The Doll House

by Phoebe Morgan

  One day, Dad took us right to the top of the building. There was a thunderstorm, and Ashley was scared. She hid under the tarpaulin which was covering the door frame, but I stood out in the rain with my father, looking out across London.

  ‘You can see the whole city from here!’ my father shouted, his voice straining above the noise of the water on the roof and the rolling grumbles of the sky. He was smiling, his eyelashes flecked with the rain. ‘The builders told me this wouldn’t work, this rooftop, but we proved them wrong, didn’t we?’ He pulled me close to him, and we watched as a flash of lightning illuminated London, the towering buildings, the slick black of the Thames. I felt as though I’d helped design the building, then, as though we were a team.

  ‘Why did they say it wouldn’t work?’ I asked and he shook his head, frowned down at me through his glasses, the lenses now speckled with water droplets.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he shouted, ‘what matters is that I was right!’ He grinned again, the frown gone, and, as lightning hit the sky again, I felt a rush of something strange, something like fear. Then he pulled me underneath his arm and we joined Ashley under the protection of the blue plastic.

  We visited the building a couple more times after that day, watching it expand until it stood proudly with the BBC branding emblazoned on the bricks and hundreds of dark-suited men and lipsticked women striding up and down the halls where the monks used to walk. I was so proud of it; I showed it to Dom when we first got together.

  Just after Dad died last year, I went and stood round the back of this building, underneath an old archway that had been turned into a bright green fire exit with a flashing white light. I put my hand against the bricks and tried to breathe. It felt as though there was water inside my brain, a great tidal wave of grief threatening to take me under, pull me into the riptide. I held the wall and made myself fill my lungs in and out, in and out, imagining the air seeping into my brain and making space above the water. It helped. I stayed there, sodden, as the rain poured down around me, until I realised there was a car parked opposite with someone inside, staring at me through misted-up windows. I must have looked crazy, I guess.

  I put my face up against the glass window of the bus now, one hand on my stomach. It’s a wonderful building. As we bump on up to Hampstead, I imagine my father’s big square hands examining the bricks, casting an expert eye over the way the cement solidified and the red stone stacked. I smile. Dad feels more alive to me in those auburn walls than he does in the stone of a grave. London slides past me in a blur of colour, as the windows steam up it begins to look like a cloudy painting, a sea of greys and greens.

  The cemetery is a nice place, actually, just down the hill from the heath, not far from our old home. I haven’t been since before Christmas. For a while I found it really difficult to see the grave at all. But now, now it is different. I want to tell him my news.

  After the bus lets me off, I push open the iron gates and make my way through the graveyard. It is deserted, the little pathways empty. It’s well kept, the plots are expensive.

  The gravestone is right in the middle of the plots, surrounded by oak trees. Their branches hang over me, blocking out the blue sky. I kneel down, my jeans soaking up the cold of the grass. My eyes are closed, my hands clasped together.

  ‘I’m pregnant, Dad. I’m going to have a baby.’ I whisper the words as though they are magic, imagine him grinning down at me, scooping me up in his arms like he used to when we were children. Ashley and I would vie for his attention like magpies, would run to greet him at the door whenever he got in from work. Looking back, I think it made Mum jealous.

  I kneel silently for a few minutes. The air around me is still, I can hear the distant cry of birds, the rustle of a squirrel. I feel peaceful, a wonderful, rare sense of calm, the first time I’ve felt like this in weeks. My hand moves over my stomach. I hope it’s a girl in there.

  I open my eyes, lift my gaze up to Dad’s gravestone and it is only then that I see it, see the word that has no place on the silvered stone.

  Richard Hawes, 1949–2014. Architect, husband, father. They are the same words I have stared at for months. But someone has added to the list. Staring back at me, scrawled in glaring black paint is the word ‘LIAR’.

  It’s been written in messy capital letters, scrawled across the stone. The letters glisten, as though the paint has been freshly applied.

  I can’t help myself; even though the cemetery is deadly quiet I open my mouth wide and I scream. The sound echoes, pierces the air. Birds flutter from the trees around me, darken the sky with their flapping wings.

