She stands for a while looking at them, hands clasped to her chest and eyes still damp.
“Daft old bugger!” She says again, this time with a small smile on her face. Then she turns to pick her basket up and makes her way to the front door, a bubble of warmth filling her chest. To Lacey, it means more than Rachel could possibly realise, it means the world. Nobody has ever given her flowers before.
She hates having to lie to Rachel about the injury to her face, but she can’t bring herself to tell the truth. Losing Albert had plunged Lacey back into the solitary world she had lived in for such a long time. Just hearing the voice of another person has once more given Lacey a less tenuous grip on her day to day life. She finds that, when she focuses on conversations she has had or on memories of people’s expressions, her mind is more inclined to stay in the here and now. The dark moments take a step backwards.
She can’t tell Rachel the truth, she is too afraid she might believe Martha. She is too afraid that Rachel will look at her with the scorn she has seen on Martha’s face, that awful, awful hatred that tears at Lacey’s skin.
Chapter 25 ~ Rachel
By the middle of the week almost everything was ready for Jane’s impending visit. The house was tidy and the spare room had been sorted for her to sleep in. I frantically juggled boxes trying to clear the space out entirely, but had run out of places to store them and only succeeded in moving them from one side of the room to the other. I threw the rugs over them and topped it all off with a vase of dried flowers that I’d blown the dust from. Jane knew me well enough by now not to expect perfection.
By Thursday all I needed to do was venture out to buy food for us all. I hadn’t left the village since I had moved in and had been reluctant to do so, but as it turned out the trip to Exeter was uneventful and brief. In no time at all I was heading back to the cottage, the car laden with bags.
It was the road sign that I saw on the way home that knocked me for six. Something so simple, just metal and paint that told me it was eight miles to Dawlish, eight miles to the past. In my head I saw the beach, I felt the heat and heard again the conversation that changed my life and had torn me kicking and screaming from a reality I wanted so desperately. Was this the road we had taken then? It didn’t look familiar, there was no sense of déjà vu as my foot unwittingly eased up on the accelerator.
In a twist of synchronicity it had been the other sign, the plywood sign that had first set me on the journey that would finally lead to that childhood holiday at the beach. Everything had changed for me after the other children had burst into my room and dragged me, terrified, into the corridor. The security my room had afforded me had vanished in that moment. I felt vulnerable, more alone than ever and I knew then that somehow I had to get away.
Occasionally people would visit the home. Foster parents looking for a child to take away with them and I had often wondered what magic these people possessed. I would sit on the sidelines and watch as the care kids transformed into kind, happy creatures. They would hug each other and laugh out loud, putting on a great show of perfection so that they would be chosen, the best sweets in the candy shop.
Up until then I had never pretended. I didn’t want to be taken away or how would my mother be able to find me? I would sit watchful and silent, scowling at the couples who came to make their choices and praying that they would take away with them the worst of my tormentors. I sat in the furthest corner and pulled faces, turning my back if their eyes dared to fall upon me. I knew what I looked like to them, a skinny waif of a child with a mass of tangled dark hair and eyes like bruises. I was never chosen.
The lessons I learned that caused my change of heart were painful ones. I knew that there was no point hanging on and waiting for a mother that had forgotten all about me, I knew that the bullying would continue until I found a way to end it. And I knew that from that moment on I would be just like everyone else, I would pretend until finally it would be my turn, the door of the home would close behind me and I would be safe.
I practiced smiles in my little mirror for when visitors came. I brushed my hair and held it back with hair bands or ribbons so it didn’t fall over my eyes. I did what I could to look like happiness came naturally but it sat awkwardly on me, a mask that didn’t quite fit. I tried anyway.
Not long after that some visitors came. The other children sniggered when I walked into the room, elbowing each other and pointing at me. I was wearing my best dress and had put a pink ribbon, lopsided, in my newly tidy hair.
It turned out to be a waste of time. The middle-aged couple with frown lines between their eyes and brown clothes were only interested in boys. They left without a name to pick up later and nobody seemed sorry about that.
One of the older boys, Michael, cornered me after dinner in the TV room. At eleven he was three years older than me. He had mousy brown hair that poked out in every direction and a face like a cherub, all dimples and shining innocence. The care workers seemed to adore him and thought he could do no wrong. The children knew differently. He was mean and cruel with a darkness in his eyes that frightened me sometimes. I had once seen him with his shirt off and there were circular scars across his back and on his chest. Curiosity had got the better of me and I asked him what they were. He sneered at me. “Cigarette burns, bitch. Do you want some?” I tried to avoid him after that.
He pushed me up against the wall and held me there with a rough, grazed hand.
“What the hell were you doing today? You think you’ve got a chance of getting out of here, freak?” He laughed and it spread around the room like a disease. But as the laughter washed over me, and my cheeks burned with fire fed by humiliation, I felt my teeth clench. I felt my fear take a step backwards, becoming smaller. I lifted my head, tilting my chin back until I stared him right in the eyes.
