The Rabbit Girls(62)

How Frieda must have imagined them. Rather than squat writing pressed into space that could never contain the volume of thoughts. The pages overflow with love and grief.

‘If you give a man what he wants, he’ll never take what he needs.’ The words of the nurse seem to echo in her head. She feels foolish and petulant to have been talking to the doctors, the police, about Axel. Look what happened to the ‘rabbits’, and they didn’t complain.

Axel had sex with her, she thinks, that is all, yet she went crying to the police. Maybe Dawn was right, that her actions caused his needs to take over. That she deserved it, again. Of all the things the police must hear, her whines and worries must seem so petty.

She continues writing, feeling shame at her own actions. It is a new sensation, it pricks her skin like a rash. Not shame from what someone else has done to her, but shame at what she has done to herself. She writes until Wanda’s words exist again, then calls the hospital.

Her father is stable and off the oxygen. Miriam is relieved and then cautious. Like being pulled toward and instantly repelled against something. The hospital. What if Axel were there again? What if he didn’t just hurt her, what if he were able to do worse? Her head spirals into the ‘worse’ she’s experienced before. She continues to write out the letters with diligence and intensity.

When her hands ache and she has rewritten many of the letters, wrapped them in cloth and placed them in her handbag, Miriam gets up with no real purpose, and walks into her father’s study. Taking off her jacket and rubbing life into her arms, she starts to collect his papers and put them away. She sorts them and places them back into the desk and the folders just behind it. She works without stopping until she can see the floor space and there are only a few small piles left on the desk to go through. She pulls out her father’s chair and sees a book has fallen; she retrieves it.

Yeats in English.

She flicks through the pages, the spine is broken and deeply lined. She opens it to a poem and a scrap of paper falls out.

When darkness drops, I am your light.

Frieda.

The poem, ‘The Second Coming’, is full of pencil markings and lined with notes in her father’s writing, all around its margins.

She sits in the chair with the poem on her lap, and reads and rereads it and the note.

From Frieda.

Her father had been searching for her; after all these years. Miriam swallows hard. He must never have found her.





25





MIRIAM


‘Merry Christmas,’ Eva says, slipping off her boots and placing a bag of food on the ground. ‘I have a present for you.’

‘Christmas?’

‘It’s Christmas Eve.’ Eva is wearing a red dress and a deep green jumper with her usual heavy boots.

‘It is?’

She follows her through to the kitchen.

Eva takes out all the vegetables from her bag, some coffee and a newspaper.

Miriam picks it up and leafs through it. A picture of the church catches her attention. The Church of the Redeemer is opening its doors tonight, the headline reads. After almost thirty years shut away, there will be a service this evening at 8 p.m. All welcome.

‘The church,’ she says, holding the newspaper for Eva to see. ‘They have a service on tonight.’

‘Are you religious?’ Eva asks.

‘No, but my parents were married here. Now that Dad’s not here, I’d like to go, I think.’ Axel would never find her there.

‘Perhaps I could accompany you?’

Miriam looks at her. ‘Okay.’

‘Here, I got you something,’ Eva says, and places an envelope on the side, before rustling back into her bag. ‘I still have a few more to go, but I’m almost there. And I also have this.’ She hands Miriam a small parcel wrapped up in pink tissue paper.

‘Merry Christmas,’ she says as Miriam takes off the sellotape at each end first before unwrapping.

She finds a scarf the colour of autumn folded over on itself. It is the softest fabric Miriam has ever felt between her deeply battered hands.

‘Do you like it?’ Eva asks.

‘It’s . . .’

‘I know it’s bright, but I can’t stand pastel colours and, well . . . I always said that pale colours are poor relations, if you know what I mean.’ She laughs as Miriam smooths her fingers across the fabric. ‘I thought maybe you could do with a bit of colour?’

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Go get yourself dressed and I’ll make dinner . . . if that’s okay?’

Miriam looks down and realises she is still in her pyjamas. She smiles and stretches.

After changing she returns to the kitchen, where there is a substantial mess of tomatoes, saucepans, knives and an eruption of what must be broccoli all over the work surface. She shakes her head and takes a piece of carrot from the chopping board and chews on it.

‘Mum would have a fit to see her kitchen like this.’

‘I promise I’ll clear up.’

‘No, I didn’t mean it as an insult, just . . . it’s not a problem.’

‘I love to cook, so this is a treat for me. It’s hard to make an effort when you are on your own, so cooking for someone else is nice,’ Eva says, searching the drawers for a spoon. Miriam points out the cutlery drawer. ‘And it’s Christmas!’