The Silk Factory

by Judith Allnatt

  She couldn’t be bothered to do much for supper so she put some cheese and biscuits on a tray, poured a glass of wine and picked and sipped while she watched a quiz show. At least trying to answer the questions kept her from brooding, but as it ended, her thoughts returned like a compass needle to the children. She turned the TV off and decided that she would wrap their presents; it would make her feel better to be doing something for them.

  She got sellotape and scissors from the bureau and unrolled the wrapping paper on the floor: kids’ paper with comic Father Christmases tobogganing their way across snow-covered roofs. She wrapped Cara’s present first but didn’t bother with ribbon as she had for Tally; she knew that the kids would have the paper off in seconds.

  She was particularly pleased with the present she’d picked up for Sam: a remote-controlled loader, its metal painted a bright yellow, with a wide bucket and ‘JCB’ stencilled on the cab just like the real thing. The controls moved it around and lifted the bucket to scoop or push earth along like a bulldozer. She took it out of the box to fit its batteries so that he would be able to use it straightaway. It would be brilliant if the snow got heavier, she thought; he’d love using it in the snow.

  As she knelt on the rug beside the toy and fiddled to get the battery compartment on the remote open, something about the colour of the loader nagged at her – that particular shade of yellow … Yes, it was the same colour as the whizzing object she remembered from that day, that awful day at the beach. Faintly the whirring sound began and she shook her head to drive it away. She tried to block it out, concentrating instead on the good things that her visit to May had brought. She conjured up the new image that she had formed of herself and Lily: two babies on their very first birthday with gooey fingers grasping their puppets-on-sticks.

  Two sticks.

  One each.

  Something was slotting into place.

  A windy day. Sunlight and flashing yellow. Windmills! Two yellow plastic windmills on sticks that Maria had bought for them from one of those shops full of such glories: rubber rings and fishing nets, blow-up dolphins and bucket-and-spade sets. They had held the windmills up outside to get their folded plastic petals to catch the breeze, but in the shelter of the buildings they flicked and stopped, turned and then stood still. Maria had taken them out on to the jetty at the beach. Rosie closed her eyes tight, willing the pictures to keep on coming.

  Steps up, one on either side of Maria, a matching pair. The smell of salt and seaweed. Maria holding their hands tightly, keeping them away from the edge. Green-painted posts beside them and, underfoot, wooden boards with gaps where the sea moved and glittered beneath, great dizzying swells rising and falling away to gurgle and suck around the stilts of the jetty. Out further, out towards the end of the pier with the wind whipping their dresses and hair, Maria urging them to hold the windmills up to make them whizz round.

  Mine was whirring now but Lily wasn’t holding hers firmly enough. The blustery wind twisted it, turned it crooked in her hand, buffeted it first one way then the other. My words, taken by the wind, ‘Not like that! Like this!’ as I reached across in front of Maria and triumphantly thrust my windmill at Lily, knocking her hand. And in a split second, the wind had it, plucking it from her fingers. For a moment it flew, and then, with a scratching sound, went scudding along the boards towards the edge. Maria let go of Lily’s hand and lunged to grab it and Lily, with a squeal of indignation, ran forward, stumbled and slipped …

  Rosie sat back on her heels, the batteries rolling away across the floor.

  There was screaming … her hand held in a grip as tight as a vice as she was dragged forward, her parents’ voices shouting, desperate, the sound of strangers’ feet running, pounding along the boards, and then nothing. Just the yellow petals flicking round between her and the brightness of the sun and the endless whirring blocking everything out.

  Shakily, Rosie levered herself up to sit in the armchair. She sat still and closed her eyes, breathing heavily. It was her fault. If she hadn’t interfered it would never have happened. She hadn’t been trying to help, not really, she’d been doing what she always did with Lily, competing, trying to get attention, and showing off. Oh God! It was her fault. Poor, dear Lily.

  When she opened her eyes it seemed unreal to see the room before her with its patterned rug and familiar red sofa, as if she expected the past to open up and swallow her back into it. The ordinary things in the room seemed distant and insubstantial, as if she might step on to the rug and feel her feet sink into sand or reach out to touch the table and find only the emptiness of air and salt spray.

