Mother Loves Me

by Abby Davies

‘Tell me again,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell me you’re real.’

  I swallowed, mouth dry. How long had she been down here all alone?

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’m real. I promise. I’m real and my name’s Polly.’

  ‘Polly … that’s a nice name …’

  I wanted to ask her a million questions but her breathing told me she was already asleep, so I sat on the bed in the pitch black and tried to take comfort in one fact: I was not alone.

  Chapter 41

  My brain was black. Burnt toast. My eyes were black. Coals, soot, death. My body was black. Mother’s eyes. Black was evil. A colour that murdered other colours. But it wasn’t just a colour any more. It was a killing force. A force that murdered hope – stole from you. I knew what she meant now. Knew something – however small – of what she’d gone through.

  Open-eyed I stared into the nothingness that was somehow all there was. Blackness rolled over me like a never-ending wave. I was trapped inside a belly of black where tar oozed down the walls and slithered across the ground like a giant, black eel.

  Darkness. Black. Too much black.

  The Eagles’ witchy woman song played in my head. Over and over again the same tinny lyrics rotated. With every passing second, my body seemed to float away from my mind, and the only thing that stopped me believing it gone was the mattress under me. If not for that hard slab, I would have thought that I only existed in my head.

  I fought to remember images of the woods and the fields, the greenness, the cows and flowers, that beautiful white horse, but black was a fierce enemy. A thief. A murderer. Like Mother. She was the reason I was here. She needed to …

  ‘Who’s there?’ The woman’s voice cut in. Shrill. Afraid.

  ‘Me. Polly,’ I said quickly, startled into a response.

  ‘Polly? Oh yes … I remember. I’m sorry. Your voice woke me.’

  ‘My voice?’ Had I been speaking? Saying my thoughts out loud?

  ‘You were talking really fast. Saying the word “black” a lot.’

  I heard the mattress springs squeal as she shifted her weight. Felt dizzy with relief. She was awake. Together. We could get through this together.

  ‘I’m glad you’re awake,’ I said, tearful all of a sudden.

  She laughed softly, but there was no humour in it. ‘I’m glad you’re still here. For a moment I thought I’d dreamt you.’

  ‘How long …’ I hesitated, frightened by what she might say. ‘How long have you been down here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? How can that be?’

  ‘Time slips away here. There’s no sense of morning and night. Minutes feels like hours. I sleep a lot, but I never feel rested.’

  I swallowed a lump of mucus. It slithered reluctantly down my throat. ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. What you’re still going through.’

  She didn’t say anything, so I gave her time. I shifted my weight. Numbness had started to creep in.

  ‘How old are you, Polly?’

  ‘Thirteen.’

  ‘Shit.’

  I jumped at the curse.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s fine. Shit,’ I said, testing the word. It felt good somehow, ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

  She laughed. This time her laugh sounded more real.

  ‘SHIT!’ she shouted.

  ‘SHIT!’ I shouted back.

  We giggled. After a short while, we fell silent.

  ‘Will you hold my hand?’ I said.

  ‘Of course I will.’

  Our fingers found each other’s and we held hands in the darkness, silent for a time.

  ‘I’ve never said a swear word before,’ I said.

  ‘I hadn’t when I was your age. I’ve said a lot since then though. Sometimes I scream and curse until my throat’s raw.’

  ‘How old are you?’ I said.

  ‘I was forty when she put me down here.’

  Her answer reminded me that she had no idea how long she’d been held captive. It was a horrifying thought. Would I still be here when I was twenty? Twenty-five? Thirty? Forty? Would Mother really do that to me? I couldn’t bear to think about it.

  Her stomach grumbled. I rested my free hand on my own hollow stomach.

  ‘When did you last have something to eat?’ I said, fear trickling down my spine.

  She sighed. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think she’s trying to starve me to death – then she’ll open the roof and put a cup of water and a few scraps of bread on the step.’

  ‘Does she ever talk to you?’

  ‘No. At first I tried to reason with her, but I don’t bother any more. She’s a cold-hearted monster. Totally insane.’

  ‘Have you ever tried—’

  ‘Escape? Yes. And I nearly died trying.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I must have been here less than a week. I spent my time working out where everything was. Feeling for anything I could use as a weapon, but there was nothing except for a small table. Back then I was still strong enough to lift it above my head – but only just. I hadn’t eaten anything for days and by that point hunger was making me weak.

  ‘I positioned the table on my lap and sat at the top of the stairs for God knows how long, waiting for her to come. I didn’t even know for sure that she would come. I was terrified that she was going to leave me here, let me starve.

  ‘But finally she came. I heard scraping above my head, so I grabbed the table and the moment she opened the roof fully – because that’s what she used to do – I threw the table as hard as I could through the opening, straight at her.

  ‘But her reactions were too quick – she put out her hands, so the table bounced back into my face. The force sent me tumbling down the steps. I landed awkwardly – really awkwardly – and for a while I didn’t dare move, thinking I’d broken my neck. She slammed the roof shut, leaving me nothing but a cup of water.

  ‘I lay there sobbing. I was in agony and too scared to move. After a long time, I got up the courage and managed to pull myself into a sitting position. My neck was very sore but not broken.

