by Abby Davies
After a beat, she asked if we could play I Spy again, but I couldn’t speak.
I mumbled that I had to go back to my room then staggered across the landing. Inside my bedroom, I hurried over to my bed, slid a trembling hand inside my pillowcase, pulled out the newspaper article and read.
Sunday, 5 June 1966
Girl, Three, Goes Missing in Salisbury
Police are searching for a missing three-year-old girl who they suspect was abducted in a supermarket near her home.
Polly Dalton was last seen on Saturday afternoon, standing beside a red car in Sainsbury’s car park. The missing girl’s mother, English teacher, Jane Dalton, 25, said she realized her daughter was missing when she reached for her hand in the supermarket and she wasn’t there. ‘I was talking to an old friend and took my eye off Polly for a second. She must have wandered off when I wasn’t looking.’ Polly’s father, veterinarian Peter Dalton, 27, was at home when the incident took place.
Local shop assistant, Rebecca Birch, 16, said she saw a little girl matching Polly’s description: ‘She was standing next to a red car. I think she was talking to someone in the car, but I couldn’t see who it was.’
Police said they were becoming ‘increasingly concerned’ for the missing child’s safety and have deployed a large number of officers to investigate the disappearance. Detective Chief Superintendent Frank Jones said his officers were following a number of lines of enquiry: ‘Salisbury police have launched an intensive search and criminal investigation into the abduction of three-year-old Polly Dalton. Polly was last seen in Sainsbury’s car park at around 2.30 p.m. We are obviously becoming increasingly concerned for her safety and are asking for anyone with information to please contact us.’
Hundreds of residents were said to have joined the hunt for Polly on Saturday with many continuing their efforts overnight. As news of the apparent abduction broke, around 200 people gathered at Salisbury Cathedral to help in the search for the missing girl.
Petrol station owner Tanya Khan said she re-opened her station on Saturday night to help efforts to find the missing child. Khan said: ‘My father called to ask if we would open so people could get petrol to help in the search. Locals are out in full force.’ She said some people had returned home overnight, but were planning to resume at 6.30 a.m. ‘It just shows the community spirit of the town and how people get together in a crisis to do anything they can to help.’
Police released two pictures of Polly and urged anyone with information about the child’s disappearance to come forward. Salisbury residents have also put up posters of Polly around the town appealing for information.
Harry Taylor, who works at the Haunch of Venison on Minster Street, said the pub was empty on Saturday night with many people joining the search. ‘All the locals are looking for her,’ he said, adding that police officers were ‘everywhere’ and they were also searching cars.
The air in my room seemed to close in around me, making it difficult to breathe.
I frowned at the black-and-white photograph of the little girl. She was smiling. She looked so happy. Even though the photo wasn’t in colour, I could tell that this little girl had fair hair. She also had a small button nose and a heart-shaped face. And she wore the dress with the label sewn into its collar.
Chapter 14
Mother didn’t come to see if I was all right. She didn’t call me for dinner either, so I had nothing to eat and spent the entire night trying to convince myself that the article and the things Clarabelle had told me meant nothing.
I would not look at the article again. Even thinking about the words on that yellowed piece of paper made my heart drum, yet they were all I could think about.
The next morning I stayed in my bedroom, half-hoping Mother would call me down to paint me, half-hoping she would leave me alone. She didn’t call me. At midday she left the house and I snuck downstairs into the kitchen to make myself a sandwich. My movements were robotic, my mind dazed with tiredness and I jumped when the strange sound came. I whipped my head towards the blinds and hurried across the room, heart thudding. There was definitely something out there. Out in the back garden. Mother had driven away, so it wasn’t her making the sound, which made me begin to wonder. My mind went to a dark place so quickly I surprised myself. I shook my head and put my ear to the blinds. I listened. The sound was half-banging, half-crowing, like some injured animal was out there in the other world alone and in pain. I looked at the kitchen door, thought about the newspaper article. I thought about the bread crusts. Shook my head again. No. It wasn’t what I thought it was. Mother was innocent. She had gone through a horrible childhood, which explained her moods. No one who had a troubled childhood was ever at peace. I had learned that from books. Even though most of what I read was made up, there was a lot of truth in it. I knew that as well as I knew the mole next to my right eye.
