I stood up and took a step backwards so I could use my full body weight to release the door and lay it down on the floor. I walked back around to where I had started. I saw a steep staircase leading down into darkness. I was breathing heavily from the exertion of the lifting. Already I could feel blood leaking out of me on to the thick pad I was wearing. I felt dizzy and weak. I tried to control my breathing and my racing heart. I paused and stood still for a few moments. Then I placed my foot on the staircase. I didn’t know what to expect as I took the first step into the darkness.

65

ANNIE

The baby had begun to fuss. He would need a bottle before I left. I knew Daisy would be well out of it so I threw my handbag over my shoulder and rushed across the landing and down the stairs. As I did, memories of Ben were flooding in and out of my mind.

I wondered how I had managed all those years, none of it was plotted or planned, I just went along with what I thought was best. I often told Ben the story of Mrs Keeley with the two children who helped us out. Then when he was old enough his original memory of a kindly woman with two small children, one girl and one boy and a woman he referred to as mama, merely morphed into my new memory which I had spoon-fed him. Eventually in his mind his own mother evolved into Mrs Keeley. It was my saviour for many a moment when Ben referred back to something in the past that I couldn’t account for during my time with him.

‘That must have been when you were with Mrs Keeley,’ I told him. And like everything else I told him during those innocent years, he swallowed down. Until my job was complete. He had erased her from his memory. And all the new memories that we made from then on took precedence. I couldn’t help it if my womb was uninhabitable. I did the very best for my Ben when he came to me. Those first few months had been torturous for me. I didn’t stop looking over my shoulder until we had travelled the 400 miles to the beach house. Then I went about creating a new identity for myself. I simply dropped Marianne and became known as Annie. No one at that cookery class had known a thing about me. They didn’t know where I lived and twenty-two years ago, they didn’t have CCTV on every corner. No one batted an eyelid at a young mother with a toddler walking down the street hand in hand. But I went out as little as I could in those early days. Keeping oneself to oneself all my life, had paid off for me. It took a while, but eventually I stopped looking over my shoulder. I was always acutely aware though. Forever checking the papers, but never able to listen to the radio or TV for fear of hearing or seeing something I wasn’t prepared for. And then there she was on that ridiculous oversized screen, all these years later, making some plea or another.