So this is how it works from then on.
She brings breakfast every morning, waits for him to finish, and takes the tray back downstairs.
She is still as friendly and cheerful as possible, even though she has almost given up any hope of taming him. She tries to give him whatever he wants to have, but usually it turns out to be the wrong thing. The wrong book, the wrong map. Africa when it should be Japan. Greenland instead of Indonesia. What does she know? “You’re not the brightest of lights, are you, Lampie?” her father always used to say. Well, she seems to be proving him right again.
“Shall I just teach you how to read?” the boy has already asked irritably a few times. “It’s the easiest thing in the world.”
“No, thank you.”
“Unless you’re stupid, of course.”
Yes, unless you’re stupid.
Whenever she gets the chance, she slips behind the curtain and peers into the distance, at her old house and at the sliver of sea, which is a different colour every day, green, grey, grey-green, blue-grey, and she longs to feel the wind blow around her head, the cool steps of the lighthouse under her feet.
“Are you still here? What are you doing? What are you looking at?”
She does not tell him.
In the afternoon, she goes upstairs to put him in the bath. Lenny helps, taking dirty water downstairs, bringing clean water upstairs and lifting the boy in and out of the bath when needed. It is always needed. Edward announces every day that there is no longer any need, that his muscles are getting stronger and he can do it himself, but every day it is still needed.
Lenny does not mind though. He waits obediently outside the room, looking around the corner of the door at the girl, for as long as he can.
Lampie counts properly to one hundred and thirty-five, without making any mistakes. She remembers to call his deformity a deformity and not a tail. She calls the boy Edward and not Fish. She blows the dust off the books on the shelves and puts them back – in the wrong place, of course. She picks flowers in the garden, puts them in a vase beside his plate. And then takes them away, because he thinks it is ridiculous. He is not a cow. She washes the dirty windows, very slowly and carefully, particularly that one window. She thinks about her father and worries about him. Sometimes she walks into the garden and looks for a while at the tree, the tree with the branch that grows up close to the fence.
So this is how it works from then on.
She comes upstairs every morning, that child, and every morning he has to get used to the fact that she is there, and not Joseph. And to the fact that she is not calm and quiet and does not know exactly what he needs, but that he always has to explain everything to her and still she usually does not understand. And to the fact that she is stupid and can’t even read and wanders around his room until it drives him crazy and she refuses to leave, but goes behind the curtain to look out of the window or whatever it is that she does. Until he shouts at her, and then she generally goes.
When she has gone, he practises. He does not want her to see.
He practises until he turns blue in the face, strapping himself into the harness, hoisting himself onto his walking bars and galvanizing his muscles into action, shouting at them that they need to be stronger, that they should stop complaining, that all they have to do is carry him! But it all happens so, so slowly – in fact, it does not happen at all.
Before Joseph… When Joseph was there, Edward could take five steps in a row. Sometimes even six. And now? Two, three at most. They are clumsy hops that do not even look like steps. And then she comes back, skipping around with those legs and those feet of hers, as if it is nothing special, as if she is mocking him.
When she does that, he just wants to bite her and bully her and to make her cry.
He does not actually make her cry until he says she is no longer allowed to look out of that window. He has decided that the curtain is to stay closed from now on. And when she has finished her work, she has to go straight back downstairs. She can look out of another window, a window that is somewhere else.
“I can look at whatever I want to look at,” she shouts. But he can already see the tears – ha ha.
“No, you can’t,” he says. “You have to do whatever I say.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes, really. I’m your boss.” And it’s true. The house does belong to his father, after all.
“Well, a fine boss you are!” she yells. “Locked up in a little room! A fine boss, hiding away under the bed!”
He shrieks and comes after her, his teeth seeking her feet, and she jumps back and out of the room.
“Monster!”
Yes! That’s right. That’s what he is! He’s a fearsome monster! His chest swells triumphantly. Who does she think she is? Such a stupid child. So stupid.
The next morning, for the first time, she does not come. All day long. And not in the evening either.