Lullaby Girl (3 page)

T: Look around you. What else can you see?

P: A street. Wooden houses. Yellow. Red. Green. Candles in ice.

T: Are there any people in the street?

P: No.

T: What can you see in front of you?

P: A house. Curtains closed. I want someone to come to the window. Want them to let me in. It’s so cold.

T: Is it daytime?

P: Yes.

T: How long have you been sitting here?

P: Not sure. Came on a bus.

T: Do you live in the wooden house?

P: No. Came a long way. It’s very cold. Too cold. Scared will die. Fingers. Freeze.

T: What did the bus look like?

P: High up. Dark. Travelled in night.

T: Can you see the front of the bus? Can you see the name of the destination?

P: Not sure. Looks wrong. Funny words.

T: Who do you want to come to the window?

[No answer. Patient sobs.]

T: Can you see their face?

P: Yes.

T: Can you describe this person?

P: Handsome. He is smiling. Lines around eyes. But he is not old.

T: Do you know this man?

P: [Pause.] Yes.

T: Why does this man upset you?

P: [Long pause.] My fingers hurt.

T: Do you know the man’s name?

P: [Sobbing. No answer.]

[Patient is brought out of hypnotic trance.]

*Session ends*

#

Breakfast goes on in the dinin’ room. I don’t like it down here, with all the people. I’ve been here every day, I think, but I didn’t really notice till now. Like my body was here without me inside it. I sit close to the door. Heart bumpin’. Tryin’ to eat. Thur’s people all round. It feels like thur’s hundreds of ’em, but now I know thur’s jus’ fourteen. Fifteen includin’ me. All women. I try not to look at their faces. I don’t like this room. Not by myself. I want to get out.

Where’s Rhona? She said
See you at breakfast
. Why’s she not here? I want her to be here.

I see somethin’ bright, an’ risk a peek. Iss a doorway on the other side of the room. Oh. I’ve been through that before. Iss the room with the glass roof. My legs are shakin’. I should jus’ go upstairs. But the glass room is callin’ me. I remember the tree, an’ decide I need to look at it.

I stand up, put my head down, an’ walk quickly at the light. Someone laughs, from somewhere.

‘Hey Katty, gizza song!’

Other voices. I feel eyes on me. Then the doorway comes up, an’ I’m through it. Away. Under the glass. No one is out here. Jus’ me. I breathe an’ feel much better. Thur’s tables an’ chairs, like the dinin’ room. I walk right forward, to the end of the room, an’ sit down. Here, I can’t see into the dinin’ room, an’ they can’t see me. The tree is right through the glass. Iss like I’m outside, without Rhona. But it doesn’t feel scary. Iss lovely.

‘Katherine,’ I say, quietly. Testin’ my voice out, an’ that word. The name that I know is mine now. Katherine. Kathy. Katty. All three of ’em are inside me. It feels funny to have so many. Rhona said the people over the fence made up lots of ’em. She said they know I’m Katherine now, but they’re hangin’ on to the names they made up. Lullaby Girl. Lock-oss-ki Girl. Viking Girl. An’ more I can’t remember. Rhona says they like Lullaby Girl best.

Outside, the moor fills most of the window. Iss greyish purple, runnin’ all the way down to the sea. I can see for miles. Past the perimeter fence. Across to the dark-brown mountains. Wind blasts the heather. Clouds the size of countries cross the sky.

Jus’ then, somethin’ twists against the purple, an’ a thin shape unfolds from the ground. I jump an’ move back. Iss her! The quiet girl. She hasn’t seen me yet, cos her eyes are pointed down. She walks forwards, gettin’ battered by the wind.

Rhona said the girl’s called Mary, an’ that she doesn’t talk at all. She used to talk, long ago, but some bad stuff happened, an’ after that she jus’ stopped. Her mum an’ dad stuck her in here, but they never come to visit.
Poor Mary
Rhona always says. She says her dad’s a priest.

Mary’s reached the gravel now. Her eyes come up, towards the glass room, an’ without thinkin’ I take a step back. Mary’s eyes go straight to me. I gasp. Both of us go still.

For a second, nothin’. I don’t move an’ neither does she. Wind makes her hair whirl round. I can see her face better from here, an’ she looks real sad. We look at each other some more. Then she lifts her hand. Sends a tiny wave.

I wave back.

A big
whoosh
hits the window, an’ thur’s a
splat
above my head. I look up. The tree’s dumped a clump of leaves. Narrow. Silv’ry brown.

