No Way to Say Goodbye - Anna McPartlin [95]
Declared an orphan, she’d been in the system since she’d been found sleeping in a cardboard box one hot morning in the car park of a K-Mart in Michigan. She was of mixed race and answered to Lola. In the late 1970s, mixed-race children had been difficult to place. Adoption agencies wanted a newborn, preferably one race, colour and creed. They didn’t need the headache that came with a kid whose origin was in question and who was approaching two. Throughout her childhood she had been fostered over and over again and never quite found a family that fitted her. The other girls were jealous of her oval eyes and flawless caramel skin, while her height and grace had been an affront to her Plain Jane room-mates. The boys were always fighting for her attention, so much so that there was usually trouble. Her childhood and teenage years had been filled with insecurity, fear and disappointment.
One day a lady named Kiki Shaw, an ex-dancer and one of her many foster-parents, had complimented her singing voice. She only mentioned it once but that was all it had taken. After that day Mia had done nothing but sing, initially in the hope that her voice would attract the attention and praise she craved, but when neither was forthcoming she did it for herself. When she was fourteen she stole a guitar. She stalked the shop for a full week before she made her move. She knew exactly which one she wanted. It was blue and closest to the door. Usually there were two young guys behind the counter but on that day there was only one. He went into the back once in three hours, but when he did she darted inside, grabbed the guitar and ran away as fast as her legs could carry her, holding her newly acquired possession high in the air until she was far away from the scene of the crime.
She taught herself some chords from an old book she’d picked up second-hand. She wrote her first song aged fifteen. She left her last foster home at sixteen, got a job as a waitress and the owner let her live in the room above the diner. When she wasn’t working she gigged in every dive that would have her. But as hard as she tried, six years later she was still a waitress and the dive above the diner was still home.
She was twenty-two when a beautiful man had come into her world and changed it utterly. He plucked her from obscurity. He dressed her. He styled her. He even named her. He believed in her and filled her with courage and hope. He had made her feel special and, for a long time, she’d thought he loved her.
Deep down, Mia had long believed herself to be Sam’s creation. In him she had found her missing identity. He’d given her a family and her life, and she knew that, behind all his inexplicable fear and before heroin had stolen him, he had loved her. She knew this because once upon a time he’d been kinder to her than any other human being ever had. She couldn’t let him go. She needed one last shot to get him back.
But then there was Caleb. She had lied to him, much as she had lied to Mary. Her therapist had not been involved in her decision to see Sam. In fact, he would have been wholly against the idea, and in any case, since Sam had left her she had become increasingly dependent on her bass player. Only the previous week he had declared his love for her in a beach house in Malibu. She had fallen into his willing arms, and this was something she didn’t do lightly. She had never wanted Caleb to be her casualty as she was Sam’s. And she cared for him: he made her laugh, he was kind, and he would even forgo a romp with an enthusiastic groupie in favour of winding down in a little café somewhere with her. If she did see him with someone, he would act as though he’d been caught out. She had spent last night with him in London, and had promised she would return the next day. Their relationship, if you could call it that, was new and she had made it clear she was very much on the rebound. He had told her he knew that. Then he had kissed her and said