The Silent Daughter

by Kirsty Ferguson

  The Silent Daughter

  Kirsty Ferguson

  For Tarni, my partner in crime

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Acknowledgments

  More from Kirsty Ferguson

  About the Author

  About Boldwood Books

  1

  Danielle Brooks awoke with a start, the dankness seeping into her cold bones. She rolled over, pulling the blanket up around her chin, her shoulders chilly in the frigid room. While she loved it most of the time, sometimes she hated the old house, the creaking of the settling wood and pipes, the third stair that squeaked sharply every time you stood on it just right, the broken bathroom doorknob that her husband Joe had meant to fix but had never got around to.

  Danni sighed. Joe, snoring loudly beside her, had woken her up again, just like he had every night for the better part of two decades. She untangled herself from the blanket and swung her legs out, wincing at the cold of the floorboards as she placed her bare feet on them while she felt around for her slippers. Danni fumbled for her dressing gown, eventually finding it at the foot of the bed. Shrugging herself into the voluminous gown, she knotted the tie to fit around her waist, pulling it tight. Wondering why it was so large on her, hanging from her delicate frame, she realised she had put on Joe’s by mistake. Too tired to find her own and open herself up to the cold again, she pulled the collar higher around her neck. Danni looked at the alarm clock resting on the bedside table, reminding her the dawn was still hours away.

  Wearily pushing herself up from the old, sprung mattress, she slid her feet into her worn slippers, scrunching up her toes in the end, trying to magic warmth into them, the fluffy innersole long since gone.

  Need another blanket. Too bloody cold in here.

  Danni stumbled from the bed tiredly, yet walked without hesitation, knowing her way to the door having made her way over the floorboards hundreds of times in the darkness. She quietly went through the doorway, turning the knob and closing the door as she left. Her bladder was calling to her as she walked across the landing to the bathroom, leaving the door with the broken handle open a bit. If you closed it all the way, you became trapped in the bathroom until someone came to let you out. It happened to their son Noah more often than you’d think. Many a time Danni had found him, eyes filled with fresh tears, spent ones wetting his face, snot running down to his lip.

  Danni would sit on the floor beside him and, as he crawled into her lap, she would wipe the tears from his five-year-old face. He would look up at her, love for her burning in his hazel eyes. He looked so much like his dad, with the same colour eyes and tanned skin. She would kiss the top of his head and mumble how much she loved him into his sweet-smelling hair. Her middle child Alexandra, big sister to Noah at nine and a half, would also rescue him. She never laughed at him, never made fun of him for forgetting and locking himself in again, or for crying.

  Her oldest daughter, Mia, was almost a woman at seventeen years of age, as she was so fond of telling her father when he refused to let her do what she wanted. Dress how she wanted, go out with her best friend, stay up past her bedtime. Joe and Mia didn’t always get along and Danni found herself playing referee more than she’d like to. They seemed to constantly be at odds with each other these days. They used to be close, Joe and Mia, but in the last couple of months they had drifted from having a loving relationship to sometimes outright hostility from Mia and anger from Joe. Danni didn’t understand why, and when she broached it with Joe, he just gave her the old she’s a teenager line. It felt wrong, but Mia refused to talk to her about it too, so Danni had no choice but to watch them grow apart, saddened by the growing divide. Danni hadn’t thought about her for a long time but now, in the darkness of the home she shared with her family, the memories came rushing back. Beth, her tormentor, her abuser, her sister, flashed through her mind.

  When Danni was young, she thought all families were the same and that all families lived like hers did. It was only after she went to a friend’s house for a play date that she began to realise that what happened in her house was not normal. Love, laughter and no violence. That was normal. Danni couldn’t get over the difference. There was love in these homes, and they were homes, not just houses full of pain and resentment. Danni had become used to her combative family life so much so that it was second nature to her to feel scared and alone.

  In her family, there were clumps of hair missing, hidden by a well-placed ponytail, purple and black finger mark bruises on her upper arm, disguised by her school uniform sleeves, sprained wrists that went unwrapped, and slaps so hard she always had a headache. Danni thought this was normal behaviour but, even though she knew better now, she also knew that she couldn’t tell anyone. Beth, her older sister, would just hurt her more. She’d even threatened to kill her on more than one occasion and Danni suspected she was capable of doing it. They went to the same school which made it hard for Danni to escape her. Her only saving grace was that she was in the year below her sister and didn’t have to share any classes with her.

  Danni couldn’t remember when the abuse started, so she guessed it had always been there. She did know from overhearing her parents when she was older that they hadn’t wanted her, that they only wanted Beth. She guessed that’s why they didn’t really care how Beth treated her, how she hurt her. They didn’t want her anyway. She was disposable.

