by Lucy Dawson
‘Yeah, well I can’t really blame him for that,’ Adam says quietly. ‘She’s beautiful and she worshipped him. He’s a decent bloke, but he’d been shut up in an all-boys’ school. It was a done deal. To hear she’s genuinely been waiting for seventeen years for him to come back though?’ He closes his eyes briefly. ‘That’s so very sad.’
I reach up my sleeve for a tissue. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say quickly, dabbing at my eyes. ‘This must be so painful for you too. It’s all just…’ I trail off. ‘She really believes she’s brought him back here!’ I begin to sob, and Adam frowns, worried, and leans forward again, placing a comforting hand on my arm.
‘You’re exhausted, Eve. Today has been so stressful. I’m not surprised you’re this upset.’
‘I’m sorry! Susannah Vaughan came to the house earlier and had a go at me, too. She said…’ I hesitate, but I feel so dejected and so desperate for someone to tell me I’m not a bad mother and that Susannah Vaughan is the bitch here, not me – I blurt it out anyway. ‘She said she helped Izzie get rid of Timothy’s baby. She even made her have a DNA test to prove it was his! Can you believe that?’
Adam freezes. ‘Izzie was pregnant?’
I regret telling him instantly. He has turned ashen.
‘I shouldn’t have told you.’ I am suddenly wracked with guilt as he removes his hand. ‘Izzie didn’t want to tell either of us. This was very, very wrong of me. Timothy doesn’t even know.’
‘There was a baby?’ I can see the disbelief all over his face.
‘It was that same summer. He ended it with Izzie just before he went to university, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ Adam says automatically. ‘After a séance we did together at Fox Cottage… it was nothing – just a kids’ game,’ he adds quickly at the sight of my face. ‘Timothy has a very overactive imagination. Always has. He got spooked and dumped her. A baby… oh Izzie…’ He shakes his head again and covers his mouth, stunned.
‘You know what, Adam?’ I say suddenly, standing up, appalled at myself and desperate to do something, anything, to atone for such a hideous indiscretion. ‘I am going to go and get those bloody dolls for the poor girl. Will you wait here for me? She’s gone to bed anyway; I won’t be more than five minutes. And when I get back, I’m going to work out what the hell I’m going to do about all of this. I can’t let her carry on with this witchcraft nonsense any more. It’s past being a harmless hobby. It’s becoming dangerous.’
‘I honestly don’t think she’d hurt anyone.’ He looks bewildered. ‘She—’
‘I mean dangerous for Isobel, as in, it’s unhealthy. I don’t believe in it – not for one second.’
‘I’m sorry, I misunderstood. You should get the dolls if it makes you feel better and perhaps it’s advisable that the Vaughans don’t find them in any case. Is she locked in?’ He nods at my wrists.
‘No, so just be aware she might come downstairs.’
‘Of course. You go.’ His eyes are still wide with shock. ‘I’ll look after her.’
The cold makes me more alert as I march down the street and start to wake up a bit. The faster I walk and the angrier with myself I become – I should not have told Adam about the baby – the more defensive I also begin to feel. I’ve moved a whole house on my own today, with no help from anyone else bar Adam taking Izzie out and the men I’ve paid. I’ve unpacked at the other end. I’ve been confronted and verbally assaulted by my former lover’s wife. I’ve recovered my daughter from our old house and discovered her ‘witchcraft’ is most definitely escalating out of control and now, now I’m going to go and remove voodoo dolls from a chimney. You couldn’t make this up.
I laugh out loud in desperation, but all I can hear are my footsteps and my breath becoming shorter. I round the corner and pass the back gate to Fox Cottage, before marching right up to the front door and knocking. I wait, but there is no answer. Their car is still here, so they are blatantly in. I tut angrily. I know exactly what they are doing right now: peeping from behind a curtained window – there are some new ones hanging in the small sitting room and the upstairs left bedroom which I suspect is now theirs – and deciding to ignore me.
The thought of this makes me furious. Trapped in this house for the best part of thirty years, and now I actually need to get in, I can’t. I step back and look at it. Nothing. I know you’re there!
