Then She Was Gone(61)

Ellie blinked. A DVD player. Movies. Documentaries. ‘Yes, please, thank you, yes.’

‘And some books, too? Would you like some books to read?’

‘Yes. I would. I’d love some books.’

Noelle smiled fondly at her. ‘Books then,’ she said. ‘I’ll pick some up from the Red Cross shop. And some DVDs. We’ll make it nice in here for you. We’ll make it good as home.’

She got to her feet then and looked down at Ellie and said, ‘It’s all coming together now. I can feel it. It’s all coming together. Just you wait.’

Ellie watched her fiddle clumsily with the key in the lock. She sensed a moment of vulnerability. She played with the idea of ambushing her. Throwing herself upon her, slamming her drunken, make-up-smeared face into the wall, once, twice, three times, grabbing the key from her, shoving it hard into the lock, turning, opening, running, running, running. But even as the thought showed itself to her, the door clicked open and Noelle Donnelly was passing through it and then slamming it shut behind her and then she was gone.

‘Mummy,’ Ellie whispered into the palms of her hands. ‘Mummy.’

Ellie would never really know what happened the following night. She could guess, because of what happened afterwards, but the actual facts, the details, only one person knew and she would never tell her.

Noelle came down with her supper at six o’clock. It was chicken nuggets and chips with a perfunctory spoonful of mixed peas and sweetcorn on the side. There was a big cream bun on the tray, a small bowl of jelly beans and a glass of Coke with a slice of lemon in it. Noelle cooked for her as though she was five years old. Ellie ached for a bit of sushi, or some garlic prawns and rice from the posh Chinese up the road.

Noelle stayed a while that evening. She’d brought Ellie a new book and some fancy shampoo. She seemed to be in a sparkling mood.

‘How’s the dinner?’ she asked.

‘It’s nice, thank you.’

‘You’re so lucky,’ she said. ‘At your age you can eat and eat and eat and never gain an ounce.’

‘But you’re very slim.’

‘Well, yes, but that is purely because I barely eat. When I turned forty, oh’ – she made a circle of her mouth – ‘what a shock that was. No more cream buns for me. And the older you get, the worse it gets. I’ll be living on water and air by the time I’m fifty at this rate.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Too old,’ she said. ‘Far too old. I’m forty-five. What a silly-sounding age that is, to be sure.’

‘It’s not that old.’

‘Well, love you for saying that, but all the same it is that old. Particularly when it comes to certain things.’

Ellie nodded. She didn’t know what the certain things were and she certainly wasn’t going to ask.

‘So, it’s a joy to have a young person to cook for. I can buy all the yummy things in the shops instead of just looking at them.’ She smiled and there were the tiny teeth that chilled Ellie’s soul.

And that was that.

The edges of Noelle Donnelly began to blur and shiver, the walls of the room turned black and bled into everything and for a small second there were just Noelle’s teeth, suspended alone in a sea of blackness, like a UFO in the night sky.

And after that it was the morning. And even though everything felt normal, Ellie knew it wasn’t normal, that something had happened.





Forty-one


Then


The summer slowly died away and nothing changed. The nights became longer; the temperature dropped five degrees. Noelle bought Ellie a fleece-lined hoodie and some warm pyjamas. The foliage around the basement window was still green. It was, Ellie imagined, September. Maybe early October. Noelle wouldn’t tell her.

‘Oh, sweet girl, you do not need to know. It’s of no use to you to know. No use at all.’

And then, one morning, lying on her bed, Ellie felt something very strange. A small judder, like a pop going through her middle section, as though a person living under her mattress had just nudged her in the back. For a terrible moment Ellie thought she was lying on a hamster and quickly jumped to her feet to check. But no, there was nothing there.

She sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, waiting to see if the sensation returned. But it didn’t so she lay back down on the bed. As she lay down it happened again. This time she could place it. It was coming from within her. Bubbles popping inside her stomach. She rubbed and rubbed at her stomach, trying to ease the bubbles away. Eventually the pops dissipated and the inside of her own body stopped doing surprising things and by the evening of that same day Ellie had forgotten entirely about the other-worldly feeling, the sense of being occupied, the sense of no longer being alone.





Forty-two


You may recall the exact night of conception. It was the night after I came over to yours all dressed to the nines in my satin blouse and my high heels, the night we drank two bottles of red wine and had sex three times.

I’d thought it would be a long-term project. I had more plastic pots waiting in the freezer, let’s put it that way. But it turned out I didn’t need them. I’d been charting Ellie’s ovulation for a couple of months, making sure to dole out the pads and tampons on a day-by-day basis so I’d know exactly when she was bleeding and how much. And I hit the jackpot first time. I stood by with the tampons and the towels, waiting for Ellie to ask me for them. But two weeks passed, three weeks, then four. And then she started to be sick every morning and I knew.