  Her life was a real shit show. When Danni was a young girl, she used to have long dark hair that she would wash, dry and plait herself. Actually, it was the only thing she liked about herself, her sister having worn down her self-esteem long ago. She had hopped out of the shower, gone to her room and had just finished plaiting her hair in two when Beth barged in, one arm behind her back. She had that look on her face, the one of maliciousness and glee, and Danni knew she was in for something bad. That look meant pain and suffering for her. Her muscles automatically tensed, getting ready to fight the blow she knew was coming. She bit her lip to stop it from trembling. Danni made a dash for the bedroom door and the relative safety beyond, but Beth grabbed her by one of her plaits, halting her getaway, pulling at her scalp so hard she cried out.

  ‘Where are you going, you little bitch?’

  Danni fought back, she always fought back when she couldn’t flee, not that it did her any good. Beth seemed to get off on watching her squirm. She was so much stronger than Danni and she loved proving it.

  ‘Think Mummy and Daddy are going to save you? They don’t care about you. You’re just their unwanted baby. Their little acciden
t,’ she taunted, pulling on her hair painfully.

  Danni had heard it so many times before that it no longer bothered her, although many times she had buried her head in her pillow and cried stinging tears that tore at her soul. She was brought back to the present by another tug on her hair. Finally, Beth removed her hand from behind her back. In it she held a pair of scissors. Danni felt the breath leave her lungs, then she dragged a shaky breath in, eyes round with fear. She knew exactly what Beth was going to do, of course Beth would ruin the only thing she loved.

  ‘No,’ whispered Danni, putting her hand up to grab her plait, trying to tug it from Beth’s hand.

  Beth lined up a plait between the scissors and was slowly pushing down when Danni kicked her in the shin and ran. Danni knew she’d pay for it, but she had to try for the front door at least. Beth never chased her beyond the front door. Never terrorised her where other people could see. Danni could always sleep in the drain behind their house in the vacant block if she had to. She’d done it before, no doubt she’d have to do it again.

  She almost had her hand on the front doorknob, reaching out to grasp it, when she was wrenched from behind, Beth pulling her so hard that she fell to the floor. She scrambled to her feet and tried to dodge her sister again, but Beth anticipated it and grabbed her, spinning her around and quickly hacking through one of her plaits before Danni could even scream. Then Danni found her voice, shrieking as Beth held aloft her glossy hair above her head like some kind of sick trophy. Danni’s hand immediately went to grab it, but she was too short, and what would she do with it anyway? Beth swung her hand down hard, slapping Danni across the face with her own plait, leaving trailing red marks of fire across her cheek and chin. It was what Danni imagined a whip felt like. She cried out, plait forgotten for now, and grabbed at her face, eyes shimmering with tears that she would not let fall.

  ‘Whoops,’ said Beth, ‘that’s another day off school.’ She was grinning at her younger sister.

  Danni had a lot of sick days because of Beth. If anyone ever cared to ask, which was rare, Danni used the standard excuses: I ran into a door, I fell out of bed, I opened a cupboard door into my eye.

  She was not entirely sure the teachers that did ask believed her, but they never said anything, nor did they call child services on her parents. Yet more people who didn’t care about her. Would anybody? Beth threw the plait to the floor. ‘Cut off the other one, you stupid cow, you look ridiculous.’

  Danni slammed the door closed and pushed a chair underneath the doorknob. It wouldn’t stop her if Beth really wanted to come in, but it made her feel better. The window had been nailed shut from the outside years ago, so she couldn’t get out that way even if she wanted to. She was trapped between the window and Beth beyond the door.

  2

  Back in the bathroom, Danni realised she was no longer sitting on the toilet. She was standing at the sink, her cold hands gripping the slick porcelain as she stared into the blackness that was the mirror above. She leaned forward and exhaled her breath onto it, drawing a love heart in the fog. Slowly it disappeared, replaced by shadows from the dappled moonlight outside, then the mirror cleared, and she could see her reflection crystal clear. Danni didn’t know how long she had been standing there staring at her reflection, but she felt the prick of pins and needles in her feet, her hands aching from holding onto the sink for so long. Danni was freezing, Joe’s dressing gown not doing much to keep out the bitterness of the air in the bathroom. Shuffling outside the door, Danni made her way down the stairs, careful not to stand on the third stair that squeaked. Joe and the kids had no such concern, bounding down the stairs with wild abandon, not caring about the noisy stair.