  She made herself pick up the glass of wine beside her and drink it to the dregs, hoping that it would warm the pit of her stomach where a cold block now sat. Had Maria told her parents how it had happened? Was that why all trace of Lily had been erased from her life – so that she, Rosie, wouldn’t be brought face-to-face with what had taken place, so that she could forget? She had seen the way that her parents had kept Lily’s existence a secret as incomprehensible, even callous; now it seemed, on the contrary, a huge sacrifice for her. They had given up the little they had left of their daughter: the photos and keepsakes, the exchanged ‘do you remembers’, the release of openly expressing their grief, so that she could be free and unburdened. They had hidden their memories deep inside in the black dark so that hers could be washed clean, so that even if their joy was lost forever she could start again afresh. Tears filled her eyes. She would never forgive herself. She curled up in the chair, her head resting on its arm, hands clasped around her knees, and sobbed.

  A sharp sound woke her from an exhausted sleep. She sat up with a start as everything rushed back. The room felt cold; it must be getting late; the heating must have gone off. She was stiff all over. Frozen. What on earth could that noise have been? A faint mutter still came from the radio in the kitchen but it couldn’t have been that – it had sounded more like breaking china. Blearily, she struggled to her feet, hobbling at first as pins and needles shot through one leg.

  In the hall, her mother’s china plate lay shattered on the tiles, pieces strewn around the wheels of the bike and spread as far as the kitchen. Her eyes travelled to the wall beside the cellar door, where a round grey patch marked in dust where it had hung and where the picture hook remained intact. How …? It would have to be lifted half an inch into the air to come off the hook. Groggily, she picked her way between the broken shards to fetch a dustpan and brush. She turned the radio off to listen and felt silence flow back into the house, thick and pressing.

  As she gathered the larger pieces together in the pan, the tiny sharp sounds as they chinked together broke against the uneasy quiet. Numbly, Rosie tried to reassemble the pieces, fitting together peony and butterfly; she mourned the loss of the keepsake of her mum. It was useless. Giving up, she swept up the smaller fragments and moved the bike so that she could get at the remaining shards. She turned them over and back in her hand. There had been no one there to knock it; how could it possibly have happened? It would take a minor earthquake. And here was another strange thing: the air didn’t smell right; there was a trace of something burning. She sniffed – no, burnt; it smelt like soot.

  She went back to the living room expecting to find that there had been a fall of old soot down the chimney, a mess on the carpet and black dust puffed out all over the room. Nothing. The pile of pine cones in the grate was clean and undisturbed. She went upstairs and checked the two bedrooms that had tiny fireplaces, although she knew the flues were boarded up. The grates were clean and when she bent and sniffed to see if a fall sat behind the boards, there was nothing but a faint trace of damp. Yet the smell was getting stronger: as she came back downstairs it seemed to rise to meet her.

  She stood again in the hall, staring at the mark where the plate had hung. She tried to think rationally. What could possibly connect the two things? With a flash of inspiration, she remembered the big crack in the cellar wall and her fear that there might be
subsidence. Perhaps that was it: the building had moved; she remembered her dad telling her that the Georgians were jerry builders – beautiful proportions but all built on shallow rubble with no proper foundations. Maybe something had crumbled and shifted. That could have jarred the plate and loosened soot in the old stovepipe in the cellar. Oh God, if it was bad she’d have to have it underpinned or she’d never be able to sell the place. Another bloody financial disaster.

  She wrenched open the door and a gust of freezing air, laden with the reek of soot, assailed her from the black belly of the cellar. She clicked the light switch and then remembered that she’d never got round to fixing it; she would need a torch. From the cupboard under the sink she pulled out bottles of Flash and Windolene, dusters, drain cleaner, scouring pads … What now! No torch! This bloody, bloody house, taking all her money, all her energies … a bottle of bleach went rolling across the floor.

