The problem is, I forget things.
Or I don’t want to remember. Is there a difference?
I don’t want to start at the beginning, so I’ll start somewhere else: the day Gina was born.
Hugh was there. At least, the shell of him. By the time I led Mum to the bunker, I’d already watched the light go out of his eyes, and the blood come out, so I know he wasn’t really there. Mum started leaking and something was wrong. I said, “Mum, you’re leaking”, and her eyes went big and round like little moons in the dark. I had to help her up the steps and into the woods. She was breathing all wrong. Panicked. Gulping.
That was when the police officer came and he helped me get her back onto the road. I had to shove my fingers in my ears when the ambulance siren came close. I’m still getting used to all the noises. Mum says I was noisy before I was taken and I’m sure she’s right. I remember that my favourite toys were the ones that made different sounds. Hugh used to bring me toys in the bunker, but they were silent.
I had to wait with the police officer while Gina was being born. DCI Stevenson. He’s all right. His voice reminds me of Hugh’s. Jake’s did, too. I guess it’s all the male ones. High voices make me feel strange, like I’m on a new planet. That’s taken some getting used to. Sometimes Mum would talk to me or tell me to do something and I’d just want to run away, which is stupid now that I think about it. I wish I hadn’t come home all wrong.
It took hours for Gina to arrive. For some of it I went and sat with Dad in a different part of the hospital. He was asleep and Grandma and Grandad were with him. Grandma kept crying and sometimes kissed me on the head. I wanted to stay with them but watching them made my stomach hurt a lot. I didn’t like it at all. Everyone had a problem I couldn’t fix. They can’t fix my problems and I can’t fix theirs. So I went back to sit with DCI Stevenson and he told me all about his police ID and the uniform he used to wear when he first joined. He bought me a hot chocolate and a Mars bar and I sat and waited. Then I heard Gina start to cry and the noise was just horrible. Even when the nurse asked me if I wanted to go in and see my little sister, I plugged my ears with my fingers and shook my head. But she waved me in, and I followed, expecting to turn around and run away as soon as I entered that room.
Mum’s face was all sweaty and red, but she was grinning from ear to ear. She smiled when she looked at me. She had a bundle in her arms. The crying wasn’t so bad anymore. Instead, Gina was making funny little noises in between the cries.
“This is your sister, Aiden,” Mum said, moving her arms towards me so that I could see the little bundle’s face.
It was all scrunched up and red. There was a bit of hair on her head but not much.
“She’s a little delicate,” Mum said. “There were complications because of the stress before I gave birth.” I didn’t understand what she meant at first, but then I remembered Jake. I remembered Mum throwing herself on him, hitting him, biting him. “It’s okay, Aiden. She’s fine. She’s going to be just fine. But I have to give her back to the doctors in a moment. So, say hello now, and then you’ll see her again later.”
“Hello, Gina,” I said, and I gently touched her nose with my finger. She gurgled and for a moment I felt like she was saying hello back.
I went to Grandma and Grandad’s that night. Mum had to stay overnight in the hospital and I was tired. It was strange not to sleep in the bunker or my room at Mum and Jake’s, but it didn’t take me long to go to drift off. The next day I went back and held Gina in the way Mum showed me. At first, I thought I might drop her, but I didn’t. She was warm and a bit wriggly. But she gurgled again and seemed happy. I gave her back to Mum after a while because she seemed so fragile. I don’t feel like I can even take care of myself. I don’t know what I’m doing or who I am. How could I possibly make sure a little person like Gina wouldn’t get hurt?
Dad woke up, too. But he couldn’t talk properly and I didn’t like it. I went to visit with Grandma and Grandad and watched him slur his words and drink from a straw. Jake killed part of his brain when he hit him, and the doctors had to help him learn to do things again, like walk and talk. I remember that I started my sessions with Dr Anderton not long after Gina was born, and she suggested that I saw myself in Dad. That I had to learn how to walk and talk again too. Or maybe I was like Gina, that I came out of the bunker wiped clean. A blank page. I wish.
