Then She Was Gone(58)

Ellie sat on her hands and watched the door with held breath.

‘Ta-da!’

It took a moment for Ellie to fully understand what she was looking at. A small plastic box with metal bars, pink on the bottom, white on the top, a handle. In Noelle’s other hand was a cardboard box, the type you might be given to take away a salad from a health-food shop.

Noelle took the plastic box to the table across the room and then returned with the cardboard box. She sat next to Ellie on the bed and she pulled open the lid of the box and there was a sudden blast of farm smell, of warm manure and damp straw. Noelle parted the straw with her long fingers and said, ‘Look at the little souls. Just look at them!’

And there, peering up at Ellie, were two small animals with honey-coloured fur, black beads of eyes, two pairs of nervously twitching whiskers.

‘Hamsters!’ said Noelle triumphantly. ‘Look! You said you always wanted hamsters! Remember? So I got you some. Aren’t they just the dearest little things you ever saw? Look at their sweet little noses. Look!’

Ellie nodded. She had no idea how to react. None whatsoever. She had not said she wanted hamsters. She had in fact said that she had not ever wanted hamsters. She did not understand why Noelle had bought her hamsters.

‘Look,’ said Noelle, taking the box to the cage on the table and carefully unlocking the door. ‘Let’s put them in here. They must be fed up being scrunched up together in that box. And my goodness, they’re not a cheap undertaking, these things. The animals themselves are virtually given away for free. But all the kit and caboodle. My word.’

She picked one from the box and carefully freed it into the cage. Then she did the same with the other. ‘Now you must name them, Ellie. Come. Come and have a look at them and find them some nice names. Though I’m not sure how you’ll tell one from the other, to be honest. They’re identical. Come here, come.’

Ellie shrugged.

‘Oh, come along now, Ellie,’ Noelle chided. ‘You don’t seem terribly excited. I thought you’d be jumping up and down at the sight of them.’

‘How can you expect me to be excited about anything when you’re doing what you’re doing?’

Noelle appraised her coolly. ‘Oh, now, it’s not so bad. You know, Ellie, it could be so much worse. I could be a man. I could be a big sweaty man coming in here to do God knows what to you at all hours. I could keep you tied up all day. Or in a box under my bed. Christ, I read a book once about that. A married couple. Stole a girl from the side of the road and kept her under their bed for twenty years. Sweet Jesus. Just imagine.’ She clasped her throat gently. ‘No, you’ve got it good here, missie. And now’ – she turned to the hamster cage – ‘you have it even better. Now come along, let’s name these little monsters. Come along.’

Her voice had lost its singsong tone and was hard and immoveable.

Ellie peered into the cage and stared at the two dots of fur. She did not care. Name them One and Two for all she cared. Name them A and B.

‘Come on. Two nice names for girls, or I’ll be taking them away and flushing them down the toilet.’

Ellie felt her breathing pitch and stall, a wash of light-headedness. She let her thoughts loop violently back and forth inside her head, rush headlong into moments from the past and grab blindly at things they found there. Her thoughts found a doll. It had pink hair and a gingham dress and huge pink cloth boots.

‘Trudy,’ she said.

‘Ha!’ said Noelle, tossing back her head. ‘I love it.’

Then there was a girl at nursery school, so, so pretty. All the girls used to circle her and try to touch her ice-blond hair, try to be her friend. Ellie had not thought of her in years. She was called Amy.

‘Amy,’ she said, breathlessly.

Noelle beamed. ‘Oh, oh, that is superb. Trudy and Amy. Just perfect. Good girl! So, I’ll keep you supplied with everything you need, all the straw and toys and nibbles and what have you. Your job will be to nurture them. You will need to keep them clean and loved and fed.’ She laughed. ‘A little like I do for you. Do you see? I keep you clean and fed. You keep them clean and fed. A lovely little circle of caring we have here.’

She put her hand to Ellie’s crown and caressed it. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, quickly removing her hand. ‘You’re getting a little grim up the top here. You’ll be needing a shampoo, I suppose.’ She sighed. ‘I think I have one of those attachment things somewhere, those things you put over the taps with a little shower head. I’ll see if I can find it.

‘You know, Noelle, I’m missing my GCSEs.’

Noelle tutted sympathetically. ‘I know, lovely girl, I know. Terrible timing for you, and I’m sorry for that. But you know, there’s always next year.’

Next year. Ellie grabbed on to the concept. She saw herself, next year, at home, legs crossed, sitting on her bed, notebooks spread around her, the sounds of her family floating through the walls and the floors, the sun picking out the sequins on her favourite cushion. She would be one year older. But she would be home.

‘You know,’ Noelle was saying, ‘I did see a little story in the papers today. About you. And you know what they’re saying, Ellie?’ She looked at Ellie, sadly. ‘They’re saying that you’ve run away. That you couldn’t face the possibility of failing your exams because you are an overachiever. They’re saying that you ran away from home because you were stressed, having a breakdown.’