by Mark Tilbury
‘You name it, Picasso.’
‘Ham and pineapple?’
‘Ham and pineapple it is.’
Mel left Tony studying the picture. Sod him. She needed to get out of the house for a while. Away from the picture that brought her father’s last words to life in the glorious detail.
9
By Monday morning, Chloe’s picture was pinned to the side of the fridge-freezer with magnetic letters, and Mel’s worries were pinned to her heart with lead weights. The rest of the weekend had passed without incident. Mel hadn’t spoken to Tony, apart from discussing her father’s burial and paying the funeral costs out of their own pocket until his estate could settle the bill. Tony had complained that her father should have had a funeral plan in place. Mel had told him to take his sanctimonious mathematical approach to everything and jump in Feelham River.
Mel dropped Chloe off at Kerrie-Anne’s and drove to school in a state of shock. She parked, watching rain bouncing off the windscreen like silver bullets. She had no idea how she would get through the day. After barely sleeping Saturday night, she’d fared slightly better last night courtesy of a bottle of wine, waking at just past 4 a.m. with a dry mouth and a bladder fit to burst.
To make matters worse, she’d slept in the spare room. The mattress was as lumpy as Tony’s mashed potato. She’d tried to convince herself that Tony would never have an affair, but the more she’d thought about it, the more convinced she’d become it was true. Chloe hadn’t plucked the information out of thin air. It had come straight from her mother’s spiteful tongue courtesy of Ruby Rag Doll.
Mel busied herself opening a packet of Benson and Hedges cigarettes. She held the pack to her nose and sniffed. They smelled so good. So inviting. She slid one out and clamped it between her lips. Tony hated smoking, but that only acted as a spur to start again. He’d never failed to throw statistical data at her when she’d smoked. How many years the damn things took off your life. How you breathed better when you didn’t smoke. Smelled better. He’d stopped short at look better. Sod him, she didn’t care about his opinions anymore.
She grabbed a cheap throwaway lighter from the glovebox and rolled the wheel.
You’ll regret it! You’re just doing this to spite Tony.
‘And that’s a bad thing?’
One puff, and you’ll be hooked. Watching the clock in class, willing away the time until the next break so as you can top up your body with deadly toxins.
Mel’s finger stilled on the lighter’s wheel.
Not to mention getting ratty with all and sundry if you haven’t had your poisonous fix.
Mel sucked on the cigarette. This action evoked a childhood memory. Thirteen. Sitting with Eileen Hislop at the back of Feelham Park, working their way through a pack of Marlboro Lights. Eileen had been as sick as a dog. Never touched another cigarette again. But Mel had been hooked. Five-a-day had turned into ten-a-day by the time she’d reached teacher training college. Ten had turned to twenty by the time she’d fallen pregnant with Megan.
She slipped the cigarette back in the packet and threw the box and the lighter in the glove box. She walked into the school, head down, rain driving against her body. Lightning slashed the sky as she closed the door against the howling, anguished cry of the wind.
She hadn’t travelled to work with any other ambition than getting through the day in one piece and trying to keep her emotions in check, but as she walked along the hallway, past the wooden lockers and cubbyholes, the pictures on the wall depicting ‘doing’ verbs drawn by the children, rows of pegs with names of Year One pupils above them, she made a snap decision to have a word with the head. Explain things. She couldn’t go on like this. It wasn’t yet eight in the morning and she was already exhausted.
Charles Honeywell was a decent man. A patient man. A listening man. She removed her beige raincoat, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.
‘Come in.’
Honeywell sat behind a large mahogany desk. A slim man of average build, his intelligent blue eyes peered out from behind black-framed glasses like gems in a display case. ‘Good morning, Mel. Dreadful weather. So much for a white Christmas, eh?’
‘Can I have a moment?’
‘Take a pew.’
Mel sat in a seat usually reserved for errant children and worried parents.
