by Nicole Trope
Her daughter is completely taken with the doll and Rachel can see that soon Beth will drop subtle hints for more of the dolls and begin a campaign of nagging for them. Ben will give in because he always gives in, and soon their house will be littered with them. The thought makes Rachel feel queasy. Even if they aren’t the same as the ones she had, they will bring with them a time in her life when she used to love and play with them. They will bring everything back, everything she has tried to forget. But it’s all coming back now anyway. First Riley Rainbow and now Petal and it’s all coming back because he’s found her.
‘You’re always visiting Nana. You never play with me anymore. Please, Mum, please… Pinky needs a house,’ whined Beth.
‘Okay, just give me a minute.’ She gave Beth her snack and raced upstairs to hide the money.
Now she sits down on her bed, staring at the drawer where she has stuffed the cash. Her bedroom is beautiful. It is a dream room in the dream house she and Ben had eagerly chosen finishes for, giggling like children with delight at how stunning everything was. In their bedroom they have chosen a rich blue carpet, pairing it with pale blue curtains. Their old wooden double bed looks a little incongruous in the middle of the large space but she hopes for new bedroom furniture once they feel like things are under control, perhaps when she finds another job.
She still has the suitcases filled with summer clothes to unpack. She knew she wouldn’t need them right away. Her father must have hated the chaos in the house. He must have hated that the boxes are everywhere and that Beth’s school bag was tossed in a corner by the front door. Sometimes, in the flat, she would find herself straightening the pantry, lining up canned goods and spices so that everything was straight, and then she would quickly mess it all up again, horrified that even after decades away from him, he was still haunting her. She doesn’t like the mess in the house right now but at the same time she doesn’t mind it. It means that it’s her house, that it can never be a house he would be comfortable in. And yet he has been here. She can only imagine his fury.
It all feels tainted now. The two-storey brick house with black metal window frames was meant to be her forever home after so much of her childhood was spent moving around, hiding from the world. But now he’s found her, he’s found her and she feels the urge to pack her things and leave, to take Beth and simply run. Could she do that to her daughter? Could she give her the same kind of traumatic childhood that she experienced, even though it was a childhood filled with love?
She would like to ask Veronica what to do about him. At the same time, she doesn’t want to say a thing. If, by some miracle, her mother wakes up, she doesn’t want to discuss him, she refuses to. Her mother’s breathing grows shallower by the day, and Sam said yesterday, ‘You’ll keep your phone right next to you, won’t you?’ She cannot ask her mother anything at all.
He couldn’t have picked a worse time to come back into her life. Anytime would have been bad but it feels as though he knows how vulnerable she is right now, as though he’s sensed it across the miles and years that separate them.
They became complacent, she and her mother. They stopped running when Rachel was sixteen, but after that she knew she still always had to be watchful and wary. She can’t remember when that stopped because it must have happened gradually, but she clearly remembers walking through a parking garage one night at around eighteen years old and seeing a man. She remembers feeling the frightening vulnerability of being a woman alone and then understanding that she had been afraid because she had feared a stranger, not because she had feared that he had finally found her. She had managed to stop thinking and worrying about him, and the relief of that realisation had made her laugh out loud in the nearly empty parking garage, startling the man, who had hurried to his car.
‘Muuum,’ Beth calls, tearing her away from her fear. ‘I’ve finished my snack even though I don’t like pears. Please come and help me.’
Rachel laughs. ‘Coming, and I thought you loved pears yesterday.’
She sits with Beth at the kitchen table, watching her daughter poke her tongue out as she colours the carpet on the floor of an old shoebox while Rachel cuts the lid and angles it to create a roof. ‘Pinky will be so happy, Mum,’ says Beth.
‘Nana made me a doll’s house when I was little.’
‘Did she? Do you still have it? Can I have it? Maybe Pinky can live there.’
‘It broke – we were moving and it fell on the floor and broke.’
‘That’s sad,’ says Beth.
Rachel clearly remembers the elaborate house Veronica made for her. She had bought wood and cut and sanded and shaped a house with two storeys and then she had painted tiles on the roof and sewn material for curtains. The project had taken her months, a surprise for Rachel’s ninth birthday. She had known what her mother was doing. There was no way to hide something like that in the small apartment they were living in but she had kept quiet and had forced herself not to peek under the cover her mother placed on it each night. Rachel had loved the beautiful doll’s house and Veronica had slowly made her little people out of felt to live in the four rooms, knowing that Rachel still missed the dolls she had to leave behind.
‘I can buy you some new ones,’ her mother told her a few weeks after they left, knowing that Rachel had only taken two of her precious dolls with her; but even as a child she felt that this would somehow be a betrayal of the dolls she had loved and left. And then it would simply be one more betrayal. She was only seven but she understood on a fundamental level that she had encouraged her mother to do what they had done. She understood that it was her fault. Thinking about it now she feels a familiar sharp ache of guilt for who was left behind and for what his life would have been like without them.