When Mum was released from hospital, we all went to live in Jake’s house. Gina’s room was all set up. The place was as white and boring as ever, but now there was no Jake. No man’s voice apart from my own, and I started to enjoy that feeling. That I could speak and contribute. I could sing to Gina or read her a book. I could tell Mum what I wanted to eat. I could tell her that I wanted the bedroom door open at night. That sunlight hurt my eyes. That too much milk made my stomach hurt. That I hated the white walls of the house.
One day Mum put Gina into the car seat, and we went to the next town over. Once I’d helped her with the pram, we went into a large, brown building and bought several cans of paint. “Choose as many colours as you want,” Mum said. I walked up and down the aisle picking up the cans of paint that I wanted. Pastel blue. Cranberry Crush. Forest green. Peony pink. Sunshine yellow. And more. It took us ages to put them all into the car.
We also bought protective sheets and covered the carpets and furniture. We made sure Gina was safely in her room with the windows open and we painted the house until every room was a different, bright colour.
“It might make it harder to sell,” Mum said, wiping sweat from her forehead. “But I don’t care.”
She even let me paint my room with swirls and patterns. I painted it sky blue with orange swirls. Pink polka dots. But inside my wardrobe I painted black and grey stripes. I didn’t tell Mum about that bit.
***
I had to rest for a while. My hand was starting to ache writing all this down. I did a bit of writing in the bunker, but not every day, and not as much as this. Mum is trying to teach me how to type on a keyboard but I’m slow at everything. I did a lot of drawing in the bunker so it’s quicker for me to hold a pen. She says my handwriting is very neat and she seems surprised by this. She seems sad, too.
After Mum and Gina came out of hospital and we painted the house, we visited Dad a lot. He was starting to talk a bit better and could even get out of bed. I also had lots of appointments suddenly. I had to do these assessments now that I was talking again. That was when I met Dr Anderton, a psychologist who knows a lot about children who have been through the things I’ve been through.
I filled out lots of forms and saw a few doctors. I had dentist appointments and Mum bought me sunglasses so that my eyes don’t ache when it’s bright outside. Mum is always being given reports about my health and then she tries to explain it all to me. I don’t think she tells me everything, but I guess it’s because she thinks it might upset me. Do I need to know it all? I don’t know. Maybe she’ll tell me when I’m a bit older.
Mum is really tired right now. When Gina cries, she has to get out of bed and feed her. I know this because I hear her moving around in the night. But that doesn’t bother me. I don’t think I slept for long amounts of time in the bunker. I had a clock to tell the time, though it broke a lot. I knew if I’d stayed up ‘til 3am, or woke up at 2am. I just had to look at the clock.
Grandma and Grandad babysit Gina every now and then. But when Gina is gone, Mum is even more stressed. She stares at the red skin on her hands and I can tell she wants to scratch it. Sometimes she bites her fingernails instead. I know how she feels. I have a spot at the back of my head that’s gone bald because I keep scratching it. No one seems to have noticed yet though.
I guess that’s everything that’s happened since I came out of the bunker. Since Hugh died. Since… since I killed Hugh and escaped. That’s everything that’s happened to me since Gina was born. I started to talk. I met my little sister. I met Dr Anderton and lots of other doctors. Dad started to talk again, too. Mum go
t really tired, but she let me paint the house. She also bought me canvases and lots of acrylics so that I could paint in the garage. She bought me all the books I wanted. But she said that we can’t stay in that house because it makes her sad.
I understand that. The bunker made me sad, too. But sometimes I want to go back there anyway. Sometimes I think that it’s the only place I’ll ever truly feel at home, and the thought that I can’t ever go back makes my skin itch.
I remember the first moments in the bunker. It smelled down there at first but later I didn’t notice it. Sometimes it would get too hot and Hugh would turn on the air pump. Sometimes water came in through little holes in the bricks. Hugh explained that the bricks needed holes so that I got fresh air. I don’t think there was anything fresh about the air in the bunker, but he insisted it was.
