by Frances Vick
‘Give me a hand?’ Kirsty complained.
‘No.’ The voice – cold, imperious – was familiar. Angela Bright. Kirsty stood up then. They faced each other like warring cats.
‘Angela,’ Kirsty managed eventually. ‘Kirsty. We met at—’
‘I know where we met.’ Angela, not smiling, had her feet planted wide, as if to bar Kirsty’s escape.
‘Are you here to see Peg? She’s asleep just now and it’s not visiting hours yet—’
Angela Bright raised her head, as if sniffing the air. Her lips smiled. ‘Why don’t I buy you a coffee?’
‘I really don’t have time.’
‘I insist.’
‘You insist?’
‘I think we should talk.’
‘What about?’
‘About my mother. About Sylvia. You’ve been calling and going over to the house a lot.’ She spoke slowly, looking Kirsty straight in the eyes.
‘Yes. She’s a very interesting woman.’
‘And why are you interested in her?’
Kirsty felt her heart rate rise further. Angela Bright was obviously spoiling for a fight.
‘Why wouldn’t I be interested in her?’
‘I want you to stop going to see her, calling her, everything.’
And Kirsty, jittery, over-caffeinated, full of adrenaline, laughed. It was like something out of a soap opera – Kirsten and Angela clash! Catfight ensues! And for once, she didn’t want to defuse the situation; for once she didn’t want to cave, exercise diplomacy or politeness. She wanted to see just what would happen if she stepped out of role; no longer the grown-up in the room, but the provocateur.
‘Have you been to see her recently? She talks a lot about you… she’s told me a lot of things about you.’
Angela’s face rippled with disgust. When she answered, her carefully modulated voice was ever so slightly polluted with a hint of the local accent – like gravel at the bottom of a clear-running stream.
‘You don’t know anything about me.’ She took a step forward and Kirsty felt that thrilled boldness recede just a little bit, letting old, fearful Kirsty step forward once again. ‘Whatever you think you know—’
‘You don’t.’ Kirsty’s eyes widened.
‘That’s right. You got it.’ Angela smiled nastily.
‘Now I get it.’ Kirsty’s voice was soft, wondering.
‘Get what?’ Angela’s voice dropped further and the accent dropped with it, right into the gutter. ‘You don’t know anything. And whatever she’s told you about me, it won’t be true, let me tell you that.’ She added, whispering, ‘She’s… she’s old. She doesn’t know what she’s saying half the time.’
‘I think she does. I know she does. Why’re you scared of me?’
By now they were inches apart, oblivious to their surroundings. A long moment passed before either of them noticed the ward sister, flanked by a lugubrious porter, standing there demanding to know what was going on. In the corridor behind her the curious faces of patients and staff bobbed like pale balloons.
Angela took a step back. So did Kirsty. Reality rushed into the vacuum between them. Kirsty, feeling her hands shake as if she’d just put down a heavy weight, put them in her pockets.
Angela Bright smiled professionally. ‘Just a misunderstanding,’ she said, her voice once again a fluid, mid-Atlantic drawl. ‘I got out at the wrong floor. This lady was explaining that this ward was closed to visitors, that’s all.’
‘Kirsty?’ the ward sister asked doubtfully.
‘Yes,’ Kirsty made herself say. ‘That was it. Just a misunderstanding.’
‘What ward do you need?’ the sister asked dubiously, but Angela had already turned and was striding back to the lifts, entering, pushing the down button with one thin finger. As the doors closed and their eyes met, Angela smiled blandly at the sister, waited until she departed, then dropped the smile, stared with sullen hatred at Kirsty.
‘Stay away if you know what’s good for you,’ she said and that accent was back, a local snarl, straight out of Beacon Hill estate.
The doors closed.
Twenty-Three
Sylvia McKnight’s house was as warm and womb-like as ever. The comforting smell of chamomile tea wafted up from the little teapot. The two women had been silent for some time.
‘I’m sorry, Sylvia. But, it had to have been her sending the notes. After she came to see me today and after the things she said, who else could it be?’