The sound stopped. I listened some more. Heard nothing. I looked at the kitchen door again.
No. Trust Mother.
She told you she rescued Clarabelle from Utopia.
So?
She’s lying, obviously.
Maybe she made a mistake.
I turned away from the kitchen door, picked up my sandwich and went upstairs. At my little white desk, I ate ravenously, unable to stop picturing the black-and-white photograph of the three-year-old missing girl.
I would have been three years old in 1966.
The missing girl was called Polly Dalton.
The blue dress had the name Polly Dalton sewn into it.
I shuddered and glanced at my bedroom door. An idea was forming and solidifying and making itself hard to ignore. Mother wasn’t around, which meant, if I wanted to, I could sneak into her bedroom. Clarabelle was as quiet as a mouse, fast asleep no doubt behind the locked door of the spare room. The cottage was quiet too, unnervingly so.
I stood and left my bedroom. Every step I took sounded like I imagined an elephant’s would. The nerves beneath my skin quivered and twitched, quivered and twitched.
I wondered where Mother had gone, how long it would take her to reach the closest house or shop. I pictured her smiling face as she had hit me, then I crossed the landing and stood outside her bedroom. This was forbidden territory. Under no circumstances was I allowed in this room. I’d probably find the door was locked, like the one to the spare room.
Cursing my trembling hand, I turned the doorknob and pushed. Nothing happened. I tried pulling but the door remained shut. Locked. Locked to keep me out. Locked, maybe, to keep whatever she had in there hidden from me.
I stood and stared at the door. I needed to get in that room. Mother wore the keys on her belt, but maybe, just maybe, she had a spare key.
I ran downstairs and darted into the living room. I scanned every part of the gloomy room and latched on to Mother’s immense bookcase. With quivering fingers I pulled out every book and looked behind and between them. When I couldn’t reach, I dragged the rocking chair across the room and stood on it to search the upper shelves.
The hunt took ages and I didn’t find anything.
Next, I hunted high and low in the dining room – again, nothing.
Feeling almost dizzy with frustration, I dashed into the kitchen and searched every cupboard and drawer. I even looked inside the oven, but there was nothing to find.
With a long sigh, I trudged out of the kitchen and stopped outside the cupboard under the stairs. Perhaps she kept a spare set of keys in there …
I glanced at the front door and listened. Outside, everything stayed quiet. She wasn’t back. Not yet.
I doubled over, pulled open the door and stuck my head inside. It was too dark to see much, so I turned on the hall light and opened the cupboard door as wide as it would go.
Mother kept her cleaning products in there. I scanned the gloomy space, saw a light switch and flicked it. The light flickered on and I spotted a cake tin on a shelf at the very back of the small space. Holding my hopes in one tight breath, I leaned f
orward and grabbed the tin. I gave it a gentle shake. Something inside rattled and my heart seemed to trip over itself.
Resting on my knees, I placed the tin on the floor and bit my lip. What I was about to do was very bad. If Mother found out I’d been sneaking around and hunting through her things, she’d be angry, but if she knew I was about to look inside this tin – something that she’d clearly kept hidden from my sight – she’d be worse than angry. If that was possible.
I stared at the front door and listened and listened and listened. No sound came.
With a shuddery breath, I wiped my palms on my lap then clawed open the tin.
Smack bang in the centre was a wad of money tied together with an elastic band. It looked like nothing else was in there. I frowned and picked up the money; underneath, lay a key. One key. I grabbed it, replaced the money and put the tin back on the shelf at the back of the cupboard.
I looked at the key – it could open any door in the house – the front door, the back door, my bedroom door, Clarabelle’s bedroom door … Or Mother’s door. The chance was slim but not impossible.
