by Nicole Trope
It hits him in the chest and he screams and rears back. The kettle bounces onto the kitchen floor, spraying water everywhere. Vernon holds his knife in front of him and steps forward but he slips on the water, going down with a thump.
‘Run!’ I scream at Lilly. ‘Run.’
She stares at me for a moment, her lips quivering, her face pale, and she seems unsure of what to do.
‘Run!’ I shout again.
Lilly moves quickly over the wet floor, careful movements in case she slips. She is out of the kitchen and heading towards the front door when Vernon stands up and roars in frustration, ‘I’ll fucking kill you!’
He moves quickly, following her. I am close behind. Lilly pulls frantically at the handle, but before she can open the door he is right there and I watch him raise his hand, see the shine of the steel blade, hear him yell with anger as he plunges it into her back.
‘Oh,’ she says, ‘oh,’ as her legs start to go out from under her.
She sags a little.
I come up behind Vernon and watch as he raises the knife to hurt her again.
A blinding fury rises up inside me. I let her go to keep her safe and now he’s hurt her. All I ever wanted to do was keep her safe and he’s hurt her. I grab the huge glass vase on the sideboard. I lift it high above my body and I hit it against Vernon’s skull, the force from the blow reverberating right through my body. ‘Leave her alone!’ I scream.
He lifts his hand, panting, as though trying to locate the source of his pain, and then he falls over and lies still on the floor, his head hitting the stone tiles of the entrance hall with a clunk.
I place the unbroken vase gently back on the sideboard. And then I drop onto the floor and crawl over to my sister. My sister, who I loved more than anything and who I thought was gone. My sister, who I only wanted to keep safe.
Forty-Five
Molly
* * *
Molly holds her hand to her back where the knife has gone in. She can feel the dark, wet blood that she knows is coming from inside her.
‘Oh,’ she hears herself moan. She is lying on the floor on the cold tiles of the entrance hall. She would like to close her eyes. She cannot feel any pain, and she has no idea why this is. She turns her head to see the man, the man who called himself her father, lying silent and still. She watches as Alice crawls over towards her.
‘My baby,’ she says to Alice because she knows that she is going to lose him or her.
‘It’ll be okay,’ replies Alice, stroking her head. ‘I need to get help. I need to call for help. Don’t close your eyes, Lilly, don’t go to sleep.’
‘You… you used to tell me to go to sleep,’ says Molly.
Alice nods and Molly can see the tears dripping off her face.
‘Go to sleep, little one,’ says Alice. ‘That’s what I used to say, but don’t close your eyes, Lilly, please don’t go to sleep.’
‘Just for a bit,’ murmurs Molly, ‘just a few minutes.’ And then there is nothing.
Forty-Six
Alice
* * *
I pace up and down the waiting room of the hospital. I’ve already had three cups of tea and I can’t possibly drink anymore. Every time I sit down, I’m overwhelmed by all that has happened and have to jump out of my chair again and start pacing once more. My hands are loosely wrapped in gauze and they’ve given me something for the pain, but I can still feel the hot sting of my burns, taking me back to that terrifying moment.
I’ve been here for four hours already. I called an ambulance, screaming my address at them, and they arrived, sirens blaring, with the police not far behind. I refused to answer any questions until I’d called Jack.
‘You have to pick the boys up from school,’ I yelled before he’d even had time to say hello.
‘What… why? Are you okay?’
‘I’m going to the hospital, but you have to pick them up from school but don’t take them home. You can’t take them home.’
‘The hospital, Alice, what’s happened… what’s happened? What’s wrong? Why can’t I take them home?’
‘I’m okay, Jack, I’m… Just promise me you’ll fetch them and take them to your mother. Fetch them and then come to the hospital.’
I am waiting to see Lilly or Molly as her name is. I am waiting to see my sister. My breath catches in my throat. I am waiting to see my sister.
When we got here, I had no idea how to explain things to the nurse. I told her I was a friend of Molly’s, and they used her wallet and phone to call her husband and her parents.