‘You look as if the universe has charged you with the responsibility of having to fathom its deepest secrets.’
Mel brushed rain from her face. ‘My father’s just passed away.’
‘Oh, dear. I’m sorry to hear that. Please accept my condolences.’
‘It’s not as if it wasn’t expected. He’s been ill for quite some time. It’s just…’
‘Nothing prepares us for death. The shock is never lessened by foresight.’
Tears, which had been waiting in the wings, took that as their cue and flooded Mel’s face. Her body rocked and convulsed. Honeywell stood poised, as unrehearsed as a stagehand thrust into the limelight and asked to take on the leading role.
Mel leaned forward, hands clawing at her face, her body consumed by this unexpected wave of raw emotion. Honeywell plucked a tissue from a box kept on the desk. He waited for Mel’s sobbing to turn to sniffles, and handed it over. Mel snorted snot and wiped her nose. The tissue turned to an instant sodden mess. Honeywell conjured another, like a magician performing tricks.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mel said, gesturing helplessly at her face. ‘I don’t know where that came from.’
Honeywell walked back to his seat. ‘From your heart, Mel. It would be a stone-cold person indeed who didn’t feel the loss of a loved one.’
Mel forced a smile, grateful the headmaster had a compassionate nature. She stared out the window at the skeletal trees standing naked against the darkening sky. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For understanding.’
‘It’s part of my job, Mel.’
After a long awkward silence, Mel said, ‘Can I ask you something?’
Honeywell brushed a hand across his thinning grey hair. ‘Of course.’
‘Do you believe in life after death?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I just wondered.’
He gazed out the window. ‘I suppose anything is possible.’
‘What about reincarnation?’
‘To be honest, I’ve never given it much thought. Has something happened with your father to provoke such thoughts?’
‘Not really.’
‘So, what’s brought this on.’
‘If I tell you, do you promise it will go no further?’
‘I’m guilty of many things, but being a gossip isn’t one of them. What’s said in this office stays in this office.’
Mel hesitated. What if he thought she was cracking up? Losing the plot. He might send her on indefinite leave and seek to have her removed from the school. The last thing she needed right now was to lose her job on top of everything else.
‘Mel?’
‘It’s my daughter.’
‘What about her?’
‘She’s…’
Honeywell studied her as if she might be about to go into emotional meltdown again. He plucked a fresh tissue from his diminishing stock. ‘Take your time.’
Without pause, Mel told him everything that had happened with Chloe. From the episode at Feelham Theatre, to the detailed drawing of her father’s deathbed message. Everything, except the part about Grandma Audrey, because she couldn’t bring herself to explain her own broken childhood.
Honeywell was silent long enough for Mel to fear for her job. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—’
‘And this all started when you took her to the theatre?’
Mel nodded. ‘She was fine before we went inside. Excited about Christmas. Looking forward to the pantomime.’
‘How strange. And she… choked later on that night?’
‘Yes.’
‘A nightmare, perhaps?’
‘It
was more than that. There were ugly red marks around her neck. She looked at me and Tony as if she hated us. Then she said, “Put me in the fucking cage and be done with it.”’
‘Good grief.’
‘Said we were all cowards.’
‘What a strange thing to say.’
‘I want to help her. Be there for her. But how can I when I don’t have a clue what’s wrong with her? It’s as if she’s a different child. Older. In so much pain.’
‘This does seem… rather bizarre.’
‘The picture of the house on fire looks as if it’s been drawn by an accomplished artist, not a four-year-old child.’
‘Perhaps you should take the rest of the term off. Get yourself straightened out. Have a rest. Come back refreshed in the New Year.’
‘What about the Christmas play?’
‘Miss Hargreaves can cover that. Now, get yourself off home and take care of that little girl.’
‘But—’
‘And that’s an order.’
Mel didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’ She left the office and walked back to the car with a head that felt as dark and full of menace as the weather.
