There was something reassuring about reading the same stories to Poppy, night after night. The sleepy bear, the worried little owls, the Gruffalo. I’d almost never been to a church service, except for a couple of weddings and the funeral of a great-aunt, but I felt there must be a deep consolation in the familiar responses and rituals and hymns, day after day, year after year.
Poppy had been tired and subdued when I picked her up from school, so now I sat by her bed and spoke the words she knew by heart with the same intonations and pauses, showing her the pictures, licking my forefinger to turn the thick pages, hearing the rustle of paper. Sunny lay at the end of her bed, curled up on himself.
Gina was downstairs, baby-less and husband-less and waiting for a drink. Finally, the little bear was asleep for the second time under the big yellow moon, and although Poppy was not quite asleep, her eyes were starting to flutter and she was settling back on the pillow and wriggling under the duvet, finding a comfortable position.
I heard a sound through the ceiling, then another, a few sharp cries and a series of groans. Poppy didn’t seem to notice. She was too tired. Was it time to do something? If I couldn’t bear to say it face to face, what about a note pushed under Bernie’s door? An anonymous note?
I picked up the teddy and tucked him in beside Poppy and then looked around for the rag doll.
‘Where’s Milly?’
Poppy just murmured something. She was drifting off to sleep. I knew that if she woke and found either her bear or Milly missing, she would get upset. I peered under the bed, pushed my hands behind the back of it, but came up with nothing except an old apple core. I looked under the covers, then stood up and tried to think. Could Poppy have left her rag doll at Jason’s? No. I’d definitely seen it since then.
It wasn’t anywhere around the bed. It wasn’t in the crate where the less immediately desirable toys were kept. I was about to search elsewhere in the flat when, on an impulse, I looked in the wastepaper bin in the corner and there it was. Poppy must have dropped it in by mistake. I bent down to retrieve it and jerked back as if I’d suffered an electric shock. The torso was in pieces. The head and one of the arms and one of the legs had been torn off and the stuffing was coming out. The sight was horribly shocking, almost as if I had found a living creature dismembered in the bin. I knelt down by the bed and stroked Poppy’s forehead. She looked very peaceful.
‘Honey, what happened to Milly?’
‘She died,’ said Poppy sleepily, without opening her eyes.
‘But you—’ I stopped. I didn’t know how to describe what Poppy had done. ‘Why did you do that?’
Her eyes snapped open.
‘She was naughty. She died.’
I wanted to pick her up, grasp her by the shoulders, shake her and ask her what was happening. What had she done? What had she seen? What was happening in that restless brain?
Instead, I bent down and kissed Poppy on the cheek and rearranged the duvet around her.
‘Go to sleep now. Sweet dreams,’ I said.
I picked up the pieces of Milly and took them with me.
‘With you in a second,’ I called to Gina, trying to sound normal. I could hear her clattering around in the kitchen, the clink of glasses.
I walked out of the flat door and the front entrance and thrust the rag doll’s severed limbs and head deep into the rubbish bin. I didn’t want them in the house.