Mother Loves Me

by Abby Davies

  ‘Polly, can we sing a song?’ she said, smiling up at me.

  I was panting now and my instinct was to say no but the keenness in her eyes stopped me.

  ‘Which one?’ I said, knowing that I did not know many songs.

  ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’ she said and she began to sing.

  Mother had sung this song to me before bed when I was little. The thought was disturbing. Memories of Mother reading me bedtime stories drifted into my head and I crushed them, fighting the strange, sick feeling that accompanied the memories. Sometimes she had been so loving, such a good mother. It had been easy to believe her lies when I was younger, when I was her perfect little doll.

  I joined in with Emma’s song and we ran hand in hand along the dirt road, Mother’s keys jangling in my free hand, my head aching from the light and my toes blistering from my loose slippers. I dropped the keys. I wouldn’t need them any more.

  After a while, we slowed to a walk to catch our breath and Emma sang a song that I had never heard of before which she said was from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – a book of children’s songs or nursery rhymes, I assumed. She let go of my hand and skipped away singing, her tiredness suddenly gone as if the song had given her a burst of energy and happiness. She clearly didn’t know all of the words, so she kept singing the same couple of lines over and over again. I found myself smiling as she skipped ahead, wondering if I would ever feel that kind of happiness again. Would I find my real parents? Were they even still alive? If they weren’t, what would happen to me?

  ‘Emma – can you hear that?’ I said, stopping and straining my ears. Emma carried on singing.

  ‘Emma! Stop!’ I said sharply.

  She turned around, wide-eyed, chest heaving.

  I could hear something in the distance. Something coming from behind us.

  ‘Can you hear that?’ I said.

  Emma nodded. ‘Yes. It’s a car.’

  ‘A car?’ I turned around and looked back the way we had come, heart slamming against my ribs.

  Speeding towards us was a red car. Mother’s car.

  Chapter 27

  My first thought was how did she get out? My second thought was run. I grabbed Emma’s wrist and dragged her to the left, towards the woods, thinking quickly: the car would not be able to go into the densely packed trees, which meant Mother would have to leave the car and follow on foot.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see the car stop, skidding slightly, pale brown dust puffing into the air. Emma and I ran down a steep, grassy bank into the trees. The slam of the car door told me Mother was not going to give up. In my mind, I pictured her sprinting after us, her face twisted with rage, blood covering her clothes, a knife glinting in her hand. I could not be certain she held a weapon, but my gut told me she would not have come unprepared. If she caught up with us, a knife would be the perfect way of persuading us to come along quietly.

  At my side, Emma slipped and stumbled over a thick root. She gasped and cried, slowing down, forcing me to pause to pick her up. Her face was pale and sweaty, her eyes wide with terror.

  ‘Hold on to me with your arms and legs,’ I panted. I was already short of breath and though Emma weighed very little, I was not strong. She clung to me so tightly though that she felt like a second skin. Her small body trembled and vibrated with tension against mine and I could feel her heartbeat thrumming against my chest. I wanted to reassure her that everything was going to be OK, but as I opened my mouth to speak a scream tore through the air behind us.

  ‘MIRABELLE! STOP!’

  Emma jumped in my arms and clung on even tighter, making herself lighter but compressing my lungs. Panting for breath, I darted between the towering trees and leapt over a fallen tree trunk and ran on, using my right arm for balance, wrapping the other around Emma. Obstacles appeared out of nowhere. The woods were as horribly unpredictable as Mother. A huge, random hole appeared in the ground a little way ahead. It was very deep and very wide. Like a large grave. If I hadn’t been looking at the ground, I would have fallen straight into it and I would probably have broken my legs. Or my back. Or Emma’s back. The thought made me even more breathless but I ran on.

  Thorn bushes and spiky leaves scratched and tore at my bare arms and legs and dress. My slippers were long gone, lost when we rushed down the bank. I knew my feet were cut and bleeding. I dreaded to think of the grime being crushed and pressed into my bloodied feet, but my adrenaline surge seemed to have made any kind of pain vanish. That was one piece of luck at least.

