Cover

MOTHER LOVES ME

Abby Davies

Dedication

To Mum and Dad

Epigraph

Little Simplicity

Dear little Simplicity’s

Five years old,

She thinks that the moon

Is made of gold.

She fancies the stars

That shine so bright

Are put out in the morning

And lit at night.

She thinks that her Dollies

Are really alive.

But then, you know,

She is only five.

And we’re good friends,

She and I,

And I know she’ll be wiser,

By and by.

Ernest Nister

Chapter 1

Mother had painted my face every morning for as long as I could remember and today was no exception. But today was different in one way. It was Friday, 23 April 1976. My thirteenth birthday. Today I was another year older.

This fact clung to me like the plague, oozing and pulsating inside my mind. Beside this terrible fact hovered my big question. A question that made my tummy screw itself up into a hard knot.

If Mother sensed my mood, she did not show it. We sat at the dining room table and Mother placed her make-up bag on her lap. Humming softly, she unzipped the shiny red purse. I wrinkled my nose. The dead roses in the centre of the orange table smelled like urine. They had been dead at least a week, but Mother seemed not to notice.

The first part of me that Mother painted was my forehead. With her tongue pinched between her small, yellow teeth, she smoothed white powder over my skin, working up and along my hairline, down and around my eyebrows then down the bridge of my nose and around my nostrils. She applied powder to each cheek and my upper lip, finishing with my chin and jaw. Eyebrows were next. With a black pencil she coloured in the fair hairs above my eyes. When the pencil was due for sharpening, the lead scratched, but Mother grew angry if I complained or fidgeted, so I counted the freckles on her face to distract myself. I was up to twenty when she moved on to my eyes.

‘So big and blue,’ she murmured, as she often did when she reached this part.

Her warm breath touched my nose and I smelled coffee and buttered toast. I looked at her small, brown eyes, tried to focus on them, focus on anything except the fact that I was another year older. I thought about how unalike our eyes were. I didn’t have freckles, but I did have blonde hair like Mother, whose hair bobbed around her chin. Mine reached my knees. It was ratty at the ends because Mother never cut it. She said she would trim the ends when it reached my ankles. She loved my long yellow hair. Always complained that hers would not grow past her shoulders. Sometimes as she walked by she ran her fingers down my hair, admiring its glossy feel.

My question trembled on my tongue, but I pushed the words away. Mother didn’t like me to talk when she painted me and I had to get the timing absolutely right. For months I had been building up to asking this question. For months I had tested the words on my reflection, watched my eyes widen with anticipation and fear and something else I couldn’t name.

Mother patted and smoothed blue powder onto my eyelids, careful to be gentle, then blew the excess away and picked up the mascara wand. When I was little I’d feared this part, but I was used to it now. I kept my eyes open and looked down at the fuzzy tip of my nose, making myself go cross-eyed. A headache started like it always did, but I didn’t complain.

I held my breath and sat extra still when Mother curled my eyelashes, remembering the time five years ago when an itch had made me move and she had ripped out a clump of lashes. The pain had been so intense that I hadn’t been able to hold in the tears that had rolled down my cheeks and ruined Mother’s careful work. I had been sent to my room for the rest of the day and she had not spoken to me for three days.

I pushed out my lips, keeping them open a sliver, while Mother lined my mouth with a scarlet pencil and filled in each lip with scarlet lipstick. She slipped a folded tissue between my lips and I closed my mouth on it and silently counted to three. I opened my mouth and Mother withdrew the tissue and dropped it in the wicker bin beside her chair.

Her eyes scanned my face. I waited, breath held, hoping she would not wipe it off and start again. A moment passed. She gave a nod and smiled.

‘You’re such a beautiful little doll, Mirabelle,’ she said, picking up the hairbrush.

She moved to stand behind me and began to brush my hair with long, slow strokes. This was my favourite part. My shoulders dropped an inch and I concentrated on the wonderful sensation of bristles lightly scraping my scalp, but I could not relax. My question hovered at the front of my mind, on the tip of my tongue, in the jolting beat of my heart.

‘Mother?’ I said.

‘Yes, Mirabelle?’

I hesitated. A hot, dizzy feeling swept across my face. Mother’s rhythmic brushing continued, falling in time with every other click of the huge grandfather clock. A few months ago, Mother had painted the walls with brown and orange circles, filling in the patches between each circle with mustard-yellow paint so that no white remained. With the heavy burnt-orange curtains pulled shut over the wooden boards that were nailed over the windows, the room was a pit of gloom. Not a shred of natural light penetrated the darkness, though a little light came from a ceramic mushroom lamp in the corner. The roses reeked. Roses needed light and air to grow. It was no wonder they were dead.

