Frantically, desperate to keep the blood away from my dress, I searched the attic for a piece of fabric, cloth, anything to stop the bleeding. Then I spotted it. Poking out of one of the trunks was a blue bit of fabric. I picked my way over to the trunk and knelt down. With my left hand, I lifted the lid. Inside the trunk lay a pale blue dress that looked big enough for a toddler. I grabbed the dress and wrapped it around my bleeding hand. I tied the sleeves of the dress into a tight knot around my wrist and sighed, racking my brain for things to tell Mother about how I cut myself. Racking my brain for lies. Guilt sliced across my tummy and I sighed again. Poor Mother.

I moved to close the trunk, but something caught my eye. Poking out from beneath a small yellow dress with white hearts printed all over it, was a scrap of newspaper.

I plucked the paper out from under the dress and laid it flat on my knees. My hand throbbed. The blue dress was already blood-soaked but I ignored the pain and stared open-mouthed at the newspaper cutting, blood draining from my face. I looked down at the little blue dress I’d wrapped around my hand. A white label had been sewn into the inner collar of the dress. Black letters had been sewn into the fabric. The black letters spelled out a name. I looked from the newspaper article about a missing three-year-old girl to the name label sewn onto the dress.

I could not move. Blood dripped through the blue dress onto my knees. My dress was ruined. Mother would be furious, but I still could not move.

Chapter 7

Mother, Mother, Mother.

I closed the trunk, switched off the attic light and descended the ladder in a dreamlike state. Standing on the chair, I managed to restore the ladder to its folded-up position inside the attic then I shut the attic door. Mother would never know I had been up there. She would never know what I had seen. I could go on as normal. Mother was still Mother. The Mother I had always known. The Mother who had rescued Clarabelle. The Mother who loved me.

I drifted downstairs, untied the blue dress, put it in a bin liner and shoved it deep into the kitchen bin underneath all the other rubbish. In a daze, I wandered upstairs, sat down on my bed and stared at my hand. The cut had stopped bleeding, but my hand was covered with congealed blood and it really hurt. I had not bothered to rinse it. For some strange reason, the sight of all that blood was comforting.

I heard the front door open and my heart flipped. I folded up the article and tucked it inside my pillow case.

Mother cares about me. Mother would never lie to me.