While My Eyes Were Closed: The #1 Bestseller

by Linda Green

  I pull the newspaper from the letter box and unfold it. For a moment I don’t understand. I think they must have put the local paper through by mistake. They haven’t though. There is photo of the girl on the front page of the Sunday Times. The same photo which was on the flyer. The one of her in the stripy dress. The dress which was on my rotary washing line in the backyard yesterday. The dress which I ironed last night and is now in the airing cupboard upstairs. I hold on to the banister to steady myself. It is national news. I feel a clawing sensation inside. It is me. I have done this. I am the cause of this whole kerfuffle. Half the police force is searching for this child, and she is here with me, playing with a ball of string with Melody. It would be funny if it wasn’t such a huge waste of resources. I wonder for a second if I should phone them. Tell them that I took the child but only for her own good. I know they won’t understand though. They will probably arrest me or even charge me with something. I remember reading about a woman who was arrested shortly after that toddler was taken by those boys in Liverpool. She’d spotted a little girl crying because she’d lost her mother and all she did was take her by the hand, and the next thing she knew the police grabbed her and accused her of child abduction. People get so hysterical about these things. All common sense goes out of the window.

  I open the newspaper. There is a photograph of the parents too. They made an appeal for her safe return at a press conference. The mother looks awful. Her hair is straggly and she doesn’t appear to be wearing make-up. The father is unshaven. He is not even wearing a collar and tie. And then I read what she said, the mother. About how she only turned her back for a minute and her daughter was gone. Well, she is lying. It was a lot more than a minute. And she says that after the child fell over, she cleaned her up. She didn’t. She barely brushed the dirt off her hands with her fingers. There was nothing clean about it. I was the one who cleaned her up, and maybe if the mother hadn’t been so busy on her mobile phone she would have realised that she hadn’t looked after her properly at all. And now she is expecting people to feel sorry for her. The gall of the woman.

  They won’t buy it. The police will see through this charade very quickly. Once you start lying you are in trouble. And when the police dig deeper it will all come tumbling out. The lies. The neglect. Everything. I will simply hold the fort here until the police are ready for me to return her safely to them. I will not be swayed from my duty by this emotional blackmail. I will give the child the protection she needs. Provide a place of safety. Be the mother that her own mother is clearly not capable of being.

  I hide the newspaper in the magazine rack and hurry back to the kitchen. The child is still playing with Melody. The ball of string has pretty much unravelled. Melody is tangled up in it. The child is smiling, the delight dancing in her eyes as she flicks one end of the string. It is good to see her laughing after all the tears. She will be happy here, I know that. And I will be happy too.

  *

  ‘How would you like to start learning the piano?’ I ask her later, when Melody finally tires of playing and retreats to her basket.

  She turns to look at me. ‘You mean like Otis does?’

  ‘Yes, proper lessons.’

  ‘Will I be better than him?’

  ‘You might if you practise harder.’

  ‘Otis doesn’t like practising. He says it’s boring, and sometimes he goes outside to play football and Daddy gets cross about it.’

  ‘Doesn’t anyone else in your family play?’

  ‘My nanna plays and she bought Otis the keyboard and piano lessons for Christmas. Otis wanted a Lego Hobbit house.’

  ‘Yes, well, we don’t always get what we want, do we? We have to be grateful for what we receive.’

  ‘Nanna gave me a painting stand.’

  ‘An easel?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, obviously pleased I knew the right word. ‘And Grandma gave me Lego Friends, and Mummy said she didn’t understand that I wanted the same Lego as Otis, not the pink one.’

  ‘But I’m sure you still thanked her nicely for it in your letter.’

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘The thank-you letter you wrote.’

  The child looks at me blankly. I shake my head and sigh. I shouldn’t be surprised by now, I really shouldn’t.

  ‘Right. Come and sit on the piano stool and we’ll make a start.’

