“They’re safe now. You stopped her, remember?”
“I stopped her. Yes.” Victoria smiled, satisfied, a thing done well. She raised a finger. “She was trying to take my boys. But I stopped her.”
“You kicked her.”
“Yes,” said Victoria, “I kicked her. Horrible woman. I’d do it again.”
“Where did she come from? What did she look like?”
“Do you know, she tried to get me to swap for her horrid pair? Nasty little things they were. Named for the rivers.”
“Bishop and Selver.”
“Yes.”
“What does that mean? She also had twins? Why would she want to swap them for Robert and Vincent? What happened, Victoria?”
The woman seemed to focus on Harper for a moment, but then she frowned in confusion. “Where are the boys?” She searched the room with her eyes for a moment, then seemed to forget and resumed staring at the wall.
Harper felt she was losing control of the interview. “Mrs Settle, I think you might be able to help me find this person. If you can remember anything else about her, anything at all.”
“I didn’t go out, after that. In case she came back. Not for eight weeks. I read in a book that staying inside would keep them safe.”
“Did she have long hair, or short? What sort of age was she, do you think?”
“Once I found the book, I kept it under the bed always. Instructions, just in case, you see. Just in case she came back and got inside and somehow managed to swap them.”
“What book was this?” Why was she talking about a book?
“It’s a brewery of eggshells, you need, to trick them. That’s what you need. That’s what the book said. Then she’ll know for sure.”
“A brewery of what?” The phrase was meaningless. If she could somehow steer Victoria back to what she was saying about the woman, she felt she had a good chance of getting some useful information. “Was the woman tall, perhaps? Or not? Shorter than average?”
“If you don’t trick them, you see, you’ll never be sure, because they’re very good at pretending. You don’t want to throw the wrong ones away, do you? Got to be sure. Brew the eggshells. That’ll trick them.”
At that moment, Robert appeared in the doorway.
“What are you doing here?”
“I needed to ask a few more questions. I thought she might remember something this time that could be useful.”
“You should have called first. What have you said to her? She’s all worked up. Look at her.”
Victoria was sitting bolt upright, her neck straining. She stared at something in front of her that neither of them could see.
“I stopped her, that nasty woman. I kicked her. I didn’t need no eggshells, not me. She’s not having my babies. She’s not. And I’m not having hers.”
Robert stepped between Harper and his mother. “You’re frightening her. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“I’m sorry,” said Harper, “but I have reason to believe that your mother might know something important.”
“Whether she knows anything or not, you’ll have to come back another time. She’s upset, can’t you see?”
Victoria started moaning, clutching her hands together in her lap. Robert put his arm around her shoulders.
“It’s OK, Mum, the lady’s going now. We’ll have a nice cup of tea.” He turned to Harper and hissed, “You can let yourself out.”
“I went to see the wise man,” said Victoria, “and he told me I had to trick them first, to make sure. Then, if they speak, throw them in the river.”
“Do you have any idea what she’s talking about?” said Harper.
Robert appeared to think about it. “It sounds like a story. She’s remembering a story from an old book we had as children, and she’s confusing it with real life. She thinks it happened to her. It happens with TV programmes too, She thinks she’s one of the characters.”
“What book?”
“There was one that she sometimes read to us. Folk tales about twins. It had a whole section on changeling babies. We hated it. Can you imagine? It still haunts me, that book.” He turned to his mother. “It haunts you too, doesn’t it, Mum?”
“Do you remember what it was called?”
“I think it was something like Twin Tales. I don’t have it anymore. Vinny didn’t want it either so I gave it to a charity shop.”
As Harper moved towards the door, Victoria said, “Once she knows for sure, she’ll have to put them in the water, if she wants her own back. That’s what the wise man said. Right under the water.”
“The babies?”
Victoria nodded repeatedly, and rocked back in her chair. “It’s the only way. Tell her. Tell her to do it. Quickly, as quick as she can. Hold ’em down. Faeries’ll come running.”
“But they’ll just drown, won’t they?”
Victoria turned to Harper, looked her straight in the eye, lucid and intense.
“Only if she’s wrong.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Fairies, however, when bent upon mischief, are not always baulked so easily. They effect the exchange, sometimes in the house, and sometimes when the parent is at work in the fields and incautiously puts her offspring down the while. In these circumstances, grievous as may be the suspicion arising from the changed conduct of the nursling, it is not always easy to be sure of what has taken place.
Edwin Sidney Hartland
AUGUST 17TH
FIVE WEEKS OLD
1 P.M.
Waiting in the therapy room for Doctor Summer, Lauren felt quietly confident that this would be her final consultation before they discharged her. She knew from Nurse Pauline that the whole system was under pressure to move people on, as beds in the unit were expensive, and scarce. Doctor Summer wouldn’t want a healthy, sane person taking up a space that someone more obviously in crisis could make use of. The police section she’d been detained under only allowed them to keep her for three days. After that they were required to make a full assessment and decide whether more medical intervention was required. If not, she was free to go. Today was day three, decision day.
