by Abby Davies
No. Stop it.
I pushed myself to my feet and leaned against the banister. Mother’s voice floated out of the kitchen and along the hallway to my ears. She was reading to Clarabelle. It sounded like she was reading A Little Princess. A wave of sadness washed over me. Had Mother chosen that book on purpose? A Little Princess had been my favourite book since I was eight. It was Mother’s favourite children’s book too. When I was little she had once told me that she’d often felt like Sara Crewe as a child but, unlike Sara, she had not been allowed to have even one doll. I thought about the pictures in the attic. Mother’s twin sister had been surrounded by dolls. Had all of those dolls belonged to her?
A peculiar thought jabbed at me: was it normal for Mother to paint my face every day? I had never read a book where someone’s mother painted them. I had never really considered the fact that it might not be … right.
No. It’s OK. It’s Mother’s way of showing you she loves you. No one is identical. Look at Sara. She makes friends with a monkey. That’s not normal.
I thought about this. Normal people didn’t have monkeys for pets, but the Indian man in A Little Princess was good and normalish. Being a bit abnormal didn’t have to mean being bad. Dogs were a more normal choice and I had always wanted to ask Mother if we could get a dog, but I had never screwed up enough courage to ask.
I frowned and chewed the inside of my mouth. Sara Crewe was the cleverest, gutsiest girl character I knew and she never felt guilty for her actions. But I wasn’t clever or gutsy. I was boring and well-behaved, just how Mother wants me to be. Except …
A smile tugged at my lips and a spark of victory danced across my guilt: the attic. I had gone into the attic. That was really naughty. Pretty gutsy too. And brave.
Stop. Stop being bad. Mother is hurting. Think about what he did to her when she was little.
But I didn’t want to think about it. Thinking about it brought images into my head that made me have sick, bitter feelings I’d not experienced before. I was glad he was dead, but puzzled. Why would Mother say he was a good man when he had done those awful things?
Shaking my head, my long hair swishing like a mermaid’s, I tiptoed down the stairs and crept along the hallway. The kitchen door stood slightly ajar. Mother stopped reading and explained what had happened in the story so far. Her voice was sweet. Loving and tender. Lilting and expressive. In that moment, I yearned to be her perfect little doll again, to be treated like the only thing that mattered. Special. Her special, perfect little doll.
My heart hurt and my knees buckled. I nearly collapsed. I leaned against the cupboard under the stairs and listened as Mother turned her voice into Sara Crewe’s serious, seven-year-old one and said: ‘“… you see, if I went out and bought a new doll every few days I should have more than I could be fond of. Dolls ought to be intimate friends. Emily is going to be my intimate friend.”’
Her voice turned now into her narrator voice, a voice I knew as intimately as the position of the tiny mole beside my right eye.
‘Captain Crewe looked at Miss Minchin and Miss Minchin looked at Captain Crewe.’
Now Sara. ‘“Who is Emily?” she inquired.’
Now her low, gentle man’s voice. ‘“Tell her, Sara,” Captain Crewe said, smiling.
‘Sara’s green-grey eyes looked very solemn and quite soft as she answered.
‘“She is a doll I haven’t got yet,” she said. “She is a doll papa is going to buy for me. We are going out together to find her. I have called her Emily. She is going to be my friend when papa is gone. I want her to talk to about him.”
‘Miss Minchin’s large, fishy smile became very flattering indeed.’
Mother’s voice changed to the high-pitched one she used when she was excited, like when she’d come back with Clarabelle. ‘“What an original child!” she said. “What a darling little creature!”’
Clarabelle giggled then yawned – a huge, long yawn.
I heard Mother’s chair scrape, the fridge open, liquid being poured into a glass. Glug, glug, glug.
‘Drink your milk then you’re going back to bed for a sleep.’
‘I don’t want to,’ Clarabelle said, her voice small and whiny, ‘I want to go outside and play.’
‘You can’t. I’ve already told you this,’ Mother’s voice was steely.
‘Why? I want to go play. I always go play.’
‘Clarabelle. Look at me. Look. At. Me.’
Clarabelle sniffed.
‘You can’t go outside because it’s dangerous.’
