by Abby Davies
I wondered if Mother had acted a bit too soon by bringing Clarabelle here and making her part of us. Then told myself not to be so stupid. I knew hardly anything about the outside. Mother knew it all, but I only knew little fragments; things that Mother told me; things I read in books. I wanted to know more. A lot, lot more. It was hard to feel full when I didn’t know all of the things that made up the other world. But at least Mother told me things. Things she thought I needed to know.
But … does Mother always tell you the whole truth?
Yes! Stop being so bad.
I cringed. I shouldn’t be thinking these ugly thoughts, especially as I was about to betray Mother’s trust in the worst way. Mother had never said no to the attic, but I knew she wouldn’t want me up there. Just because she had never said the rule out loud, that didn’t mean it did not exist.
Guilt glued me to my chair. I looked at Othello, the Shakespeare play I was supposed to be reading. The tiny words blurred into unreadable spiders’ legs – thousands of them. Black, spiky, harsh. My heart thumped in my chest and a cold sweat broke out under my arms. I should not go up into the attic. I should be a good doll and do as I was told. I had never gone against Mother before. Not like this.
Dolls live short lives.
No. Go up there. Investigate. Stop being such a scaredy-cat!
I hurried out of my bedroom onto the landing before I could change my mind.
Plunged in shadow, the landing looked more unwelcoming than ever – a cold, brown void that lay below a possible wealth of treasures. I looked up, just imagining, the curious cat scratching relentlessly at my skull. Beyond that small door in the ceiling lay answers, I felt certain of it.
I stood on tiptoe and reached up to the small brass knob. My fingers skimmed cold metal. I was too short, which was hardly surprising. I had nothing to compare myself to, but I only reached up to Mother’s chin and Mother told me that dolls usually stopped growing at about thirteen years old. Mother measured me every year. When she last measured me I had been exactly five foot tall. I did not know Mother’s precise height. And I never asked.
My tummy started to hurt, low down, and I laid my hand on it. It felt rock hard. I wasn’t used to betraying Mother’s trust. I knew better than to be so stupid and yet here I was, standing beneath the attic, about to do something I knew deep down was against Mother’s wishes. But I had to know more. There were things I needed to know and if Mother was not willing to tell me … well, if I was going to die soon anyway, did it matter if I disobeyed one unspoken rule?
The sick, unthinkable feeling that always flooded me when I thought about dying erupted in my chest. It was overwhelming. Terrifying. This fear was worse than the fear of what Mother might do to me, should she ever find out, which I was determined wouldn’t happen. If I stopped dilly-dallying, I would be up and out of the attic before Mother came home. I was wasting time. There was a perfect word for what I was doing. It began with a ‘p’ and hovered on the tip of my tongue and mind. I was p … pr … pro … procrastinating! I was dragging my heels – no – more than that – I was putting off the inevitable. I had already made up my mind. I was going up there.
I dragged the chair out of my room and placed it in the centre of the landing, directly underneath the attic door.
Cramps roiled in my tummy. I ignored them and stepped up onto the chair. I could easily reach the brass knob, so I turned and pulled. The door opened with a loud creak. I glanced at Clarabelle’s door and strained my ears; all remained quiet. The end of a ladder was in reach, so I pulled at it tentatively and it slid down and out of the darkness like an uncoiling snake. I jumped off the chair, ladder still in my hands, and nudged the chair out of the way with my shoulder. It promptly fell over, thudding onto the carpet. My heart thundered, but there was no noise from Clarabelle’s room; she was heavily asleep. Thank goodness.
Shuffling backwards, I pulled the ladder down until its feet met the carpet and the ladder was fully extended. I gave it a push, checking it was secure. If the ladder was too wobbly and I lost my balance and fell, it would be a disaster. Visions of Mother returning to find me in a heap on the floor, my body twisted like a discarded, damaged doll, flickered in my mind’s eye. But if I fell, I fell. I had to know more. I had to go up there.
