The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher(29)

In their father’s office Morna had sat down on his desk chair. She scuffed her bare heels on the carpet to wheel it up to the desk. The computer was for their father’s work use. They had been warned of this and told their mother got ten GCSEs without the need of anything but a pen and paper; that they may use the computer under strict supervision; that they may also go online at the public library.

Morna got up the food order onscreen. She mouthed at her sister, “Don’t tell her.”

She’d find out soon enough. The food would come anyway. It always did. Morna didn’t seem able to learn that. She said to Lola, “How can you bear to be so fat? You’re only eleven.”

Lola watched her as she sat with her face intent, patiently fishing for the forbidden sites, swaying backward and forward, rocking on the wheeled chair. She turned to go back to bed, grabbing her waist to stop her pajama bottoms from falling down. She heard a sound from her sister, a sound of something, she didn’t know what. She turned back. “Morna? What’s that?”

For a minute they didn’t know what it was they were seeing on the screen: human or animal? They saw that it was a human, female. She was on all fours. She was naked. Around her neck there was a metal collar. Attached to it was a chain.

Lola stood, her mouth ajar, holding up her pajamas with both hands. A man was standing out of sight holding the chain. His shadow was on the wall. The woman looked like a whippet. Her body was stark white. Her face was blurred and wore no readable human expression. You couldn’t recognize her. She might be someone you knew.

“Play it,” Lola said. “Go on.”

Morna’s finger hesitated. “Working! He’s always in here, working.” She glanced at her sister. “Stick with Mr. Lazy, you’ll be safer with him.”

“Go on,” Lola said. “Let’s see.”

But Morna erased the image. The screen was momentarily dark. One hand rubbed itself across her ribs, where her heart was. The other hovered over the keyboard; she retrieved the food order. She ran her eyes over it and added own-brand dog food. “I’ll get the blame,” Lola said. “For my fantasy pet.” Morna shrugged.

Later they lay on their backs and murmured into the dark, the way they used to do when they were little. Morna said he would claim he found it by accident. That could be the truth, Lola said, but Morna was quiet. Lola wondered if their mother knew. She said, you can get the police coming round. What if they come and arrest him? If he has to go to prison we won’t have any money.

Morna said, “It’s not a crime. Dogs. Women undressed as dogs. Only if it’s children, I think that’s a crime.”

Lola said, “Does she get money for doing it or do they make her?”

“Or she gets drugs. Silly bitch!” Morna was angry with the woman or girl who for money or out of fear crouched like an animal, waiting to have her body despoiled. “I’m cold,” she said, and Lola could hear her teeth chattering. She was taken like this, seized by cold that swept right through her body to her organs inside; her heart knocked, a marble heart. She put her hand over it. She folded herself in the bed, knees to her chin.

“If they send him to prison,” Lola said, “you can earn money for us. You can go in a freak show.”

* * *

NOVEMBER: DR. BHATTACHARYA from the unit came to discuss the hairiness. It happens, she said. The name of the substance is lanugo. Oh, it happens, I am afraid to say. She sat on the sofa and said, “With your daughter I am at my wits’ end.”

Their father wanted Morna to go back to the unit. “I would go so far as to say,” he said, “either she goes, or I go.”

Dr. Bhattacharya blinked from behind her spectacles. “Our funding is in a parlous state. From now till next financial year we are rationed. The most urgent referrals only. Keep up the good work with the daily weight chart. As long as she is stable and not losing. In spring if progress is not good we will be able to take her in.”

Morna sat on the sofa, her arms crossed over her belly, which was swollen. She looked vacantly about her. She would rather be anywhere than here. It contaminates everything, she had explained, that deceitful spoonful of cream. She could no longer trust her food to be what it said it was, nor do her calorie charts if her diet was tampered with. She had agreed to eat, but others had broken the agreement. In spirit, she said.

Their father told the doctor, “It’s no use saying all the time,” he mimicked her voice, “‘Morna, what do you think, what do you want?’ You don’t give me all this shit about human rights. It doesn’t matter what she thinks anymore. When she looks in a mirror God knows what she sees. You can’t get hold of it, can you, what goes on in that head of hers? She imagines things that aren’t there.”

Lola jumped in. “But I saw it too.”

Her parents rounded on her. “Lola, go upstairs.”

She flounced up from the sofa and went out, dragging her feet. They didn’t say, “See what, Lola? What did you see?”

They don’t listen, she had told the doctor, to anything I say. To them I am just noise. “I asked for a pet, but no, no chance—other people can have a dog, but not Lola.”

Expelled from the room, she stood outside the closed door, whimpering. Once she scratched with her paw. She snuffled. She pushed at the door with her shoulder, a dull bump, bump.