“I’ll be out of here before you will, shithead.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from the others and his eyebrows rose into his fringe. He pulled his fist back and I didn’t look away, didn’t flinch from the impending blow, I just stared right at him and saw something falter as he glared at my defiance. As he brought his hand towards me he opened it. Instead of the punch I tensed against he delivered two small slaps onto my cheek, patronising and stinging but not what I had expected. He slowly lowered his arm and his eyes slid from mine, the room was silent. I pushed him aside and walked from the room feeling that in some way I had scored a small victory.
As it later turned out, I was right. It was a Saturday and I had done my chores, as we all had. I’d had laundry duty, which I hated, collecting bed sheets that smelt of ammonia and sweat and had stains that I tried to keep away from my skin. After lunch, we were told to get our glad rags on and the house became a hive of activity, excited chatter and sounds of drawers slamming coming from the upstairs rooms.
It was the third time we had had visitors since the incident in my room and I was no less determined to find a way out. I didn’t sleep too well anymore. The first people had been the brown clothed couple that left empty handed. The second had been a young couple that had been totally charmed by a little four year old called Astrid. All the children were unhappy about that one because Astrid had only been at the home for a couple of months and it seemed so unfair. I understood it though. She was a sweet thing with confusion in her big brown eyes. She looked lost and afraid so who wouldn’t want to take her away from that house?
We all stood around the dining room fidgeting and looking like we didn’t quite fit when they came in. I still kept my place in the far corner but at least I looked at the grown-ups when they arrived which was more than I had done before. Diane and Richard Parks were in their forties. He was a round jolly man who kept his arm around his wife’s back. She had a cloud of greying blonde hair that was cut above her shoulders and didn’t quite sit down flat. As she looked at us all, her bottom lip pushed out ever so slightly, as if she couldn’t believe we all had no-one to love us.
I smiled at that bottom li
p and as my lips curved up her eyes met mine and she smiled in return. She turned and whispered something into her husband’s ear and made her way over to me. I felt the eyes of the other children like needles and glanced away as she approached. Mrs Parks crouched down until she was in my line of vision.
“What’s your name, sweetie?” She smelt nice, like sunny days, and when I answered her I wanted to beg her to take me with her. I told God that I would eat all of my vegetables and do all of my homework if Mrs Parks took me away. Please, please, please, Amen.
I was told the next day that I would be going with them to their home in Marham, a village a few miles away that I’d never heard of. I packed my pitiful belongings over and over again while I waited and put a wedge firmly under my bedroom door every night. It felt as though it took forever but finally the paperwork was all completed and I could leave. I never saw the house again.
It seemed a lifetime later that I sat in my car staring at the sign, wondering what would happen if I took that road. Would my life unravel as it had then? Would everything change? A blaring horn dragged me back to the present and I realised I had slowed the car almost to a crawl. I held up my hand in apology as the other car pulled past me. I put my foot down, keeping the car pointed towards Winscombe, towards home.
Chapter 26 ~ Lacey
She sits at the table. The dim light pushes against the window and the bare branches of the trees beyond whisper winter into her ears. She feels the chill in the room, sees it in the breath that blossoms in front of her lips and she thinks that this winter will be particularly harsh and cruel; even here in Devon, where the snow rarely falls and the lambs are sometimes born in time to greet the New Year.
There is a noise near the door and she jumps towards it, startled. Her mother is alive again and she walks into the room, looking younger than she has seen her for some time. Her hands are full of cutlery and the silverware clatters against the table before they are steadied. A deep breath tells the tale of her mother’s nervousness. It quivers a path through her airways leaving her shoulders rigid, her hands shaking. Her mother’s eyes steal quick glimpses towards the door and she flinches at the wind, at nothing, before she turns and leaves the room.
She sits and waits, staring at the grain of the table, at the darker furrows that make her think of the farmers fields in springtime. She follows the marks with short practical fingernails and watches as decades of wax and polish fold black and tacky beneath the edge of her thumbnail. She can hear the clock ticking and the faint sound of her mother’s trembling sigh from beyond the doorway.
She swings her legs back and forth, one after the other, feeling her feet snag against the floor and the hem of her dress. She runs her hands down her thighs and thinks, it must be Sunday because she is wearing her best dress with the lace and the embroidered flowers.
She wonders where her father is but realises he must have been called out to someone because of the way her mother glanced at the door and looked worried. She begins to sing quietly to herself,
“One, two, three, four, five, once I caught a fish alive. Six, seven, eight, nine, te... ” She looks up and sees that her mother is standing in the doorway, her shadowy eyes marching across the room and the reproach in them chases the words back into silence. She thinks, ‘swing my legs, scratch at the table, but don’t sing’. Is it because her voice is an alien thing, here where words are spare and never more than practical? How difficult it is to remember everything. There are so many rules, so many things she can do, so many things she can’t do, so many things she can only do when no-one will see her, like laugh and skip and breathe lightly.
The front door opens and slams suddenly and she sees the aftershock engulf her mother, who flinches away briefly before she rushes to greet him and take his bag. She snaps her eyes away from the hall and back to the table, feels her spine become straighter, her stomach pull inwards, her legs become still. She holds her hands together demurely in her lap and does not glance up as he comes in. So many rules. She barely even breathes as he walks to the table, pulls out his chair and sits down, every movement exaggerated as though he were too big, too important for the space he finds himself in.