Well, I’m not having this. I’m not coming back again for these bloody dolls. I set off determinedly, this time to the metal back gate. I push in through it and crunch over the gravel of the path, past the back door. I shall appear at the dark dining room French windows, knock on the glass and scare the living daylights out of him and his precious Claire. I’ll take great pleasure in telling them that I knocked on the front door; didn’t they hear me? I smile grimly, but then I glance up and my mouth falls open in shock. They are indeed in my old bedroom that overlooks the back garden, the fields beyond and even our new house eventually – but they haven’t bothered putting curtains on the back window yet, having decided no one can really see them from so far away. Except I can see Claire and Timothy standing there, clearly visible and laughing. She is naked from the waist up and he is hurrying to do up his shirt as she leans forward and kisses him, causing him to lose his balance slightly at which point he reaches out, grabs her and urgently puts his mouth all over her breasts. I exclaim as she lets her head fall back in ecstasy, closes her eyes then reaches her hands up to thread her fingers into her hair as his head moves lower, out of view. She puts her hands on her breasts and I turn away, disgusted.
How she must have laughed at my earnest warning – written me off as a frumpy, crazy old woman with an equally mad daughter… and where is their own child while they are shamelessly revealing themselves to the world like this, might one ask? Who is looking after Rosie while her parents rub my poor Isobel’s face in their happiness?
Furious, I turn and march back round through the garden, twigs snapping under my feet, shoving a low hanging branch of the apple tree out of my way, towards the gate. I cannot believe I was so taken in by Claire. I was right the first time: she’s not sexy, pretty or attractive but men like Timothy are drawn to her because she looks like she will. And obviously does. How cheap.
I arrive at the front door and, angry enough to be unafraid, push my thumb down on the latch. It is unlocked. I let myself into the small sitting room, which is empty and oddly quiet given they are at it like rabbits upstairs – I was expecting a cacophony of distressing sounds. I march over to the chimney hole, reach up into it, and feel around the space. My fingers grasp at nothing and I’m starting to think this is a wild goose chase, until I brush what feels like the edge of a piece of material. I clasp it – pull… and something tumbles down into my hand in a flurry of dust and bits of grit. I remove two small, crudely made dolls, one red, one white – tied together with a ribbon, facing each other, as if kissing. Oh, Isobel!
‘Mrs Parkes?’
I whirl round to see Timothy stood at the bottom of the stairs, shirt undone apart from one button at the neck, jeans on, barefoot and staring at me.
‘Tim? Is someone there?’ I hear Claire shout down, and I quickly raise my fingers to my lips and hold the dolls aloft to show him.
His eyes widen and he calls back: ‘Um, no. I’m not sure. Hang on – I’ll be right back.’ He looks at the dolls, swallows nervously and whispers: ‘What the hell are they?’
Timothy has a very overactive imagination.
I should, of course, be apologising: I am standing in his living room, uninvited – but if you’re going to jump in the water you might as well swim. I draw myself tall and raise a disapproving eyebrow. I am the very epitome of authoritative teachers he has spent the most formative years of his life obeying.
‘You must learn to lock your front door, Timothy,’ I say sternly. ‘It’s foolish in the extreme to leave it open just because you live in the country now. These were still in the house.’ I push the dolls towards him and note that he shri
nks back instantly.
‘Do those belong to Isobel?’
‘Certainly not!’ I retort as if he’s just offended me. Embarrassed, he looks at the floor. ‘I remembered about them at home, a moment ago. They’re supposed to absorb negative energy – become a focal point rather than the people living in the house. A priest who performed a service in here for me recommended we try it as a solution, but I didn’t want your daughter finding them and coming to any harm. They have to be properly disposed of, apparently. The priest was most insistent. It’s probably all rubbish, but you get to a stage when you’ll try anything, you know?’
‘A solution to what?’ he says slowly. ‘What’s been happening in the house?’
‘Nothing really to me,’ I shrug. ‘Izzie is the one who has borne the brunt of it, the poor child.’
‘Tim?’ shouts a voice from upstairs. ‘Are you coming back up?’