Lauren had been carefully, patiently normal for more than two whole days. She’d made sure Nurse Pauline had noted down many positive things in her book, to replace the pages Lauren had removed containing less flattering comments about how she’d behaved during Patrick’s first aborted visit with the accursed stroller. She’d torn those notes into small pieces, wrapped them in loo roll and flushed them, along with the first several doses of whatever medication they were trying to make her take. Her mind was crystal clear; she was completely in control; the picture of a model patient.
Yesterday the doctor had decided she was well enough to have the babies back with her full time. Under the supervision of a nurse, of course. They’d been with her the whole night, and her eyelids stung from lack of sleep. It was amazing that the babies themselves were still awake, as they hadn’t appeared to close their eyes at all the entire time. They’d been playing games with her—pretending to be Morgan and Riley when the nurse was awake, then each time the nurse had dropped off Lauren heard them speaking to her, hissing at her. She knew their names now, which one called himself Bishop and which one Selver. She knew they wanted the same thing she did—for them to be returned to their rightful place under the water, for Morgan and Riley to come home. And in those moments, when the nurse was asleep, they told her exactly what she had to do to make it happen. They would lead her there, to where the exchange would take place. But first, she had to get them out of this prison.
The babies were lying on their backs on the rug, singing as they watched Lauren. Their eyes were almost completely transformed into a bright shade of green, so different from the blue her real boys had. They were goading her, with this song, with their staring. She gritted her teeth and did not react. With exaggerated nonchalance, she leaned forward to pick up a plastic cup of water and their twin gazes followed her, the movements
of their heads synchronised, like all their movements when they weren’t pretending to be Morgan and Riley. Staring back at them, she said nothing, pressed her lips together in a thin line. She wanted to plug her ears so she couldn’t hear the terrible, gurgling, high-pitched hum of it. The tune was the same as the one their mother sang in the hospital when the boys were only hours old, before the swap, before the nightmare started. They sang it wordlessly, yet the tune lit up the words in her mind, as they probably knew it would, and she couldn’t help but think of the story it told, two poor illegitimate babes, bloody and abandoned. “The Cruel Mother”, that was the name of it. The choice of song seemed accusatory. In it, a mother threw her babies away. I’m not abandoning you, she silently told the creatures, because I’m not your mother. She abandoned you. I’m just putting things right. She did it all, blame her. Sing the fucking song to her.
In the past three days she’d used up all her fear, and what was left was a kind of ground-up weariness and a whole lot of disgust. Lauren could have alerted the hospital to what the twins were doing. It had been in front of the camera, after all—she could have made them watch the footage and that in itself would have proved that she was sane. Or she could have suggested that they question her fellow patient Felicity, who’d heard them singing, who’d first told Lauren the names they called each other when they thought no one else was listening. But nothing had convinced Lauren that, even with the evidence in front of them, anyone would see the truth. It was too risky to try it now—suppose the CCTV hadn’t worked, and they dismissed her story as crazed ranting? Felicity had psychosis: she wasn’t a reliable witness. Best to stay with the plan, now that there was only this small, crucial hurdle to get past. No one was going to help her. Certainly not Patrick—he couldn’t even begin to understand it. And not even Jo Harper, who’d seen the creatures unmask themselves, and still walked away.
The door opened and the twins immediately stopped humming and started pretending to be Morgan and Riley. Doctor Summer stepped cautiously around the two small bodies and sat down opposite Lauren, smiling, placing a clipboard on the side table.
“How are you feeling?” she said, the classic opener for any conversation with a psychiatric patient.
“Fine,” said Lauren. Despite the lack of rest, she felt focused, determined and strong. She smiled faintly at the doctor, hoping to strike the right balance: sane but tired, grateful for all the help but ultimately, better off at home.
“Did you manage to get any sleep?”
“Oh, not really,” said Lauren, laughing weakly. “They were up quite a bit. But it’s good, to get back in the swing of things. Yesterday and the night before, I had the whole night off—not many new mums can claim that, can they?”
Lauren felt her cheek start to twitch, rubbed at her face to stop it.
Doctor Summer regarded Lauren with interest. “The time limit for the temporary detention order is up very soon. But you know that, don’t you?”
“I can’t deny it’s been on my mind.” She swallowed. Careful, now. “Everyone has been so kind, and the support has been excellent but I sort of feel guilty, now that I’m better. There must be people who need the bed much more than I do.”
The doctor nodded, and then she said, “Your case has been a very unusual one, Lauren. I’ve not come across anything like it before.”
Lauren raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”
“When you came in, I thought you were definitely suffering from puerperal psychosis. When I see a patient with the level of paranoia you initially presented, we usually expect to keep them for a while. It takes weeks to recover from a crisis like that, in normal circumstances. But here you are, apparently better, in less than three days.”
“I do feel well. I’m glad you think so too.”
The doctor frowned. She lifted her pen and looked as if she was about to sign the paper in front of her, but then she lowered it again. Was that the release form?
“What do you think happened, the day you were brought in?”