I look back at the gravel, but Mary’s gone. Rain starts pattin’ down. Soft at first. Then the clouds come down low, so I can’t see the moor any more, an’ the roof comes alive with noise.

I sit where I am, lookin’ up. It feels great to be out here without gettin’ wet. Like I’m cheatin’. The clouds get lower an’ blacker. When I can’t see the moor any more, I come inside. The dinin’ room is dark, an’ thur’s no one in it.

Iss taken me a while to find my way round the house. Even now, I don’t always remember where stuff is. I’ll walk left at the bottom of the stairs instead of right, an’ end up down the wrong corridor, or in the toilet instead of the dinin’ room. Usually this happens in the mornin’, when my head’s still fuzzy. Rhona’s office is easiest to find, along the long, straight corridor that’s painted blue. The blue corridor’s where all the important rooms are. Rhona’s office, Joyce’s office, Mrs Laird’s office an’ private sittin’ room … When that doctor lady came here, she sat with me in Joyce’s office. I didn’t like it in there. It was the wrong colour, an’ it smelled funny. Caroline doesn’t have an office. I sometimes think she might be mad about that. But the computer room’s sort of hers. I’ve never seen any other staff in there.

I walk through the hall an’ stop at the bottom of the stairs. Iss darker in here, cos no one’s bothered to put the lights on. The ceilin’ has wooden panels with pictures carved on ’em, an’ iss higher than the other ceilin’s in the house. The stairs are made from the same wood as the ceilin’. Dark an’ shiny, with smooth oval hollows in the middle of each step. Like a heavy person walked up ’em once an’ left footprints. Above me is the landin’, which leads to the corridor where the bedrooms are. On each wall of the downstairs hall thur’s a doorway. One leadin’ to the day room, one to the offices, one to the dinin’ room, an’ one to the outside. The dinin’-room corridor has a bump halfway along, with a glass door. Through that is the back porch.

Where is ev’ryone? I don’t want to be with ’em, an’ I don’t want to talk to ’em, but I want to know where they are.

A noise comes from my right, so I go through that doorway. This is the way to the day room. Another noise, now. A voice. Music. I edge along the corridor an’ peek through the day-room door. There they are. All sittin’ down on chairs. I can’t see what they’re doin’, an’ I kinda want to know, but thur’s no way I’m goin’ in. That’s the place where I used to sing. If I go in, they might make me do it again. Then ev’ryone would laugh.

No chance …

I creep away from the door.

Wait though. Wait. What’s
that
?

I stop. At the end of the corridor, thur’s somethin’ I never noticed. A little door at the top of three steps.
Library
, it says. Have I been in there before? I can’t remember.

I look back into the day room. No one’s lookin’ this way, so I sneak past an’ climb the three steps. The door at the top has a handle with a six-pointed star. I go in.

Books, of course. They’re everywhere. The room’s not much bigger than my bedroom, but iss packed tight with novels an’ manuals an’ picture books. Shelves from floor to ceilin’, saggin’ in places. I sit cross-legged on the floor an’ grab a book called
Native Woodland of the British Isles
. In it, thur’s a drawin’of a tree that looks like the one outside.
Common ash
, it says. (
Fraxinus excelsior
.) Thur’s two more drawings beside it. One of green leaves, an’ one of the brown things that dropped on the roof. They’re not leaves at all, it says. They’re called keys.

I like the library room very much. I sit in it for a long time. At one point I hear voices, but nobody comes in here.

#

Some men ring the bell at the perimeter gate, an’ Mrs Laird lets ’em in. They’re news men, from a paper called the
Western Courier
. When I see their faces, I know they’ve been here before. I don’t know when or how many times. That whole time is fuzzy in my head. But I remember them bein’ here, drinkin’ tea. Specially the biscuit man. I remember him sayin’
Any wee treats?
an’ Mrs Laird bringin’ the chocolate biscuits out. Then he ate half the tin, an’ there weren’t enough left to go round.

The men are old an’ they smell like tobacco. All of ’em wear pullovers an’ these stretchy band things round the arms of their shirts. Biscuit man’s teeth click when he eats, an’ his hair looks funny, like iss slidin’ off the front of his head.

I watch ’em write with the blue biros. Watchin’ me all close. Waitin’ for me to say somethin’, or cry, or do somethin’ they can put on the front page. But I don’t say anythin’. I jus’ sit here, squashed between Rhona an’ Mrs Laird. Mrs Laird does all the talkin’. The worst bit comes when they try to take my photo. A man stands up, without askin’, an’ sticks a cam’ra in my face. ‘Smile!’ he says. Rhona puts her hand in the way.