‘Mummy never says it’s dangerous,’ Clarabelle said quietly.
‘Well … Mummy isn’t well, remember? That’s why you live here now. I’m your new mummy. I’m your mother and you must listen to Mother.’
There was silence. I heard the grind of object against object and guessed it was Mother sliding the glass of milk across the table.
‘Now drink this and then go upstairs. Hurry up now, or there’ll be no more stories.’
‘If I wear a hat, can I?’ Clarabelle persisted.
In my head alarm bells belted out a manic tune. I cringed. This could only lead to disaster. Clarabelle didn’t know it yet, but Mother did not like resistance of any kind. Mother always, always got her way.
A horrid beat of silence followed.
‘Fine,’ Mother said.
I jerked in surprise.
The chair scraped; she was getting up. ‘If you want to go outside, go outside. Here, I’ll unlock the back door for you.’
‘Yes!’ Clarabelle squealed. Her chair scratched at the floor. She too was on her feet. I heard her skipping, skipping towards the back door.
The key crunched in the lock, but the door did not open.
‘You may go outside as long as you’re prepared to feel the most pain in the world,’ Mother added solemnly.
The skipping stopped. ‘What do you mean?’ Innocence. Confusion.
‘If you go outside you will get hurt very, very badly. The light will hurt you.’
‘But it never hurt me before …’ Doubt crept into her voice. Fear simmered there too.
‘Yes, I know, but you’re poorly, just like your old mummy. She got ill and gave her illness to you. So now you can’t go outside into the light. Light will hurt you, Clarabelle.’
‘But what if I wear a hat and gloves?’
‘No. It won’t work. The light can travel through clothes and when it does, it will kill you, but first you will go through a huge, horrible amount of pain.’
‘What will the light do to me?’ Clarabelle said, sounding curious rather than upset.
‘It’s too horrible to say,’ Mother said. She locked the door. I heard the jangle of keys.
‘Tell me. I want to know.’
‘I’m not sure I should tell you. You might be too young …’
‘I’m not. I’m five!’
Mother chuckled. ‘Ummm …’
‘Please! Please, please, please, please!’
‘Tell you what. You drink your milk, then I’ll take you upstairs for your nap and I’ll think about it.’
‘Does that mean you’ll tell me when I wake up?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Please?’
Mother laughed. ‘Maybe. Now, drink up like a good little doll.’
Clarabelle swallowed her milk noisily. She yawned again. Footsteps headed my way. I darted across the hallway into the living room and hid behind the small bookcase. They walked upstairs slowly, Clarabelle trying to guess what the light would do to her – will it make my eyes sting? Give me a headache? And Mother saying Oh no, worse than that. Much, much worse …
Crouching down behind the bookcase like a frightened rabbit, I stared unseeingly at the curtains. First the name. Clarabelle. Three syllables. Ending in ‘belle’. Belle meant beautiful. I knew that from Beauty and the Beast. Dolls were supposed to be beautiful. I was Mother’s doll. Now Clarabelle.
Read the article. Read it properly.
No. M
other always tells the truth.
Does she?
I dashed over to Mother’s gargantuan bookcase. It loomed large and intimidating, full of millions of pages, billions of words. Imagination crammed between slivers of leather. Each row was dust-free, the lip of each shelf glossy and dark. Mother wiped and polished the bookcases every day. Even now the scent of wood polish tinted the air. Mother cared for her books almost as much as she cared for her dolls. Us. Clarabelle and me. In that order now, it seemed.
There it was again: Mother’s huge Medical Encyclopaedia. This would be the second time I’d looked in it recently to work out Mother’s words.
To work out if she’s telling the truth.
No.
Yes.
Maybe.
I looked over my shoulder. Mother was still upstairs with Clarabelle. I needed to know. I had to put this devilish uncertainty to bed. If Mother was telling the truth and I was allergic to light – and Clarabelle was allergic to light – it would be in here, in this mammoth book. Newspapers were biased, Mother had taught me all about them. But encyclopaedias were non-fiction. Pure fact.