I swallowed and licked my lips.

I had never been outside. I wasn’t allowed outside.

My question simmered in my throat. I tried to swallow it back down, but it forced its way up like sick. ‘Mother, I’ve been thinking and, well, as it’s my thirteenth birthday, I was wondering if, maybe, at dusk, just before dark, I could go out into the back garden – just for a few minutes or so. Surely that wouldn’t be too—’

Mother’s hand froze halfway down my back. My head throbbed. For a terrifying second I thought she was going to hit me with the hard plastic side of the hairbrush. I waited, unable to breathe, my eyes fixed on the curtains. Tension made my back rigid.

‘No,’ she said quietly.

Her brushing resumed but this time the brush did not lightly scrape my scalp; bristles dug in so forcefully that they scraped through the surface of my skin. I winced and tried to breathe deeply, choking back tears of frustration, disappointment, gritting my teeth with anger – angry at myself for asking when I knew what the answer would be – frustrated with Mother for not even considering what I believed to be a great idea, and all the while trembling with fear.

‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ she hissed. ‘It’s for your own safety.’

She dragged the brush over my grazed scalp a second time.

‘I know. I’m so sorry, Mother,’ I whispered quickly, dropping my head.

She placed the brush on the table and walked around to face me. Her eyes were sad as she crouched down in front of my knees and gently pushed my hair behind my ears.

‘You know that I love you – that all I want is to protect you, don’t you, Little Doll?’

I nodded and looked at her glistening eyes. She sighed and stood up. Her eyeballs glinted, the wetness gone in an instant. ‘I have a special surprise planned for your birthday.’

I tried to smile up at her and blinked back tears. ‘Gosh. Thank you, Mother!’

‘That’s all right. You’re to study mathematics this morning. Off you go. I’ll be in to check your answers in one hour.’

In my bedroom, I sat on the tiny chair at the small white desk and studied hard. Harder than ever. I wanted to show Mother I was sorry for asking my question. I wanted to impress her with my speed, show her how many questions I could answer in an hour. She’d stopped teaching me last year when she said I’d reached a good level, saying that knowing more than that was useless anyway.

A shudder rocked my body. Black thoughts returned, leaking into my mind like bloody puddles. My hand froze above the textbook and I stared at the mustard and cream paisley wallpaper. Sometimes the print made me feel sick, but I could never work out why.

I pushed myself up from the desk and wandered to the oval mirror.

In my beautiful scarlet dress embroidered with its intricate green and yellow flowers, and with my face painted with such precision and care – my hair as glossy as satin in the weak lamplight – I looked healthy. I sort of glowed. Twinkled. Twinkled like stars I’d never seen, and would never see.

Tears prickled my eyes. I held them back and took a step closer to the mirror. I stared into my own eyes until my vision blurred black. Mother loves me, I told myself. My fingers went to my hair, my soft, shiny hair that Mother brushed so tenderly every morning and every night. I touched the sore grazes on my scalp. She had not drawn blood. Mother never drew blood. That would destroy my flawlessness, I thought, surprised by the bitter edge to the words.

‘Mother loves me,’ I said into the silence, to my reflection, to my little white bed, to the frilly pink curtains that hid the boarded window, to the gloom that for ever surrounded me.

A sound outside my room made me dash back to the desk.

‘Mirabelle?’

‘Yes, Mother?’

‘Why weren’t you sitting at your desk?’

She moved to stand behind me, placing her hands on my shoulders. Her hands were cold. She was a whole head taller than me, her body long and thin. I craned my neck to peer up at her. She tilted her head to the side and frowned.

‘I was admiring my dress in the mirror,’ I said quickly, feeling a stab of guilt at the lie.

She held my gaze until I looked away. Picking up a red pen from the desk, she bent over me and marked my work.

‘One hundred per cent, like always. Good little doll,’ she said, patting my shoulder. She placed an apple on my desk. ‘I’m going out. As it’s your birthday, you may read for the rest of the day in here or in the living room, whichever you would prefer.’

I gasped and stood up. ‘Oh, thank you, Mother! Thank you so much. Is this the surprise you mentioned?’

Mother shook her head. A secretive glint lit up her small eyes. She smiled broadly. She seemed excited.

‘I’m going out to get your surprise now,’ she said, then she left the room.

