The Lies We Told(6)

‘No,’ she answered, and tilted her head to one side as she continued to consider me. ‘No, Mummy. It wasn’t me.’

I left her standing by the bed and ran downstairs to the kitchen. And there was Lucy’s cage, its door swung open, the tiny headless body lying on the floor beside it cold and stiff. I looked around the room, my eyes darting wildly about. How had she done it? What had she used? She had no access to the kitchen knives, of course. Suddenly a thought struck me and I ran back up the stairs to her bedroom. And there it was. The metal ruler from Doug’s toolbox, lying on her table. I’d heard her asking him for it the day before – for something she was making, she’d said. It lay there now, next to her craft things and I stared down at it as nausea rose in me.

I hadn’t heard Hannah follow me from the kitchen until she slipped into the room and stood beside me. ‘Mummy?’ she said.

My heart jumped, ‘What?’

Her eyes fell to my belly. ‘Is it all right?’

The slight lisp, that pretty, melodic voice of hers, so adorable – everybody commented on it. I bit back my revulsion. ‘What?’ I asked. ‘Is what all right?’

She considered me. ‘The baby, Mummy. The little baby in your tummy. Is it all right? Or is it dead too?’

I put a hand to my belly as defensively as if she’d struck me there. Her gaze bored into me. ‘Why would the baby be dead?’ I whispered. ‘Why would you say that?’ There’s no way she could have known of course that she’d touched upon my greatest fear – that this new baby, our second miracle, would not survive, would not be born alive. It was the stress of my relationship with Hannah that caused this paranoia, I think. I almost felt as though I would deserve it, because I’d made such a mess of everything with her. My unborn baby would be taken from me, as penance.

As I gazed into her eyes, fear stroked the back of my neck. ‘Stay right here,’ I said. ‘Stay here until I say.’

That night I described to Doug what had happened. ‘What are we going to do?’ I asked him. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’

‘We don’t know it was Hannah,’ he said weakly.

‘Who the hell was it, then?’

‘Maybe … God, I don’t know! Maybe it was a fox, or one of the neighbours’ kids mucking about?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘We have foxes in the garden all the time,’ he said. ‘Are you sure the back door was closed?’

‘Well, no,’ I said, ‘It was open. But …’

‘We’ve had to tell Hannah before about leaving the cage door unfastened,’ he added.

This was also true, she loved to feed Lucy, and though she knew she wasn’t allowed to open the door without me there, it was possible she had fiddled with the latch. ‘OK, but what about what she said about the baby?’ I demanded.

Doug rubbed his face tiredly. ‘She’s five years old, Beth. She doesn’t understand about death yet, does she? Maybe she’s feeling anxious about having a new sibling.’

I stared at him. ‘I can’t believe you’re saying this! I know it was Hannah. It was written all over her face!’

‘And where were you?’ he said, his voice rising too. ‘Where the hell were you when all this was going on? Why weren’t you watching her?’

‘Don’t you dare make this my fault,’ I shouted. ‘Don’t you dare do that!’ On we argued, our worry and distress causing us to turn on each other, sniping and defensive.

‘Mummy? Daddy?’ Hannah appeared in the doorway, looking sleepy and adorable in her pink pyjamas. She held her teddy in her hand. ‘Why are you shouting?’

Doug got to his feet. ‘Hello, little one,’ he said, his voice suddenly jolly. ‘How’s my princess? Got a cuddle for your daddy?’

She nodded and edged closer, but then said in a small, sad voice, ‘Is it because of Lucy?’

Doug and I exchanged a look. He picked her up. ‘You know how it happened?’

She shook her head. ‘Mummy thinks I did it, but I never did! Mummy loves her birdy and so do I.’ Tears welled, spilling from her eyes. ‘I would never, ever hurt Lu-Lu bird.’

Doug held her close. ‘I know you wouldn’t, of course you wouldn’t. It was only somebody playing a nasty trick, that’s all. Or a fox. Maybe a naughty fox did it. Come on, sweetheart, don’t cry, please don’t cry. Let’s get you back to bed.’ I knew he was fooling himself, too scared to admit the truth, but I’d never felt so lonely, so wretched, as I did at that moment. As they left the kitchen I looked up and caught Hannah watching me over her father’s shoulder, her expression impassive now. We held each other’s gaze before they turned the corner and disappeared from view.





4


London, 2017

When Clara answered her intercom it was Mac’s voice she heard, crackling back at her as though from a different world; an innocent, ordinary place where emails weren’t sent that stopped your heart from beating, that turned your blood to ice. ‘Jesus,’ he said after she’d buzzed him up, ‘you look awful. I tried you at work but they said you hadn’t come back after lunch so …’ he paused. ‘Clara? Are you all right?’