The Library of Lost and Found(44)

“I wasn’t invited, and it’s so obvious that Dad prefers little Miss Perfect to me.”

Betty set her shopping bags down on the floor. She knew that Thomas gave more attention to Lilian, but she wasn’t going to admit it to Martha.

“Your dad and Lilian have similar interests, that’s all.” She walked over and reached out for Martha’s plait, but her daughter ducked her head out of the way. Betty withdrew her fingers. “Now, let’s get this stuff tidied up. Instead of writing your stories, let’s make a list together, of all the things we need to do before your dad gets home. Then we can tick them off when we’ve done them.”

Martha still glowered. “Lilian never gets told off, and she can do whatever she likes. She gets away with everything.”

Betty’s neck muscles grew stringy, at Martha for being so challenging, and also because she spoke the truth. “Don’t talk about your father in that way.”

“Why do we always have to do what he says? It’s not fair.”

“Your dad works hard for us, and I have to put this shopping away.” Betty turned and headed for the kitchen.

“Stand up for yourself, Mum.” Martha got up and followed her. “You said you wanted to find a job…”

“It’s probably too late for that,” Betty said as she tugged a jar of pickled onions out of her bag. She found herself repeating the words that Thomas had drummed into her. “I’ve not worked before. I don’t have any experience.”

Her fingers slipped on the jar and she could only watch as it fell from her hand, crashing to the floor. Vinegar blasted out, splashing her legs and seeping across the linoleum. “Damn it,” she said under her breath. She picked up a cloth and saw that Martha had moved away, towards the front door.

“I’m going out,” she said.

“Where to? Will you give me a hand to clean up this mess?”

Martha shook her head. “I’m going to see Nana. She’s the only one who listens to me around here. Dad treats us like puppets and you can’t see it.”

“He’s a good man…”

Martha shook her head. She opened the door, stormed outside and slammed it behind her.

Betty stared at the onions on the floor. They seemed to look up at her like eyeballs, and she felt her own eyes prick with tears.

Martha was right with a lot of what she said. But it was all too late to turn the clock back.

She threw down a cloth and stamped on it. She mopped the floor, then marched into the front room. To the sound of the ticking cuckoo clock, she dropped to her knees. Pulling Martha’s books towards her, she tried to make a pile. After scooping them together, she hid them behind the sofa, ready to tidy them away properly later on. A pen lay across Martha’s notepad. Her latest story lay freshly written.

Betty put the pad on her knee. A tear plopped onto the page and she wiped it away with the side of her hand. Then she read on.

The Puppet Maker

A puppet maker and his wife had been married for many years but couldn’t have the children they longed for. This made them very sad and each night, the wife cried and pulled at her own hair. “I love you but I want us to have a family,” she said. “I want to give you two daughters.”

One night, as the puppet maker’s wife slept, a bolt of lightning struck down a tree in the garden. The puppet maker decided he would carve the wood.

He shut himself away in his workshop and created the two largest puppets he’d ever made, in the shape of two girls. He attached strings to them and made crisscrosses of wood so he could manipulate their limbs. He added wool for their hair and painted their faces so they looked almost real. When he had finished, they were perfect.

When his wife saw the puppets, she cried tears of joy. “These are the daughters I’ve always longed for,” she said.

The puppets joined them at the dining table for each meal, and each night the puppet maker and his wife put them to bed. They talked to them and cared for them, and the puppet maker’s wife almost forgot they weren’t real.

One night another storm came. This time, the lightning struck the house and the puppet maker screwed his eyes shut. “I wish the puppets could be proper girls,” he said.

In the morning, when he and his wife went to the bedroom, two real girls lay in the beds. They peeped at them from over the covers.

“My daughters,” the puppet maker’s wife cried out and scooped them into her arms. “I shall call you Mary and Lola.”

At breakfast, Mary didn’t like the breakfast cereal and asked for fruit instead. Lola asked to wear a different color of skirt. The puppet maker’s wife was so happy that she didn’t care. However, the puppet maker wasn’t happy. He thought the girls were rude to question what he gave them.

The four of them shared some lovely times as a family, going for picnics and paddling in the sea. However, the girls didn’t need the puppet maker to operate them any longer. They acted how they wanted to.

One night, Mary and Lola didn’t go to bed when the puppet maker told them to. Their disobedience was increasing and it made him feel angry. So, when they had fallen asleep, he fastened strings around their wrists.

“Let them go,” his wife pleaded. “They are real children, not puppets.”

“They must learn to do things my way.”