10
Mel drove straight from the school to Kerrie-Anne’s, thunder rolling across the near-black sky. She explained to the childminder that Charles Honeywell had given her some time off.
Kerrie-Anne invited her in. ‘I’m not surprised. What with your dad and everything else. You need to look after yourself.’
‘I doubt I’ll be going back to school until next term. But I’ll pay you up until Christmas Eve.’
‘Thanks. I appreciate that.’
‘I’d be grateful if the stuff with Chloe goes no further.’
‘It goes without saying.’
After five minutes idle chat about the weather, Kerrie-Anne went to fetch Chloe from the playroom where she was playing dolls with two other pre-school kids.
Whilst she waited for her daughter, Mel tried to stop black thoughts tumbling through her mind. Tried to rationalise what had happened. Make sense of it. It was like trying to understand quantum physics. Mel had always known Chloe was bright. She’d walked at nine months. Talked in basic sentences by eighteen months. Drew pictures she had no right to draw at four years old. Mel had no discernible gift for art. As for Tony, he barely got past matchstick men. His gift for figures was strictly mathematical.
Kerrie-Anne returned from the playroom without Chloe. In her hand, a sheet of A3 paper. A look in her eyes that warned of disaster.
‘What is it?’
Kerrie-Anne lay the paper on the kitchen table.
Mel stared at the picture, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. Depicted on the page, a guillotine reminiscent of those used in French executions. A headless woman in a bright purple tracksuit knelt one side of the apparatus. Blood ran down the sides of the guillotine and formed puddles either side of the base.
‘Chloe drew that, Mel.’
The childminder’s voice sounded as distant as the thunder rolling across the sky. Mel stared at the severed head lying in the dirt, its long blonde hair streaked crimson by the victim’s blood. Although the head was facedown, obliterating the features, Mel couldn’t help thinking the woman reminded her of Chloe. Older, but as she would have imagined her.
‘How can she even draw like that?’ Kerrie-Anne asked.
‘I… don’t… know…’
‘It’s so—’
Chloe walked into the kitchen. ‘Hi, Mummy.’
‘Hi, Pumpkin.’
‘Do you like my picture?’
Mel tried to appear nonchalant. Act as if a French-style execution was the most natural thing in the world for a child to draw.
‘What’s the picture about?’ Kerrie-Anne asked.
Chloe shrugged.
‘Why did you draw it?’ Mel asked. ‘What were you… thinking about?’
‘I wasn’t thinking nothing, silly. I was feeling.’
‘Feeling?’
Chloe nodded and plugged her thumb into her mouth.
Mel stared at the bright-red blood splashed across the page. It appeared to move, as if coming to life. She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them again. The picture was once again still. Small mercies. ‘Did you see something like this in a book?’
Chloe shook her head.
‘On the computer?’
‘No.’
‘Where?’
‘Why are you asking me silly questions?’
‘Mummy’s just confused, Chloe.’
‘Maybe you ought to open your eyes, then,’ Chloe said, in that older voice that chilled Mel’s blood.
Mel looked at Kerrie-Anne and tried to apologise with her eyes. ‘I’ll get off.’
The childminder looked relieved. ‘Okay. See you in the New Year.’
Mel told Chloe to put her coat on.
Chloe asked, ‘What are you going to do with the picture?’
Mel looked at the damned thing as if it might actually bite. ‘I—’
‘Do you want me to keep it?’ Kerrie-Anne offered.
‘Do you want it?’ Chloe countered.
Kerrie-Anne smiled. ‘I’d love it.’
Chloe seemed satisfied. She walked to the hallway to grab her coat.
When Chloe was out of earshot, Mel told Kerrie-Anne to throw it away.
‘I’ll put it away somewhere. Just in case she asks about it next year.’
‘I owe you, Kerrie.’
The childminder rested a hand on Mel’s arm, much the same way as the doctor had when he’d left Mel alone with her dying father. ‘No probs. Have a great Christmas.’
‘You, too.’