For ten years, his was the only voice I knew. His face was the only face I saw. He was the only person in my life.
And I killed him.
***
I had another break, but not because my hands were aching this time. I just needed one. I’ve written all about Gina and Dad and Mum, but I haven’t written much about Hugh or the bunker. That’s the bit I know Dr Anderton wants me to write about, but it’s the part I don’t want to write.
One thing I will admit is that when I was in the bunker, I learned things. Hugh used to buy me books and they included textbooks about science or history. Once he bought me a huge Atlas of the world. It showed you all the oceans and the continents. And it showed you the rivers going across the continents, rivers like the Ouse – the one that Jake pushed me into. Though I didn’t know Jake pushed me in until recently when he admitted it. I remembered running down from school to look at the flood, and I remember being on the riverbank, but I didn’t remember falling in, just the sudden freezing cold chill on my skin and the pull of the current. Water in my mouth and up my nose. Moving my arms. Not feeling my fingers.
Even now when I think about it, the cold creeps underneath my skin. Even my bones turn cold.
Yes, I studied those books while I was there. Hugh used to bring me pens and paper. Nothing that I could sharpen, though. I didn’t notice that until I was older, and he was still bringing me felt tips and crayons. Eventually he brought me pens I could write properly with, but they always had a soft nib. I think I was twelve when I realised that was because he thought I might hurt him. It never occurred to me to fight back until that point, and I felt stupid for not trying. For a while I thought Mum would be disappointed in me because I didn’t try hard enough. I only tried to escape once. That was the day Hugh broke my leg.
He’d fallen asleep on the floor of the bunker. I remember rolling out of my mattress onto my feet. They were bare, and the concrete was cold. I saw the edge of Hugh’s pocket. Even though it was night-time, the electric light was still on. I figured that his keys must be in that pocket and if I could put my hand in there without him noticing, I could unlock the bars and run out. I hadn’t run for I don’t know how long, but I knew I could do it if I forced myself to.
He was snoring a little bit, which was good because I was breathing heavily. My body was shaking. I leaned over and stretched and my fingers twitched as I got closer. I slipped my fingers into his pocket but as I was searching for the keys his eyes opened and he grabbed my wrist.
“What do you think you’re doing, mate?”
Mate. Always mate. He talked softly most of the time and acted like he was still Uncle Hugh, the person I knew before the bunker.
“Nothing.” I tried to pull myself away, but he held tight.
Still with his fingers tightly wrapped around my wrist, he manoeuvred himself into an upright position. “You were looking for the keys.” His eyebrows bunched together, and I saw a spasm cross his face. I’d seen that before. It always happened before he got mad.
He’d shouted at me before. When I cried and asked for my mum and dad, he would get angry and shout. Don’t I bring you everything you need? Don’t I look after you? I spend all my free time maintaining this fucking place and you’ve got no gratitude for me at all. Why do I even bother? I should let you rot down here. I should walk away and never come back. How would you like that? He often threatened to leave me there and never come back. He told me I’d starve or freeze to death if he didn’t keep bringing me electric heaters and blankets and all those other things I needed. That he wouldn’t put traps down for rats or that he’d take the air pump away.
“I wasn’t,” I said, hoping I could lie my way out of this. “I wanted to play with them, that’s all.”
“You were trying to escape.” He twisted my arm as he stood, and I cried out. “Fucking ungrateful shit.”
I was used to the language by this point. He would yell and swear at me all the time, but I wasn’t used to what happened next, the way he beat me and threw me around until something broke.
***
I had to take a break again, sorry. I don’t remember a lot about breaking my leg. I think I passed out. I can’t remember which bone it was, only that it was my lower leg. And I remember Hugh running out of the bunker. That was when I passed out. When I woke up, he was bandaging me. He had lots of medical things that he attached to it. He made soothing noises and injected my arm with something that made me feel a lot better. I went to sleep again.