Chapter 2

Mother loves me. I listened to the sound of her locking and bolting the front door and bit a chunk out of my apple, careful not to let any juice spoil my face. After tidying up my little white desk, I ran downstairs into the living room.

Mother owned at least a thousand books. Every week she turned up with a couple more. Most of them were adult books that I wasn’t allowed to go near, but sometimes Mother let me read what she called the ‘not so corrupting’ ones. She also liked me to look at her big picture books from time to time – the ones that contained amazing glossy pictures of animals and buildings and cities – so that I knew more about the outside. She said it made me less boring to talk to. And next to the door connecting the living room to the hallway there was a small bookcase that was just for me.

The room was gloomy because of the wooden boards and blackout curtains, the red sofa a murky brown in the darkness. I flicked on the orange lamp beside the rocking chair then walked over to my little white bookcase. I saw the present immediately. There, at the end of the third row of books leaning against Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was a book-shaped object wrapped in scarlet paper. I smiled and plucked the present off the shelf.

In Mother’s slanted hand my name was spelled out in capital letters.

MIRABELLE

Underneath my name were the words:

For a beautiful little doll who works so hard and behaves so well. All my love, Mother. P.S. You may open this now!

I tore into the paper and stared excitedly at the book. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This was Mother’s way of giving me a piece of the outside world. I half-smiled and lifted up the front cover. The pages were yellow with age and a little rough. I had a sniff. The book smelled intensely booky; good and musty. It was perfect. I curled my legs beneath me in the rocking chair and lost myself in the story, escaping into another girl’s world.

I was at the part where Mary Lennox meets a chirpy little robin, a bird which I had only ever seen in Mother’s bird books, when I heard something. My heart seemed to jump into my throat. I held stock-still. The sound was coming from the back of the house, but Mother wasn’t home yet. I was home alone. No one else lived in the cottage. Just Mother and me. And, horrid as he was to think about, Deadly, the spider who lived in the bathroom.

Without moving, I trained my ears on the direction the sound was coming from. The sound was strange, unidentifiable. Uneven and raw. It was definitely not coming from the front door and it wasn’t coming from upstairs, so it couldn’t be the boiler having a tantrum.

I remained where I was for a while, my legs pinned under me, eyes wide. I listened. An idea crossed my mind. No, I told myself, you’re not imagining it. You’re not a little girl any more. You know what’s real and what’s not. But I thought about Polly and doubt crept around my mind like a sneaky rat. As a little girl I’d had an imaginary friend called Polly. Polly had looked exactly like me, but she’d been mute. I had played imaginary games with her whenever the opportunity arose and sometimes we just sat beside one another, keeping each other company. One day when I was six, Mother had said I was too old for her and told me I had to make Polly disappear from my head or she would. Worried about what Mother might do, I had ignored Polly until she had shaken her head sadly at me and vanished. I never saw her again, no matter how hard I tried to.

With a frown, I pushed myself up from the chair. The sound is real. It’s real.

I had to see where it was coming from.

I tiptoed across the living room and carefully opened the door to the dining room. The noise was slightly clearer here. The oak floorboards creaked underfoot and I cringed and leapt through the door into Mother’s kitchen. Again, the noise was louder in here – louder than before. My eyes fell on the Venetian blinds and I froze. The strange sound was coming from outside. Outside in the back garden. I was sure of it.

The blinds remained, as always, shut, drawn down over the wooden boards that had been nailed over the windows. Nailed firmly over the glass so no light could break in.

I had never heard anything like this sound from outside before. Outside sounds to me were the perfect twitter of busy birds, the mad onslaught of hail-beasts and the pitter-patter or hammer-attack of rain – depending on its mood – spooky wind wails, thunder roars and the grumbly engine of Mother’s car.

Just as I wasn’t allowed outside, there were certain places in the cottage that I was not allowed to go. I wasn’t allowed in Mother’s room and I had been banned from the spare room a few months ago. I thought about the spare room. Mother had carried boxes into that room and spent a lot of time in there recently, but she wouldn’t tell me why. I wanted to know but didn’t dare ask.

The strange sound from outside stopped. I stared at the blinds above the dark brown cabinet and listened. Nothing. I scanned the room. Mother had nailed her new pop art print to the wall next to the one she’d brought home last month, which was of a singer called Elvis Presley. The new silkscreen print was of a very pretty lady with curly blonde hair. Mother hadn’t told me who she was yet. Like the Elvis Presley picture, it was eye-poppingly bright and colourful. I liked it a lot. It made the kitchen less gloomy.