I ran up the stairs and approached Mother’s bedroom with a racing heart. Knowing I was running low on time, I slotted the key into the hole and twisted. To my utter shock, the little chamber clicked. I smiled, amazed by this piece of luck.
Trembling, I withdrew the key, turned the doorknob and pushed open the door.
Immediately, the scent of orange-blossom filled my nostrils. I stared at what I could see with the door only partially open: a huge old wardrobe stood on the right-hand side of the room. There was a neatly made double bed whose sheets were pure white. To its left was a small wooden table and to its right a small bookcase. The room was colourless, the opposite of my room. The opposite of the living room with its circles of brown and orange paint all over the mustard walls.
As far as I could see, there were no pictures in Mother’s bedroom either. No pop art. No psychedelic prints. It was strange. Unexpected. Almost like there was another side to Mother I’d never seen before. A side she’d hidden away in this room.
I looked back at the bed with its pure white cover. It was bathed in a glorious pool of yellow light.
I stepped into the room, squinting against the brightness: on the far side of the bedroom was an open window, a window that was not blacked out or boarded up. An open window that allowed beautiful, bright, sparkling, wondrous light to pour unfiltered into the room.
My eyes burned and began to water, but my feet transported me, dreamlike, to the shimmering window. I blinked furiously, willing my eyes to adjust and allow me to enjoy this heavenly sight, but they blurred and tears welled, blinding me. Still, my feet carried me on, past the bottom of the bed, towards the warmth of the glorious sunlight. I could hear birds chirping, smell fresh, clean, rich oxygen which broke through the orange-blossom fragrance, beating it away until there was nothing left but the smell of fresh, sun-glossed air.
For a long time – how long I don’t know – I stood in front of the open window, eyes shielded by my left hand, salty tears freely flowing down my pale cheeks, taking my fill of the outside.
I inhaled deeply and stared in wonder at the view that stretched so temptingly before my eyes: first there was a small front lawn, wild and overgrown with long grass so green it hurt my eyes almost as much as the sunlight. Through this tangle of grass weaved a stepping-stone path, the stones of which were pale grey and made smaller by the long blades of grass. The garden wilderness was closed in by a wooden fence that must have stood only as high as my waist and which looked broken and battered in places. Beyond the fence lay a dirt road, on either side of which stood masses of tall, looming trees. In Mother’s magazines and books – on the rare occasion she had shown me – I had seen these things: trees, grass, bushes, sun, sky, farms, houses, animals. I had pictured them in my mind, but never had I seen them for real. So now I stared and stared, feasting on these sights, delighting in their realness.
The thicket of trees stretched on far into the distance, but beyond the dirt road I could see a road made of some kind of grey stone, and then, far away, a beautiful assortment of different coloured fields which splayed out in all directions, one of which held grazing sheep that resembled little clumps of cotton wool. Beyond the sheep field lay a sea of houses which, from this distance, seemed large enough only to house dolls.
Clouds floated across the sun, giving me some relief. I lowered my arm and stared open-mouthed at the scenery. At those houses in the distance. Eagerness and excitement snapped me into action. If Mother wasn’t lying and she’d made a mistake, I could prove to her that I wasn’t allergic to light, and one day she might let me outside.
I turned away from the window and scanned the rest of Mother’s bedroom. There was nothing unusual at all about the room. The carpet was brown. The bedside table held nothing but a small lamp and a book: Rosemary’s Baby. No pictures hung from the walls. A second wardrobe stood to my right, the door ajar just a touch, as if it was too full to close properly.
Aware that I had wasted precious time, I walked straight over to the wardrobe and pulled open both doors.
For a second, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. But as I continued to stare at the frightening display lining the shelves, my heartbeat quickened and my mouth grew dry.
The wardrobe was full of dolls. Every shelf was lined with them – some naked, some clothed. From the clothes rail hung more dolls. Every single one was tied to the metal pole by her hair.
