Frozen Grave (Willis/Carter #3)(37)

‘You did it to yourself.’ Willis took off her coat and draped it over the back of the chair before sitting down.

Bella laughed drily. ‘Not really, darling. I was upset. I was a little angry, perhaps. I . . . I saw the razor and I thought: You are worthless, Bella – you are a monster. You’ve failed the very person you love more than anyone else in the world. You’ve failed your baby.’ She threw herself back onto her pillow and seemed to be gasping for breath. She turned her head and kept her eyes on Willis. ‘That’s you, Ebony, darling. You’ve been my reason for living, my raison d’être. Everything we went through in life we did together.’ Willis started shaking her head; she turned away. ‘What? What? I know I was a terrible mother. I didn’t get diagnosed early enough with my medical problems. No one helped me. No one but you, my little baby girl. You were my world. Remember how you used to ask me to dance. We used to twirl round the room together. Ahhhh, Ebony, my little girl . . . you kept me safe all those years. It was only when you left that . . .’

‘I didn’t leave – I was taken away for my own protection.’

‘They didn’t understand how much I needed you. You were the very thing that kept me under control, kept my illness from spiralling out of control.’

‘I spent my childhood waiting for you to explode.’

‘I know – I know – that’s exactly what you did. You were so steady, so quiet. You were always watching with those big brown eyes of yours – always looking after your mummy. Weren’t you, darling? You were a very special child. My child. My flesh and blood. Born from my womb, brought into the world by my will and desire. Mine . . .’

‘You can’t use a child like that. I was your daughter, not your nurse. Not your possession. It wasn’t right to make me responsible for you. What do you want from me?’

‘It’s only now that I’ve been having so much therapy, after I tried to kill myself.’ She looked at Willis as if waiting to be contradicted. ‘They tell me I have all sorts of conflicting feelings towards you.’ Willis couldn’t hide her smile. ‘What? Why is that funny? I don’t want to feel anger towards you – you are all I have in this world. I need to make my peace with you. Because I do take responsibility for the way my life has gone – to a certain extent. And I do know that you are the most important person in my life and I haven’t always been as fair as I could have been.’

Willis looked at her mother. She would only need to wait. She knew her mother better than any psychiatrist or doctor.

‘That’s why I attacked myself with the razor – I thought: You don’t deserve to live. You know I adore you. You were a tiny baby, I loved you so. I held you in my arms and we danced and danced and people said to me – what a good baby, she sleeps, never cries, but she doesn’t smile, does she?’

‘Bitch . . .!’ the pregnant woman screamed across at them.

She was leaning towards them as far as her handcuffed arm would allow.

‘Shut up, you worthless piece of pregnant scum,’ Bella hissed across at her. She turned back to Willis. ‘You think that I want to be out of that place, that I want to move to an open prison and show how much I’ve learnt about growing vegetables, and you think I want to earn my freedom?’

‘It had crossed my mind.’

Bella laughed. It was a laugh that was high and false.

She turned a sweetened face back to Willis and reached out her hand. ‘You’re no “catch”, you know.’ Willis resisted the urge to recoil.

‘I swear your father was a good-looking man. The best-looking black guy I was ever with. And yet . . .’ She reached out again and pushed Willis’s hair back from her face. Willis held still. ‘I do believe you are growing into a kind of beauty – unique. Yes – I can see it now.’

Her mother’s smile slowly eased.

‘Do you have any memories of your father?’

‘There were so many men in my childhood. Not sure if he was one of them.’

‘What do you mean? I wasn’t some slut who bedded men left, right and centre.’

‘Maybe not, but you loved a fair few.’ The pregnant woman choked with laughter.

‘Well, you can judge me any way you want but I am asking for us to go forward with a new relationship now; put the past behind us. It’s not as if I can do any more harm stuck in there.’

Willis smiled. ‘We both know that’s not true. What about the member of staff who you stole the razor from?’

She shrugged. ‘He was a stupid boy who fell for the oldest trick in the book. He deserved everything he got.’

‘I bet you didn’t share that thought with your therapist?’

Bella didn’t answer. She yawned.

‘You know what? You’ve tired me out – such a shame you are not softening. It would reflect in your face more if you could find that inner peace. Inner beauty.’

‘I’ll go.’ Willis stood and picked up her coat.

‘Yes, go, but come again in two days. I didn’t get a chance to tell you something important. I wanted to show you something, to explain something.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that – with such disdain. That’s what you’ve always done. You forget, I gave birth to you. You came out of my vagina. You were the result of passion and wild sex and fun. Does that mean anything, Miss Sourface?’