‘She’s pregnant,’ I told the nurse.
Once she’d been admitted and my hands had been seen to, Constable Ferris had taken me to a small, sterile room and asked me to explain. Then he asked me to explain again and again.
‘You’ll need to speak to one of our detectives,’ he said, scratching at his blond hair, still confused about my story.
‘I understand, but I need to be here for now.’
‘I should really take you in to the station straight away.’
‘I feel sick,’ I said. ‘You can stay with me, but I’m not going anywhere.’ I wasn’t going to leave her. Not again. Never again.
He’s sitting a few chairs away from me now. ‘A detective will be here soon,’ he said.
Constable Ferris is the one who keeps bringing me cup after cup of tea.
‘He forced his way into my house,’ I told him. ‘He was my mother’s partner for many years and he came back to hurt me.’
‘But why?’ he asked, and I shrugged my shoulders. I can’t explain it now, relive it all. I’ll save my energy for the detective, and I may also need a lawyer before I say anything else. I slump down into a grey plastic chair. I cannot believe what has happened, but a small part of me is relieved that I was actually getting emails from someone who wanted to hurt me, and not my mother, or Anika. I’m not going mad. He was using my mother’s computer or getting Ed to use it to torment me. I think about how confused she must have been to see him and about how terrified she must have been at the end. No one believed her when she said he was visiting, but how could we have known? I’m certain he caused her death. She was so weak, so sick, it wouldn’t have taken much to force her body to shut down. Her chest was bruised from Anika attempting CPR, but what if it was bruised from a blow delivered by a monster? The relief I feel mingles with a terrible sadness at how she died, alone and afraid.
Another part of me is almost leaping with joy. Lilly did not die in a car accident. Lilly was adopted. Lilly was saved. Lilly is back. It doesn’t feel real and I stifle an overwhelming urge to walk around the waiting area saying to people, ‘My sister isn’t dead, she isn’t gone,’ until this wonderful truth sinks in.
Alice has a sister. Alice has a sister. Alice has a sister.
I watch as a tall man walks quickly to the front desk. He runs his hands through his curly dark brown hair, breathing so fast he almost can’t get the words out. ‘Molly Khan,’ he says, ‘my wife, she’s pregnant.’
I stand up, wanting to go to him, but then I sink down again. What on earth would I say?
A few minutes later two women and a man fly in, also asking after Molly. The women are both blond and beautiful, obviously mother and daughter. I can see terror and desperate love on both their faces. Lilly has been loved, loved and cared for. Relief fills me right up. Lilly is alive and she is here and she is loved.
My phone rings. ‘What happened, Alice?’ says Jack the second I answer.
‘The boys?’ I ask. ‘Are they okay?’
‘They’re with my mother, she’ll give them dinner. I told them you had to go and meet some mothers about… about the bake sale.’
‘And they believed that?’
‘Isaac said… he said it was unlike you to schedule a meeting at pickup time.’
‘Smart boy,’ I say. I can’t help smiling but then I feel a stone of sadness crush my heart. What if I lose all of them when the truth comes out, when they know ever
ything? What if they can never look at me the same way? Will Jack resent the lie I’ve held onto my whole life? Will he resent it too much to stay married to me?
‘It’s a long story, Jack,’ I eventually reply. ‘I don’t even know where to start.’
‘Well, it’s going to take me twenty minutes to get to the hospital… so I have time and I’m listening, Alice… I’m really listening.’
I look at Constable Ferris, but he is on the phone as well. I turn my body away from him and I begin. The hidden story of my little sister flows into the world, feeling too fantastical to be real. The fear that has consumed me these past weeks makes me shiver as I speak. I don’t leave anything out. I tell Jack everything and then I am silent, waiting, expecting judgement and derision, waiting for him to tell me that my life as a wife and a mother is over.
‘Oh,’ he says, ‘my poor darling. I can’t believe you’ve been dealing with this alone. Why didn’t you tell me this before? Why didn’t you tell me all this before?’
