i.
You watch her stare at the doll’s house. Watch her brow furrow and her eyes narrow. Watch her recoil from what she is starting to understand.
She says something. You can see her lips move but you cannot hear the words. It doesn’t matter. It makes no difference what she is saying. There is only one thing that matters now.
She knows.
Not everything, but enough. Not the how, and maybe not the why, although that will become obvious to her soon enough, but the who. And the who is the important bit. All the rest is just the story. Just what happened.
Yes, the rest of it is just events. What matters is who did it, and if she knows that, she knows enough.
More than enough. She knows too much.
You almost sigh. It has gone so well, and now this. The girl has some memory after all. Vague and shapeless, no doubt, but there nonetheless. It was probably from some fleeting moment of consciousness when you moved her. But who knew? Who knew how memory worked? What went in and what came out? What stuck and what slid away? What a drug could erase and what it could not? After all, people with Alzheimer’s whose minds were nearly destroyed could remember a sunny childhood day by a river in the company of their long-dead grandmother so clearly that they thought they were there. You’d seen it with your own mother, how she would snap from the cruel fog of her dementia into another place entirely, into conversations with people from her past, before lapsing back into her confused, anxious present. It had been a mercy for both of you when you killed her.
That was another act that had to be done, that was hard but right. Another necessary evil. Like the others. They were all necessary, all right. But people would not have understood, which was why you were forced to hide it from the world.
So is it a surprise that the girl had remembered something? No, you suppose it isn’t. Especially something like a doll’s house. That is exactly the kind of thing that the mind might cling onto: something large and unusual and very, very interesting.
Damn. You should have thought of that. You feel a surge of frustration. It had gone so well. So perfectly. Too perfectly.
But no matter. Into every life a little rain must fall, as your mother used to say, before her mind failed her and you had to put her out of her misery. You had to act, make a tough decision. Just like now. You must act, and what you have to do is simple enough. You have to deal with the situation. Yes, things have gone well, but you have been ready all along in case they didn’t, ready to do whatever it took.
And now the time has come.
Now you have to act.
Your daughter-in-law turns to look at you, her cow-like face plastered with shock.
‘Come inside,’ you say. ‘Come and say goodbye to Anna.’
ii.
‘Come inside,’ Edna said. ‘Come and say goodbye to Anna.’
She was smiling now, Edna, and there was real warmth to her smile. She had relaxed, and had adopted an open, friendly manner. A bedside manner. Julia had seen it before, seen Edna turn on her charm – and she had considerable charm, when she wanted to use it, when she felt that her interlocutor deserved it – but this time Julia did not feel the familiar wistful regret that Edna did not treat her in that way; this time, Edna’s sudden warmth was utterly chilling, because she saw it for what it was: the practised facade of someone with no real feelings at all.
The facade of someone who would kidnap her own granddaughter. That was what this meant. She had not merely taken advantage of the situation to blacken Julia’s name and get custody of Anna for her son, she had created the situation. She had kidnapped Anna with the intent of showing the world what an unfit mother Julia was. She had put her son through all the pain and anguish of thinking his only child had been murdered or sold into slavery or become the victim of a paedophile gang. It was almost unbelievable, but then Edna had form: she had tried to paint Laura as an adulteress so that Simon would leave her.
But this was a hundred times worse. This was the act of someone who was totally insane.
Julia knew what she had to do. She was going into the house to rescue her daughter, and then she was going to the police and from there to a hotel where Edna could not find her. She had no idea how the police would prove that it was Edna who had taken Anna, no idea whether they even could, but it didn’t matter. Anna was not staying here a minute longer, and she was never being left alone with Edna again.
‘It was you,’ she said. ‘It was you all along.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Edna said. ‘What was me?’
‘You know,’ Julia said. ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about.’
Edna raised her eyebrows, her lips curling upwards in a bemused smile.
‘I dare say I don’t,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you enlighten me?’
‘Fuck you, Edna,’ Julia said. ‘Fuck you.’
She started walking towards the gate. Edna moved aside. Julia had feared that she would try to stop her and it was a relief when she didn’t, but then what would Edna have done? She was in her late sixties, a good thirty years older than Julia, so if it came to a physical contest she would have no chance.
As she passed her, Edna spoke. This time there was no warmth in her voice at all.
‘This makes no difference, Julia. You know that, don’t you?’
Julia spun around. ‘It makes all the difference. But you can try explaining to the police why it doesn’t.’
‘What will the police do? Look for Anna’s DNA in my house? In the garage? They’ll find it, and plenty of it. She lives here. There’ll be no way to prove that I took her. You think some vague statement from Anna, some half-remembered dream, is enough?’
‘It’s enough for me,’ Julia said.
‘I don’t doubt it. But you are not a court of law. Anna’s testimony will count for nothing. She’s five, and she’s been under enormous strain.’
‘What if she remembers more? This changes it, Edna. You need to face facts. At the very least the police will be crawling all over your house. Do you really want that, Edna? Do you really think you hid your tracks that well? I don’t know what you did or how you did it, but there’s always evidence. Always. Maybe someone saw you near the school that day, maybe there’s CCTV footage of you in the vicinity, when you were supposed to be at home with burst pipes. Whatever. The police will take every bit of your story and unravel it, strand by strand, and all it will take is one lie, Edna, one little lie, and this will be over. You think you’re bulletproof, but you’re not.’
‘I’m not so sure of that,’ Edna said.
‘No? You don’t think the facts apply to you? You don’t think you have to play by the same rules as the rest of us?’
Edna shook her head. There was a hint of sadness in her expression. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’
‘Yeah? Well, I guess we’ll find out,’ Julia said. ‘I’m going to get my daughter.’
iii.
Julia pushed open the back door and stepped into the kitchen. The kitchen door was ajar. She heard Anna talking to herself in the hallway, playing some lonely game in Edna’s draughty, cold house. Well, she wouldn’t have to do that anymore. Those days were over.
She pictured herself driving away, Anna in her car seat in the back, asking, what’s happening Mummy? Why am I not staying at Grandma’s house?
You don’t live there anymore, darling. You live with Mummy now.
A thrill ran from her stomach to her neck at the thought of it.
And how would Brian take the news that his mother had kidnapped Anna? Or had he known all along? Had he been in on it? Julia didn’t think so. For all his faults, Brian would not have done something like that to put Anna at risk. And why would he? Why, for that matter, would Edna? What was the point? Was she just crazy?
No doubt, it would all come out in the wash. Right now, she didn’t care. Right now she had a daughter to take home.