‘The brunt of what?’ He is fixated on me, staring at the dolls in my hands.
I wave a hand, vaguely. ‘No, you’ll think us ridiculous. It probably is ridiculous. Look at me! I’m clutching two dolls that were up the chimney for God’s sake!’
‘When you say a priest performed a service – do you mean an exorcism?’ Pleasingly, he looks as if he’s about to throw up.
‘I don’t want to drag it all up again.’ I deliberately don’t give him a direct answer. ‘But these dolls really are the last of everything. You can put it from your mind now.’
‘Well thank you for coming to get them and thinking of Rosie, that’s kind of you,’ he says sincerely, and for a moment I almost feel a twinge of conscience.
‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you; in every sense,’ I reply and turn to leave. ‘Do take care.’
At least I’ve got the dolls back, that’s all that matters.
As I walk grimly back up the road, however, I pause in the still, night air and turn them over in my hands. They really are horrible, creepy little things. One is obviously the girl; she’s got actual human hair – very obviously Izzie’s – stitched to her head, God help us. The red one is bald, thankfully. I imagine Izzie leaning over a sleeping Timothy holding a vast pair of scissors, and shudder – thank God she didn’t lose the plot that much. I’m suddenly reminded of a dreadful book my parents read to me as a child: Shockheaded Peter – a collection of ten tales mostly about wilful children and the occasionally fatal consequences of such behaviour. A little boy is warned by his mother not to suck his thumb, but he disobeys while she is out, whereupon a tailor with giant scissors appears in his bedroom and cuts his thumbs clean off. I swallow and stare at the small dolls in my hands. Glancing over my shoulder to check no one is around, I carefully place the girl on the ground, before pulling at one of the stiches on the boy’s head, working them loose and looking inside to see what it’s stuffed with. It seems to be a mixture of herbs. I pull some of it out and lift it to my fingers to sniff, but whatever aroma they once possessed has long gone. I powder the leaves between my fingers and let the dust sprinkle onto the cold pavement, watching some of it catch on the wind and blow away, before shoving the dolls in my coat pocket.
If only it was that easy to affect the will of others. Mind you… I chew my lip thoughtfully at the memory of Timothy’s terrified expression… maybe it’s not that hard.
When I walk back into the new kitchen, Adam is sitting at the table on his phone. ‘She wants you to go up,’ he says flatly, looking up as I appear next to him, before getting to his feet himself. ‘I might make a move now, if that’s OK?’
‘Of course. Thank you so much for all of your help today.’
‘It’s no problem.’ He hesitates. ‘She was insistent that her bedroom door stay unlocked. I said to her, “No one is trying to keep you here against your will, we only ever do it when you ask us to”.’
I sigh. ‘I can’t deny I sleep a lot better when I know she’s safely contained in her room, though.’
Adam looks at me sympathetically, ‘I know. It’s so hard, Eve, but what can we do? She’s thirty-four years old. Maybe she’ll surprise us and have a really good night.’
I try to smile. God bless him for his continued optimism and patience. As he goes to pass me, I take his arm. ‘Hang on in there, Adam. He’s no threat to you.’
He swallows. I see the apple bob in his thin throat. ‘I just want him gone again. All he had to do was stay in the past, where he belongs. It’s not much to ask, really, is it?’
I think about that as I climb the stairs to Izzie’s new room. He’s right – it isn’t. As I walk in, Izzie’s sat bolt upright in bed, waiting for me.
‘Did you get them?’
I shake my head apologetically. ‘I only found one of them, darling. This girl doll. Are you sure there were two there? I looked and looked?’
I pass the single doll over and lay it down on the duvet in front of her.
She picks it up, clutches it to her and strokes the hair, worriedly. ‘But they were together, tied together.’
I don’t say anything for a moment. ‘Well, at least you’ve got one back. Won’t that do?’
‘No. You have to bathe them in salt to remove the disassociations with any living person, then dismantle or burn or bury it,’ she says, distracted. ‘I don’t understand how one was there without the other. It doesn’t make any sense. Maybe someone else found it?’