‘I was afraid, afraid you would hate me for what I did, afraid that you would make me go to the police, afraid that the whole world I built for myself would just collapse. And I thought she was dead. I thought I was the reason she was dead. I thought it was all my fault.’
‘You were ten years old. You were being horribly abused and there was no one to turn to for help. I have no idea how you coped… but you did, and what happened… it wasn’t your fault. You had no idea what you were doing. You thought you were helping her, and all these years you thought… you thought she was dead. I cannot imagine what that has been like for you. You were a child, Alice… just a child, only a year older than Gus and Gabe are now… I just… I understand why you’re so protective of them… I get it… you were so little and you had to make such a terrible, terrible choice.’ He stops speaking and I can hear him sniffing and I know he is shedding tears for me, for the child I was. It’s a different reaction to what I expected, and I realise that even though I have always trusted him, I have not trusted him enough, have not trusted his love enough.
My eyes feel heavy, my body is exhausted and I need to sleep. My revelations have depleted me.
He takes a deep breath. ‘Look, I’ll be there soon. I love you, Alice – I love you so much,’ my husband says.
‘Love you too,’ I reply in a whisper.
I end the call and look up as the tall man, Molly’s husband, walks towards me. I stand up and straighten my shoulders, preparing myself for whatever is coming.
‘I’m Peter, Molly’s husband,’ he says, holding out his hand, but then he looks down at my bandages and smiles gently, dropping it.
‘She’s awake and talking and she’d like to see you,’ he says.
‘How… how…?’ I stammer.
‘She’s fine. It was just a flesh wound. She’ll be a bit sore but she’s had ten stitches and she’ll be fine.’
‘The baby?’ I ask.
‘She told you?’
‘She… wrote… Yes, she told me.’
‘The baby is just great. It’s our first, you know.’
I nod, tears filling my eyes.
‘Come on now, you’ve both had a rough afternoon, but she’ll be fine and she wants to see you.’
I look at Constable Ferris and he nods his head.
Lilly’s husband places his arm around my shoulders and I know it’s because I look like I might fall over. The doors at the front open and Jack walks in. He sees me, sees Peter’s arm, and I watch him tense as if afraid that I am being hurt.
‘Oh, my husband,’ I say, and Jack walks up to us. Peter immediately holds out his hand. ‘Peter, Molly’s husband.’
‘Molly?’ says Jack.
‘Lilly,’ I say, ‘he’s Lilly’s husband.’
They shake hands. They are the same height, but so very different in looks, Jack with his ink-black straight hair and Peter with his brown curls.
In Lilly’s room, I look at the two women sitting by her bed. My sister is sitting up, her cheeks rosy, a smile on her face. She is talking fast and I immediately worry about how she will feel when the adrenalin wears off.
‘Here she is,’ she says, ‘she saved my life.’
‘Oh, Lilly, I’m so… so…’ I start but then I can’t go on.
I feel Jack’s arms around me as he pats me on the back. ‘It’s okay,’ he murmurs, ‘it’s okay.’
After a few moments, someone produces a chair and I sink gratefully into it.
I drop my head into my hands, wincing as the gauze presses against the skin. Everyone in the room remains silent until finally I take a deep breath and look up at the assembled group.
‘What happened, Alice?’ asks Lilly.
‘You know, you were there,’ I say.
‘No, I mean what happened when I was little? How come I was out on that road alone? Why did you think I’d been killed in a car accident?’
‘It was my fault,’ I say.
‘Your fault?’
‘Yes,’ I reply and then I tell them. I tell them everything.
Forty-Seven
Then - 19 January 1987
Alice
* * *
It wasn’t something I planned.
That morning after my mother saw what he was doing to me, she lay crumpled on the floor, beaten so badly that I thought she might be dead. We crept past her, my little sister and me.
‘Mama sleep,’ said Lilly because that was all she knew about her. Mama sleep.
