Queen of the Mersey by Maureen Lee

the Black Horse. It’s on the Docky.’ The Dock Road was referred to locally as the Docky.
    ‘When my husband gets home, I’ll ask him to see if anyone there knows where she is.’
    ‘I want me mam back.’ Two giant tears rolled down the girl’s thin cheeks.
    Laura felt her heart contract. ‘You poor thing!’ She reached for the girl’s hand. It felt as light as a feather in her own, sensible broad one. ‘You should have come down before. I feel awful, knowing you’ve been by yourself all this time with nothing to eat or drink.’ What a perfect bitch the mother was, though there was just a chance the woman had been taken ill or had had an accident and was lying in a hospital somewhere.
    ‘I didn’t want to be a nuisance,’ Queenie whispered.
    ‘Of course you’re not a nuisance.’ Although the words were sincerely meant, Laura would have far preferred to have been left alone with her knitting. She had no idea what to do with the girl now. ‘How old are you, Queenie?’
    ‘Fourteen.’
    She looked less than that, her slight body that of a child’s, no sign of breasts beneath the cotton frock. Her white legs were as thin as sticks. On another face, her grey eyes would have looked quite pretty, but Queenie’s cheeks were almost nonexistent, making the eyes seem much too big and accentuating her pointed nose and little, pale mouth. Her hair looked dreadful, as if it had been chopped off with a pair of blunt scissors, though the colour was nice, a silvery blonde. It stood in stiff clumps on her tiny scalp. She looked like a half-starved elf.
    ‘Would you mind if I looked upstairs, dear, to see if your mother’s left any clues as to where she might have gone?’
    ‘No.’ Queenie shook her head. She seemed less nervous than when she’d first arrived. Perhaps she sensed Laura wasn’t about to bite her head off.
    ‘I’ll give you another cup of tea first, and perhaps you’d like to finish off these biscuits before they go soft. You’ll be doing me a favour.’ Laura put a plate of perfectly good, if broken biscuits on the table. She had a feeling, if she told Queenie to help herself, she’d only take a couple.
    ‘Ta.’
    The first thing she noticed when she went upstairs was the strong smell of polish. The rooms were gloomy, the furniture old and well worn, as it was in her own flat. But Laura had added things to make it look like home; pictures and ornaments, embroidered cloths and flowers. Nothing had been added upstairs. The walls and surfaces were bare. Everywhere looked very drab, but immaculately clean. Queenie must have been dusting and polishing in readiness for her mother’s return. The idea made Laura want to weep.
    In the bedroom, a neatly made double bed was covered with a well-worn eiderdown.
    On opening the wardrobe, she found nothing but half a dozen wire coathangers, jangling eerily against each other. The drawer underneath contained sheets, unironed, but clean. An almost empty bottle of bright scarlet nail polish on the dressing table indicated this must be Mrs Tate’s room. In the drawers, there was a pair of leather gloves with the fingers hanging off and a few items of underwear that Laura wasn’t willing to touch. She came to the definite conclusion that Mrs Tate had gone for good.
    Where did Queenie sleep? she wondered. She somehow doubted it was with her mother. The small room at the back, the equivalent of the one where Hester slept downstairs, had been turned into a kitchen. She remembered there was a floor above and found the narrow staircase tucked in a dark corner next to the lavatory. The further she climbed, the stronger became the odour of damp and mould. There were wet patches on the landing ceiling. She opened the first door and her heart sank. This must be where Queenie slept, on a mattress on the floor in a room with green mould in all four corners and no curtains on the window.
    Beside the mattress, there was a nightlight in a metal container, matches, a cardboard box with a few pathetic items of clothing,