‘I don’t see how, Izzie? Only you knew they were there.’
She looks at me, frightened. ‘You didn’t destroy it, did you? Promise me, Mum?’
‘I promise,’ I say truthfully. ‘You need to get some sleep, my darling. It’s been a long day. You’re safe and Timothy is safe – I’ve just seen him and he’s fine.’
She smiles suddenly at that – the sweetest, happiest smile. ‘I can’t believe he’s just down the road!’ She shakes her head in excitement and snuggles down under the duvet. ‘Can you turn my light off, please, when you go? Good night, Mummy.’
‘Good night, Isobel. Sleep well.’
Once I’m safely back downstairs, I open the draw to the sideboard to reveal the red doll. I need a better place than this to keep it. Somewhere Izzie won’t find him.
This situation is already everything I worried it was going to be – after one day. What happens next? Now that Timothy’s back, will that be enough for her? Will she be satisfied with worshipping him from afar? I hardly think so. It is only going to become worse and worse – and more painful for her. I cannot allow this disturbance to continue. It must stop here. I pick up the doll. I genuinely do not believe desecrating this scrap of sewn material will have an effect on anything at all – except my mood. And yet the force of my grip sends another puff of cranial dust into the air.
Well now. He’s really not very robust at all…
Twelve
Claire
Tim looks at his watch and chucks the books he’s holding back in the packing box rather than on the shelves. ‘Can we go now? We’ve done another hour. Or shall we stay and pick up where we left off before we were interrupted?’ He grabs my arm as I pass him, but I pull it back.
‘The moment’s passed, don’t you think? I don’t fancy any more neighbours popping round and letting themselves in, halfway through.’ I shudder. ‘Which ones were they by the way? Just so when I meet them I can die of embarrassment that they’ve probably heard us having sex?’
‘I don’t remember his name, sorry. I’m sure he didn’t hear anything at all and I’ve locked the door now, but fine,’ he sighs, ‘let’s just go then, I’m properly cold anyway.’
‘But it’s still pretty early,’ I look around us at the mess of our belongings strewn everywhere around the bedroom, ‘and we’ve got so much to do.’
‘You said let’s wait until we’ve painted in here though.’ He nods at the walls.
‘Well, yes, but we could at least move some of the boxes out so there’s a bit more space to get started tomorrow.’
‘Fine, I’ll put them in Rosie’s room.’ He picks one up an
d I follow him out onto the landing. ‘I just want to go back, I’m tired.’
‘Hang on a minute.’ I change my mind. ‘I might want to freshen up Rosie’s room too. Can’t the stuff just go on the other side for now?’ I nod at the door, beyond which lies the empty three-storey part of the house. I walk up to it, throw back the bolt and yank it open. The vast hallway beyond echoes as I step up and onto the wooden floor, reaching for the switch and blinking as a vicious strip light on the ceiling flickers into life.
‘Bloody hell.’ I wince. ‘I don’t remember seeing “interrogation area” on the particulars. We just need to get ourselves a wooden chair, duct tape and a rope, and we’ll be all set.’
I look back at Tim who has put the box back down and is glancing around the space nervously – peering at the doorways to the two dark bedrooms on our left and right, and the narrow stairway between them leading to the third floor above. ‘I hate this bit of the house,’ he says suddenly. ‘I stayed over once when I was seeing Izzie – I’d had a row with Mum and Dad – and Mrs Parkes put me in that bedroom there.’ He nods at the door to my right. ‘This is going to sound crazy, but I felt the room didn’t want me there. It didn’t mean me any harm, as such, but was just hostile – like I was intruding.’
‘The room itself made you feel like that?’ I repeat.
He nods. ‘It took me ages to get to sleep, but when I woke up in the middle of the night, I couldn’t move – it was like I was pinned down to the bed with something really heavy on top of me. I could see there was nothing there, but I couldn’t do anything. I was terrified.’
I put my head on one side sympathetically. ‘Poor thing. That’s called sleep paralysis. It’s when your mind “wakes up” before your body does and you try to move, but can’t, for a second or two, until it all catches up with itself.’