They dangled there lifelessly. There must have been at least twenty crammed in there. Though every doll was different, they all had one thing in common: every single one had a photograph taped over its face – a photograph of a young woman whose eyes had been coloured in with red ink. Some photographs had been coloured in so forcefully that holes had punctured the paper revealing the dead, beady doll eyes that lay beneath. I recognized the dolls from the photographs I’d found in the attic. These dolls had been on the bed with Mother’s sister, Olivia.
The air was punched out of me. I was suffocating. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t hear. Couldn’t think.
My knees buckled and I fell to my hands and knees. I began to moan. Tears splatted onto the backs of my hands and I gazed at them unseeingly. My teeth found my lip and bit. Hard. Too hard. Blood came and with it the terrible, tearing truth: she was a crazy, mad woman. She had been lying about everything. I did not know her at all.
Chapter 15
I thought back to my earliest memory. It was of Mother and me making a cake together when I was four. I remembered us pretending to be witches and using our wooden spoons as wands and pretending the bowl was a cauldron and the flour and eggs and butter and sugar were lizards’ tongues and bats’ wings. I remembered her smiling, me giggling, us being happy and playing together like a real mother and daughter.
But it had all been a lie.
An immense wave of sorrow rolled through me and I curled up on my side on the bed and hugged my knees to my chest.
For a long time, I lay there, head spinning. I tried to make sense of everything, but there was no sense to be made. Sense was a thing of the past. The present overflowed with chaos and madness.
I sat up and swivelled around to look at the boarded-up window. I picked up the article and brought it right up to my face. Beside the little girl’s right eye was a tiny black dot. My mole. In the background was a house. My house?
I couldn’t get my head round it. She had taken me from my real parents. She had locked me inside this cottage for the last ten years of my life and made me think I was allergic to the outside. Made me believe I was dying.
The pressure in my chest was suddenly unbearable, as if someone was standing on my heart, yet at the same time an immense sense of relief warmed me. I felt guilty for feeling that way, and part of me wanted to scream and smash my fists into the walls, but I didn’t. Instead, I stared hard at the picture of me – innocent, happy me. Polly. I liked that name. No. I loved that
name. It felt … right.
I got under the covers and turned onto my side. My body began to shake uncontrollably and my breathing lost track of itself. Short, sharp, ragged breaths wheezed out of me, and I squeezed my eyes shut and counted down from one hundred. I wanted to call for Mother, but she was no longer my mother. It was becoming harder and harder to breathe. I was hot, too hot.
It will pass. It will pass. Just breathe.
I pushed off the covers and counted down from one hundred again and again and again.
Finally, breathing became easier. I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. I tried not to think about all that I had discovered, but my brain reeled with it.
I was Polly Dalton. I was not allergic to the outside. If I walked out of the house right now, I would not die. I was not on the verge of dying. That was a lie meant to … I swallowed drily … control me. Everything was so wrong, and yet everything suddenly seemed so horribly right. So real.
Horror and grief tied me to the bed. My heart throbbed and my head banged. Staring at nothing, I curled into a ball, dug my nails into my palms and moaned as the agony of loss sank in and ripped me apart.
Chapter 16
I finally dragged myself off the bed and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of my bedroom mirror. My eyes were so swollen I could barely see. In my head, I replayed the moment Mother had slapped me and told myself I should be relieved she wasn’t my real mother. A real mother wouldn’t do the things she had done to me. A real mother wouldn’t tell their daughter they were dying when they weren’t. Yet loss wedged itself in my chest, stubborn as a nail, and refused to budge. I had lost the only mother I had ever known. I had lost my real parents, and they had lost me. They had lost me when ‘Mother’ had taken me away. But why? Why had she taken me from my real parents? Why? Why? Why?
The question was on repeat in my head, circling and circling and circling, like the vicious hornet that got trapped in the cottage one summer. It didn’t make any sense. I felt like I was going mad. But she was the mad one. She was the one who didn’t make sense. People didn’t take other people’s children. It was wrong. It was worse than wrong. It was crazy and not something a human being did. People were supposed to have their own children and then look after them themselves, not steal someone else’s baby.