The doll’s house had been dropped and smashed on one of their moves. Rachel can’t remember which one but she thinks it might have been when she was twelve. She mourned its loss but she was too old for a doll’s house by then and hadn’t thought about it for more than a few weeks. She thinks Veronica might have been more upset about it. ‘It was so perfect,’ she remembers her mother saying. It had been perfect with a perfect little family of four. A mother and smiling father and a boy and a girl who always liked to play together. She had recognised, in the faces, the family they had been. The father doll with his brown eyes and the mother and daughter dolls with their light green thread eyes. And, of course, there was the brother. His eyes were dark brown, almost black, and she had seen Veronica pick up the doll once or twice and stare down at it, sadness pulling at her face.
The house was perfect and the felt residents were always happy, and now that Rachel has a family of her own, she thinks that her mother loved the house for what it represented – a happy family. Something Veronica never got to experience. Her parents, Rachel’s grandparents, had died within a year of each other when Veronica was only twenty. Was his large family part of the attraction for Veronica when she met Rachel’s father? She thinks so. ‘We had one hundred and fifty people at our wedding,’ she remembers Veronica telling her. ‘All of them were from your father’s side and just about every one of them thought he’d made a mistake with me. I was too quiet, too shy, and they were quite loud and bubbly. I think it was their Irish ancestry. They liked to argue about everything. I never had the courage to join in their discussions.’
A picture of her parents’ wedding had stood on the white mantel above the unused fireplace in their home. Her father hated the idea of the smoke and the mess it would create. In the photograph her mother is stunning in a close-fitted, white lace dress with short sleeves that she’d paired with long white silk gloves and a short veil on a pillbox hat. ‘I tried on lots of dresses,’ her mother told her, ‘but I was just lost in the full-skirted ones.’ Her father stands like a soldier, his black tuxedo fitted close to his large frame, his arm looped through hers. Neither of them is smiling but Rachel remembers her mother smiling when she looked at the picture. She assumes they were happy once. They must have b
een.
The strange thing is that Rachel remembers seeing very little of her father’s family when she was small. Her parents rarely went out and they certainly never had anyone over. She wishes she could talk to Veronica about all of this, ask her to explain what happened and why she found herself married to such a man, but it’s too late now, and all these years she and her mother have had an unspoken agreement to not talk about their lives before her father’s supposed death, before what they have always agreed was his death. Fear makes people do such strange things.
Even as she thinks this, Rachel realises that she is allowing fear to control her in a way she promised herself it never would, not since she told her mother she would no longer keep moving to avoid being found. But she cannot seem to help herself.
She has stuffed the money in the bottom drawer of her cupboard. This is how she remembers Veronica doing things. There was always an envelope of cash hidden in the bottom of a drawer so she and Rachel could make a quick getaway if they needed to. How much will she need if she has to run?
It makes her feel dirty doing this, guilty, lying to her husband, taking money they can ill afford. But what choice does she have? It feels like a compulsion, like she has to have the money ready and waiting or she won’t be able to breathe.
She picks up her mobile phone and looks at it. It wouldn’t take much to press Ben’s number, to simply explain. She has no idea how she would start, but once she did, it would be fine. Ben would help her figure it out. He would calm her down and tell her that it would all be fine.
I’ll never tell, I promise.
She puts the phone back in her pocket.
She cannot know for sure how Ben will react. If he cannot understand and forgive her, she may lose him. If he does understand and wants to try and protect her, what will happen to him? What might the monster do to him? It seems that whatever happens – if the truth comes out – she risks losing her husband.
She has never imagined she would ever contemplate leaving him. He is nothing like her father, and leaving him would devastate her – but what if she has no choice? To save her child she may have to run, she may have to accept the heartbreak of losing Ben and just run.
She briefly contemplates calling Lou but knows she will be at work and very busy. They try to catch up with a phone call once a week but they don’t manage to see each other much now that Lou’s the principal of her school. Her weekends are taken up with sporting events and rehearsals for musicals and endless paperwork.
She knows that Lou would tell her to confess everything and get the police involved. But Lou has grown up in a different world to Rachel, a world where Mum and Dad and home are safe people and safe places. She has never had to run from anything, to really fear anything. She has always been able to turn to her parents or her brother for help and support. Veronica and Rachel have only had each other, and everything else, everyone else, has been a threat. And soon Veronica will be gone and Rachel will be on her own. She will have Ben; she knows she will have Ben, but the only person who knows every single truth about her will be lost.
‘Can we put some sparkles on the roof? I want purple sparkles,’ commands Beth.
Rachel draws herself back to where she is. She should be enjoying this time with her daughter. She will be leaving to return to the hospice as soon as Ben walks through the door.
‘I’ll sort out dinner and bath time,’ he told her on the phone this afternoon.
‘I’ll get sparkles,’ she says, knowing they are in a box marked ‘craft’. In the room designated as a playroom for Beth, she stands and stares at a tower of boxes. Exhaustion at the idea of having to unpack them all makes her sigh. She feels like the process of moving in will never be finished, that this will never feel like home. She starts moving boxes one by one until she finds the right one and manages to extract some purple sequins.
‘Here you go,’ she says, returning to Beth.
The front doorbell startles them both because they’ve never heard it ring before. The short, sharp burst of high-pitched sound is unexpected.