  The child looks up at me. Her face is serious, her voice almost a whisper. ‘I don’t know what those little squiggles on lines in Otis’s piano book mean.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, dear. I’ll teach you.’

  She nods. The corners of her mouth turn up a little.

  ‘Can I play to Daddy when I get home?’

  ‘Let’s see how we get on, shall we?’

  She sits on the stool, her legs dangling. I pull out the footrest for her.

  ‘What about those?’ she asks, pointing to the pedals.

  ‘There is no need for pedals yet. It’s your hands we need to start with.’

  She holds out her hands as if for inspection. ‘Have my germs gone now?’

  ‘Yes, they’re fine.’ Her fingers are reasonably long but slightly chubbier than Matthew’s were at her age.

  ‘Now, shape your hand like a bridge, with your fingers curved and on their tips. Like this.’

  She looks at my hand and then copies. ‘Like I’m going to tickle Melody,’ she says.

  ‘Yes. I suppose that is another way of looking at it. Tickle the piano keys then. Very gently.’

  ‘The black ones or the white ones?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter for now. I just want you to get used to having your hands in the correct position.’

  The child’s fingers curl gently over the notes and she produces the most delicate of tinkling noises.

  ‘Wonderful,’ I say. ‘Now always remember to hold your fingers curved like that. Never let them flatten out. Flat fingers don’t produce the right sound.’

  ‘Does Otis have flat fingers?’

  ‘Not now he doesn’t. But it took a long time for me to get him to stop.’

  ‘Am I going to be better than Otis?’

  ‘Let’s hope so, shall we?’

  She nods and tinkles some more. I hear Matthew playing, his fingers so delicate he sometimes barely seemed to touch the keys. He hums along to the tune. He thinks he is only humming inside his head. I don’t tell him that he is humming out loud. The world is full of people who only hum in their heads. He will have the rest of his life for that. I want him to hum out loud while he can. I want his heart to sing with the music. His body to vibrate to the notes. Sometimes, while he is playing I am able to forget the world outside. To simply close my eyes and immerse myself in the moment. To breathe in the very essence of aliveness.

  ‘Piano lady, are you asleep?’

  The child’s voice cuts through to me. I open my eyes. I see the outline of Matthew. Matthew’s clothes, his hair, his pale skin.

  ‘Just resting my eyes,’ I say to the child. ‘Now, we’re going to learn all about the different notes on the piano. Do you know your ABC?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Your alphabet, dear, from A to Z. Do you know it?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Right, well you can start now. We only need to know A to G. I think we can manage that. Point to the black keys for me.’

  The child points.

  ‘They are grouped in twos and threes. Show me the two black keys together in the middle.’

  She points again.

  ‘Now, the white key to the left of those is middle C. That’s very important to remember. You can always find the other notes if you can find middle C.’

  I glance down at the child. She has a glazed look in her eyes. I’m not sure any of this is going in.

  ‘Where’s middle C?’

  She hesitates then points to the white key to the right of the two black ones.

  ‘You don’t know your left from right, do you?’

&nb
sp; She shakes her head. ‘Mummy says they’ll help me with them at school.’

  ‘Matthew knew them before he started school, you know.’

  She looks down. Her bottom lip is trembling.

  I sigh, knowing full well what is about to happen.

  ‘I want my Mummy,’ she sobs. ‘I want to go home. I don’t want to play piano any more.’ She screws up her face as she wails.

  ‘We’ll leave it for now then,’ I say, standing up.

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘You know why you can’t do that.’

  ‘I don’t care about naughty boys.’

  ‘Well the police do and your parents do. Besides, I told you, your mother isn’t well enough to look after you.’

  ‘Has she got a poorly tummy?’

  ‘No. It’s a different sort of poorly. Her head’s poorly.’

  ‘Did she bump it?’

  ‘No, but she’s not thinking straight. She doesn’t know how to look after you.’

  She frowns at me. ‘Will the doctor make her better?’

