The Family Game(94)

‘Can you make it out to the woods?’ I ask Robert, as we stumble clear of the house. ‘Eleanor and Matilda are in the hide at the edge of the forest.’

‘Yes,’ he tells me, then grasps my wrist protectively. ‘Wait. Where are you going?’

‘Stuart is still inside.’

Robert shakes his head, grasping my wrist harder. ‘No. Don’t go back in, Harriet. Think about your child.’

I remember the life inside me, half Edward, half me, and I hesitate. Then I carefully remove his grip from my arm. ‘I am thinking of her,’ I say delicately. ‘She needs me to be a person who goes back in. I need me to be a person who goes back in.’



* * *



The heat is hard to bear when I re-enter the building and the snow-drenched strip of fabric I thought might protect my lungs does not stop the hot burn in my throat. I dash back through the heat of the flaming hallway, my eyes stinging.

When I reach the new wing, Stuart is no longer behind the glass. He must have made it out another way.

I turn to leave again, but with a sudden jolt remember Sylvia and Anya propped up beside each other in their break room. I turn and sprint towards the staff quarters, through smoke-clogged corridors that lead back to the gas-filled kitchen.

I know nothing I can do will change the past; nothing can change what I did, or who I am as a consequence. But the past can stop here. I can change. I can be better. A fresh start, a new me – a more honest me.

After all, isn’t that what I want for my child? For my daughter?

We all make mistakes and live with them, but we can make a virtue of that fact. We can turn one bad day into a hundred good ones. One bad choice into a lifetime of good choices.

Ahead of me I hear the sound of flames hitting gas and exploding as the force blows the kitchen door ahead clean off its hinges, the backdraft knocking me off my feet. My hands fly to my buzzing ears as I choke on the cloud of smoke.

I stumble up to my feet and dart forward into the kitchen, dodging the flames lapping cabinets and bursting along the fabric of the half-rolled blinds.

I bolt into the white corridor beyond and then I see her. Anya freezes mid step, the weight of a still barely conscious Sylvia leant against her, her expression terrified as she tries to work out if I am here to help or hurt.

But there is no time to explain. Wordlessly I slip an arm under Sylvia’s other shoulder and take half her weight.

The three of us burst out into the frozen white of the garden and spill onto the snow gasping in clean air.

After a moment, Anya catches her breath and speaks. ‘The phone lines don’t work. We need to call the fire service, the police. Do you have a phone? We aren’t allowed our own phones in the house.’

Of course they aren’t.

‘Matilda has my phone,’ I answer honestly.

Anya suddenly seems to remember the rest of the Holbeck family. ‘Oh God, where are they? I completely—’ Anya’s hand flies to her mouth. ‘Are they okay? I didn’t think, there was only time to save Sylvia,’ she gabbles, emotion taking hold of her.

‘Everyone else is okay,’ I lie. ‘Everyone is gathered down by the forest, away from the fire. We can walk down to meet them – call for help there.’

Anya looks between me and her barely conscious friend and seems to come to the conclusion that I am, at least, the devil she knows.

‘Okay,’ she says, ‘let’s go.’





49 Iris




Monday 10 July

Iris. Apple of my eye.

You stir in the clear bassinet beside my hospital bed as I shift into a more comfortable position.

Beyond the windows of Mount Sinai, the sky is blue. You are a summer baby; you arrived a little later than everyone expected, but you survived that night in the snow seven months ago. We both did.

We stood in the cold, the remaining Holbecks and I, and we watched The Hydes burn to the ground. The new wing would be all that would remain. A wing rising from the ashes. They say the rebuild will be completed by next spring, to Eleanor’s minimalist specifications.

In the hospital corridors beyond my private room the ward buzzes with life, but you sleep on peacefully after the storm of hours before. I watch your tiny chest rise and fall – the life inside me now outside.

The last Christmas I spent with your father will always be burnt into my memories and into my skin: the flesh of my hands, my calves, warped forever; my lungs scarred. I’ll never run a marathon, but I was strong enough to keep us both alive.

They cut you from my abdomen in the early hours of this morning. Not because there was a problem, but because there wasn’t. You just didn’t want to leave; you were happy, too content nestled safe inside me.

But the world was waiting to see you. So, they shucked me open, like an oyster, and popped you out, my pearl. My little Iris.

Grandad Robert paid for this room. He paid for everything, and he always will. He chose Mummy, you see, for a very important task; he saw something in me, a strength or a usefulness – whichever you prefer. Grandad knew one day we would do something amazing, you and I, that we would save him, that we would save the whole family. You won’t hear it from me, but you will from them. You see, Mummy won a game – an old Christmas game. But we don’t play that game anymore.

That last year we played; everyone got their presents – Mummy insisted. Auntie Fiona got a trust for her boys; Uncle Oliver got a company stake for them; Uncle Stuart got to take over Oliver’s position in the company and Mummy got a new family. And, lest we forget, Granny and Grandad got you.