by Abby Davies
Dust matted the carpet. I sneezed and wriggled my upper body underneath. My hand connected with the box and I managed to pull it closer. I wriggled back out and pulled the box with me.
Hot from the effort, I swiped my brow, sat cross-legged and tried to open the box, which was made of bronze and very simple with no markings or decoration at all. At first, the lid seemed glued on, but after a few moments, I managed to use my nails to prise it open.
Inside the box was one photograph and a very small piece of fine, black hair. Nothing else. I picked up the picture and brought it close to my face. The photograph was of a baby with its eyes closed. There was no colour in the baby’s face. It was wrapped up in a pale pink blanket.
I turned the photograph over. On the back in Mother’s writing it said Annabelle. 3.3lbs. Born 1/3/63. Died 1/3/63.
Gently, I replaced the photograph in its box. I looked at the tiny curl of hair. It must have belonged to the baby. Mother’s dead baby. I shook my head. Mother had given birth to a baby girl? Was that why she’d done all of this – because her little girl had died? I touched the black curl. The hair was so soft, so silky. My heart hurt for the baby, for me and Emma and Olivia, but also a very tiny bit for her. For Mother. A sick feeling swirled in my tummy as I wondered about the baby’s father. Had Mother been attacked too? I closed my eyes, unable to look at the little curl of hair. I didn’t want to feel sorry for her. I wanted to hate her.
I shut the lid. She had suffered, but she had made me and Olivia suffer. It was all so complicated that my brain hurt trying to understand it. Maybe I would never be able to understand it. But at least she wasn’t trying to hurt me any more. She was alone in the woods, bleeding and hurt.
Focus on finding the key. Stop thinking about her.
‘Any luck?’ Olivia’s voice was just loud enough for me to hear.
‘No. Not yet,’ I shouted.
‘Me neither,’ she said, ‘I’ve looked everywhere.’
‘I still need to check the rest of her room. I’ll come get you and you can help me look in here.’
I left the box on the carpet beside the bed and pushed myself to my feet. Swaying with exhaustion, I left the room and helped Olivia out of Emma’s bedroom. As we crossed the landing, I stopped mid-step.
‘Did you hear something then?’ I said.
Olivia frowned. She was so pale she could have been a ghost. ‘No. I don’t think so.’
We hovered on the landing and listened for another minute. There wasn’t any sound. I looked at her and shrugged.
She shrugged back and said, ‘We’re paranoid.’
I helped her into the room and onto the floor in front of the small bookcase beside the bed. She began pulling off books with difficulty, using only her uninjured hand, her pace slow, every movement a struggle. Her other hand rested limply on her thigh.
‘Are you sure you can do this?’ I said, forcing myself to approach the wardrobe.
She nodded, her mouth a grim line.
I took a deep breath and stared at the wardrobe. The doors were closed, but I’d seen what hung behind. I didn’t want to see them again. I didn’t want Olivia to see Mother’s twisted dolls either. I hoped she would be too focused on searching the bookcase to look around.
My hands found the doorknobs and began to pull. A thud made me turn around. Olivia was lying on the floor. I dashed across the room. I couldn’t see her chest moving. I put my ear to her chest and waited.
After what seemed like for ever, I heard her heart beat. With a huge sigh, I laid her down on the floor so she was in a less awkward position then stared down at her unconscious body, not sure what to do next. I wondered how long it would take for her to wake up. If I found the car key, I needed her to be awake.
I pulled a pillow off the bed and slid it under Olivia’s head. Her skin was cold and clammy so I covered her with the duvet then hesitated, lost and confused, not sure whether to keep looking for the key or try to wake her up. I knelt back down and gave her a gentle shake but she didn’t stir.
Thinking a little water splashed on her face might help to wake her, I left the bedroom and stepped onto the landing, pausing at a creak.
Dread seized my neck. I froze. Listened as another creak and then another cut the quiet in half like a blade.
Unable to stop myself, I went to the banister and peered over the top.