I wiggled out the large book from the bottom shelf between the Oxford English Dictionary and Roget’s Thesaurus. The book was so heavy that I had to kneel on the carpet and rest it on my knees. My fingers scurried over the pages to the index section at the back of the huge tome. The pages were thin and slippery but smelled comforting. For me, books had a perfume of their own. Warm, musty, exciting.
I’m a bookworm and a booksniffer – a bookdog.
I had a good, long sniff. This encyclopaedia was about ten years old, so quite new, but it smelled good and booky, and I already knew it was full of modern, up-to-date science I could trust.
In the index I found the word I was looking for: allergy. I trailed my finger down the allergy sublist looking for ‘light’, but it wasn’t there. I carried on down and spotted the word ‘sun’. Sun allergy, pages 222–225. I flipped to page 222 and immersed myself in information about ‘Solar Urticaria’ (SU). SU was a rare condition where exposure to ultraviolet radiation or sometimes even visible light brought on a case of hives that could appear in both covered and uncovered areas of the skin. That sounded like the condition Clarabelle and I had! I lingered over the word ‘rare’ for a few moments – disturbed by the idea that rare meant very few people in the whole world could have the condition. The words too much of a coincidence skittered across my brain, but I read on, desperate to know SU’s symptoms and effects.
Areas affected are bare skin not usually covered by clothing; however, it can also occur in areas protected by clothing. Skin regularly subjected to sunlight may only be slightly affected, if at all. Those with severe cases will also have reactions to light bulbs that produce a UV wavelength. Sparsely covered parts of the body can also be affected by this form of light.
In some cases, life with SU can present a plethora of difficulties. Some patients experience persistent itching and pain resulting from the rash (a result of exposure to UV radiation). If large areas of the body are affected, the loss of fluid into the skin may cause headache, dizziness and vomiting. In very rare cases, people may experience a stroke or heart attack due to swelling in the body. Other side effects include bronchospasm and glucose variability problems. If a vast area of the body abruptly comes into contact with the sun’s rays, the individual may have an anaphylactic reaction. However, away from light, the rash will usually diminish within several hours. In severe and rare cases, the rash can take one to two days to fade.
What on earth were bronchospasm and glucose variability problems? And what was an anaphylactic reaction? I flipped to the back of the book again, found bronchospasm, flicked to the right page. I couldn’t really understand what it was, just that it made breathing difficult. I found out that glucose meant blood sugar and guessed that glucose variability meant unstable amounts of sugar in the blood – why that would be a problem I couldn’t guess, but I didn’t have time to look it up. It didn’t sound that bad anyway – definitely not as bad as the broncho thing.
I sensed Mother. Any second now she would come running downstairs and I would have to shove the encyclopaedia back in its place and act normal. Unable to stop myself, I located the page about anaphylactic reaction. That sounded serious. Enough to kill a person if not treated by a doctor straight away. Was this what Clarabelle and I had? Was that why Mother wouldn’t let us outside? I swallowed, flicked back to page 222, hesitated, tore it out.
‘Mirabelle?’
Footsteps thudding downstairs, moving quickly. Urgently.
Mother was coming. She knew I was up to something. And I was. I was being gutsy for once. Breaking the rules. Mirabelle the gutsy had come out to play.
Thud, thud, thud.
My heart flipped. I stuffed the page down the front of my dress and frantically shoved the huge Encyclopaedia back into its place.
Thud, thud.
It got wedged in, half-sticking out of the shelf.
Thud.
I gave it another push. The book slid in an inch but still protruded more than the books beside it.
I swivelled on my knees to face the small bookcase as she strode into the room, eyes aflame.
Chapter 10
‘What are you doing?’ She fired out the words, sharp with accusation.
Trying to find out the truth.
‘Nothing, Mother. Just looking at my books.’
I could feel the crumpled page against my collarbone, thought for a horrible moment a corner of paper was visible out of the top of my dress.
Her eyes darted away from mine. She scanned the room quickly. I held my breath. Her eyes fell on the immense bookcase and she wandered over, raking her fingers through the hair on my scalp as she passed. The touch was not pleasant but not unpleasant. I wanted her to comment on how silky my hair felt, but she didn’t.
