Chapter 171 : Pretending

“I sometimes wish so hard that I could be better Esmee like now so you didn’t have to put up with any of this rubbish from me, but then I think if I wasn’t like this you wouldn’t even be here and I would be alone. Can being insane really be a good thing because without all the clients and staff at apple gate I would be so alone in the world?” I moaned scanning my eyes back to the main street where so many different people walked by. Family’s with prams, friends arm in arm and pensioners. There was no one like me, I had no friend, I had no family I was alone.

 “You will get better Mi you won’t right away and yes it could take some time but weather you can believe it now or not it won’t be like this forever and the little things that mean so much to you now will mean nothing as you get older; I can promise you there will be a day when you won’t even remember Emmet or myself as anything more than distant dreams and that is how it is meant to be. Apple gate house is not forever, though admittedly when you are stuck there it can feel like it is and the things that you do that seem so bad at the time will seem like nothing but distant blips. Life goes on people grow up. We are all changing all of the time. It will get better.

 “You talk like you know but how can you. I want to believe you, I want to really think that I will grow up leave this place and get married and have kids, maybe a cat and a big house somewhere with a mini wishing well in the front garden, but things like that don’t happen to people like me. I am lucky if I get a rundown council flat in my future, with miss-matched furniture and the sad thing is I probably won’t care as long as long as It’s got a loo that I can put my head down in private every day and a mirror that I can get myself lost in. You talk like you know. I sometimes think you do but you have never lived in apple gate house. You don’t know what it feels like to look at a street full of people and not fit into any group. I fit in at apple gate, I belong there, but I hate it.”

 “You don’t fit in at apple gate, no one does; it is not your home.”

 But I don’t have anywhere else to go if I was thrown out of there tomorrow, I would be homeless and on the streets, my mum doesn’t want me and the only foster parents that would take me in for miles around don’t want me any more anyway.  Foster parents always seem to want cute chubby babies and not fucked up teenagers; in short they don’t want me.” Who could blame them?

 “In reality we never really get chubby babies, Emmet and myself have had two or three before but to be honest it is mostly older children and teenagers and we are happy with that it’s just teenagers are harder to look after, and when we can come across like we don’t care it’s mostly only because if we tried to shove a bottle in a sixteen year olds mouth or entertain them with a sock puppet we would lose our license.”

 “Your foster careers,” I asked surprised “Does that mean Mia isn’t yours?”

 “Oh no, Mia is ours but before she was born we used to foster.”

 “Why did you stop?”

"We wanted to put all of our attention on to her for a while. You see Mia was kind of special to us. I was told I couldn’t have children and even if I became pregnant like I did four times  my body wouldn’t handle a pregnancy and before her it didn’t, all four of my other pregnancy’s landed in early miscarriage but Mia didn’t and she was born full term and healthy and we just wanted to focus everything onto her.”

 “I’m sorry, that really sucks, you deserve lots of kids and Miscarriage is just terrible thing to go through and four is just unthinkable.” I stuttered wishing there was something more I could say but I knew there was no way I could make any difference to what she was feeling; no one could.

 “You seem to know a lot about it,” Esmee smiled at me sadly her hand still cupped protectively over her stomach, is there something that you would like to tell me?”

 “No.” I whispered shaking my head slowly looking down at the cracks in the floor below me and sighing as I once again had to deny him to someone else and pretend he was never there, I was the only person in the entire word who cared that knew the truth. The only other person who ever did I now hoped was up there somewhere looking after him.