  Clouds covered the sun, submerging the woods in shadows and giving my eyes the chance to stop watering. Everything turned a few shades darker and a few degrees cooler. My breaths came in ragged gasps. I knew I could not keep up this pace for much longer. Emma’s arms and legs loosened and she grew heavier, her body dipping towards the ground, her hands pulling on my neck, her body bouncing up and down with every stride I took.

  ‘Hold on – tighter,’ I gasped.

  She responded but not as well as before. She was weakening and so was I. But I could not stop. I could not let her catch up with us. I thought about Patrick and pushed harder. My legs were heavy. I wrapped both arms around Emma and held her against me. My arms protested from the weight as she sank into them. I was going to have to put her down soon and hope that she could run fast enough.

  A low branch came out of nowhere and I ducked just in time, then tripped and fell, throwing out my hands to stop myself from hitting the ground face first. Emma cried out but clung on as we fell. Her back hit the ground though not hard. My arms jarred with the force of the fall. I gritted my teeth and told Emma she’d have to run now. She let go of me and pushed herself to her feet, slotting her hand into mine. We ran. In the distance I could see light penetrating the trees. The woods were coming to an end. Beyond the trees lay a field. A field would be easier to run through – for us and for Mother. But maybe someone would be in the field. A farmer perhaps.

  My lungs burned. Emma was too slow. I considered carrying her again but that would mean stopping to pick her up. Was Mother still following us? Since that last, terrifying scream, she hadn’t made a sound.

  Unable to resist, I glanced back. Mother was nowhere to be seen. I frowned and faced forward. Had she given up? Had she fallen over? Twisted her ankle?

  The thought was like the feeling of hot water on aching muscles but I fought the urge to slow down and carried on running, pulling Emma along behind me. And there was the light – more light – shining through the gaps between the trees. And green – so much green. I could see the field. Not long now until we broke out of the woods into open air.

  But at the edge of the woods we reached a fence topped with silver thorns of wire which ran as high as my waist. I stopped, picked up Emma and heaved her over the fence, lifting her as high as I could to avoid the thorns.

  ‘Keep running,’ I said. She didn’t move. I shouted at her to go and she jumped. Tears sprang to her eyes and her chin wobbled.

  ‘I don’t want to leave you,’ she said.

  I nodded, not wanting to waste time arguing, and carefully placed my hand on a small section of wire between the knots, noticing further up the fence a clump of white wool snagged on a thorn. My heart leapt; wool meant sheep or goats; sheep or goats meant farmers or shepherds or goatherds, like kind young Peter, the goatherd in Heidi; farmers, shepherds or goatherds meant help.

  I swung my leg over the fence, pushing down on the wire with my hand. The fence wobbled and I fell, tearing my other leg on a thorn as it followed my body onto the grass. A sharp pain speared my calf. I looked down, wincing. The vicious metal had ripped a three-inch cut down my leg. Blood dribbled out and down my leg like water out of a tap.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Emma said.

  I nodded and grabbed her hand. The pain was bad, but not bad enough to stop me. I glanced behind me, saw nothing but trees. Emma looked around too.

  ‘She’s gone,’ Emma said quietly.

  I could hear the hope in her
voice, almost like she couldn’t believe our luck. For me too, the idea that Mother had gone was too good to be true, and I knew that we had to keep on running until we found someone. If we stopped for too long and she was still around, she might catch up and grab us. I couldn’t – wouldn’t – go back to that place. And Patrick needed help.

  ‘We need to keep running,’ I said to Emma, ‘OK?’

  She nodded bravely and we ran through the ankle-high grass towards the burning sun.

  Chapter 28

  We ran through the green field into another field and another. The third field was brown and all churned up into one gigantic stretch of dry, hard, rippling soil. Did this mean a tractor had been used on it? Did this mean we were close to making human contact?

