The Girl Who Cried Wolf(55)

I walk slowly downstairs, passing Michael as he goes to her room with a baby monitor in one hand and a bottle in the other.

‘I thought you were sleeping.’

‘I was,’ I tell him, still vexed that I had been persuaded to go and see Mother.

‘Anna, we need to give our daughter a name. Please.’

He looks at me so mournfully that I almost stop and go back to her with him, but something makes me turn around and continue the slow decent down the staircase.

***

Lillian is carefully pruning her favourite roses and has set a folding chair out for me. I sit down thankfully, holding my painful abdomen as Freedom fusses about me.

‘I thought you might need some fresh air,’ she tells me, tenderly snipping away dead leaves from the beautiful deep orange roses.

‘I remember the day you planted that, Mother. Why is it so special to you?’

My mother looks at me with surprise and smiles, ‘It’s special because of the time in my life that I planted it. They’re called Remember Me roses. You can’t possibly recall that day, Anna, you weren’t born until two years later.’

I scrunch my face up against the low setting sun and tell her crossly, ‘I do remember. You were wearing a blue dress with white flowers on it, and your lip was bleeding. You were very sad …’

My confident voice trails away as she searches my face with bewildered eyes, and I sense gentle vibrations gathering in abundance all around me. They ebb over me like strengthening waves, crashing memories that belong to another world.

I leave her alone by the roses and begin to run towards the house, intensifying echoes and whispers resonating from somewhere deep within me.

‘Remember me.’

I’d heard that voice before, a distant memory or dream of another world. A place I learned a little of purpose, where someone spoke to me of progression and promise.

Despite the ache in my troubled heart, and the familiar pang of fear that I was simply not enough, or that I could never be everything anyone expected I should be, the dark cloud above me seemed to lift a little – just enough for me to feel the welcome reprieve of the mid-morning sun, a gentle breeze lifting the newly grown hair from my face. I take the stairs two at once, and push through the door to find Michael looking at me expectantly.

I run to his side and take the contented little girl from his arms. I want to love her as they do, and show her she is part of my world.

‘Hope,’ I say softly, as I look down and her blue eyes meet mine. ‘She’s called Hope.’

THE END