Morgan

My parents are behind some door or another, the twins in their bedroom. My book of blank pages and pen have gone. The paper dolls under my mattress have been taken. But it wasn’t as I thought it might be. I’m still here. And there wasn’t an argument or a fight. It was worse.

No one has looked at me all day.

The twins were in their playroom downstairs this morning, and I went in and they were sitting cross-legged on the floor in the corner, tying their four hands together with a red ribbon. They were staring into one another’s eyes. They never hear me when they’re staring like that. I saw them again later, scuttling into their bedroom, just along the corridor from mine. I knocked on their door. They didn’t answer. I tried the handle but they were holding it on the other side so it wouldn’t turn.

I tried to talk to Dad when he came out of my mother’s workroom, but he kept his eyes on the ceiling as he walked away, murmured ‘Later … later …’ and shut himself away behind another door.

We’ve eaten three meals together and though our mealtimes are mostly silent anyway, none of them looked at me. Dad didn’t even come to the kitchen for the last meal. Mum, Hazel and Ash ate quickly, I watched their plates till they were empty, and so did they. Then they went away.

So Mum’s told everyone to ignore me with their eyes, as a punishment.

If there was a wicked stepmother who lived here with us, she might tell me to sweep the floor and polish the cutlery and do the dishes and clean out the firebox and scrub the range. I could dance with her while I raged and swept, throw ashes at her while she shouted. I could battle with her, disagree, rage and be transformed. We could fight really hard but talk about it afterwards. She’d be wicked, beautiful and have a knife-sharp wit. I’d secretly love her, because when we’d fight, she wouldn’t cry or sulk, she’d match my angry words, and I’d match hers. I wouldn’t have to surrender in order to protect her from how she feels, as I do with Mum. I know from all the storybooks that wicked stepmothers are to be avoided if you wish to remain good or pure or ignorant. I really want one.

There isn’t a wicked stepmother telling me to punish myself with housework. But I have my real mother, who tells me it’s my job to look after everyone else, thinks that housework will keep my feet on the ground and stop my imagination taking over.

But if they’re not looking at me, they can’t see me. If they’re not seeing me, they won’t guess what I’m thinking. So for now, I can let my imagination do whatever it likes.

It’s almost night and this day has made me feel so invisible, the light has moved across the sky outside slowly, slowly.

My head is full of thoughts and languages and my imagination thinks that all the stories have gone wrong.

I’ve been dancing in ashes for a hundred years with a frog that has turned from me, kissed a prince and become a toad. I’m meant to have been a much loved daughter made from snow but my parents used icing sugar so I can’t melt and leave them thinking I was always perfect. I’ve developed a fear of enclosed spaces, so I don’t want arms around me or a ring on my finger. I’m not hungry for an oven-baked witch, I’m not laughing at an empress who wears the skin of her fattened emperor as her brand new clothes, I’m in a corner, watching the ice queen who is worried about eating rich foods for a feast in her honour, in case she gets heartburn. I’m so tired, but I don’t want to sleep for decades to give anyone a kiss they’ve wanted for only a moment.

I need to be lifted out. Picked up, and put down somewhere else. I write on the window:

ANY LOCAL WITCHES, YOUR PRESENCE (WITH BROOMSTICK) IS STILL MUCH NEEDED. WICKED STEPMOTHERS IN POSSESSION OF AXES OR HACKSAWS OR NON-ELECTRICAL POWER TOOLS MAY ALSO APPLY WITHIN.

I lie on my bed, close my eyes and think of our own story. All families must have one. Some are spoken of, and some need to be remembered in fragments in order to be pieced together. I think of Mum in the days after she’d built the fence … dressed in magenta overalls and an orange shirt, her hair twisted away under a bright green scarf. She drew roses, sunflowers and violets all over the inside of the fence in coloured chalks. She drew flowers all over the outside of it as well, but I didn’t see them. She said, ‘Now, that shows everyone my talent. And it will wash away in the rain.’

She put the padlock on the gate to keep everyone who lives on the island out. On her charm bracelet, the key to my freedom still clanks and clunks.

When she’d locked the islanders out, and us in, she told me, ‘I’ve met some of the women, they’re all mad, they think your father is some kind of deranged man, because who would want to be an undertaker?’ She sobbed, ‘I’m not like the women who live here and they laugh at my voice because I speak properly. I won’t be laughed at.’

I said, ‘Are there children I can play with?’ and she said, ‘Where do you keep your loyalty – in your little finger?’

Mum settled into building our furniture once the chalk flowers had been rained away. We were eating lunch on a picnic blanket spread on the kitchen floor. Mum told Dad that she was going to make all the furniture we needed for our home with her own hands. The beds, chairs, shelves and tables. She told him, ‘It will all belong to me if I make it.’ She glared at him, ‘No one else could ever claim it was theirs.’

Dad put his radish sandwich down and stared at it for a long time. He doesn’t like us to talk at mealtimes, because he has to concentrate so hard on eating. He didn’t always find it hard to eat; in our house on the mainland, he was a lot wider. He used to go out and eat fine food and drink fine wines. But since we’ve lived here, he chews slowly, never clears his plate and finds it hard to swallow.

I wipe my bedroom window, breathe another fog on it and write:

I HAVE TO LEAVE

If I stay in this locked room for much longer, I’ll destroy all the books – tear out the pages and rearrange the paragraphs. I still have my small nail scissors. Little use when it comes to picking a lock, breaking down a fence or digging a tunnel, but they can cut up the pages of a book and make up a new story.

I take down some of the storybooks, the atlas, the mythology, psychology and biology books. I pick up the scissors, and put them down again because if I can’t get away from this house, these books could be the only books I ever have. I open them at random pages, move my finger over the words and point at different sentences.

I say aloud …

The match girl … danced with … Medusa … her psyche was disturbed by … photosynthesis. Travelling to Atlanta … she married … a wooden spoon. In the snow-capped mountains, carrying … fungicides … she dissected … the Furies. They were diagnosed as … lampyridae. The girl had … a psychotic episode … of the … tentacles. She ran away with the travelling … metatarsals … she wore … a golden fleece … and lived with seven small … ladybirds … in the … barrier reef … she was jilted by her most beloved … bipolar … bear.

Dad knocks on my door. It’s his quietest knock. He opens it and comes in, says gently, ‘I’m sorry. She was very upset. She’s shut herself away downstairs now. Drawing, I think.’ ‘And I’m not upset?’

‘I didn’t want you to be in here alone, angry or tearful.’

‘Well, I’m not angry or tearful.’

‘That’s good.’

‘I’m invisible.’

‘You aren’t. I promise.’

‘Don’t go. Can I talk to—’

He shakes his head. ‘I promised her a cup of tea, so I’d better go and make it. Think about something you like, to make you feel more … visible. Collective nouns. You used to like them. How about a symphony of starlings?’

‘An unkissablement of toads.’

‘That’s good, if nonsensical. A … twilight of candles.’

‘Ah. An infestation of rice.’

‘Hm.’ His mouth looks stern, but his eyes smile as he closes the door.