‘We already told you, no!’ she says.

‘We can blur it afterwards. It’s really no big—’

‘Then why bother?’

Photo man sighs. The man with the blue biro gives him a look.

‘
You
don’t mind if I take one, do you, Kathy?’ says photo man. ‘Pretty girl like you.’ He reaches out. A big, red, hairy hand. I watch it comin’, in slow motion. All the way to my face. Closer. Closer.

Somethin’ electric goes through me. Suddenly I’m movin’. My chair goes over, knockin’ a mug off the table. It smashes. Tea goes everywhere. Over their shoes, into my socks, over the cam’ra, under the sofa. People suck in breath. I stand behind Rhona, shakin’.

‘I wouldn’t try that again, if I were you,’ Rhona snaps. Silence rings out. The man blushes.

‘All right, gents. I believe that’s enough for today,’ says Mrs Laird. She takes ’em away.

Later, I tell Rhona I won’t see any more newspaper men.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I think it might good for you.’

I glare.

‘Meeting folk is good for your recovery.’ she says. ‘The
Western Courier
guys are a bit annoying, but—’

‘I won’t do it again,’ I growl. ‘I’ll run away.’

Rhona puts her hands down flat.

‘Where would you run to?’ she asks quietly.

I look at her. I can’t work out if she’s angry. She stares back. But the moment passes.

‘You know, running away never solves anything,’ says Rhona. ‘You can’t spend your whole life in the conservatory. We’re here to help you. Mrs Laird, Caroline, Joyce …’

I make a face. Joyce is the lady with red glasses.

‘Then there’s Dr Harrison, who was here last week. You remember the woman who made you go to sleep?’

I glare at Rhona.

‘Don’t need any of you,’ I say, though I know that’s not true. I need Rhona quite a lot.

‘Hon, it’s not good for you to be isolated. Now that you’re talking, it’s important to keep moving forwards.
Up
wards. And that means increasing your social circle. When you finally go home to your family, you’ll want to be able to talk to them.’

I gasp. Tears come into my eyes.

Home
. I’ve never told her how much that word scares me. How can I go back to a place that doesn’t exist?

‘I … don’t have … family,’ I say.

Rhona sits forward in her chair. ‘Everyone’s got family, Kathy. It’s just that you’ve forgotten who yours is.’

‘They’d’ve come to get me.’

‘Oh, hon … There could be all kinds of reasons for them not getting in touch. Remember, no one out there has seen your face properly. The papers aren’t allowed to—’

‘They’d still
know
! They’d know I’m
gone
!’

Rhona looks at me for a long time. Her face is sad, but she doesn’t say anythin’. In the end I turn over, pullin’ my bedspread with me, an’ lie with my back to her. Through the window, the sky is black. I can see myself in the glass, like iss a mirror. Over my shoulder, Rhona’s head is in her hands.

#

Dark dreams follow me through the night. Movin’ in circles. Chased by tears. Afterwards, I only remember one.

A man stands tall against a blackened sky. Shinin’ pale, with his back to me. Snow swirls down an’ lands in our hair. At our feet, hundreds of jellyfish lie dead.

Help me,
I say.
Help me
.

Thin hands hang by his sides. One clutched tight. The other creased and limp. I reach for the second one, but my hands drift right through. Suddenly I see I am barefoot.

Help me …

The man’s back quakes. Like laughter, emptied of sound. I claw at his hands. The silence grows. Shoals of stars buffet us. He will never turn around.

#

Breakfast time. I look through the mugs to find the one with the green stripe. At first I don’t see it, so I almost don’t have tea at all. But iss there at the back. I take it to the hot drink machine, put it under the tap, an’ press
Tea
. Then I put in three sugarcubes an’ carry it with me to the conservat’ry. I feel a bit sick today, so I don’t get any food. Thur’s only three people in the dinin’ room, an’ none of ’em stare. I look at their faces as I go past. They’re all old. One is Mrs Bell an’ one is Mrs Shaw. I know the third one’s face but not her name. Prob’ly another
Mrs
. Only the staff call the oldies by their first names. I get the feelin’ they’d clip the rest of us round the ear if we tried.
Mrs
is safer. I don’t want to talk to ’em anyway. I don’t like talkin’ to anyone besides Rhona.