  ‘It’s not something the doctor can mend. It’s inside her head.’

  The frown deepens. I think it’s right that I do this now. I need to prepare her for what is going to happen. It will make it easier for her in the long run, even if it is going to be hard now. I sit back down next to her on the piano stool.

  ‘Your mummy hasn’t been looking after you very well, I’m afraid. Remember when you arrived here? The mess your hands were in? Your mummy should have taken care of them.’

  ‘She said we had to go and get Otis first.’

  ‘Yes, well. It seems your mother is often in a rush. No time to cut your hair or your nails. Or even to feed you properly.’

  ‘Mummy doesn’t let me have ice creams. She says they make your teeth go bad and people get fat if they eat too many ice creams.’

  ‘Well, I’ve never heard such nonsense. Matthew used to have ice creams in the summer, and they never did him any harm.’

  ‘Are you going to get me an ice cream?’

  ‘I will do but I can’t go to the park at the moment.’

  ‘Because of the naughty boys?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Grandma gets them from her freezer. She has choc ices in there.’

  I stand up straight away, cursing myself for not having thought of that earlier.

  ‘And so do I.’

  ‘Can I have one? Can I have a choc ice?’

  ‘I’m not hearing the magic word.’

  ‘Pleeease.’

  I smile at her, stand up and leave the room with her following behind me like a faithful Labrador. There is a lightness in my step as I go through to the kitchen. And a smile on my face when I hand the plate with the choc ice on it to her and watch her slowly unwrap it, pop a broken piece of the chocolate into her mouth and then take a bite of the soft ice cream below. I can do this. I can make her happy. I can be the mother she needs. And she does need me. Even if she doesn’t know it yet.

  *

  She cries less at bedtime than the previous two. Only by ten minutes or so, but it is something. She is coming to accept it. That her place is here with me. Little by little, the resistance will wane. The important thing is not to listen to the crying but to the gaps between. I remember that from when Matthew learned to go to sleep by himself. Some mothers would crack after a few minutes. Would go in and cuddle them, try to soothe them. They didn’t understand that once you had done that, there was no going back. The baby would cry and cry until you went into them again. You have to be strong about these things. Know that you are doing the right thing and not be swayed by your emotions. Matthew learned soon enough. Five nights and then I barely had a whimper from him. And babies taught to go to sleep without a fuss grow up to become children who go through life without a fuss. Matthew was never a needy child. Never.

  I picture him outside in the park now. Wrapping himself in the tree canopy. Understanding that I cannot come to him. Knowing that it doesn’t mean I love him any less. Simply that the bond between us is such that he does not need me fussing over him all the time.

  I go to the guest room and switch on the computer which I keep in there. It is a desktop model, rather old and no doubt obsolete by now. It does not matter to me though. I use it very rarely. Only for the occasional email and a bit of online shopping. Mostly the grocery order. Ocado is a godsend for those who can’t abide the weekly shop. The very thought of stepping inside a supermarket turns me cold: the screaming children, the frazzled mothers, the cashiers who don’t even make eye contact with you during the entire transaction. No, I don’t miss that one iota.

  And the Ocado drivers are so polite too. It’s like they have been to some sort of finishing school which the rest of the population of Halifax doesn’t have access to.

  I check my weekly trolley and am about to press Place Order when I realise that my normal shop will not be sufficient. I need to order for two. For a child. My finger hovers over the mouse. I am not at all sure what young children eat these days. Crumpets obviously and pasta – she has mainly eaten pasta since she arrived. And she asked for tomato ketchup and fish fingers, neither of which I had in. I do a search for fish fingers. It comes up with twenty-three different products. I have no idea which ones she prefers. I choose Birds Eye because Matthew liked them and because I can’t bring myself to order anything with Jamie Oliver’s name attached. Tomato ketchup is just as bad: twenty-seven products, though at least Mr Oliver’s name isn’t featured on any of them. I go with Heinz, again on the basis that Matthew liked it. I add some more things she has asked for: baked beans, cheese slices, little sausages, Coco Pops, Magnum ice creams – the little ones, because the full-size ones are so expensive and far too big for a child that age anyway. The only thing that comes up when I search for SpongeBob Squarepants are some cartons of orange juice drink. I put them in my trolley. I won’t give the treats to her all at once. I will ration them to one or two a day. That will give her something to look forward to, and I can use them to stop the tears when they come. Not that there will be so many tears as the days pass. I am quite sure of that.