  ‘She didn’t bring me any food for a really long time. I thought I was going to starve to death. Since then I’ve thought about trying something again, but I’m so weak and I keep having visions of breaking my neck for real.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. Shit.’

  ‘Did she say anything when she brought you food?’

  ‘Yes. Before she opened the roof she shouted in that she was holding a knife and that if I tried anything, she’d stab me to death then leave me down here to the rats.’

  ‘Rats?’ I said, a sick feeling crawling up my throat.

  ‘Yeah. They mostly leave you alone. They frightened me at first, but I’m used to them now.’

  Rats. Sneaky, hairy, dirty rats. Rats with sharp, yellow teeth and evil, blood-red eyes.

  I shivered. Thought about the cut on my wrist. The blood was congealed now. Did that mean the rats would not be interested or would they be drawn by the scent of quite fresh blood?

  She must have felt my reaction because she said, ‘Don’t worry, Polly. Honestly, you’re a lot bigger and scarier to them than they are to you.’

  Something soothing about the way she spoke made me wonder if she had children. I opened my mouth to ask, then stopped. If she did have children, what had happened to them? They might have been left alone in their home with no one to care for them. They could have starved to death by now – or maybe Mother had done something to them too. Bringing up the subject didn’t seem a sensible thing to do. Not yet anyway.

  ‘Tell me if you don’t want to talk about it, OK,’ she said, ‘but I can’t help wanting to know why you’re down here?’

  She asked the question as if she knew why she was down here. Curiosity got the better of me and I blurted, ‘Why are you down here?
’

  She laughed – this time a bitter, hard sound. ‘Because she’s mad. She’s always been mad.’

  ‘Always been mad? What do you mean? Have you known her for a long time?’

  She didn’t reply.

  Icy fingers of dread unfurled across the back of my neck. ‘Your name’s Olivia, isn’t it? You’re her sister. Her twin sister.’

  She was the girl in the photographs. The girl on the bed. The girl surrounded by dolls. The girl Mother said was rotten to her core.

  The woman inhaled sharply, said, ‘How on earth do you know that?’

  I took a deep breath, unable to believe it.

  ‘Polly? How do you know my name?’ Her voice rushed out of her, urgent and panicky. She let go of my hand and moved closer to me on the bed.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me,’ she urged, finding my shoulders in the dark, her fingers a little too tight. ‘Tell me everything.’

  Chapter 42

  I told her everything, just as she’d asked. As I talked, I was surprised to hear hollowness in my voice, but Olivia made interested noises. Occasionally she gasped or groaned or rubbed my shoulders, while I twisted my hands together in the darkness, glad to be invisible as I tried to slow the storming of my heart. Talking about the past ten years was like inflicting lashes on my own back.

  Why did she have to choose me, choose anyone?

  Because she’s insane.

  There was, I told myself, a reason for her madness. There had to be. People weren’t born evil – were they?

  I sighed. ‘I think her brain’s all muddled up. I think, sometimes, she believes she really did save me,’ I said quietly. ‘She wasn’t horrible all of the time. Sometimes, when I was little, she played with me, baked cakes with me, read to me at bedtime …’

  ‘You’re being too generous,’ Olivia said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re trying to make excuses for her. Trying to understand her. She told you that you were allergic to light, for Christ’s sakes. She stopped you going outside. And now she’s locked you in a hole in the ground.’

  ‘I know …’

  ‘She’s stone-cold crazy, believe me. I know – she’s always been crazy.’

  I said nothing. I didn’t want to force Olivia to tell me anything.

  Silence flooded the space between us, and my eyes grew heavier and heavier. The darkness pressed down and an irresistible sleepiness teased my mind. It was silent for a long time. I began to drift away.

  Olivia sighed heavily. ‘Four. We were four when I started noticing something strange about Catherine.’

  I jerked upright, eyes wide, suddenly alert. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to understand her. Mother. Understand how she could bring herself to do the terrible things she had done.

  ‘Strange?’ Catherine. So that’s her name.

  ‘Yes. Strange. Disturbing. My earliest memory is her twisting the head off a doll then stamping on its face. I think she was angry because she’d been told off. I don’t remember the details. She always had a terrible temper.

  ‘Anyway. We didn’t get on like twins are supposed to. Catherine hated me. I started to feel it when we were probably around six or seven years old. I’d sense her glaring at me from across the room as I sat on the old bastard’s lap. Part of it, I think, was jealousy. I was prettier than Catherine and people commented on it all the time. And the old bastard – almost every day he’d admire me – in front of her. He’d dress us in these ridiculous dresses that looked like something out of a fairy tale, then stand back and say how I looked like an angel. His angel. I suppose I should have picked up the warning signs then, but I was too innocent to believe that adults could be so evil.’

  ‘Did you and Catherine go to school?’ I said, prompting her to continue.

  ‘We did, for a while.’

  ‘What was she like – at school, I mean?’

  Olivia laughed humourlessly. ‘Worse than at home.’

  ‘How?’