‘She… she wouldn’t have meant any harm.’ Sylvia was looking at her own nervous hands, as if begging them to believe her. ‘Marie… she’s… Sometimes she doesn’t understand what she’s doing, that’s all.’
‘Sylvia, why are you doing this? I know she’s your daughter and you love her, but come on, this is… nuts. She’s trying to scare both of us, and why? Is it just that she’s jealous? Because we’re close, and you and her…’
Sylvia smiled bleakly at her hands. ‘Jealous? Oh no. No, she won’t be jealous of you. She’s not built that way.’ One finger unfurled, tapped the table. ‘I’ve never understood Marie. She’s not like other people.’ A vague, sinister phrase. ‘In all these years I’ve been too much of a coward to think about… what she’s really like, let alone talk to her about it. I’ve always been afraid that if I did, people would realise it’s all my fault.’
‘You can talk to me!’ Kirsty said warmly. She touched one cold hand, dry and hard as petrified wood. ‘You know you can! And I’m not going to think it’s your fault, am I?’
‘You might when I tell you.’ She sighed, shuddered, sat a bit taller, and Kirsty watched grim acceptance creep onto her face. ‘I’ve always been afraid.’
‘Of what? Sylvia, you have to tell me. Please?’ Kirsty held her hand. ‘I won’t judge, I just want to understand. And, whatever it is, well, we’ll face it together.’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Well, they’re the best kind.’ Kirsty smiled.
‘Not this one. This one doesn’t have a happy ending. But it has to be told.’ Sylvia nodded to herself. ‘It’s time. It’s time I was brave.’
* * *
‘I always wanted to be a mother,’ Sylvia began. ‘There were years and years of disappointment, before I finally managed to get pregnant. I knew from the start that she was a girl, I knew from the start that she was Marie. It was as if she told me herself. Marie-Belle McKnight. I wanted to make her life perfect. I wanted to give her something most children never have, that I never had – absolute security, absolute faith in herself, and privacy. When I was little there were too many of us in one small house… no books, no music and it was all noise. I had to go to the outhouse in the yard to be on my own, and even there I wasn’t really alone – I could still hear them. I had to go back. I wanted Marie to have the opposite. We lived in the country.’
‘In Ireland?’
‘Yes. Galway. And we had horses, we grew our own vegetables, fruit. Like people on a desert island. It was our own world.’
‘It sounds idyllic.’
‘I thought it was. Oh we had so much fun!’ Her face creased fondly at the memory. ‘We cooked and we went on long walks and climbed trees and took day trips to the sea side and we drew… it was a lovely time. Then it all changed.’
‘How?’
‘I thought it’d be good for her to see a big city – somewhere foreign, but not foreign if you know what I mean. We’d been reading that poem – “They’re Changing Guard at Buckingham Palace”.’
‘“Christopher Robin went down with Alice”,’ quoted Kirsty with a smile.
‘That’s the one. Marie loved it! So as a special surprise I arranged to go to London for the weekend: see the changing of the guard, the Tower of London, all the sights. Well, she was excited – looking back, maybe a little too excited. As soon as we arrived she got upset. Overwhelmed. There were too many people, there was too much to see, and she just shrank down into herself. Couldn’t talk, barely looked anyone in the face an
d when she did she’d cry. I had all these activities planned, but it was a torture for her. I thought it was just shyness – after all, I’d kept her away from the world, and now, suddenly, I take her to a city like London, with all those millions of people and all that noise. I mean, no wonder she… I told her, look, let’s just go home, but she told me no. She wanted to go to the British Museum and see the mummies. She was set on that. So, the next day that’s what we did, and she seemed all right, quiet, but all right. Then, suddenly, she was gone! I searched for her like a mad thing, running, shouting for her… You don’t understand panic until you lose your child, that fear! It turns you into an animal almost! Anyway, an American family found her eventually. She’d crammed herself between these two cabinets and hidden right back by the wall. She’d only been a few feet away from me the whole time and she’d never said a word! And when they got her out she didn’t speak to me, or talk, or… Then the mother? Of this American family? She took me aside and said that crowded places like the museum weren’t the best place for a child with autism. Well, I was offended! I said that she didn’t have anything wrong with her, that she was just shy and they should keep their opinions to themselves! I grabbed Marie’s hand and we marched out of the place, her screaming her head off and me just mortified.’