‘It’s a delivery,’ says Beth. ‘Maybe it’s more troll dolls.’
‘I really don’t think so, Beth.’
Rachel leaves her daughter in the kitchen and, heart thumping, she pulls aside the curtain of a window in the living room from where she can get a clear look at the front door. When she sees a man, her throat constricts and the panic she felt only a few nights ago returns, but then he turns and she sees it’s Bradley from next door.
‘I’m going mad,’ she whispers as she goes to open the door. She has no desire for a conversation but her car is in the driveway, ready for her to return to the hospice. He knows she’s home.
‘Hello,’ she says, pulling open the door. Outside the air is chilly and fresh and she glances up, noting the gathering of dark clouds. It will rain soon.
‘Oh hey, how are ya? I just stopped for a look at the site because I’m thinking about a pool and… it’s a big expense but Jerome wants one.’
Rachel smiles and nods.
‘Anyway,’ he says when she doesn’t say anything else, ‘I found something outside the house this morning.’
‘Oh,’ says Rachel, unsure as to where the conversation is going.
‘It’s, um…’ He puts his hand into his pocket, digging around. ‘There you go, it’s so small. Here, I found this little doll thing in the street. I thought it must belong to your little girl since she’s the only child living around here right now.’ He opens his hand and shows her what he’s found.
Rachel catches her breath. Her fear makes her want to slam the door in his face but she cannot move.
‘I was afraid I’d lost it. It’s small enough. Is it hers?’ he says when she doesn’t reach to take the doll.
‘I don’t…’ replies Rachel as she looks at the tiny baby troll doll with white hair and a painted-on nappy. She knows who this one is. This is Baby Doll, tiny and sweet and given to her by him when he came home from work one day. ‘Look what I found hiding in my desk for Daddy’s favourite little girl,’ he said and then she had to prise open his fist, pulling fingers one by one to reveal the little doll.
‘I know kids get attached to stuff like this. Jerome has these tiny transformers all over the house. I stepped on one once and he cried for an hour.’
‘It’s not… not hers,’ says Rachel. Her voice is faint. She feels sick.
‘Oh, okay then… I’ll just chuck it.’ He smiles uncertainly.
She nods and moves to close the door.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks. ‘You seem a little… pale.’
‘I’m fine, just fine,’ she snaps and then she shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, that was rude, things have been a little difficult. My mother is… not well.’
Bradley closes his hand and shoves it in his pocket. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.’
‘No, no, it’s fine. I’m sorry, you didn’t do anything…’ She trails off. She doesn’t want to start off on the wrong foot with him. He has a child Beth’s age and she doesn’t want him to think she’s strange. She struggles for something to say, for a way to lighten the conversation. ‘Um… when will your wife be here?’
He smiles, takes out his phone and opens an app. ‘Eleven days, four hours and thirty minutes,’ he says. ‘I have this countdown app.’ He turns the phone around to show her and she nods weakly. She doesn’t know how much longer she can be polite for.
‘But I should get going,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry about your mom, I hope she gets better soon.’
‘I don’t think she will,’ says Rachel and she is embarrassed to hear a sob catch in her throat. She has no idea why she is telling him but she realises, as she says it, that it’s the first time she has acknowledged this out loud. Her mother will not get better. Her body heats up, even as the cold wind comes in from outside. Her mother will not get better.
‘Oh God, look, I’m really sorry, I know… I lost my mom a while ago. It’s… look I’ll le
ave you. We’ll talk in a bit.’ He takes two steps backwards and then turns around and walks quickly down the driveway.
Rachel shuts the door and leans against it. She remembers that Baby Doll liked to sleep next to his mother. She had a tiny cradle for him. Petal was his mother. Petal, who Beth has called Pinky. She clasps her hands together and squeezes. She had wanted to reach out and take the doll, to reunite the pair, but she couldn’t touch it.
Her father was everywhere. He was inside her house and in Ben’s car and in front of the neighbour’s house. He was everywhere and nowhere that she could see.
Where are you? she wants to scream. Where are you?
But Beth, her baby, is in the kitchen and so there will be no screaming. She hears the garage door go up – Ben is home. She will return to her mother at the hospice because there is nothing else she can do. She knows she will look behind her as she backs out of the driveway and as she gets out of her car and walks along the path to the front door of the hospice. She will look behind her when she gets inside as well.
She will look behind her because she had become complacent. Now he’s back to make sure she will look behind her every day from now on.
14
Ben
He shakes his head as he looks through the bank statement. Rachel has taken $400 out this time. They have a small cushion of savings as an emergency fund but it won’t survive such large amounts regularly going out of the account. What could she be taking it out for? What could she need that costs so much?
He gets up from behind his desk and looks out into the open area. It’s quieter today than it’s ever been. Two of the administration staff have been let go and the mood is sombre. Everyone is concentrating on their computers, appearing or seeming to appear incredibly busy. He knows that Angela has already begun looking for another job. His boss, Colin, has been locked in his office all day and no one has any idea what he’s thinking. Ben has spent a little time this morning getting his CV into shape. He can feel his time is running out.