  I scrabble to my feet, stumble backwards. I can’t take my eyes off the paint, the angrily slashed letters defacing the grave. My foot slips on the wet ground and I almost fall over. My heart is racing; I spin around and look up and down the cemetery. The gloom of the afternoon is closing in, the sky casting an eerie light over the spires of the church that overlooks me. For a minute I think I see a flash of something in the corner, near the railings, and I start towards it but then the movement is gone, there’s nobody there.

  I fumble with my phone, desperate to call Dom, but there’s a crack of a stick and so I begin to run, my footsteps trampling carelessly over fresh mounds. As I reach the huge black gates, I turn around, stare back at Dad’s grave one more time. The church bell above me begins to toll and I can’t stay any longer; I’ve got to find Dominic. I race through the gates, launch myself out into the road. There is the screech of brakes, high and urgent, and as the headlights swing over me all I can see is the word, flashing through my head: LIAR, LIAR, LIAR.

  Then

  It’s time. We’re going inside.

  Mummy has been waiting for this, she tells me, and she checks her watch until it reaches half past six and that’s when we know that they’ve gone. Spain, she says, and when she says it her lip curls up as though Spain is a horrible place, which is strange because I know Spain is nice, we did it at school and it looks hot and sandy and lots of fun. They’ve gone on holiday there and I’m jealous. I can’t tell her that though.

  So this time when we drive to the house like usual, we don’t have to park far away, we can park almost right outside, where their car usually goes. There aren’t any cameras, Mummy says, the house is too old and he didn’t want to ruin it by having messy wires installed.

  Mummy knows where they keep the keys, she says she does anyway. We go up the driveway and it’s really weird, as we’re walking up I feel different. I feel taller, better, smarter, as though this could be my house, my home. As we get near to the doorway, Mummy takes my hand and squeezes. I squeeze back. I feel excited.

  We get inside and oh my God, they have SO MUCH STUFF. I run my hands over all of it, it’s not even dusty like our house is sometimes. Mummy says she thinks they have a cleaner. We don’t have a cleaner. Our flat isn’t really very clean, especially on bad days when we don’t wash up.

  She goes upstairs to the bedrooms but I stay in the living room, looking out into the garden. It’s so big. That’s where I normally am, but I don’t think they ever look out like this and see me. It’s funny being on the other side, it makes me giggle. I can’t see the hole in the fence but I can see the tree where the tennis ball was, and I can see the rabbit cages, and the little bank of flowers that surrounds the house that we never go near.

  I stare out at the garden for a while, and then I turn into the room, look at all the things they have on the walls. Some of them are pretty and some of them are a bit boring, like you see in museums or maybe in the high school. There’s a corner with a lot of books in, and I pick up a couple to look at, turning the pages in my hands. They feel heavy. They’re mostly full of drawings. Then something catches my eye, and I stop looking at the books because wow, it’s there. The best thing I’ve ever seen in my life, the thing I dream about. It is amazing.

  I accidentally drop one of the books on my foot, but it doesn’t even barely hurt because I am so excited! I run across the
room to where it sits, pink and amazing, standing on a table against the back wall of the room. I’ve never seen it up close before, I’ve only seen it through the windows. They don’t play with it much any more, they’re too big, but sometimes I see them looking at it, touching the top of it with their fingers. I reach out and touch it. Just like them. Wow.

  *

  I wish we’d never gone inside the house. Everything is worse. Now I know what’s in there, I have started to dream about it, I dream that I am inside, running through the rooms, round and around in circles that never end. The house seeps into my thoughts every night so that when I wake up I get a horrible feeling, a sad monster in my tummy because I’m not there. I’m here. On the outside.

  Mummy says we can’t go back into the house, not while they’re there. I told her all about the doll house, how the stairs really look like stairs and the little bath really looks like a bath and the chimneys really look like chimneys. I spent ages last night telling her about it, she was listening at first but then she got a funny look on her face, all twisted up and cross. I thought she was cross with me and I started to get worried but then she put her arms out and she gave me a cuddle, a big one like she does when she’s all happy and OK.