Chapter 52
It was her. She was almost at the top of the stairs, dragging herself up on her hands and knees, her face veiled by hair and blood.
‘Mirabelle,’ she rasped.
Her arm flashed out and shot between the banister poles; fingers latched onto my ankle and wrapped around the bone. I cried out and tried to yank my leg out of her grasp but she clung on, holding with inhuman strength, nails scouring my skin like claws. She thrust herself up, releasing my ankle and swiping out with her free hand. I darted back, but she seized a handful of my dress and pulled me over the banister on top of her.
I screamed and fell, and our foreheads collided. My head rang with pain as I rolled down the stairs and smashed into the wall. She shrieked and scrabbled down the stairs on her bottom, using her hands to push herself down, movements jerky but fast as a spider. I stared up at her distorted face, unable to move as pain shuddered through my back – and then she was on top of me holding the knife above my chest, her eyes wild and split with streaks of blood.
I looked at the knife and a crazy idea popped into my head. She was not the woman I’d thought she was, but I knew what drove her.
Looking into her eyes, I said, ‘Who’s Annabelle?’
A puzzled look washed away some of the wildness. She blinked a few times, but didn’t move the knife. In a soft voice, she said, ‘Annabelle. Poor, sweet, little Annabelle.’
‘Who is she?’
‘My baby. My first little doll.’
‘Where is she now?’
Her eyes grew wet. She frowned. Her chin trembled. One of her tears hit the blade of the knife.
‘Why have I never met her?’ I said.
Mother tipped back her head and blinked rapidly. Her chest rose and fell with abnormal speed. ‘I can’t. I can’t talk about Annabelle.’
‘Why? Did something happen to her?’
Her chin snapped down and she stared into me, her eyes intense and dark. Suddenly, she was present, more present than before. More present than ever. I held my breath. Glanced at the knife.
In the gentlest voice I’d ever heard she said, ‘Annabelle was my little doll. My real little doll. But she’s dead now. She’s dead and buried and gone for ever.’
I swallowed. ‘I’m sorry.’
She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to the side. ‘You’re not my little doll. You’re not my Annabelle. She’s all I want. She’s all I ever wanted. Don’t you see?’
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.
Tears dribbled down her cheeks and mixed with her blood.
In the not-too-far distance, sirens sang, their song the most beautiful sound I had ever heard, but it was going to be too late.
‘I’ve done terrible things,’ she said flatly.
Tears poured down her cheeks. I stayed silent.
‘All I ever wanted was someone to love me back,’ she said. She was distant again, frozen in a faraway time, looking beyond me into the past, maybe far back into her terrible childhood.
I tensed as she jerked down and brought her face an inch from mine. She smelled awful, her breath like rotten fruit.
‘Please, don’t—’ I said.
But she had already made up her mind. I saw the decision painted there in tears and blood. Her blood, my blood, Olivia’s and Derek’s and Dot’s and Patrick’s blood. She’d hurt so many people, and now she wasn’t just going to hurt me. She was going to kill me. I was never going to see my mummy. I was never going to see my daddy. I was going to die here, inside this wretched, never-ending gloom never having experienced a proper life. A life lived in colour with people w
ho loved me.
I closed my eyes, held my breath and tried to imagine my parents. They were all I wanted to see, but no matter how hard I tried all I could conjure up was the face of the grandfather clock or the deep darkness of the hole in the back garden. And that was my final vision: blackness – a long black tunnel with no light at the end.
A tear hit my eyelid and I opened my eyes and flinched as she brought the knife down whip-fast and placed it on the ground beside my face. I frowned, confused and frightened, as she pushed herself off me. She didn’t look at me or say anything, just drifted away with limping steps towards the kitchen.
I raised my head off the floor, terrified to move in case she came back, but she walked into the room and closed the door.
I listened and listened and heard a drawer scrape open, heard a chair scrape across smooth, hard tiles. A moment of silence followed and then I heard her gasp. She gasped once more and then all was silent again. Nothing broke the quiet apart from the grandfather clock striking the hour.