I glanced at the pop art calendar pinned to the wall above the Formica table. Mother had circled today’s date in red pen. In the Friday, 23 April box she had written the words LITTLE DOLL’S BIRTHDAY – collect second present. Guilt lifted its hot, prickly head.

I heard something else. Jumped as the front door slammed. Heard the locking and bolting of the door.

Mother’s back.

I grabbed a glass from the cupboard and turned on the cold tap.

A moment later Mother giggled and I turned around, my heart thumping hard. Mother stood in the entrance to the kitchen wearing opaque sunglasses and a floppy sun hat. She carried a large black holdall in her sinewy arms. She placed the holdall on the kitchen table and looked at me. A smile spread across her face as she took off the sunglasses and hat and dropped them on the table.

‘This is your surprise!’ she said, spreading her hands wide.

‘What is it?’ I said, mustering up as much excitement as I could to conceal the frantic pounding of my heart.

She grinned. ‘Open the bag and see.’

I put the glass of water on the counter and reached the table in two steps. Outside, in the other world, everything remained silent.

Mother leaned over the bag as I took hold of the silver zip and tugged, wondering why she had not wrapped the present. She’s probably too excited to, I thought. The zip caught on the black material. I struggled to loosen it and Mother pushed my hands away.

‘Let me do it,’ she snapped. She ripped the bag clean open and squealed excitedly, her hands balling into fists against her pale cheeks. ‘Look, Mirabelle, look! Isn’t she perfect?’

I stared, unable to speak. Inside the bag lay a little girl. She was curled up on her side, her tiny chest rising and falling steadily, her eyes closed. She had long, fair eyelashes that fluttered every now and then as if she was having a dream or a nightmare. Her hair was the same butter-blonde as mine, but curly rather than straight and no way near as long. Like me, her milky skin was freckle-free. She wore a pale blue dress, a white cardigan and sparkly, silver tights. There were no shoes on her feet.

‘Isn’t she perfect?’ Mother repeated, stroking the little girl’s cheek.

‘Who is she?’

‘Her name’s Clarabelle. Such a pretty name for such a pretty little doll, don’t you think?’

I swallowed with difficulty, my mind racing. ‘Where’s she from?’

‘Utopia,’ Mother said dreamily.

I hesitated. There was a fiction book in Mother’s bookcase called Utopia, which meant it couldn’t be real. My textbooks had taught me the difference between fiction and non-fiction, so I knew that much. I swallowed. ‘Where’s she really from, Mother?’

Mother’s head whipped around, her hair spraying out like sparks of fire. She glared at me, nostrils flaring. ‘Don’t you like her? Don’t you like your present?’

I took a step away from the table. ‘I think she’s perfect, Mother, I do. I just want to know more about her, that’s all.’

Mother’s eyes narrowed and she tilted her head to the side. ‘If I tell you she’s from Utopia, she’s from Utopia.’

I nodded and glanced at the sleeping child, a queer, sick feeling working its way up my throat like thick treacle.

‘Thank you for my book, Mother,’ I said.

‘That’s fine. Tell me what you think of her, of Clarabelle.’

Mother watched me intently. I looked at the child’s face, thought about how oddly similar our names were. Mirabelle and Clarabelle.

‘She’s beautiful and, er, really small. She must be quite young.’ I paused, telling myself to be brave, ‘How old is she?’

‘She’s five,’ she said. ‘I rescued her.’

The sick feeling eased a little, ‘You rescued her?’

Mother nodded. She bent down and lifted the little girl out of the bag. Kissing the girl’s forehead, she left the kitchen and walked through the dining room into the living room where she placed the child on the sofa and covered her with the crochet blanket. I watched Mother perch on the edge of the sofa and stroke the child’s face over and over again, a faint smile on her thin lips.

‘If I hadn’t saved her, she’d be dead right now,’ Mother said softly.

‘What do you mean, Mother?’

‘That’s enough, Mirabelle,’ she said, her tone sharpening.

She picked up the little girl and I watched her carry her out of the room. I listened to Mother’s feet travelling up the stairs, heard her turn at the top. She’s taking her to the spare room, I thought.

The spare room that I haven’t been allowed in for months.

Mother came downstairs two hours later. Curled in the rocking chair trying to focus on my book, I looked up at the sound of her footsteps and opened my mouth to speak but she walked straight past the living room door without glancing in my direction.

‘Mother?’ I said, rushing after her into the kitchen.

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