1997
The baby has stopped crying for the moment. Her face, which for the last hour had been scrunched up and covered in snot, has flattened, exhausted by her yelling. Her little chest still heaves, though, as she hiccups in oxygen, her eyes wide as she stares at Laurel and Rosie.
The girls gather the baby like hens rustling a chick to one side, pushing her into the bushes, squashing themselves into the space only they know, where only they have been before. The movement makes the baby cry again, but Laurel and Rosie wear exhilarated expressions, their hearts big in their chests, thumping from the heat and the repeated realisation that the baby is with them.
It was never said out loud, the game of taking the baby. It was just there one day in that unspoken way they have between the two of them. A charm or a spell that, once it had been cast, was as binding as the bell at breaktime or their repeated refusal of broccoli. Skipping in their garden, opening the gate and dancing towards the playground on their toes, Laurel and Rosie had known in their bones that soon a baby would come, a round, chunky baby with a delicious smile and open hands. The baby would want to play with them, that was also certain. And they would go to their secret place, down into the gully scored through the grass where the canal used to run under the willow tree. There, the earth was dark and dank and the leaves made a bower perfect for hiding in.
The game was usually ‘schools’, or sometimes Laurel wanted to play ‘Saturday Night’, which Rosie didn’t really understand but pretended to. This involved a sequence where Laurel feigned putting on make-up and then got upset with ‘Dad’ (who was Rosie) and stormed off, hips waggling, declaring that she would ‘never be back, not even if the baby is crying until morning’. That was what they’d started to play this afternoon. Except the baby wouldn’t cry. So Laurel had pinched her hard on the arm, just above her elbow. And then the crying wouldn’t stop.
Soon, though, Rosie felt hungry and a bit bored and began to look around for something else to do. Laurel was busy looking in the ‘mirror’ on the tree trunk and applying ‘mascara’. The baby was still sobbing and a smell came from her that reminded Rosie of the school toilets. The sun dipped fractionally and something had changed. It felt as if the energy of the afternoon had been whisked away, along with the excitement, the pleasure of just being there in the dappled light under the trees without any adults.
‘Let’s go home,’ Rosie said.
But Laurel ignored her, murmuring, her hands enacting all manner of things known only to herself.
‘Let’s go home,’ Rosie insisted. ‘I’m bored.’
The baby was sucking its fingers now, soothing herself, her eyes still big and wet. She began rocking back and forth, her legs stuck out in front of her.
‘The baby’s boring,’ Rosie said. ‘I want to go home.’ She stamped her foot, grabbing a low branch and pulling it down to the ground, letting it ping back up with a loud thwacking sound so that the baby stopped moving for a moment and stared upward, her mouth open in surprise.
Laurel turned to Rosie then, her face dark with a sulk. ‘You always spoil everything,’ she said. ‘I want to play.’
‘No,’ Rosie retorted.
Laurel got to her feet, her chin low. ‘I want to play,’ she repeated.
‘I want to go home,’ her sister replied.
And then the baby began to cry again. Rasping, heavy sobs that seemed to scratch the very soul of their special place. She was ruining it for them.
It was a sickening, desperate sound that, in the end, had to be stopped.