Unable to believe it, I scrabbled to my feet, reached for the front door and stepped outside.
Chapter 53
It was the first sunset I’d ever seen. I sat in a police car and watched the sky through the open window. The sky was layered. At the top ran a light, brilliant blue layer. Beneath the blue ran a delicate lavender, followed by the most magical shade of light pink. It looked like someone had taken three brush strokes to the canvas above and painted the sky in three separate sweeps of colour. It didn’t look real. Sitting in the police car on the dirt road outside the cottage looking up at the sky didn’t feel real.
Olivia waved at me. She was being rolled past in an ambulance bed. I wondered if Mother had been telling the truth about Olivia getting her expelled. Knowing I would never know, I waved back.
The ambulance drove away. Policemen rushed around the cottage like giant ants. A policewoman stood in front of the car window, trying to hide the next bed that rolled past, but I could see the black body bag anyway. I knew it was Patrick. I had told a policeman where to look for him. I remembered my promise to find Patrick’s family and tell them what he’d done for me and Emma. Another ambulance approached and Patrick was put into the back of the huge vehicle and driven away.
‘You OK?’ the policewoman asked. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘I’m kind of starving, to be honest, so yes, please.’
She smiled. ‘I think I’ve got some crisps in the glove compartment. Hang on a second.’
While she rifled inside the front of the police car, I turned my attention back to the sunset. It was beautiful and if a thing could be perfect, this sunset was. There was magic in those colours.
‘Here you are,’ the policewoman said, handing me a packet of crisps.
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ve just been told we need to leave the scene now. Make sure you strap in.’
A memory of Mother strapping me in when she’d driven me back to the cottage made me flinch. I focused on my crisps, on the strong, salt and vinegar crunch of every bite.
As the policewoman started the engine, I swivelled in my seat to look out of the back window. Mother’s body was being wheeled into view. One of her hands was visible. It hung down the side of the bed. Blood covered her wrist.
I spun round to face the front and my eyes met the policewoman’s in the small mirror.
‘I’m sorry you saw that,’ she said.
‘It’s OK. I’ve seen worse,’ I said. And I had. I hesitated, then said, ‘There was a woman called Dot and a man called Harold who—’
‘They’re fine. They’re both fine. Mrs Bancroft sustained a minor head injury, but she’ll make a full recovery. Mr Bancroft had a flat tyre, which was why he didn’t return to Greenfield House for so long, but once he returned he was able to get his wife to a hospital and report the fact that you’d been taken.’
I exhaled, pleased beyond words that Dot was OK. I was scared to ask about Emma but I needed to know. I couldn’t bear the not-knowing any longer. I exhaled, took a deep breath. ‘She took another girl too but she got away. Emma—’
‘Emma’s fine too. She’s an extremely brave little girl, just like you. She saw someone going for a run and asked him to take her to the police station. She told us about the knacker’s yard and described the woods and the general direction the two of you had come from. It didn’t take us long to find this place.’
‘Was she hurt?’
‘Other than a few scrapes, no. She’s at home with her family, safe and sound, all because of you.’
I smiled. Emma was OK. She was safe. She was with her family.
I wanted to ask more questions but was too choked up to speak.
‘Would you like the radio on?’
I caught the woman’s eyes in the mirror and nodded.
She turned it on and for a moment I was seized by the terrifying idea that the Eagles’ music would come on, but it wasn’t them. The radio man introduced a song called ‘Somebody to Love’ by Queen. I liked it.
My mind tried to return to when Mother and I had danced, so I stuck my head out of the window and looked at the fields and the sky and the wide, open space of the outside. Cool air rushed at my face, soothing my aching head. The policewoman passed me back a can of something called Coca-Cola that I had never tasted before. I liked that too even though it made my teeth feel sticky.