  She paused, took a ragged breath. ‘It probably sounds petty but she stole every friend I ever made. And spread nasty rumours about me. Got me in trouble with the teachers. Like I said, it doesn’t sound that bad now, but at the time it made my life hell. She bullied other children too. Eventually so many parents complained that the school expelled her.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Shut her down here for a few days. At the time I thought she deserved worse than that.’

  ‘What was she like when he let her out?’

  Olivia fell silent for a moment.

  She sighed. ‘She was quieter. A lot quieter, come to think of it. And she tried her hardest to please him any way she could. I’d still catch her staring daggers at me, but she spent most of her time – when I was around anyway – with her head in a book.’

  ‘Do you think that’s why she’s like …’

  ‘Like this?’ She snorted. She sounded exactly like Mother. A chill crawled across my shoulder blades.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I mean, being down here for so long. It must be hard to feel OK after that.’

  She snorted again. ‘I’ve no sympathy for her. She didn’t have to do what he asked her to.’

  ‘Didn’t have to do what?’

  She fell silent.

  I swallowed and said, ‘Did he home-school her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like me,’ I said.

  Olivia seemed not to notice I’d spoken. In a flat voice she said, ‘When I was twelve he started to abuse me. It went on for three years until I got pregnant and ran away.’

  She was quiet for a long time. I waited. At last, she squeezed my hand so hard it hurt.

  ‘He never, ever touched Catherine,’ she said, her voice turning hard. ‘But she knew – yet she never said anything to anyone.’

  I gasped, unable to hide my shock. ‘What? She—’

  ‘Yes. Like I said. There’s no sense trying to wrap your head round what she’s done. What she’s done is unforgivable. She’s a monster and if I get the chance, I’ll kill her.’

  Chapter 43

  We sat in silence, holding hands.

  I groped for words but could not find ones that would do. I longed to know what had happened to the baby, but didn’t dare ask. If Olivia felt like telling me, she would.

  My tummy churned with hunger and emotion. Part of me wanted to close my eyes, go to sleep and forget everything she had just told me. Another part felt like tearing something to pieces, bashing my fists into the wall. Olivia had suffered so much cruelty and Mother had done nothing to help her. There was no question in my mind that Mother was crazy, but there was also no question in my mind that she was evil too.

  ‘Shit,’ Olivia said, ‘I shouldn’t have told you all that. You’ll have nightmares for a month.’

  ‘No, I won’t. Don’t worry about me. I want to know everything. I need to know.’

  ‘Thanks, Polly.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For listening. I’ve never told anyone about my childhood. Even when I had the abortion and the nurses treated me like shit, I never told them what he’d done.’

  ‘You had an abortion?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t feel guilty about it. Not when it was his.’

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. Blackness yawned in front of me.

  ‘I’m married now to a wonderful man called Robert and we have twin boys, Andrew and David. They’re three.’

  ‘What are they like? Your sons?’

  ‘Lovely. A handful but lovely,’ her voice cracked. ‘Every time I think about them, my heart breaks.’

  I squeezed her hand and gave her a while to compose herself. Finally, questions pushed themselves off my tongue.

  ‘How – er – how did she find you? What happened?’ I said, desperate to know but equally desperate to take her mind off her sons. She sounded like she was about to break.

  Her voice trembled. She cleared her throat
and sniffed. ‘I was stupid enough to come back here. I don’t know why I did it. I think it was because I finally felt almost normal again. No one told me to do it. I just came. I’d been thinking about doing it for a long time and it was a nice day for April. The boys were at their grandparents’ and Robert was at work. Work finished early, so I drove here. I only live an hour’s drive away.

  ‘I thought she was gone. All these years I’d created this fantasy that she’d moved to France, like she used to say she would when he was out of earshot. And I wasn’t worried about him. I knew he was dead because a friend of his managed to track down my address and send me a letter telling me about the funeral, which of course I didn’t go to. I was glad he was dead. Glad that he didn’t leave me the house or any money. Ecstatic. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Like I was finally free. I think knowing he was dead was what allowed me to open myself up to the idea of falling in love.

  ‘Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. It’s my bloody fault I’m here. My stupid idea to come back, face my fears.’

  ‘So you drove right up to the cottage?’ I prompted, tasting blood from a torn cuticle.

  ‘Yes. I noticed boards on the windows and thought some homeless person might have holed up inside. I didn’t want to go in. I needed to see it; I don’t know why – it’s hard to explain.

  ‘I got out of my car and wandered up to the front door. The same smells – smells of trees and grass and swamp and pollen – began to overwhelm me, and I started to cry. I couldn’t be there. I knew I’d made a mistake – I wasn’t ready. Would never be ready. So I turned to go and her car was pulling up behind mine, blocking me in. I froze. She got out of her car and we stared at each other. I was so surprised that I didn’t speak. She looked so much older. Thinner, haggard, but those hateful eyes were the same.

  ‘I found my voice and told her I was going. Could she move her car? She didn’t reply; just walked towards me with her head tilted to the side in a really odd way and a strange smile on her face.

  ‘I asked her again to move her car, but she ignored me and kept walking over. I asked her to move her car one more time. She didn’t say anything, just smirked. I didn’t know what to do. She slid her hand into her pocket then raised her hand. She was holding a knife.