  ‘You’ll get a house like that, my darling,’ she tells me, and I bury my head in her clothes and I believe her. She’s my mum. What she says comes true. Most of the time, anyway.

  26

  London

  Ashley

  Lucy has been subdued for the last few days. Ashley hasn’t told James what Benji said, has been waiting for the right moment since Tuesday. If it ever comes. Corinne’s news is the only good thing that has happened all week; Ashley is so happy for her, it makes her heart want to burst. She can only pray that nothing goes wrong. If she believed in a God she’d beg him.

  The children are back in school and her husband is in the office. Ashley slept well; Holly had had a spoonful of medicine before she went down and managed to sleep solidly from two to six, almost a record. Ashley’s limbs felt different when she woke up, more rested, lighter. She had lifted Holly from her cot in the morning, tried to work out whether her body seemed floppy, whether there was anything unusual in the way her daughter’s little frame lay against her chest. She is still waiting to hear back from the doctor.

  James rose at six this morning, Ashley woke to the sound of him closing their bedroom door. She had called after him and he’d come back to kiss her.

  ‘Sorry, Ash, I didn’t want to wake you is all.’

  She had watched him leave. The expression on his face had reminded her of Benji, standing outside the headmistress’s office. She had recognised it instantly. Guilt. He looked guilty. And he’d looked awfully at home sneaking out of a bedroom. How many times has he done that before?

  As Ashley was hunting for Benji’s trainers (‘Football Friday, Mum!’), there had been another call, another silent line. She’d listened for several minutes, ignoring her son’s increasingly desperate shouts about needing the shoes with the bright red laces. Nothing. Just silence, and another blocked number, like the one the night Lucy went missing.

  Ashley had retrieved the trainers from behind the sofa, hustled her children into the car and driven them to school as though on autopilot. One of the mothers had waved at her at the school gates, beamed at Ashley through the window of the car but instead of stopping Ashley had pretended not to see, put the car into reverse and twisted the wheels away. She doesn’t want to talk to any of them. Instead, she goes to June’s, holds Holly tightly to her chest before passing her over. Her daughter’s body feels warm, solid. Ashley thinks of the doctor’s words again. Is she floppy? Ashley cannot tell, feels the familiar sense of worry begin to grip her heart. The lightness she felt this morning has evaporated; she feels tense, her body coiled like a spring. What kind of mother is she that she can’t work out what is wrong with her baby? She doesn’t want to let go of Holly, is suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to keep her close, safe in her arms, far away from the future world of gossipy schoolrooms and silent phone calls that haunt Ashley’s thoughts.

  When June opens the door her face immediately looks concerned.

  ‘Oh, my dear, whatever’s wrong?’ She is wearing a red and white apron and the sight of her is suddenly so comforting that Ashley wants to cry. She swallows, stands on the doorstep. June reaches out and wordlessly lifts Holly from her arms.

  ‘Come here, there now.’ She lifts Holly onto her hip, gestures to Ashley. ‘Why don’t you come in for a quick cup of tea? You look like you could use one. Yes, she does, doesn’t she?’ She says this last part to Holly who gurgles happily, spreads out her tiny hand so that it rests against June’s shoulder.

  ‘Oh, really, I’m OK,’ Ashley says, feeling embarrassed, but June shakes her head.

  ‘You don’t look OK, excuse my saying so. Come in, come have a sit down for five minutes. I bet you’re exhausted.’

  Ashley looks at her watch. She is due at Colours in twenty minutes but the thought of sitting down with someone who is not going to judge her, someone who has been so kind to her daughter over the last few months is very tempting. One cup of tea won’t hurt.

  ‘Thanks, June, that would be great actually then,’ she says, and she follows the older woman into the house. It is comfortingly warm inside; Ashley allows her body to relax at the kitchen table while June bustles around with the kettle, pours steaming mugs of tea into blue china cups. Holly has gone very quiet, sitting in a high chair with blue and white beads attached to the front. The sides of it are decorated with painted birds, swallows that dart up the chair legs and swoop across the bars at the front. Ashley frowns.