I leaned down and touched her hair, already stringy and threaded with grey like she was an old lady. Then I put my hand on her chest, felt the rise and fall.
‘I made bacon and eggs,’ he said jovially, standing in the kitchen like it was an ordinary morning. I felt sick, too sick to eat, too sick to believe how he was behaving, as though she wasn’t lying still on the floor covered in blood. He stared at me until I dropped my gaze and I picked Lilly up, putting her in her high chair. He put a plate down in front of her with the toast cut into little squares as though he was the perfect parent. As though he hadn’t just battered my mother into oblivion.
‘You’re a good sister,’ he said. He came and sat down at the table with us, bringing his coffee with its strong smell of the whisky he always added.
‘When she finally wakes her lazy self up, you tell her to clean herself the fuck up,’ he said, looking at me over the rim of his coffee cup as he drank.
‘Tell her to clean herself the fuck up,’ he said again. I practised the words in my head, the ugly brutal words. Clean yourself the fuck up. I hated her, hated him, hated myself for letting him do what he did, for being powerless to stop anything.
He smelled like Lilly’s nappies and he was only wearing his underwear. Everything flopped and bulged on his body. The eggs I was forcing down my throat started to come back up. I grabbed a piece of toast, chewed and swallowed quickly, hoping it would keep everything down.
‘She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she?’ he said, looking at Lilly, who smiled at him, her big brown eyes lighting up her face.
‘You and I are going to be great friends, aren’t we, Lilly?’ he said with one of his nasty smiles. He reached out and touched my little sister’s hair, so gently, so softly that it could have been a touch coming from some other man.
‘Yah,’ said Lilly.
I grew cold in the hot kitchen.
‘You won’t give me trouble like your mother and your sister, will you, love?’ His hand moved onto Lilly’s face, down her neck and chest.
I put some eggs on a spoon and fed them to Lilly. My head was filled with white noise.
How long does she have? I wondered. He had started with me when I was ten but would he wait that long with my sister?
She held up her stuffed frog for him to see. He smiled. ‘You like that, don’t you?’ He made to grab it away from her and she held it close to her again, making him laugh. ‘You’ll learn,’ he said.
He got up from the table, stretching so she and I could see everyt
hing. I looked away, down at my plate.
‘I’ll be home for dinner, I think, or maybe I won’t be. I need a break from all this shit.’
I watched my mother after he left, willing her to wake up and tell me we were leaving. Willing her to stand up and say, ‘It’s enough, I won’t let him hurt you anymore.’ But she slept on.
* * *
‘Clean yourself the fuck up,’ I spat at her when she finally opened her eyes.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she whined. ‘Can’t you see I’m hurt? Can’t you see I’m tired?’
I understood that nothing was going to change. Nothing was ever going to change, and one day, one day very soon, he was going to start hurting Lilly. Little Lilly, who still thought the world was good because she had me, but I knew I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t strong enough, and I wasn’t powerful enough to protect her.
I looked at my little sister, speaking nonsense to her stupid stuffed green frog, and I knew I couldn’t let him hurt her.
The hours trickled along. I played with Lilly, made her afternoon tea and dinner. At least the fridge was full. When it was so late that I could no longer keep my eyes open, I knew he wasn’t coming home. He didn’t want to have to clean up his mess.
I fell asleep next to Lilly, waking hours later from a nightmare of him dragging my sister by her leg, a broken doll, her little face too bruised to see properly.
I climbed out of bed, stripping off my sticky, sweaty pyjamas, throwing on shorts and a T-shirt.
He was going to do it to Lilly. I knew he was going to do it to her too. But I couldn’t let him. She was so tiny. She was so small she wouldn’t even have the words to describe her pain.
I wouldn’t let him hurt her.
My eyes were burning and I was tired again, so tired, but I knew I had to save Lilly. I tried to wake her but she was deeply asleep so I dragged her out of the bed into my arms, grabbing only her frog, thinking that at least she would have him. She was dressed in an old red T-shirt of mine that hung down on her like a nightie.