  She had a brainwave and went back to the hall to unbuckle the lamp from the bike. When she switched it on, it went on and off intermittently as if a connection were faulty. Stemming the urge to hurl the thing against the wall, she tapped it smartly on the base instead until she got a steady, if feeble, beam of yellowish light.

  It cast a round disc on the steps as she went down past the turn in the stairway where she lost the light from the hall. The lamplight glinted on moisture condensed on the cold stone. A cobweb touched her face and she brushed it away with a shudder. She lifted the lamp to look at the crack. It zigzagged down the wall like a slalom run, but was it wider? It was impossible to tell. She picked her way carefully down the slippery steps, following the feeble light. The stench was stronger, acrid; it caught in the back of her throat with a bitter taste of coal dust.

  From somewhere in the darkness yawning before her came a soft sound, as though something shifted, and her skin prickled as its tiny hairs rose. She lifted the lamp to shine its dim tunnel of light into the dark, expecting to see a new fall of soot. The light played unsteadily over the stack of cast-off objects: bedstead, cupboard, boxes, mirror. As it passed over the frame of the mirror, she glimpsed a movement, something small and pale, and shakily swung the lamp back. Its reflection flashed in the glass and whatever had moved was gone.

  She edged her way through the lumber, past the boxes of jam jars to the back of the cellar and shone the light at the foot of the old stove flue. There was nothing there. No soft pile of black dust, just an empty patch of bare floor. In disbelief, she thumped the pipe with the flat of her hand. The hollow metal clang shattered the silence; it reverberated against the brick walls as if the room were an echo chamber. From the flue, a thin trickle of grit and dust fell at her feet. In the silence that followed, Rosie stood staring at the little pile of detritus.

  As though the sound disturbed something, the shifting noise came again. Rosie swung the light wildly around her and the shadows of the lumber danced, looming and shrinking against the walls. The sound stopped. She stood absolutely still, straining to listen, afraid to move.

  The smell grew stronger. There was a tightness in Rosie’s chest; she struggled for breath. Now, mixed with the soot was the smell of burning rotten flesh. Dizzy and sick, she was overtaken by a cold sweat. Rosie put her arm across her nose and mouth as waves of nausea hit. From all around her came the tiniest sound, a continuous soft rustle, like leaves stirred by a breeze. Something touched her face, something light as paper, grazing her cheek as it fell, and then another, tangling in her hair. She felt for it and her fingers met a fluttering shape that she knocked to the ground with a cry. She raised the lamp and looked above her.

  The ceiling was covered in a thick creamy layer, in constant swarming motion, as thousands of moths crawled over one another. In places the blanket grew so thick that they hung down in pale stalactites until, grown too heavy, some would drop away and fall to the ground. Directly above her, a swag of soft insect bodies hung, shimmering, wings shivering as they crawled.

  The lamp went out. In utter darkness, Rosie stood absolutely still, her heart pounding, not daring to even stir the air around her, terrified of hearing the soft collapse and slide of globs of teeming creatures. Beside her, low down, other noises began, human noises, short gasping breaths and a scratching around on the ground. Closer, so close that she could have reached down and touched them, someone was casting about, feeling across the floor, searching … a hand brushed her foot, clasped and then gripped her.

  Rosie dropped the lamp and fled as the room filled with a child’s sobbing and a desperate scrabbling sound. Arms outstretched, she groped wildly towards the stairs and knocked into the lumber, clattering the jam jars in their boxes. Stumbling up the steps on hands and feet, behind her a cry was abruptly cut off and something metal scraped against the brick. As she scrambled for the door, an icy blast hit her back, a freezing cold flowing around her as if the windows had been punched in.

  Then she was up, pushing past the bike, not caring that the handlebar caught her hip a jarring blow. She pulled at the front door, crying out as the latch held fast, fumbled to release it and threw the door open, leaving it swinging. She banged with both fists on Tally’s front door and a light came on inside. Tally came to the door, took one look at her face and opened her arms.

  SIXTEEN

  Rosie, sitting tensely on the edge of the sofa, warmed her hands round a mug of tea.

