Nightshade

45

‘Well, this is a nice surprise,’ said Sandra’s mother, as Sandra kissed her on the cheek. ‘Dad’ll be so sad to have missed you. He’s fishing down at the canal.’

‘I’ll be back, Mum. But I wanted a chat with you.’

‘Tea,’ said her mother. ‘The kettle’s on. Come on through.’ She took Sandra down the hall and fussed around the tea things as Sandra sat down at the table and looked out over the back garden. It wasn’t the house that she’d been brought up in; her parents had downsized ten years earlier when the last of her brothers had finally moved out. They’d sold their five-bedroom house, bought a small bungalow with a manageable garden and put the rest of the money into shares, providing them with a comfortable retirement.

‘How’s my lovely granddaughter?’ asked Sandra’s mother.

‘She’s fine. It’s almost as if it never happened. She doesn’t talk about it, and we don’t ask her.’

‘When is she coming home?’

‘Hopefully tomorrow. Friday at the latest. She wants to go now, but the doctors say they want to keep her in a while longer. But they have promised she’ll be back home by the weekend.’

‘How is she … inside?’ She rubbed her own stomach and winced as if she was in pain.

‘The doctors say she’s fine. They did all sorts of tests and she’s all clear, you know, for HIV and things. And there’s no damage, just bruising. They gave her a shot so that she won’t get pregnant.’ Tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked them away. ‘Nine years old and they’re worried she might be pregnant. How awful is that?’ She took a deep breath. ‘She’ll be fine. It’s best we don’t talk about it. It needs to be forgotten so that we can all move on with our lives.’

‘There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t say a prayer of thanks to God, you know that?’ She poured boiling water into a earthenware teapot, complete with a red knitted tea cosy. Sandra had made the tea cosy at school almost twenty years ago and presented it to her mother on Mother’s Day. ‘It was a miracle, a true miracle.’

‘It was,’ agreed Sandra.

‘And Will? How is he?’

Sandra nodded. ‘He’s okay. He’s taken time off work, he doesn’t want to let Bella out of his sight. He’s in the hospital with her now. I get the feeling that he blames me. He doesn’t say anything, of course, but I can see it in his eyes.’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t. It wasn’t your fault, it was those …’ She shuddered. ‘Those animals. How could they do that to a little girl?’

Sandra shook her head. ‘The police say they think he’s done it before. They’re talking to the girl to see if she’ll give evidence against him. Will gets so angry when he sees anything about them on television. He wants them dead. Says hanging’s too good for them.’

‘Well, he’d be right about that,’ said her mother. ‘Killing’s too good for them, though. They need to be made to suffer for every day they have left. They won’t of course. It’ll be Sky TV and PlayStations and probably conjugal visits. Prison today isn’t really prison. They’re like holiday camps.’

‘I don’t think I can face a trial, Mum. The police say they hope that they will just plead guilty and then Bella won’t have to give evidence. I couldn’t bear the thought of her having to talk about what they did to her.’ She shook her head fiercely. ‘I don’t want her going through that.’ She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself down and then forced a smile. ‘Mum, I’ve got to ask you something and I know it’s going to sound silly, but …’ She threw up her hands. ‘I should just spit it out, shouldn’t I? Did I ever have a sister? A sister called Eadie?’

Sandra could see from the look of horror on her mother’s face that she’d struck a nerve. ‘Did your father say something?’

‘No, Mum. I just need to know, did I have a sister?’

Tears filled her mother’s eyes and she dabbed at them with a teacloth. ‘Why are you asking now?’ she sniffed.

Sandra got up and walked over to her mother and hugged her. ‘It just came up, Mum. I need to know.’

Sandra’s mother trembled and Sandra found herself patting her on the back to reassure her. ‘It’s okay, Mum.’ She flashed back to when she’d been a teenager and she’d been dumped by her first boyfriend. Her mum had hugged her and patted her back in exactly the same way and told her that everything was going to be all right, that there were plenty of fish in the sea and that one day she’d meet the man of her dreams. She’d been right. Will was the love of her life. ‘Come on, sit down, I’ll make the tea.’

Her mother sat down and kept dabbing at her eyes as Sandra poured tea into two mugs. She sat down and waited until her mum had sipped her tea before asking her again about Eadie.

‘She lived for about an hour,’ said her mother. ‘Barely that.’ She sighed. ‘She was eight weeks premature and didn’t stand a chance, really. I knew that as soon as I saw her.’ She held out her right hand. ‘The doctor held her like that, with one hand. She was so tiny. And she didn’t even open her eyes. They put her in one of those incubator things, but I could see from the looks on the faces of the nurses that she wasn’t long for the world. We’d already decided on the name. Eadie. Your dad’s grandmum was Eadie. I know it’s old-fashioned, but that’s what he wanted and what your dad wants he usually gets.’ She dabbed at her eyes again. ‘She would have been our first.’ She shook her head. ‘No, she WAS our first. She was my first baby but I only got to hold her after she’d died. They wrapped her in a white cloth and said that I could hold her as long as I wanted. They meant it, too. I held her for hours and no one said a word.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘Tell you what? That I had a baby and she died? What good would that have done? You all came along later.’

‘That’s so sad.’ Sandra felt tears pricking her eyes.

‘She didn’t suffer. She just wasn’t meant to be born. Your dad said she’d gone back to be with the angels.’

‘Did you bury her?’

‘The hospital arranged a cremation and they had a vicar there.’ She wiped her eyes and smiled. ‘Not a day goes by when I don’t think about her,’ she said. ‘In a way I’m glad you know. It wasn’t a secret, it was just that your dad and I decided it was something we should keep to ourselves.’ She sipped her tea again. ‘What made you ask about Eadie now? After all these years?’

Sandra drank from her own mug as her mind raced. Telling her mum the truth would raise more questions than it would answer. How had Bella known about Eadie? She put down her mug. ‘It was a dream, Mum.’

‘A dream?’

Sandra nodded. ‘Just a dream.’