Chloe fell asleep on the short journey home. Mel carried her from the car and straight upstairs to bed. She laid her on top of the duvet, drew her pink Minnie Mouse curtains, and tiptoed from the room. She just needed an hour to get her head straight. Rearrange the furniture as her father used to say.
She resisted an urge to go to the fridge and pour a glass of wine.
You’re turning into your mother.
She sat on the sofa, tucked her feet up under her.
What are you going to do next? Lock Chloe in the basement?
No worries on that score. The poky little house didn’t have one. The sooner they moved, the better. They might get a chance to relax for once without being on top of each other.
That won’t solve anything. Another bedroom and a decent-sized garden won’t make Chloe’s bizarre behaviour disappear, will it?
Mel wrestled with an urge to go back to the car and fetch the cigarettes from the glove box. She was in danger of failing Chloe every bit as much as her own mother had failed her all those years ago.
‘I’m nothing like my mother,’ Mel whispered, sucking the tip of her finger and inhaling imaginary smoke. ‘I’m not a cruel and vindictive bitch like her.’
There’s more than one way to neglect a child.
‘I’m doing my best.’
That’s what they all say. But are you? Are you, really?
‘Yes.’ She sucked the tip of her finger again. Harder. Biting down on the nail.
What do you think the pictures mean? Fires. Guillotines. What next? A crazed axeman chopping them all to pieces?
‘Shut up,’ Mel shouted, half-convinced her mother had somehow got inside her head. ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t cope.’
That’s right. Shut up shop and run away like you always do.
Mel stared at the wall, trying to lose herself in its blank magnolia canvas, convinced that she was being punished for failing Megan. Failing Chloe. Failing herself.
You’ve not much going for you, have you? Even your husband’s at it with some tart at school.
A scream interrupted her thoughts. She bounded up the stairs two at a time. Ran into Chloe’s room and stood panting just inside the door. Her daughter was sitting on the end of the bed, Ruby Rag Doll hanging limply in her hand.
Chloe stared
at her, eyes wide, the ghost of a smile on her lips.
Mel couldn’t see any trace of her daughter in those eyes. The smile spoke of a thousand deadly secrets. ‘Are you all right?’
Chloe nodded.
‘Did you have a bad dream?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like some lunch?’
‘Not hungry.’
‘You need to eat.’
‘Why?’
‘To grow up into a big strong girl.’
‘What’s the point of growing up?’
‘To have a nice happy life.’
Chloe shook her head. ‘Not going to happen.’
‘You—’
‘Why did they want me to do stupid bloody A-levels?’
‘Who?’
‘My parents.’
‘But—’
‘I hate science.’
Mel walked to within a few feet of her daughter. ‘Your… parents?’
‘What about them?’
‘What are they called?’
Without missing a beat, Chloe said, ‘Jenny and Robert.’
‘Do they live in Feelham?’
‘No.’
‘Where?’
‘Woking.’
‘But that’s a long way away. You’ve never been to Woking.’
‘Have.’
‘When?’
‘Before I died.’
Even though Mel had already considered this to be a strong possibility, just hearing it out loud made it seem more real. More terrifying. ‘But you haven’t died, sweetheart.’
‘Have.’
‘How?’
Chloe was silent long enough for Mel to wonder if her daughter had been asleep the whole time. Talking to her from somewhere deep within her subconscious. She looked up at Mel with those big blue eyes designed to steal hearts. ‘Here comes a candle to light you to bed.’
Mel watched a deep red jagged line appear around her daughter’s neck. ‘What the hell…?’
‘And here comes a chopper to chop off your head.’
11
With Chloe finally asleep at just past nine, Tony said, ‘I think you should take her to the doctor’s. See if he can refer her to someone.’
Mel lit a cigarette, her third since Chloe’s latest outburst, and blew smoke in his direction. That’s for the bitch you’re fucking. ‘No doctor’s going to help her.’