A steely kind of determination settled itself in my mind, and I ascended the ladder with slow, careful movements. Each rung creaked underfoot and gave way a little, but not much.
I reached the top of the ladder and stared into a pit of shadows. Biting my lip, I braced myself, fearful of creepy-crawlies that might be lurking on the walls, and felt along the wall for a light switch. There was no point going inside if I couldn’t see anything. My fingers touched string and I tugged. Something clicked and a naked bulb came on, emitting a low buzz. The bulb was weak but it did the job. I glanced around the attic, my eyes greedy. Attic floors could be unstable, I knew, so I gingerly stepped onto the floorboard in front of the ladder, relieved to feel nothing give way, the wood cool beneath my bare foot.
An unpleasant smell circled me. It was an ancient, mouldy, moth-eaten kind of smell that made me wrinkle up my nose and breathe through my mouth as I stared in horror at the masses of cobwebs that hung between the wooden rafters like Gothic, lace drapes. The roof was not far above my head; if I stretched my arms up, my fingers would touch those grotesque cobwebs, no doubt inviting a horde of hungry spiders to crawl down my arms and underneath my dress where they would feast upon my skin with their tiny, needle-sharp fangs. Big, evil spiders like Deadly.
Ugh. I shivered and turned my attention to the contents of the attic, reminded of poor Sara Crewe in A Little Princess who was forced by Miss Minchin to sleep in the attic all on her own.
I counted eight cardboard boxes, one filthy mattress and two leather trunks. There was a lot of stuff to search. It was going to take me all day, maybe longer, to go through everything. But I didn’t have all day. I didn’t even have two hours.
Testing each part of the floor with an outstretched foot, I made my way towards the closest box. Like all the other boxes in the attic, it was a plain cardboard box, big enough to fit me inside if I were to curl up in the foetal position. It was smothered with dust and contained lots of grubby, dusty, old books. I picked up a few, surprised to find them written in another language. Latin perhaps. I was careful to check for Deadly’s friends before picking anything up. I sneezed three times and more dust clouded the air.
One box down, seven to go.
I had been up in the attic only about ten minutes so far, giving me quite a bit longer before Mother came back. Hopefully.
I pulled open the second box and stared. It was full of photo albums. I picked up the top one and blew off the dust. The moment suddenly felt so big that I stopped breathing. Something tickled my arm and I screamed in terror at the enormous, big-bodied spider on my right forearm. For a moment I was paralysed. It looked like Deadly’s bigger, hairier father.
I dropped the album and flicked Deadly Senior off my arm with my free hand. My skin crawled and I rubbed my arm frantically, desperate to be rid of the lingering feel of his spindly legs on my skin. Revulsion pulsed through me. I exhaled shakily and looked down at the album, which had fallen open to the middle.
Taped to the page was a black-and-white photograph of two girls who looked about the same age as each other, perhaps ten or eleven years old, holding hands. One girl was a lot prettier than the other with a rounder, more symmetrical face and a small, delicate nose. The pretty girl smiled at the camera but the other did not. Both girls were dressed in identical frilly dresses and wore their hair in matching bunches. I brought the album close to my face and stared closely. Both girls’ faces were painted like mine. I recognized the plainer girl as Mother. The other girl must have been Olivia. Mother’s twin sister. My evil aunt. Except, she didn’t look evil. If anything, it was Mother who looked a bit—
A banging sound interrupted my train of thought. Mother’s home.
I left
the album where it was, leapt over the box, scurried back to the attic door and scrambled down the ladder, heart thrashing. My feet found carpet and I seized the ladder and hoisted it up. It was heavy but it slid up, up, up … and then I couldn’t push it any further up because I was too short.
I froze, listening for Mother, but all was quiet. Had it been Mother I’d heard, or had I imagined the distant banging sound?
Gently, I slid the ladder back down until it rested on the ground. I tiptoed up to the banister and peeped over. The front door was shut. Mother wasn’t back yet.
