Warhol's Prophecy

64

ONE ON EACH pillow.

Hailey moved further round the room, eyes riveted on the double bed.

She put her hand on the wall, as if to support herself, as she approached the bed.

The heads had been propped up carefully so that, as Hailey advanced towards them, their sightless eyes held her in an unblinking gaze.

One with flowing black hair; the other with long blonde hair.

Had she been able to think straight, she may well have realized which of Becky’s dolls they had been taken from. As it was, all she could do was stare down at them.

For fleeting seconds she wondered if this was some kind of bizarre joke perpetrated by Becky herself, but the thought disappeared almost instantly.

This was no joke.

There was real malice in this act.

Becky would never have . . .

Becky?

Hailey turned and ran into her daughter’s room.

Like the other rooms in the house, it appeared relatively undisturbed. Apart from the toys.

Three of her dolls heads had been removed. Pulled free. Two of them were now in Hailey’s own bed. The third, she saw immediately, lay on the pillow of her daughter’s bed.

Three tiny plastic bodies lay together on the floor close by.

Hailey picked one up and it made a mechanical crying sound.

She dropped the doll and sat down on the edge of Becky’s bed.

Now what?

She sat trembling for what seemed like a long time, her heart hammering inside her chest.

Now will you call the police?

Hailey sat a moment longer, then wandered back into her own bedroom. She retrieved the two dolls’ heads and returned to Becky’s room, where she carefully restored the small mannequins to their correct appearance by replacing the heads of each. The blank eyes gazed at her as if they were wondering what she was doing. When all three were repaired, Hailey replaced the dolls in their usual position.

Everything in its place.

The fear she had felt before had been replaced by a kind of foreboding as she moved around the house in a trance-like state.

She had already made up her mind she wouldn’t tell Rob what she’d found today.

She would tell him that the burglar alarm needed fixing. That was all.

And there was certainly no need for the police.

Hailey changed into jeans and a T-shirt, stepped into ankle boots, and made her way back downstairs.

The dried mud on the landing and in the bedroom would brush off later.

No need for Rob to know.

Nothing had been taken. Nothing had been damaged.

Whoever had broken in had done it not for gain, but merely to prove a point. And that point had been admirably illustrated. The intruder had got in easily once. A second time would be a formality.

Hailey checked her watch.

Another forty minutes before she had to collect Becky from school.

She had time.

There was something she must do.