Does she feel his eyes upon her? For a moment there is the sensation of a spider web touching lightly across her cheek. She wonders if she has imagined it as she fights the urge to see if both of her feet can touch the floor at the same time. She wonders if she has become invisible, if her father even realises she is in the room with him, in her pretty Sunday dress and with her dirty thumbnail. Or is there merely an empty space where she thinks she is?
Her mother once again bustles into the room, shaky and desperate, trying to do everything right and yet failing simply by being there, by being anything other than still and perfect. She places his plate in front of him and then waits beyond his right shoulder as he looks at it. The silence becomes thicker, heavier and she feels the three of them push against it, her mother’s hand fluttering at her chest as if the stillness is no more than a fly that she can waft away.
She can see from her end of the table the curling edges of the bacon, the shiny patches where it has begun to dry as they waited. She can see that the food looks unappetising, old and she knows that her mother sees it too, she sees it in the way her lips move in quiet contrition. She wants to tell her mother that it is not her fault, that the blame lies with the patient that called him away from his freshly cooked breakfast, or it’s her father’s fault for being so unreasonable, cruel. But she doesn’t, she sits within her hidden void and wills him not to notice her.
She stays statue still as the plate is snatched up from the table. She doesn’t flinch as it flies just above her head and shatters against the wall. She tries not to hear the high pitch of her mother’s fear as he takes hold of her arm and drags her from the room. She feeds the lace of her hem through trembling fingers and hums quietly to herself, as quietly as she can so they do not hear her.
She hears heavy footsteps, the dragging slip of her mother’s feet against the boards of the stairs. There is the sharp sting of flesh on flesh, palm on face, a muffled cry of pain. She hears the throwing down, the squeaky sound from the bed, her mother’s submission.
After a short time she gets to her feet and goes to the cupboard under the stairs to fetch a brush and as quietly as she can she cleans up the crockery, the grease stains, the ruined food. By the time she hears footsteps on the stairs again she is sat back in her seat as though she never moved at all. He walks into the room and she forces herself to be still, to not react to his presence in any way. He does not look at her.
She sees his eyes move to the space where his plate hit the wall, to the floor below it and all the while she keeps her gaze on the emptiness of the wall opposite her. She wonders if she will be punished too, simply for being there. Perhaps she left a dirty spot on the wall, a sliver of porcelain on the floor. It seems forever that they remain still and silent.
She feels the beginnings of a tremor in her right leg and the more she thinks of it the harder it is to keep still. She closes her eyes and concentrates, her legs are the trunk of a tree, they will not bend or move in any way, they will not betray her and make him see she is there. When it seems under control, she opens her eyes and he has gone. She did not hear him leave the room and has to look around her carefully before she is convinced that she is indeed alone. She feels her shoulders sag, her heart calm. In that moment she is so relieved that he did not see her, that she is the invisible one.
Later, when they go to church, her mother does not go with them. She imagines the darkened form hunched beneath the bed covers crying silent tears against the cloth. She imagines the bruises painted across her mother’s skin. She sits beside him in their pew at the front and wonders if he feels her loathing for him, wonders if she despises him enough that it will take tangible form that will billow from her and engulf him.
At the end of the service she overhears him talking to the vicar, kind Father Alan who gives her a strange,
sad smile if he happens to catch her eye. They speak of nothing in particular and their words blur and run into each other as she stands statue still beside them. But then she hears her father say, “One of her turns, you know.” And she raises her eyes from the ground long enough to see the vicar nod sagely, she sees him turn in her direction and meet her gaze and behind the sympathy she can see shadows and suspicion. For the briefest of moments he places his hand lightly upon the top of her head, a blessing to comfort her, and she feels tears threatening to spill as her father turns and begins to walk away. Quickly she catches up with him, wanting him to have no excuse to punish her.
One step, two steps, three steps. She watches the ground as she walks and doesn’t look up. The tips of her toes come into her line of sight and then disappear, get replaced, reappear. She sees the lace of her skirt sway back and forth, like a bell. She feels the tension in the back of her neck as her chin grazes her chest. She knows that later, when she is alone in her room, she will feel it like a knot between her shoulder blades.
But she has no choice. He is watching her and she dare not give him reason to punish her, she dare not let her eyes rest on anyone who may be passing. She remembers a time before when she dared to break the rules, when he caught her. She remembers the punishment, the fear; she remembers that for days every movement reminded her not to do it again. So she keeps her eyes on the ground and the rest of the world passes her by unnoticed.
She sees the rough surface of the lane and glances slightly, ever so slightly to the side. His feet keep pace with hers, she sees the shine of his shoes and there is pride in each step. He clears his throat and she thinks that maybe he is about to speak to her, she waits for whatever harsh words, whatever orders or censure may come but there is nothing else. She thinks that maybe it was just the dust from the lane catching in his throat; the summer has baked the ground hard and dry and the dust dances in the sunlight. When she breathes in she can taste it on her tongue.
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