We drove through countryside, past sheep and cows and beautiful sleek brown horses. I saw a few rabbits and more fields and more trees and bushes and a stream and then I saw houses, and more houses and I realized we were in an actual village or town. The policewoman said something but I didn’t hear her. I looked down at my cleaned, bandaged hands and watched them shake. I was beginning to feel nervous and cold, so I wound up the window and let my head lean back against the padded headrest. Tiredness dragged me down and I fell into a heavy, dead sleep.
‘We’re here,’ the police officer said.
I opened my eyes and looked out of the car window at a big building called Bristol Royal Hospital for Sick Children. I didn’t like the name of the hospital. A shiver ran across my neck and I snuggled down into the blankets that the policewoman had piled around me. I stared at the huge, ugly, brown building and tears swam in my eyes. I didn’t want to go in there. I didn’t want to be inside. I wanted to be in the outside. I wanted to be free.
The car engine cut out and the radio went dead, cutting a slow, sad-sounding song in half. The policewoman told me to stay where I was and got out of the car. I closed my eyes and pulled the blankets up over my head. I wanted to stay where I was. Good luck to whoever was going to try to get me to go into that horrid building.
I heard the door next to me click open.
‘Polly? Polly, it’s OK. There’re some people here you need to meet,’ said the policewoman, her voice thick as if she was trying not to cry.
I stayed hidden, safe in my blankets, taking strange comfort in my self-inflicted darkness. The blankets were warm and soft and they smelled like soap. I squeezed my eyes shut. There was a moment of silence then I heard a woman’s voice. A different voice.
‘Polly? Baby? Is that really you?’
My heart somersaulted. I recognized something in that voice. My brain seemed to click awake at its sound. Slowly, I unpeeled the blankets from around my face and stared at the fair-haired woman standing next to the police officer. She inhaled sharply. Silent tears spilled down her cheeks.
‘Polly? Oh my goodness. My little girl. My baby.’
She held her hands out to me. Her arms were shaking. Her whole body was shaking. She smiled, chin trembling, her eyes exactly like mine.
Behind her stood a man with light brown hair. He was crying too. He sank to his knees and stared at me, his eyes wide and shiny with tears.
‘Polly? My sweet Poll?’ he said. He could barely control the tremors in his voice.
The policewoman smiled and stepped back.
I looked from the lady to the man.
A memory stirred – a memory of the three of us playing in a carpet of sand somewhere warm and bright.
I stared at them. My MUMMY and DADDY.
Tears made me blind, but they were happy tears. The happiest tears in the world.
‘Mummy? Daddy?’
Without a second thought I tore off the blankets and threw myself into my mummy’s chest. Her arms wrapped around me and she held me and rocked me. She whispered my name over and over again. Her voice was so soft, so full of love. She kissed my cheek and stroked my hair and told me she loved me more than anything in the whole world and she would never let me go again. She felt and smelled so familiar it was like I’d known her all my life. I buried my nose in her shoulder and breathed her in.
Another pair of arms wrapped around me. These were firmer and stronger, and I knew they belonged to my daddy.
A light tapping sensation on my head made me look up and I found myself staring into the eyes of a little boy with blond hair.
Without letting go of me, my mummy said, ‘Polly, this is your little brother, Jake. Say hello to your big sister, please, Jake.’
The little boy patted my head again. He grinned at me revealing two missing teeth.
I smiled back. I couldn’t believe another dream had come true. I had a little brother. I was never going to feel alone again.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Jake. I like birds. Do you like birds?’
I looked down and grinned. In one hand he held a small, cuddly robin.
Acknowledgements
This book exists as it is because a lot of brilliant people helped to make it happen.
I want to start by thanking Debbie Taylor and her team at Mslexia Magazine along with Will Mackie from New Writing North, whose novel competition and subsequent pitching party gave me the chance to pitch this story to the wonderful Jessica Sinyor at A. M. Heath, who passed my work on to my incredible agent Euan Thorneycroft. Without Euan’s passion, expertise and wisdom, Mother Loves Me would not be here. He is amazing – and so good at dealing with neurotic writers like me!