances – and none of it about Florence herself. When was the last time Mom had asked her how
she felt about anything?

In the last few weeks, things at home had moved to a whole new level. Her mother was just being plain
weird.
She kept catching Mom staring at her when she thought she wasn’t
looking, like she was doing right now. She held the magazine closer to her face. One minute Mom was hugging her in the hallway like she was five years old – something she hadn’t done
since she
was
five – and the next she was gazing at her like she’d never seen her before. And what was this weird new obsession with all their old photo albums? She’d
been poring over them practically every night. In the end, Dad had grabbed them away from her and locked them in his study. He wasn’t himself, either. She’d heard them arguing at night,
when they thought she was asleep, and during the day they barely talked to each other. God, she hoped they weren’t going to get divorced. If they were, there was no way she was going to live
with Mom.

‘Florence Lockwood?’

A nurse in teddy-bear scrubs stood at the entrance to the doctor’s office, clipboard in hand.

‘Come on, Florence,’ her mother beckoned, leaping to her feet.

‘Mom, you don’t have to come in.’

‘I need to hear what Dr Lancaster has to say. Please, Florence, I don’t know why you’re being so
difficult.’

She threw down the magazine and slouched after her mother, arms folded over her baggy school sweatshirt, cheeks burning. They went through the usual routine: blood pressure, height, weight
– ‘Sweetheart, it’s
normal
to put on a bit of weight, you’re still growing!’ – and a pinprick sugar test, and then followed the nurse into an
examination room with brightly coloured parrots and monkeys painted all over the walls. She couldn’t wait till she was eighteen and could be treated in the adult diabetes clinic. This was
just humiliating.

They sat in strained silence on the uncomfortable plastic chairs, Florence tapping an impatient beat on the floor with one of her trainers.

‘Florence, please. Stop that.’

She stopped for a few moments, and then deliberately started up again. Her mother sighed and stood up to peer out of the window. Three floors below them, workmen manoeuvred earth-movers and
cranes. A new hospital wing, or maybe an extension of the ever-expanding parking lot. Screw the environment, right?

The door opened. ‘Hey, Florence,’ Dr Lancaster said, leaning casually against the exam counter and folding her arms. ‘How are things today?’

She liked that the doctor talked to
her,
looked at
her,
not her mother. ‘Same old. I like your necklace,’ she added diffidently.

‘My husband gave it to me on our anniversary last year. He says it’s called steampunk. Is that right? Victorian Gothic. It’s made from an old watch fob and chain from
England.’

Florence’s face lit up. ‘I love steampunk. It’s so
Twilight.
I’ve tried making a few things from old jewellery and watch gears, but it’s so hard to get the
right pieces in this country. I saw this amazing necklace online the other day – it’d been made from a tiny glass globe compass that’d been set in a—’

‘Darling, don’t let’s waste the doctor’s time,’ Mom interrupted. ‘How’s her A1C? Her sugar’s been really hard to control this past couple of
months. Of course, it doesn’t help when she snacks and doesn’t cover it with insulin . . .’

‘It’s higher than we’d like,’ the doctor admitted. ‘I’m a little worried, Florence, looking at your numbers—’

‘We’ve tried cutting down on carbs, but it’s not easy,’ Mom said quickly. ‘I’ve even been baking my own bread, and I try to make sure she has a protein
frittata for breakfast, but I don’t have any control over what she eats at school, and I’m sure that’s a large part of the problem.’

Teacher’s pet,
Florence thought sourly.
It’s not my fault, doctor. Florence is the one who let the team down.

She zoned out as they pored over her chart, talking numbers, ratios, correction factors. She was sick of it, sick of the monitoring and calculations and the damn shots. OK, yes, she cheated
sometimes. Now and again she had half a can of a friend’s soda or some popcorn at the movies, and she didn’t cover it with insulin. So what? Mom should try walking in her shoes for five
minutes before she started bitching about being
irresponsible.

‘Do you think we should consider the pump again?’ Mom asked the doctor. ‘You said it might control her sugar better once she hit puberty.’

Her head snapped up. If she heard the word
period,
she swore to God she was out of here.

‘That has to be Florence’s decision, Mrs Lockwood.’

‘No pump,’ she said flatly.

‘I don’t know why you won’t even
consider
it,’ her mother sighed. ‘It would give you so much more freedom. The pump would do all the maths for you. You
wouldn’t have to have a shot every time you wanted a glass of orange juice—’

‘I don’t want to be attached to a stupid pump like there’s something
wrong
with me!’ she exploded. ‘At least with the shots, they’re over and done
with and I can get on with my life! You think I want to walk around with a stupid lump under my clothes reminding everyone I’m a freak? I just have diabetes, Mom! It’s not who I
am
!’

‘I’m just thinking about what’s best for you—’

‘No you’re not! You’re thinking about what’s best for
you
!’

There was a brief silence.

‘Mrs Lockwood,’ the doctor said gently, opening the door. ‘Why don’t you go and grab a coffee while Florence and I have a chat?’

Her mother hesitated. Florence scowled at her trainers. Maybe she had gone a bit far with that last dig, but she wasn’t going to give Mom a break. Not this time.

‘The machine is just down the hall,’ the doctor added. ‘I’ll come update you when we’re done.’

Why does it have to be this hard?
Florence thought unhappily as the door closed behind her mother. She’d seen her friends’ mothers bickering with them, laying down rules,
vetoing short skirts and parties; but she’d also seen them shopping together, gossiping about boys, being
friends
. She and Mom were like total strangers. She couldn’t imagine
going to her mother with a problem, or asking her advice. She’d as soon stop some random woman in the street.

She’d expected the third degree the minute she came back to the waiting room, but to her surprise, Mom said nothing. They collected the car from the parking lot and drove home in silence.
Florence shot her several sidelong glances, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Mom seemed lost in her own thoughts. See,
weird
. Normally she’d have torn her a new one over the
way she’d sassed her in front of the doctor, but it was like Mom had forgotten about it already. Like somehow in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t even matter.

As soon as they unlocked the back door and stepped into the mudroom, Dad came through from the kitchen as if he’d been waiting for them. Florence went to give him a hug, but he waved her
away without looking at her, his gaze boring straight into her mother. She’d never seen the expression on his face before: an icy, blanched anger, his blue eyes slate-grey with fury, a muscle
working at the base of his jaw as he struggled to rein in his temper. She had no idea what had made him this angry with her mother, but it had to be really,
really
bad.

Florence quailed in the doorway as he stepped forward and thrust an open letter at Mom, forcing her to take it. When he spoke, his voice was as cold and unforgiving as his expression.

‘Harriet,’ he hissed between clenched teeth, ‘
what have you done
?’

Zoey simply didn’t believe it. It was so ridiculous, she wanted to laugh. So
out there,
as Nell would say, she’d have thought it was an April Fool’s
joke, except that it was now May.

She tucked the letter into the pocket of her sloppy purple cardigan and filled the kettle with water. If it really wasn’t a joke – and surely no one would take a joke this far, with
embossed headed notepaper and tests at the
hospital,
for heaven’s sake – then it was clearly a mistake. Given that the Princess Eugenie had sent two women home with the wrong
babies, as they were suggesting they had, then obviously they were more than capable of muddling up a couple of letters and sending them out to the wrong people.

She edged past the teetering pile of cardboard boxes in the hallway – she really must get round to sorting them out before Nell had kittens – and took two mugs of tea into the tiny
sitting room.