“Do you mean it? That I can come and stay here? Really, really, really?”
She smiled a warm-honey smile. “You’re here most of the time anyway. And it will make my Nicky very happy.”
I saw the wisdom of her words, saw myself repeating them to my grandma, and then I saw Earl’s face when he found out. He would rage and curse and deny it all, probably smash her in the mouth for telling lies. Would he come around here, too? Would he hurt Mrs Dixon? And Nicky?
That could not happen. Would not happen.
Dark shadows crept across Mrs Dixon’s bookcase then, eclipsing the television, crawling over the carpet…
Give us work, Eva, give us work.
“Mrs Dixon, can I ask you one more thing?”
We both glanced at the clock. There wasn’t much time before Earl would be back for his tea and notice my absence.
“Nicky once told me you did voodoo, and—”
“Say what?”
I loved the way she shrieked like that, and I almost laughed. “It’s just, I wondered, you see, I have this poppet. I got it in Bavaria when I was seven, and—”
With her eyebrows almost in her hairline, she listened for all of thirty seconds while I tried to explain, before holding up her hand. “That Nicky Dixon’s got some answering to do. I most certainly do not practice voodoo.”
“Oh!”
“My sister and I once stuck pins in a doll we made at school because some girl was causing mischief, but we got badly scared after what we did. And I mean, real scared. You don’t ever mess with things you don’t understand, not ever. That girl got sick, see? She nearly died. And then we had some bad things happen to us, too – things I can’t ever talk about. Whatever it was we connected with was real, and, believe me – you don’t ever want to meddle with the black arts. Not ever, Eva. You got to burn that poppet, and you don’t bring it into this house, either, do you hear?”
Shame filled me, and my eyes prickled.
“Now don’t take on. But if you’re thinking of sticking pins into a poppet of your grandad and asking me if that’s okay, then all I’m saying is, tempting as that might be, don’t!” She ruffled my hair. “Now, go and speak to your nanna, child. Go tell her what he’s done to you and that you’re leaving.”
“Mrs Dixon, do you know where my mother is?”
“No, I don’t. But why don’t you ask your daddy?”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because when he comes to the house, Gran and Grandad are always there, and they’ve told me not to upset him and pester him. That she’s a sore subject.”
“Go to his house and see him there. Ask him in private.”
“I can’t. He’s in Leeds with another family now. I think they’re moving into a new house there.”
Her voice shot up another octave. “Leeds? Leeds? Who told you that?”
“Er…”
“Eva, I see that man all the time. If he’s in Leeds, how come he uses the same paper shop I do? The nursing home is at the end of the main road, and he lives round the corner. Ten minutes from here!”
“No… yes… of course, yeah, I knew that…”
When I stood up, the room was spinning. My face in the mirror over the mantelpiece was as tiny and pinched as a grey, deflated balloon, the eyes hollow. The whole fabric of my life was fraying at the edges. Soon there wouldn’t be a single fragment of reality left.
Outside, someone was bouncing a ball up the pavement, getting closer.
“That’ll be Nicky,” said Mrs Dixon, standing up and smoothing down her skirt.
Nicky played netball for the school team. I was useless at sports, but she was quick and agile, strong too. I imagined her sunshine smile when I told her I was going to be her sister for the next year… We could have so much fun. I could live again…
But the whole room was shrouded in gloom, as if there’d been an eclipse. Couldn’t Mrs Dixon see it? Why wasn’t she shivering like me? Goose pimples rose and spread across my back, my skin like ice.
Give us work… come on, Eva. Say yes…
A good life could still be mine. It could happen. But not like this, not weak and ill, with my hair falling out, sores all over my body, poleaxing headaches and permanent stomach pain.
“Okay, I’m going to go and tell Gran now, Mrs Dixon. I’ll be back in about an hour with my things, is that all right?”
“Is what all right?” said Nicky, bursting in.
“Eva’s going to come and live with us for a while. I’ve asked her and she’s agreed.”
Nicky stared at us, from one to the other. Then, throwing her arms around me, she hugged me and jumped up and down all at the same time. “Oh, that’s ace. Brilliant! We’re going to have such a—”
Abruptly she broke away, frowning. “Eva, what is it? You’re shaking and you look awful. Are you okay? Has something happened?”
“Well, yeah—”
She peered at one of my eyes, then zoomed in close. “What’s happened to your eye?”
I touched the one she was looking at. “Nothing, why? Is it bruised?”
“Yeah, but I don’t mean around it. I mean in it. Like there’s something growing inside the pupil – a big black smudge. Go look in the mirror – it’s really weird.”
Chapter Thirty
Gran was in the scullery, elbow deep in suds, when I broke the news. She listened, continuing to wash out smalls while I told her what her husband had done and that there was no choice but to leave.
What could she say? What more could I say in response? You can’t allow the same pattern to play out again and again, can you? When it’s over, it’s over. So I left her there, staring out of the window into the backyard. To think.
Besides, I felt too ill to stand there any longer. And despite what Mrs Dixon had said just minutes before, Uncle Guido’s nightcap was on my mind.
Earl – I could no longer refer to him as Grandad – had a habit of cutting his toenails while he watched television, leaving them to fester. As soon as I remembered that, I went straight into the front room and knelt in front of the hearth to ferret around. Yes, there were quite a few dry, crusty yellow crescents stuck in the cracks of the tiles. They would serve the purpose. Quickly retrieving half a dozen or so, I wrapped them inside a tissue and sped upstairs to pack.
Today was the day this ended, and he was going to pay and pay and pay. Why should I suffer this horrific pain while he laughed and joked in the working men’s club, drinking beer and playing snooker? I’d seen all those pornographic newspaper cuttings on the walls, heard the way they talked about women, knew they had strippers perform while they sat there in a nicotine fog, jeering and swearing.
Deep inside, though, a nagging voice conflicted with my shadow self. What about my grandma? She’d done her best with a troubled young girl not her own. Guilt snagged at my resolve for a moment, and I slumped onto the bed. To make it all so much worse, every kindness she had ever meted out now flashed before my eyes – from the soldiers of toast with treacle, to the games of whist and the freshly pressed school uniform.
Yet she’d done nothing when his fist cracked across my eight-year-old skull. And she’d been lying all this time about Dad and probably about my mother, too. She knew Dad lived just down the road and never said! She wouldn’t even tell me what had happened to Sooty, despite my crying and pleading. I put my head in my hands. Everything ached, every single part of me – from the sprained ankle to the swollen cheek to the oppressive, pounding headache. Why had everyone lied? Why?