‘Shall I go upstairs and study?’ I said. I stood up, glanced at the Medical Encyclopaedia, at its traitorous position. Wished I’d given it a harder shove.
Her fingers danced across the shelf second from top. Tap, tap, tap across Agatha Christie’s spine. She hummed to herself – Eagles, I knew – apparently lost in her own thoughts. I was going to be lucky. Her focus wasn’t on me. It was on her beloved books. I turned to leave the room.
‘Mirabelle?’
I stopped. ‘Yes, Mother?’
‘What were you really doing in here just now?’ Her voice sounded dreamy, faraway, detached. That voice made warning signs bounce off the walls.
My heart skipped. Be brave. Lie.
I bit back rising guilt. ‘I was looking for A Little Princess. I felt like reading it again, but I couldn’t find it.’
She turned and walked away from the bookcase towards me, her steps slow, eyes unfocused.
‘That’s because I’m reading it to Clarabelle,’ she said, stopping to stand in front of me.
She reached out and tucked my hair behind my ear. A tender gesture. I wanted to like it but her touch suddenly felt odd to me. Strangely false. Like the touch of someone trying to comfort a stranger.
‘It’s a great story. I’m sure she loves it,’ I said. ‘Shall I go to my room and study now?’
Eyes still glazed, she murmured, ‘I don’t like to talk about my sister.’
I tensed and looked at her. I waited and held in my questions. If she wanted to tell me more, she would.
In a small voice she said, ‘He gave her everything she wanted. Me, nothing. Nothing but lessons. I did everything I could to please him. Everything.’
I opened my mouth to ask what she meant and stopped myself.
She drifted away from the bookcase over to the grandfather clock. Her fingers traced the clock’s face, leaving smudges on the glass. I walked over and raised a hand to comfort her, to pat her back and soothe her and tell her I was sorry about what she had gone through.
She whirled around and my hand froze in the air.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me abo
ut his lessons? Don’t you want to know what she did to me, Mirabelle?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry, I—’
‘Just go. Go to your room now. I’m tired.’
‘Please, Mother, please. I really want to know.’ I placed my hand on her arm, gently, ever so gently.
She stared at my hand. A frown knitted her eyebrows together like the curtains in my bedroom. She muttered something I couldn’t hear.
‘Pardon?’ I said.
Her eyes were wet. She shook her head and a tear plopped onto the shiny white toe of her shoe.
‘You know, Mirabelle, sometimes I wish I’d never been born,’ she said, staring at the space above my head.
‘Why would you wish something horrible like that, Mother? If you hadn’t been born, neither would I.’
She laughed and looked away, fisting her hand so hard that her knuckles popped out like hazelnuts.
‘How can I make you feel better, Mother? I want to help you.’
She yanked her arm out from under my fingers and walked over to the sofa. She sat down and stared at her knees.
‘Mother?’
‘I’m fine. Go upstairs now, like a good girl.’
I watched her sitting there, so alone. For a moment, she looked like a little girl. Lost and lonely and helpless. I took a step towards her.
Her head snapped up and she glared at me. ‘I said go.’
With a lump in my throat, I tried to walk normally out of the room and mount the stairs at a steady pace. As soon as my foot touched the landing carpet, I hurled myself into my bedroom and shut the door. My hands shook slightly as I withdrew the page from my dress. I sat down at my desk, slid my textbook out of the way and laid the page out on the desktop, flattening and smoothing out the creases best I could. Solar Urticaria. It sounded more like a planet or a star than a rare medical condition. Rare. That word again. It didn’t say how rare – like one in a hundred or one in a thousand – just rare. But how rare was rare?
I re-read the symptoms and flashed back to that moment on the stairs. When I had seen the light, a headache had come then I’d thrown up. Those were two of the symptoms of SU. But … I read the passage carefully. It was only if light touched you that symptoms developed. You didn’t get headaches and sickness from simply seeing the light. Hang on – yes you did – sometimes even visible light causes a case of hives that can appear in both covered and uncovered areas of the skin. Did I get hives? What were hives? I guessed hives were some kind of rash. Yes. That made sense. But I hadn’t been aware of a rash on my skin. There could have been one, but I was too busy throwing up at the time to notice any weird patches on my body.