I exhaled a whoosh of hot breath and rolled my eyes at my own stupidity. I was on edge and had imagined the sound, a bit like I had the other day in the kitchen.
I looked at the ladder. Now that I was on the landing, I found it impossible to make myself go back up into the attic. How long had Mother been gone? It could not have been more than twenty minutes, surely?
I padded into my bedroom and checked the clock. Yes, Mother had left twenty-two minutes ago. She would not return yet. Hopefully.
But my heart still hammered in my chest and my palms sweated. That noise had given me an awful shock. I stood and listened. Nothing. I must have imagined it.
Deciding all was safe, I climbed up the ladder and carefully retraced my footsteps.
I found the album and turned the page.
The next photograph was of the pretty girl sitting on a bed dressed in a frilly nightdress. She was surrounded by dolls. A strange, sick feeling entered my throat. My fingers hovered on the edge of the page. The girl was probably about two years older than she had been in the previous photograph. Her mouth was fixed in a smile but her eyes were wide with what looked to me like terror.
I could not make sense of what I was seeing. The girl’s face was painted like mine. She looked like me. I scanned every inch of the image, but there was no trace of Mother in the picture.
An unpleasant feeling slithered in my tummy.
I did not want to turn the page, but I had to.
Slowly, I lifted the page. My hand flew to my mouth. Anger twisted inside me. No. No! I knew what that was and it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all. It was horribly, horribly wrong. Mother had warned me about the foul things some men did in the outside world and this was one of those things.
Once, when I was eight or nine, I’d begged Mother to let me go outside at night, begged her to take me for a night-time walk somewhere close by. I hadn’t cared if it was right outside the house, I just needed to be out there, breathing the air and looking at something different, even if it was hidden by darkness.
After giving me the silent treatment for a day, she had sat me on her lap – a rare treat – and told me about Sex. Sex was something grown-ups did, she’d said. She’d described how it worked in a matter-of-fact way and then her face had gone very pale and she’d said that sometimes, in the outside, men had evil urges that made them turn their attention to little girls who were too young and too small and too innocent to have Sex. She said there were lots of these men out there, which was why she could not, for one second, consider taking me outside for a night-time walk.
At the time, this had been enough to stop me asking to go outside, but as I grew older, I learned from my books that, in spite of these dangerous men, people took their chance in the outside and never got hurt. I wanted that chance too. I craved it. Even if it was just at night where the light couldn’t harm me.
My fingers felt sticky with sweat. They quivered slightly as, unable to stop myself, I flicked to the next photograph. Sick rose in my throat. What Mother’s grandfather was doing to Mother’s twin sister was awful, and the fear and pain in her eyes …
I closed the album with a loud slap and shook my head, trying to vanish the things I’d seen. My mind struggled to process everything. I closed my eyes, clenched my hands into fists. Aunt Olivia could not have been any older than me in those pictures. My great-grandfather had hurt Mother’s sister, Olivia. Had he hurt Mother too?
One more question circled my brain like a bird of prey: why would Mother keep these pictures? This … evidence.
The only explanation was that Mother did not know they were up here. I stared around the attic with new eyes, unable to search any other boxes, unable to forget what I had seen. That poor girl. Mother had warned me about the evil that lurked in men. I thought about poor Clarabelle. How she too had been hurt by her own father. No wonder Mother had rescued her; she had seen the same terrified expression in the little girl’s eyes and known what that evil man was doing to her. It was clear now that Mother had also been hurt – but why had she said that her grandfather was a good man? It didn’t make sense.
I rushed away from the foul album and tripped over a box. My hands and knees thudded onto the floorboards and I screamed as something sharp dug into my palm. I lifted my hand and gaped at a small hole in my skin, at the blood rising up like water out of a flood hole. How would I explain this to Mother?