‘Is she autistic?’
Sylvia shook her head. ‘When we got back home I went to the library to do a bit of research. I thought maybe there was something in it… maybe it wasn’t just shyness, or isolation, maybe there was a real problem? I wanted to understand, you see. I wanted to know what I’d done wrong and how I could fix it. Nothing in the books rang true though.’
‘So what had happened in the museum to upset her like that?’
‘She told me that one of the mummies had started speaking to her. And she couldn’t understand them and she couldn’t understand why no-one else could hear them. She said she spoke back and people gave her funny looks and so she got scared and hid. I told her that none of this was real and she just had a big imagination and she calmed down. As soon as we were back at home, as soon as we were on the train back home actually, she was normal again – happy, smiley. I asked her what had happened to make her feel so sad and shy before the museum and she said she could see what people were thinking, feel all their emotions rushing into her, and it had all been too much for her. Well, I knew that feeling. I’d had the gift all my life, and I remember how hard it was when I was little, too. Oh, I could’ve kicked myself for not seeing it before! I was relieved, Kirsty. This meant I could help her, because I knew what she was going through. But… ’
‘What?’
‘I started to tell her that I understood, that I’d been the same way, and my mother before me, that it was something the McKnight women had, that it was a talent, a gift, and I could help her. I wish someone had said that to me when I was five, I’ll tell you that. But she… she didn’t like what I was saying. She said, “I’m not like you or anyone.”’
‘Woah.’
‘Yes. She sounded so adult, so sure of herself. She said she didn’t need training, and started showing me the things she could already do – she knew who was calling before I picked up the phone. She could find things I’d hidden or lost. After that she changed. I’d go to hug her and she’d pull away. She didn’t like me reading her stories, teaching her her ABC. She never let me teach her anything ever again apart from tarot. It takes people a lifetime to master tarot, all the combinations, the spreads; it took Marie about ten days. I’ve never seen anything like it…’ Sylvia looked up, gazed gravely at Kirsty. ‘I know this must sound made up, but it’s all true. All of it. She was gifted in a way that was beyond me. So I did what any decent mother would do; I tried to get her as much support as possible to help those gifts along.’
‘Where? Where did you go?’
‘Well, I didn’t know where to start! I thought maybe the doctors could test her, but then I remembered the woman in the museum and thought they might just say she had some syndrome and medicate her. Then I called up Mensa and they sent a test, but she wasn’t that sort of gifted. Then I saw an advert in the library – the Society for Psychical Research were giving a talk about their work with ghosts, that sort of thing. And I thought that they, of all people, might listen to me without thinking I was mad. So, we went along and that’s where we met the Star Child people.’
‘“Star Child”?’ Kirsty almost sniggered.
‘It sounds silly and I thought it sounded silly at the time, but remember, Kirsty, I was desperate. By this point she was hurting herself, screaming, crying, or just shutting down completely and not saying a word. What was I meant to do? My child needed help and thirty-odd years ago there wasn’t the internet to help you find out about things, make contact with people. Star Child, for me, seemed heaven sent.’
‘Who were they?’
‘They were a new organisation and they were deliberately piggybacking on ghost talks, medium shows and things like that, to meet people like me. They were very open about it and what they said made real sense: some children are different, they’re more than intuitive, they’re gifted and so they have to be taught and cared for in a different way. This was exactly what I’d been looking for! After the first meeting we went home and cried, it was such a relief to be told that there was a place for her in the world. We got more involved in the group and Marie made friends with the children – her first real friends. And I met people too, which meant that for the first time in years I could talk about my gifts without people thinking I was mad. Loneliness is a funny thing. Sometimes you don’t know you’re lonely until you stop being lonely. That’s what it was like for me anyway. I’d given my all to motherhood, for all those years it was just me and her, and now I was meeting other mothers, being part of a community. It was… it was lovely. And then it stopped being lovely.’