***
My leg still hurts sometimes, but the doctors said it healed well considering the circumstances. I overheard Josie tell Mum that Hugh wanted to be a paediatrician once, and began studying medicine at university before he dropped out and set up a company with his brother. I guess he knew what to do when he broke my bone. No, not broke, fractured. That’s right. But my leg still hurts sometimes, especially when it’s cold.
The broken leg was one of the worst moments and it hurt more than anything has ever hurt. I don’t like to think about it very often, but I do dream about it sometimes. But while I am thinking about it, maybe I should write down the routine I started in the bunker, because after a few years I realised that I needed to stay strong. I hated, hated not being able to run around, so I figured out a new way of using my muscles. Especially when I learned more about muscles from the science textbooks.
I didn’t sleep at regular times, but when I slept for a longish period of time and felt well rested, I would get up, drink water, and eat something. Usually a breakfast bar or something like that – Hugh didn’t bring a lot of fruit or veg because it would attract mice and flies. Then I would do as many star jumps as I could. I’d count them every time. I could do over one hundred star jumps at a time. Then, depending on how sweaty I was, I’d climb the iron bars, up and down, up and down until my arms ached. I’d stretch my legs and my arms, my back and my neck. I’d seen Dad doing sit ups and press ups. I wasn’t sure how to do it right, but I did those until my muscles felt sore. And then I’d read, draw or write. If it was hot, I’d use the hand-held air pump. I’d check the toilet and sink was clean. I’d shoo the spiders out of my cage.
As I got older, I did more star jumps and sit ups, but I never looked as muscley as Dad. I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong. And then it finally dawned on me that no matter what I did, I couldn’t exercise properly in this tiny space. My diet wasn’t nutritious enough to create muscles. I never got to use my legs outside of the cage. For a while, I stopped, and there were black thoughts, ones that Dr Anderton wouldn’t approve of. I thought maybe I could drink cleaning products to kill myself. Mum had always told me they were poisonous. But by this time, I was old enough to realise that the small amount Hugh left me in the cage probably wouldn’t kill me, just make me sick.
And then he kept talking about my mum, about her marrying someone called Jake. He showed me pictures and videos. I heard her voice saying I do. I thought that perhaps I should keep trying to be strong and maybe one day I could get out. That if I did, she’d be proud.
It happened. I did it. I think she’s proud. Happy, anyway, although she’s scared, too.
But I’m not
proud. I hate what I did.
***
I had a therapy session today and Dr Anderton asked me how I was getting on with my narrative writing. I said that I was doing it and that I was writing about what life was like in the bunker. She asked me how it was making me feel, and I said it was making me sad.
“Perhaps in time, when you’ve written everything you want to write, you’ll begin to feel better,” she said.
I shrugged, because I can’t imagine that happening.
“Once it’s on the page you can leave it on the page. Maybe it will help you move forward.”
“Because words heal?”
“That’s right,” she said, and she smiled.
For the rest of the hour we drew pictures. I have to admit that I do feel better after drawing. But Dr Anderton keeps reminding me that I can’t get lost in drawing and painting, I also have to face difficult problems by talking or writing. She reminds me to use my words.
After I wrote about Hugh breaking my leg I didn’t speak for a full day. Mum went to bed in tears. She thought I wasn’t going to speak again. But I did. And I didn’t even mean to, I asked her if I could have toast for breakfast and she went all tense before she smiled. I’m not sure how that makes me feel, because sometimes I think I just frighten her because I’m so weird.
It can be overwhelming outside the house. People want to take photographs of me because I sell newspapers or whatever. There’s lots of noise. Even in our village there’s people and cars and noise. So, I stay inside and watch television. The teenagers on TV are so much bigger than me and they talk all the time. They never stop talking or joking or laughing. They have girlfriends and they play sports and they dance and do all these things that I don’t. I’m not normal and I’ll never be normal because a man took my life away. It makes me so mad. Sometimes I want to hit him again. I want him to be alive so that I can keep hitting him until I’m no longer mad.
Stolen Girl Page 27