  ‘That’s a beautiful high chair, June,’ she says. ‘Goodness. It’s gorgeous.’

  June’s back is to her, Ashley can see her fingers unscrewing a carton of milk.

  ‘Yes, it is lovely, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘It used to belong to a friend of mine, I mentioned I’d been looking after Holly and she brought it round for me the other day. Kind of her.’

  ‘Very,’ Ashley agrees.

  ‘How did it go with the doctor the other day?’

  ‘He thinks it’s night terrors,’ Ashley says. ‘Nothing too serious. I’ve got some medicine for her, actually – here.’ She reaches in her bag and hands the little bottle to June. ‘Could you give her a spoonful before she goes to sleep? Just one.’

  ‘Of course.’ June nods, hands Ashley a mug of steaming tea. She sips it gratefully.

  ‘They also said she needs a blood test,’ she tells June, cupping the mug to try to reassure herself. ‘But it seems like a precaution really, that’s all.’

  ‘I see,’ June says. ‘Well, best not to worry, I’m sure if it was anything serious they’d have said.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Ashley. ‘That’s what my sister said too. I’m probably worrying about nothing.’

  ‘Oh, we all do that.’ June smiles, takes a seat opposite her. ‘Oof. I can’t sit down without making some sort of noise these days. That’s what old age does to you!’ She sips her tea, then stands again and goes to the side cabinet, rummages before coming back to the table with a small packet of pills. ‘I can feel my joints creaking when I bend my knees,’ she says, popping the tablets onto the table and swallowing them with another mouthful of tea. ‘How’s your sister doing these days, anyway?’

  ‘Oh!’ Ashley smiles, almost spills her tea as she puts the mug down on the table. ‘I didn’t tell you! She’s pregnant. Isn’t it wonderful?’

  June clasps her hands together. ‘Oh, my dear, you must be over the moon for her. Poor love, how long has she been trying for now? I remember you saying it’d been a while.’

  ‘Since before Dad died,’ Ashley says. ‘I’m thrilled for her. She’ll be a wonderful mother.’ The warmth of the tea relaxes her. June brings out a plate of biscuits and she helps herself, ignoring the way her shirt is clinging to her hips. She’s got enough to worry about.

  ‘And how is James?’ June asks. �
��I saw him when he dropped off Holly the other day, poor man looked a bit flustered.’

  Ashley feels the biscuit she’s just eaten churn in her stomach.

  ‘Actually . . . actually I’m not sure,’ she says.

  June looks at her questioningly.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on with him at the moment,’ she says, the words blurting out of her mouth before she can stop them. ‘I never see him, he’s always at work, and there have been these phone calls . . .’ She trails off. The older woman is looking at her sympathetically.

  ‘What do you think?’ Ashley asks. She can hear the edge of desperation in her voice and is embarrassed by it, but she has a sudden urge for the older woman’s opinion, wants somebody to reassure her. ‘Do you think I’m jumping to conclusions?’

  There’s a small pause. Ashley can hear the ticking of the clock, the hum of June’s boiler. She focuses on a stray biscuit crumb on the table, trying not to cry.

  ‘On the contrary,’ June says. She looks intently at Ashley, reaches one hand out across the table to her. Her fingers clasp Ashley’s, they are warm and soft. When she speaks, her voice sounds different from usual, more serious, with more of an edge. ‘I know I’m a silly old woman, Ashley, but I’ve lived a long life and believe it or not I have known a few men in my time. And if what you say about James’s behaviour is true, then I think you need to be careful. And be prepared.’

  *

  When Ashley finally gets to Colours, the shift is busy. June’s words are going round and around in her mind, she cannot concentrate. She appreciates the woman’s concern – it sounded as though the words meant something to her, and in recent months they have grown close, in a way. Afterwards, she’d patted Ashey’s hand and offered her another biscuit, which she’d accepted gratefully even though her stomach felt like it was churning.