‘How?’
Sylvia frowned. ‘You know if you put a frog in boiling water it’ll jump straight out? But if you put it in cold water and gradually bring it to the boil, the frog will stay there until it dies? It won’t register any danger. Star Child was like that. The first few months were all about support, praising the kids’ talents, learning to deal with anxiety, things like that. Then it changed, but so gradually that I couldn’t be sure if what was happening was real, or I was making too much of it, or…’
‘But what changed?’
‘Well, from the start we were told that kids like ours weren’t just gifted, but specially gifted, important to the future of the planet. They were old souls who operated on a different level to the rest of us. We’d all lived before, but Star Children had total recall of every past life, and had consciously returned to earth to change it, and we should let them lead. That’s why they could be a handful sometimes, they weren’t being trusted to take the lead, and they resented it. I know it sounds… I know what you’re thinking, but remember, this was very gradual. They made you feel as if you were discovering it all yourself, or rather, you were being trusted with this knowledge because you were special yourself. They wouldn’t just dump the information on you like that, they’d lead into it, saying things like, “We understand this sounds crazy, but…” and “We don’t blame you if you want to leave us right now, plenty have when they couldn’t take the truth.” They took you aside and told you privately, saying that it would be best not to tell any other parents because they weren’t quite as open as you were.’
‘Sounds like a cult,’ Kirsty managed.
Sylvia nodded. ‘Yes. It was. They had that covered too though. They’d kind of poke fun at the fear of cults. One of the things they said in meetings was that if a “cult” has over a thousand members, they call it a religion, if it’s over two thousand it’s a political party, and anything above that means it’s normal life. Democracy could be defined as a cult. And we’d laugh, nod. It made sense. And, after all, we were all there because we knew our children were different, special. Some parents were scared of their own kids, others’ marriages h
ad broken up… The things normal kids responded to – mainstream education, reward charts, sleep routines – simply didn’t apply to ours and we knew that but didn’t know why. Some of us had spent years resisting doctors trying to medicate them out of their gifts. We didn’t trust the system. Now, here was Star Child telling us that we were right all along and together we would change the world. It was irresistible. And of course they weren’t just saying that to the parents, they were saying that to the kids as well. So if parents started having second thoughts and stopped going to the meetings—’
‘Their kid would kick up a fuss about it,’ Kirsty finished.
‘Exactly.’ She shook her head. ‘I stayed longer than I should.’ She winced. ‘I knew on some level that something was off, but I didn’t want to know: Marie was so happy and it was so lovely to meet people again, be out in the world again. I kept taking her to the training sessions. They told me she was immensely talented, but she’d do even better if I wasn’t in the room with her – it was all about vibrations and focus and…’ she pushed one tired hand through her hair, ‘and every time I went to pick her up, she was so happy! It made me realise how unhappy she’d been before. Lonely, just like me. Kirsty, she glowed! She stood tall, she ate well, she slept well, she woke up energised. She hugged me again. It was miraculous! I saw that she’d changed, and that they were changing her, but it was for the better. I thought it was for the better anyway. Then she started going to a few weekend retreats, and, no, I wasn’t allowed to go. When she came back from these retreats she was just a little bit different, just a little bit less herself, and she didn’t want to tell me what she’d done, or how she felt, or…’
‘What did you do?’
‘At the next meeting I stayed behind to ask some questions. Well, they tried to give me the brush-off, but I – and I was very polite about it – I wanted to know details; just ordinary things like how many children were on the same retreat, what activities they did, that kind of thing. I know, I know it sounds insane now, that I sent her off in the first place without knowing these things, but it was a different time then – parents were more trusting of authority, more intimidated by people in charge.’