  Making her way down the stairs, hand trailing behind her, feeling the old, worn banister under her fingertips, she thought about the renovations they still had to do. The to-do list was ever growing. Danni would add new things to the list every day; today it was sanding and re-staining the banister. She would ask Joe about it in the morning. That was his area of expertise. Joe did most of the chores and renovations while she ran the house and looked after their three children. She loved her kids with a fierce passion that only a mother could understand. She would do anything for them. Her relationship with Joe had changed over the years. Danni still loved him, but she felt that they were drifting apart, her longing, her loneliness overwhelming at times. Was Joe was deliberately putting distance between them? Why he would do that? He was working longer hours, often not coming home until well after dark and even when he was home, he seemed… distant, unable to connect with her. Sure, they’d been together a long time, since she was seventeen, but that was no excuse. They were supposed to be a team, them against the world. It had always been that way, ever since they had started dating.

  Danni made her way into the kitchen, the night wrapping around her like a darkened shroud, the fingers of cold finding their way onto her bare skin. Danni shivered, her whole body shaking, her teeth clicking together, sounding loud in the silent kitchen. Opening the cupboard door quietly, Danni grabbed a glass from the shelf and leaned over the sink, filling up her glass with tap water that was so cold it burned its way down her throat. Outside, she heard their dog Pooch barking into the wind. His sudden barks turned into a long mournful howl that touched Danni deep inside, making her feel melancholy, filling her with a longing for something she couldn’t put words to.

  Danni looked at the clock. Where had the time gone? The glass in her hand had warmed from the contact with her skin. She took a sip; it was lukewarm. Pooch still howled outside, and finally Danni decided to go and check if he was all right. She pulled the dressing gown tighter around her body, already knowing that it would be inadequate once she went out into the night.

  Danni unlocked the front door, stepping over the threshold, the dim and dusty veranda light doing little to illuminate the night. She walked into the darkness and it was only after the door closed behind her that she realised that she had forgotten to click the lock into the open position. She was now locked out of the house.

  Damn it!

  She was cross at herself, not knowing how she was going to get back inside since she knew the house was locked up tight, she had done it herself, as she did every night. She would walk around to each and every window, locking out the world. She would have to try to rouse Joe from outside the house to let her back inside, but he was such a heavy sleeper, and the wind that she could hear whipping around would steal her voice and carry it away into the night. He would never hear her. She might be sharing Pooch’s bed for the rest of the night. Danni wanted to smile at the thought, but she was just too damn cold.

  Pooch cried into the wind again and, deciding on a course of action, Danni gingerly walked over the uneven ground towards his doghouse. She rounded the corner of the house, the wind buffeting the length of her body, making her stagger against the force of it. Leaning into the blast of cold air, Danni made her way over to where the dog was howling mournfully.

  Squatting down, trying to make herself as small a target for the wind as she could, she reached forward to touch the dog. Danni could see his wild eyes, the whites catching the faint moonlight, reflecting back at her, his head thrashing this way and that.

  ‘You okay, Pooch? What’s the matter? The wind scaring you too, huh? Least you didn’t lock yourself out of the house,’ she grumbled.

  Pooch pushed his muzzle into her cold hand, licking it gently at first, then enthusiastically, simultaneously wetting and warming her hand. She let out a small laugh, unheard in the wild wind. She scratched him gently behind the ears, the warm creases in his skin giving her comfort. Danni put her hand against his collar and unclipped the chain. He yipped happily and as she stood, he ran around her legs in a circle, threatening to trip her up in his excitement.

  ‘Settle, Pooch,’ Danni said, her voice carrying to the dog’s pricked ears. He bumped into her leg and she smiled, leaning down to pat him again.

  Danni stood at the side of the house,
near the doghouse, staring up at the cold stars glittering above her. Despite the frigid night, they looked beautiful, diamonds hanging high in the inky sky. She sighed, her breath puffing out in front of her. The night air nipped at her exposed face, chilling it, making her lips feel stiff, unyielding. Danni had no idea how long she had been outside. Her phone was in the bedroom, resting unhelpfully on her bedside table. She sighed deeply. She had better try to wake Joe before she froze to death.

  Bending into the wind, Danni, with Pooch at her side, walked slowly around the side of the house towards the back, where their bedroom was. Mia’s room was across the hall from her parents’ room. She had the biggest room out of the kids. Noah and Alexandra’s bedrooms were on the other side of the house. Maybe Alexandra would be easier to wake up than Joe, although all her family were heavy sleepers, just her luck. She remembered the conversation where Alexandra had brazenly called dibs on Mia’s room once she went to university. The almighty argument that it had caused. It was still a good two years away, but they had been talking about it at dinner one night and Alexandra had said that she wanted Mia’s room. Mia proceeded to tell her in no uncertain terms that a room swap would be over her dead body. Alexandra started to argue but Joe put an end to the girls’ bickering by bashing his fist on the table, something he rarely did. It silenced the girls and erased the bemused smiled from Danni’s face. She wondered what had got into her husband, but when she asked him about it later, he didn’t have an adequate answer for his behaviour.