  My heart leapt and I thought I might die with hope – and fear. What if the person we met was insane too? How many people in the world were like Mother? If she was crazy, there had to be others. I felt my hope sink as a realization set in: we had no choice. We would have to place our trust in the first person – or people – we saw. I knew this and it frightened me badly. But Patrick had been good. Slow to come round, but kind. He had tried to help us, even though he had struggled to believe my story. Would others think I was making it up too? Would they take us back there? Back to that secret house in the middle of nowhere? I shuddered. Just thinking about it made me want to scream.

  Emma stumbled on the uneven earth and I held up her wrist, preventing her from falling.

  ‘Thank you, Polly,’ she said, looking up at me through misty eyes.

  ‘We’re going to be fine. I promise,’ I said, trying to make my voice calm.

  I had to stop thinking the worst.

  It seemed like Mother had given up. We had escaped the cottage. We were outside. Free. I wasn’t dying any more – not that I ever had been. I was alive and well and going to find my parents and live happily ever after, like they did in fairy tales. Emma was going to go back to her parents and forget all about this. One day she would look back on it all and it would feel like one really bad nightmare. She was so young that she would forget all about this horrible experience. She wasn’t physically hurt. Mother had never harmed her, except for that bruise on her arm the day she took her from the supermarket.

  My heart calmed a little. I pushed damp strands of hair out of my eyes, pasting them to the sweaty hair on top of my head, and shielded my gaze from the sun. Up ahead, at the end of the next field stood a few buildings. I blinked several times, desperate to believe what I was seeing, to clear the stinging tears from my eyes. Was it a dream or was it real?

  Emma jumped up and down pointing, ‘Look, Polly! Look!’

  ‘I know,’ I said, beaming down at her. It was real. A real, bricks and mortar farm. Just like the ones I’d read about.

  Emma grinned at me and squealed. We ran over the mud ripples using the last dregs of our energy, the sun doing its best to slow us down and losing as we flew across the dirt, carried by hope and excitement, driven by need. Anticipation blasted away some of my concerns and I felt my face relax – we were going to find someone who could help us, help Patrick. Someone grown up and sensible and responsible and full of knowledge about what to do in a situation like this. They would call the police and the police would go to the cottage and they would find Patrick and he would still be alive and they would rush him to a hospital and the doctors at the hospital would save him, and then, when I had been reunited with my parents and Emma with hers, Emma and I would go and visit Patrick in the hospital and take him a present to thank him for helping us get away. And Mother would be locked up in a prison and I’d never have to see her ever again …

  We slowed to a walk when we got within yards of the farm. There were three buildings in total. The first building was a small house with a low, tile-topped roof and pebbly walls that were an unhealthy off-white colour. We approached from the back of the house and entered an open patch of barren land upon which stood two other buildings and a big metal cage. There were two large, black dogs in the cage which immediately stood up and pressed their faces against the metal wire, baring their teeth and snarling. A third dog lay on the ground chomping on a huge bone. The dog was attached to the biggest outbuilding by a long, thick, metal chain. It was sturdy and muscular with a sloping face and white fur. It paid us no attention other than a couple of glances, too interested in its bone to bother with us. I couldn’t take my eyes off the dogs. They were fascinating. So real. So alive, so …

  Emma hugged my side and shook her head. ‘I don’t like it here.’

  I dragged my gaze from the dogs and stared where she was staring. The building opposite had a strange, zigzag roof and it was locked, a heavy-looking chain and padlock keeping the doors tightly shut, but the door of the building that the dog was chained to stood open a few inches. In and out of the opening buzzed hundreds and hundreds of flies.

  ‘What’s in there?’ Emma whispered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I murmured, turning to the small house.