  ‘Better?’ Tally said, sitting down beside her.

  ‘A bit.’ She could still feel the icy chill inside her and when she took her hand away from the mug it trembled.

  Rob came in from next door carrying a torch and bringing her handbag and keys. ‘There’s nothing – just a load of old tat down there.’

  ‘Did you check the whole house over?’ Tally said.

  ‘Yes, and I locked up. Everything’s secure.’

  ‘There was something,’ Rosie said. ‘I know what I saw. I’m not mad, I …’ Her eyes began to fill and Tally glanced at Rob with a meaningful look.

  Rob, taking the hint, said, ‘I’d better turn in then. I’m on duty tomorrow.’ He gave Rosie’s shoulder a pat as he passed.

  ‘I think something awful happened in that house and it’s … I don’t know … somehow still there. Some people think that, don’t they, that horrible events leave something behind, like an electrical charge – well, not electricity but some kind of force field that a susceptible person is able to pick up. I mean, we didn’t know about magnetism or radio waves or bacteria or any of that stuff at one time but they were there waiting to be discovered …’ She trailed off.

  Tally squeezed her hand. ‘I think something happened to disturb you down there and I think you’re still a teeny bit in shock.’

  ‘I think someone died in that house,’ Rosie said stubbornly.

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s true of every house, isn’t it?’ Tally said mildly. ‘Every house of any age, that is.’

  ‘You think I’m losing the plot,’ Rosie said miserably. ‘That’s exactly why I haven’t told you about all this before. People will say I’m not coping – like before when I was depressed after having Cara. Josh’ll say I’m just like my mum. He thinks I shouldn’t have the kids.’ She wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand and Tally put her arm around her.

  ‘Shh, shh, no one’s saying that. You’re a great mum; don’t think that way, not even for a minute.’

  ‘I’m not losing it! What about the plate? That didn’t just break itself, did it?’

  ‘Look, you experienced something horrible, I’m not denying that, but there’s got to be some rational explanation. What happened just before all of this started? Tell me what led up to it.’

  Rosie looked down into her mug of tea and shrugged.

  ‘Rosie? Was there something? Something that upset you?’ She hugged her tight. ‘Come on, you’ve been sitting on this ghost thing for months and it’s made you feel awful; if there’s anything else, don’t you think it would be a good idea to get it off your chest?’

  Rosie let out a lo
ng wavering sigh before beginning to speak. The certificates in the bureau, the newspaper report, the memory of Lily’s death and her part in the tragedy all came out.

  ‘But it wasn’t your fault! You were tiny!’ Tally exclaimed. ‘Come on, that sort of thing happens all the time between kids. Think of your two, or my girls, always vying for attention. All kids do it.’

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘I know so.’

  ‘But if I hadn’t knocked her hand, if I hadn’t been showing off …’

  ‘You might just as well say if Maria hadn’t bought you the toys, if she hadn’t taken you on the jetty or if it had been less windy … on a different day … in a different year … It was an accident. Come on, you’ve got to stop blaming yourself, OK?’ Tally took both of her hands and leant forward to look into her face.

  At length, Rosie nodded. ‘OK. But it doesn’t really change anything. I can never get her back.’

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘No,’ Tally said softly. ‘You’ll never get her back. There’s nothing anyone can do to change the past, but you can do plenty about the future.’ She rubbed the knuckles of Rosie’s clenched hand. ‘What I think would do you the most good, now, would be to concentrate on your stake in the future. I think you need your kids with you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Rosie said dully. ‘Josh has got them until tomorrow night.’ She seemed to shrink back into herself as she said it.

  ‘Rosie?’ Tally said. ‘How do you feel about that? Honestly?’

  Rosie thought about it. ‘Bitter.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t put up with it. Go down there! Fetch them back!’ Tally said, desperate to put some fire back in Rosie’s belly.

  A glow of colour rose to Rosie’s cheeks and her shoulders straightened. ‘Right, right! I’ll go now.’ She started unwinding herself from the duvet. ‘Josh pulled the “weekend” card on me – well, he’s had his weekend.’