  I place the order. The amount I pay is both alarming and satisfying at the same time. Shopping for one is not something anyone ever aspires to.

  I am about to turn off the computer when I remember the press conference. It will probably be on the Internet somewhere. I hesitate, unsure whether I should watch it. The media are good at wringing the emotion out of these things. Everything is always painted as black or white. Life is not like that, of course. Life is about all the shades of grey in between.

  I go to the BBC website. It is the only news one I ever bother with. Matthew showed me how to find it. I like the fact that you only have to click on the stories you want to read. Not like listening to the ten o’clock news, when you have to listen to all the stupid things that stupid people around the world are doing before you get to the bit at the end about the royal family, or whatever it is you are actually interested in. That’s why I decided we didn’t need a TV. It is bad enough that these people exist without inviting them into my living room on a regular basis.

  It is there. The photo of the child in the stripy dress is at the top of the page. I scroll down the story until I get to the video of the press conference and press Play. I recognise the father instantly, though he has always been clean shaven when he has come with the boy. Usually he has a very casual, couldn’t-care-less air about him but that has gone too. His body is taut, his fingers twitchy. She, on the other hand, sits there with a scowl on her face. Looking for all the world as if it is everybody else’s fault, not hers.

  A police officer introduces himself as the detective leading the enquiry. There are two other police officers, both women, sitting next to the mother. The detective introduces the parents as Lisa and Alex Dale. I watch as he outlines the ‘facts’ of the case. It is ridiculous, of course, because they aren’t facts at all. They are her version of events. A vers
ion which she has carefully crafted to give the best possible impression of herself. So it comes across as if she is some poor innocent victim who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The policeman doesn’t mention the way she neglected her child when it fell over. Or the fact that she was more interested in answering her mobile phone than keeping an eye on the child. He has clearly accepted her version of events. If this is the detective leading the case, I dread to think what the others are like.

  Every now and again they go to a shot of the mother and father. They are stony-faced, as if they are assuming the worst. The mother looks awful. Her hair is lank. She appears to have put a bit of lip gloss on but it only succeeds in accentuating how pale and lifeless the rest of her face is. Guilt does that. Sucks the life out of you.

  The policeman says the father is going to read a prepared statement. I watch as he gets a piece of paper out and holds it in front of him, hands shaking, his voice trembling as he starts to read.

  I try not to listen to the words. He will have written what he was told to write by the police or what she told him to write. The mother sits next to him, her jaw set, her eyes staring straight ahead. She doesn’t appear in the slightest bit sorry for what she has done. She does at least draw the line at crying. Maybe she knows that she couldn’t do it convincingly. When the father gets to the bit where he asks for anyone with information to get in touch with the police she looks up. As she does so, she is greeted with a battery of flashes. She doesn’t even appear to blink; simply stares out at the photographers, her face hard and uncompromising.

  When the father finishes reading he folds up the piece of paper and gives an audible sigh. I watch as they stand up, the mother still staring straight ahead. You can see it in her eyes, the fear. They probably think she is frightened of what has happened to her child. Only I know that she is scared of being found out. Scared of the truth.

  11

  Lisa

  We are all sitting at the kitchen table. It has become like some kind of war cabinet, each of us waiting for news from the front while trying desperately to think of something constructive to do or to come up with the important piece of information which hasn’t been thought of yet.