With her arms wrapped around her body, Lou made her way to the front of the house and back inside. She stopped before the fireplace in the hall to warm her hands. Why hadn’t she been able to tell Tom to marry Emma? She kicked the hearth. What did any of this matter when this house, these people, that Christmas tree, even this sensation of being chilled to the bone, were nothing but fantasies? She wandered through to the morning room.
Bertie looked up from the dolls’ house.
‘Oh,’ Lou said. ‘I wasn’t expecting to find anybody in here.’
‘My granny’s helping with some cooking,’ Bertie said. ‘I’m very lucky that Lady Mandeville has let me play, and I must stay right here, be quiet as a mouse and definitely not be a bother to anybody.’
Hearing Sally’s voice in her son’s words, Lou smiled. ‘May I join you?’
Bertie nodded and returned to rearranging the miniature furniture inside the house. He took a small Christmas tree from his cigar box and placed it at the bottom of the staircase. The dining room was crammed with dolls, and he laid some tiny silver plates on the table.
Lou knelt on the rug. ‘Are they having their Christmas Ball?’
Bertie nodded.
‘Oh dear, you seem to have forgotten someone.’ Lou took the only figure remaining in the box – the figure of the maid with red hair – and placed her in the kitchen. Immediately, Bertie reached inside, removed the doll and placed her back in the box.
‘Won’t she be lonely with everybody else at the party?’ Lou asked.
Bertie closed the lid and moved the box out of her reach. ‘Hill House decides who will come to stay. Not us. One out, one in.’ His sweet little face was so stern that Lou had to stifle a laugh. There you go again, brain, bringing up that “one in, one out” business and putting it into little Bertie’s mouth.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘And who exactly told you about this “one out, one in” rule?’
Bertie screwed up his nose. ‘I don’t remember. But I knew that you were coming, and I knew that she was leaving.’ He opened the box and removed the maid. Holding her, he ran his little thumb over her red hair. ‘She was nice. I liked it when she used to stick her tongue out at me when nobody was looking. I was sad when she went, but I was glad that you came.’ He took a finely dressed doll from the ballroom. Lou recognised it as herself in miniature. Holding a doll in each hand, Bertie closed his eyes and moved his hands up and down as though weighing them. ‘Who will stay?’ he whispered. ‘Soon … very soon.’
As he spoke, his cheeks grew pinker, and his eyelashes began to flutter as though in the midst of a dream.
‘Bertie?’ Lou said.
He didn’t respond.
‘Bertie?’ she tried again. Worried that he was sitting too close to the fire and overheating, she tried to move him. He resisted; his small body becoming a deadweight.
‘We want to help,’ he said quietly. He was speaking in his own voice, although it sounded different. Somehow older. ‘We saw your pain and wished for you to come. You were so sad. So very sad. Your mama, she left you. Oh, my poor darling. My poor, poor, darling.’
Bertie opened his eyes. His pupils were black, each one the size of a penny. The look in them was distant, as though Bertie was no longer there. He put the dolls aside, got to his feet and cupped Lou’s face in his warm chubby palms. He looked directly into her eyes and without blinking, said, ‘You need to be loved.’ He slipped his arms around her neck, rested his head on her shoulder and patted her gently, his hair soft against her cheek.
This little boy, using vocabulary well beyond his years, could have no idea that he was reaching inside Lou, plucking the strings of her pain. ‘It’s all a dream,’ she said. ‘I’m ill, I’m hallucinating.’
‘No, my darling,’ Bertie said, ‘you are very well. And you are as real as I am.’ He took her hand and placed it over his chest. She could feel his little heart beating rapidly beneath his woollen sweater.
‘You’re making this up, aren’t you, Bertie? It’s not real. It’s all part of a game.’
‘The truth can be frightening, we know that. But you must believe us if you are to accept what is happening. We brought you here. We need you.’ He kissed her softly on the cheek. ‘So, now you know.’
The life flickered back into his eyes. He shook his head, blinked, and then once again knelt on the rug. He began to rearrange the furniture in the dolls’ house, seemingly oblivious to what had just passed. Taking up the doll of the finely dressed lady, he placed her in the ballroom and positioned the hands of a man around her in a stiff sort of dance. He returned the maid to the box, but this time, he didn’t close the lid.
‘Aren’t you going to play?’ he asked, looking up at Lou.
‘No … I … you carry on without me. I need some air.’