Frantically, desperate to keep the blood away from my dress, I searched the attic for a piece of fabric, cloth, anything to stop the bleeding. Then I spotted it. Poking out of one of the trunks was a blue bit of fabric. I picked my way over to the trunk and knelt down. With my left hand, I lifted the lid. Inside the trunk lay a pale blue dress that looked big enough for a toddler. I grabbed the dress and wrapped it around my bleeding hand. I tied the sleeves of the dress into a tight knot around my wrist and sighed, racking my brain for things to tell Mother about how I cut myself. Racking my brain for lies. Guilt sliced across my tummy and I sighed again. Poor Mother.
I moved to close the trunk, but something caught my eye. Poking out from beneath a small yellow dress with white hearts printed all over it, was a scrap of newspaper.
I plucked the paper out from under the dress and laid it flat on my knees. My hand throbbed. The blue dress was already blood-soaked but I ignored the pain and stared open-mouthed at the newspaper cutting, blood draining from my face. I looked down at the little blue dress I’d wrapped around my hand. A white label had been sewn into the inner collar of the dress. Black letters had been sewn into the fabric. The black letters spelled out a name. I looked from the newspaper article about a missing three-year-old girl to the name label sewn onto the dress.
I could not move. Blood dripped through the blue dress onto my knees. My dress was ruined. Mother would be furious, but I still could not move.
Chapter 7
Mother, Mother, Mother.
I closed the trunk, switched off the attic light and descended the ladder in a dreamlike state. Standing on the chair, I managed to restore the ladder to its folded-up position inside the attic then I shut the attic door. Mother would never know I had been up there. She would never know what I had seen. I could go on as normal. Mother was still Mother. The Mother I had always known. The Mother who had rescued Clarabelle. The Mother who loved me.
I drifted downstairs, untied the blue dress, put it in a bin liner and shoved it deep into the kitchen bin underneath all the other rubbish. In a daze, I wandered upstairs, sat down on my bed and stared at my hand. The cut had stopped bleeding, but my hand was covered with congealed blood and it really hurt. I had not bothered to rinse it. For some strange reason, the sight of all that blood was comforting.
I heard the front door open and my heart flipped. I folded up the article and tucked it inside my pillow case.
Mother cares about me. Mother would never lie to me.
‘Mirabelle?’ Her voice floated up the stairs into my bedroom. It sounded so familiar, so her.
I curled myself over. Hugging my injured hand to my stomach, I croaked, ‘Mother?’
‘Mirabelle? Mirabelle!’ She was coming up the stairs now, her footsteps heavy and angry, her voice sharp.
‘In here, Mother,’ I whispered.
The door burst inward and she rushed towards me, ‘Mirabelle! What happened?’
‘I cut my hand,’ I said.
‘How? On what? What on earth were you doing?�
� she demanded, crouching down in front of me.
I shrugged. Tears dripped down my cheeks onto my bloodied lap. I saw Mother take it all in; my spoiled face, ruined dress, torn hand. I could not bring myself to lie to her. But I would not tell her exactly what had happened.
Mother stared at me. A frown creased the space between her eyebrows. I waited, sniffed, tried not to hope too hard that she wouldn’t get mad. Her eyes darted all over my face and dress. Her lips pursed and she shook her head.
‘Poor little doll,’ she murmured. She leaned over and kissed my hand, ‘If dolly has a headache, or breaks an arm or two, just kiss the place to make it well, that’s all you have to do.’
She left the room then returned with a laundry basket. She helped me remove my dress and dropped the soiled material into the basket then led me to the bathroom where a hot bubble bath was running. The mirror steamed up and the soothing fragrance of orange-blossom saturated the warm air.
‘This is a sign,’ she said darkly, whether to me or to herself I couldn’t be sure.
She checked the temperature of the water then helped me step into the bath. Immediately, my muscles relaxed and the cramps in my tummy eased.
‘Keep your hand out of the bubbles,’ she instructed, her tone gentle.
I watched her leave the room. Mother was not furious. She was being loving and kind. Mother would never lie to me.