  The door was painted dark green and the paint was peeling. A brass door knocker in the shape of a horse’s head stared at me. Next to the door on the wall of the house, scrawled in black pen, were the words Knackers Yard. I hesitated, then raised my hand and banged the horse head three times. We waited, Emma’s hand trembling ever so slightly in mine. Clouds blocked the sun, pooling us in shadow. I knocked again. Louder, more urgently, straining my ears for the sound of footsteps behind the door.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Emma whined.

  ‘No,’ I said, knocking a third time.

  ‘Hello!’ I called.

  I tried the door, barely touching the doorknob, and the door swung inward with a long, high-pitched creak. I took a tentative step forward and peered into the gloomy interior of the house.

  ‘Hello?’ I tried again.

  ‘Maybe we can find a telephone,’ Emma said, her voice smaller than ever.

  I looked at her. Mother didn’t own a telephone but I knew from my books that lots of people did. ‘Yes – where will it be?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The telephone?’

  ‘We keep ours in the lounge at home.’

  ‘OK, great. So if we can find a phone, we can talk to someone who might help us. We can call the police.’

  Emma nodded. ‘Yes. The numbers are nine, nine, nine. Mummy and Daddy teached me them.’

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ I said smiling at her. ‘Come on.’

  I pulled her into the house, leaving the door open behind us. We were in a small kitchen. The counters were a mess; covered with dirty plates and dirty saucepans and mugs, filling the room with an unpleasant smell a bit like sour milk. I flicked a light switch but it didn’t come on.

  ‘The telephone won’t be in here,’ Emma said.

  We left the kitchen and crossed a hallway. I opened one of two doors that led off from the hallway and we entered a room with a bed in it. The bed was unmade and a few pairs of men’s underwear dotted the floor. The room smelled like bad breath and sweaty armpits. There was no window in the room. I grimaced, backed out and shut the door. We tried the next and final door in the house and I smiled, pleased to see a living room of sorts. A black box with a window in it sat on top of a table at the back of the room. A television maybe. Like telephones, I had read about televisions but never seen one. Facing the black box was a brown sofa. Drink cans littered the floor around the sofa and magazines lay on a table in the centre of the room. On the table beneath the window sat a black, square object with numbered buttons on. It had to be the telephone.

  Emma let go of my hand and ran over to the odd contraption. She picked part of it up and waved it at me.

  ‘Telephone!’ she said.

  I walked over and took hold of the black thing she was holding.

  ‘Hold it to your ear and I’ll do the numbers,’ Emma said excitedly.

  I did as she asked, feeling strange, uncomfortable, not sure I was doing it right. Emma nodded at me as I placed one of the
round end parts to my ear and the other round part to my mouth. She stabbed the number nine on the machine three times and I heard something beep. Then I heard a ringing sound. Then a voice, but the voice wasn’t coming from the telephone; it was coming from behind me.

  Chapter 29

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  I jumped and dropped the telephone. It fell to the carpet with a thud, a black, curling wire snaking up from the ground to the machine on the table. Vaguely I registered a crackly voice coming from the ground, but the voice in the room seemed to echo inside my skull.

  I spun around, inhaling sharply.

  A man with a large, round stomach stood just inside the living room doorway. He was dirty-looking, his white vest stained and too tight across his belly. He wore badly fitting jeans and no shoes, only dirty socks with holes in the toes. Long hairs poked out of the top of his vest. Even in the gloomy room I could make out dark circles under his eyes and red blotches on his bulbous nose. His hair was long and stringy and he had a thick, bushy beard. Down by his side he clutched a bulging carrier bag.

  ‘We – er – we—’ I tried to speak, but the man held up one large hand.

  ‘Give it me!’ he barked, lurching into the room.

  ‘Give you what?’ I said.

  ‘Whatever you’ve stole,’ he said.

  ‘We haven’t stolen anything,’ I said, pushing Emma behind me. ‘Please, we just want—’

  ‘Come here!’ he shouted.

  I froze and clamped my mouth shut. He swayed visibly. He let the bag drop to the floor then cursed and bent over, scrabbling to pick up cans as they rolled across the carpet.