This was a test; she must answer correctly in order to pass. She took a controlled breath before she began. “I believe I was in a sort of waking dream,” said Lauren. “I don’t know much about shock or anything, but the idea that the boys had been changed seemed to come upon me, I’m not sure why. When they were returned after they were taken I looked at them and my eyes saw something else. I was definitely hallucinating. But then, it went away. Very quickly I started feeling normal again.”
The creatures had forgotten themselves, and were watching her, listening to her attempt to lie her way to freedom. She glanced at them and the one on the right, who looked like Morgan in his yellow vest but who she knew was really named Selver, squeaked and struggled, baby-like, to fit his fist in his mouth. His arm hit out at the other one, the one she now knew was called Bishop, and he started to cry, an absurd facsimile of a baby’s cry. She picked him up, cuddling him close as her skin crawled, as the doctor watched. She laid him on her knees and tickled his tummy, and the thing smiled at her with only his mouth, making a poor imitation of a giggle.
“May I?” asked the doctor, indicating the baby in yellow on the rug.
“Of course,” said Lauren, smiling pleasantly, ensuring she made her eyes smile, too.
Reaching for the baby, not looking at Lauren, the doctor threw out another loaded question disguised as idle conversation. “I’m curious,” she said, “on the day you were brought in, you say that you quickly realised the babies weren’t changelings, and were in fact your children. But later you also reacted badly to seeing the babies when your husband brought them to your room. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” said Lauren, still regretting her inability to control herself at that crucial early stage.
“So perhaps you still thought, at that point, that they’d been switched?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. But it was over very quickly. And since then, I’ve been absolutely fine.” Haven’t I been fine? she thought. Won’t you just admit that I have, so we can get this over with and I can go home?
The doctor sat heavily back in the chair, the baby in her hands, dangling there. It had gone stiff again; she could stand it up on her ten-deniered knees. “Nurse Pauline gave you a glowing report,” said Doctor Summer, grunting with the effort of trying to make the creature sit. The thing was board-stiff, unyielding. “Even on that night, she said you made excellent progress.”
“She did?” Lauren managed to sound surprised, even though she’d dictated the notes herself, forcing Pauline to add bad grammar, just like the notes she’d flushed, to make it seem authentic.
“She said you very soon recovered, and within an hour were able and willing to feed the boys yourself.”
“Yes, that’s right. I think the stroller had a lot of negative associations for me. I reacted badly when I saw it because it reminded me of the abduction. The fear of losing them again overwhelmed me.”
“That’s completely understandable, in your position.”
“I’m still so grateful they were returned so soon,” said Lauren, her eyes spilling tears as she thought of her lost boys, the terrible possibility that they were forever lost, and that after these two aberrations had gone back she would have nothing at all.
No. Don’t think like that. There’s hope, she thought, if I can just get to the water.
Lauren watched the doctor struggle to cradle the baby in her arms. Soon she was forced to place it back on the floor, where it seemed happier and began to behave like a baby again. Lauren put the one in green back down, too. Bishop and Selver were not like Morgan and Riley in any way, apart from their appearance; they hated being held and couldn’t tolerate it for very long at all. Morgan and Riley, in contrast, were the cuddliest babies in the world. Her arms ached for them. When all this was put right, when she found them and switched them back, she silently promised she would hold her boys in her arms and never let them go.
The doctor put her pen and clipboard on one side.
&nbs
p; “I spoke to the Senior Investigating Officer on your case today. He said there have been some developments.”
“Oh?”
“He said that due to a lack of evidence they’ve decided to drop the case.”
“What does that mean? They don’t think that woman Natasha did it, after all? I did tell them that it wasn’t her, that they needed to keep looking.”
“They say they’re no longer looking for anyone else in relation to the abduction.”
Lauren stared. She couldn’t work out what was being implied. But then, suddenly she could. “Oh, they don’t think I did it myself? Is that what they’re saying? That’s not even possible, I was asleep. How could it have been me? I was asleep, on a bench, and someone took my children. I know I have to take some of the blame, but—”
“When deciding on the best care plan, I have to take many things into account. Sometimes, with puerperal psychosis, it’s difficult to tell precisely when it’s medically safe to discharge. Sometimes, symptoms can be masked temporarily, only to return very rapidly, and indeed much more acutely.”
Why has she put the pen down—
“I’m afraid what I’m about to tell you might be disappointing …”
No—
“We won’t be letting you go home tomorrow …”
“NO!”
“I have applied for detention under Section—”
“YOU HAVE TO LET ME GO!”
The doctor reached for the emergency button. A few seconds later, two security guards entered and relieved Doctor Summer, who in the process of restraining Lauren from throwing herself at the window, had bruised a finger quite badly.
The guards placed Lauren back in the chair just as Nurse Pauline entered with a cup of medication.
“There’s no danger to the boys,” said Doctor Summer. “She’s just had a bit of a shock, that’s all. Haven’t you, dear?”
No one but Lauren saw the twins watching the drama, motionless and focused, unnatural. No one but Lauren saw their quiet smiles, the sadness they held.
Little Darlings Page 26