After extended periods of playing outside alone, I’ve learned to spend the first minutes of my return home standing quietly, listening to what the house is telling me. When the floorboards creak and the radiators gurgle it’s like it is trying to talk. And today it wants me to know that something has happened while I’ve been chasing wild rabbits around fields. There is something here that doesn’t belong. Or someone. I haven’t seen who it is, but I sense their presence. In the stuffiness of the corridors and hallways I can taste them.
It’s not Dad – the car he borrowed from the people who lived here before us isn’t on the drive – and we don’t get visitors, ever.
And then suddenly, warmth spreads through my small body. I know who it is. It’s George! He’s come back for me on my birthday! I turn fourteen tomorrow and he remembered!
Without thinking, I run up the staircase yelling his name. ‘You’re back!’ I shout and try to open his closed bedroom door. Only it’s locked. I rattle the handle but it won’t open. ‘Are you in there?’ I ask hopefully but there is no response. I ask again as the rush of warmth cools and I worry that I’ve let my imagination run away with me. An aching to be with my brother opens up inside me again, so wide and so desperate to be filled. Then, just as I’m about to leave, I spot his shadow under the door. I hold my breath,
waiting for George to turn the handle, open the door, leap out and shout, ‘Surprise!’ Instead, I hear a completely different voice. It comes from a girl. ‘Help me,’ she whispers.
Scared, I back away, turn and run downstairs as fast as my legs can carry me, but they buckle and I fall down the last three, scuffing my knees. I land awkwardly at the base. I pick myself up and hurry into the kitchen.
Mum is sitting at the table with her back to me, her posture rigid, head straight and focused on a blank space on the wall. I wonder if the house is talking to her as well. A cigarette has burned down to the filter, leaving a neat line of ash. Back away now, I tell myself. Her mood swings are becoming completely unpredictable. But there is someone upstairs and it’s been months since they last told me to bring anyone back here. I have to know who it is.
‘Who’s in George’s bedroom?’ I ask quietly, but she maintains her silence. Nervously, I approach her and tug at her sleeve. The backhander she gives me is so unexpected that I’m sent crashing to the floor. Then she kicks her chair back as she rises to her feet and begins throwing anything at me that she can lay her hands on. She is hatchet-faced as I try to shield myself. Plates, a breadboard, a saucepan and a washing-up bowl fly into or above me. I wish I was big and strong enough to fight back like George did with her, but all I can do is scramble to my feet and run, only for her to grab me by the neck of my T-shirt and yank me backwards with such force that I feel my neck crick. I’m scared what will happen next, when the kitchen door suddenly opens and Dad appears. He’s early, thank God. He glares at us: first her and then me.
‘Get out!’ she screams at me.
I run to the nearest safe place, the downstairs toilet as it has a lock on the door, and I drop to the floor, panting. Their voices are raised and I press my ear to the wall but they’re too muffled to understand. With the door ajar, their
words become clearer. They’re not arguing over her treatment of me; instead, Dad is furious because, behind his back, she has two children locked upstairs.
Two, I repeat to myself.
Where has she found them? How did she get them here? And why didn’t she ask for my help? Mum has never gone out on her own like this before. Since George left, I’ve always done everything they’ve asked of me and brought back someone whenever they’ve demanded it. I’ve added a few things together and guessed why I never see them again and for what purpose Dad uses the suitcases that keep appearing. But I’ve not asked where these children go next, or why my parents do this.
Suddenly it dawns on me that if my parents no longer have a use for me, then where is my place in this family? If I’m not a means to an end, then I am nothing.
The kitchen door opens and I close mine, and my father’s heavy footsteps stamp up the staircase and into George’s room. He is clutching a suitcase, like the one that was next to George the last time I saw him. I can’t see from where I am, but I think Dad puts it in that room. Soon after, a shriek rings out across the landing before something is dragged along the floorboards and once the door slams, the house falls silent again.
Later, as my parents argue in the kitchen, hunger and curiosity get the better of me. There’s a stash of KitKat chocolate bars under my bed I keep for when Mum forgets to feed me. I pad up the stairs, my feet astride each step to minimise the sound of creaking floorboards. I approach George’s room but the door is open and his room is empty. The door to that room, however, is closed.
I lay my head against the floorboards and try to focus on the dim space under it. Nothing happens for a long time, but I’ve learned to be patient. Eventually and without warning, something on the other side flickers and I jolt backwards, hitting my head on the skirting board behind
me. I return, closer this time, and spot the white of an eye staring back at me. It blinks twice but instead of shying away, I edge closer to it.
‘Please help me,’ a girl’s voice whispers. I want to reply but I’m stuck for words. ‘Has she taken you too?’ she continues, her voice permeated by short gasps.
‘Yes.’ I don’t know why I’m lying. ‘Where are we?’
‘In a house in a village, I think.’
‘Where’s my friend? Have you seen Abigail?’
‘No. I’m sorry I haven’t.’ She doesn’t need to know the truth and I want to change the subject. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Precious.’ It’s an unusual but familiar name. I recall
meeting a Precious at a church group my parents took me to shortly after George left. She made a point of approaching me and introducing me to her group of friends. I liked her; she was kind. I wanted her to live. So I didn’t befriend her.
‘How did she get you here?’
‘Abi and I were walking back from choir practice through the park when a woman came from behind a car with a knife. She told us to get inside and we were so scared . . . she made us breathe in something from a cloth and then I woke up in here. Did she do the same to you?’
‘Yes.’
I’m stunned by my mum’s shameless approach. It goes against everything her and Dad have ever taught us. She is becoming more and more unhinged.
‘What does she want?’ Precious asks.
‘I don’t know.’ I do know, of course, but again, the truth will do her no favours.
She starts crying again and I find myself feeling something for her that I haven’t for any of the others George or I brought here. Pity. For the first time, I’m seeing one of these kids as another human being. So I try to reassure her that everything is going to be alright and that, soon, the woman who took us will set ‘us’ free.
I want to stay but I move away quickly when I hear my parents emerge from the kitchen. I listen from behind my bedroom door as Precious is moved up into the attic. I lie on my bed in the room below, hearing her pacing the floorboards for much of the night and wishing I could say something to calm her down. But my parents might hear me. It isn’t worth the risk.
I am ordered out of the house for much of the next day, but to my relief, she is still alive the following afternoon and she is back in that room. ‘You’re safe!’ I whisper under the door.
‘Where have you been?’ she asks. ‘They locked me downstairs,’ I say. ‘Did you see Abigail?’
‘No, I’m sorry. Maybe she escaped?’
‘Do you think so? If she has, she’ll go and get help for me. For both of us.’
‘Me too?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘We won’t leave you behind.’
I’m temporarily silenced. I repeat it to myself. We won’t leave you behind. She said it with such conviction that I believe her. Even though she doesn’t know the first thing about me, she wants to help me.
In reality, it’s me who can help her. And I want to. I failed George and I won’t make the same mistake again. My mother is a danger my father can’t control. Sooner or later, one or both of them will turn on me. I need to get Precious and I out of here. I need to save her from what’s to come because I am the only one who can.
My parents are still downstairs so I try to keep her mind off the present by asking about her family. She describes her mum and dad, her two cats, the cousins she plays with, grandparents she adores and the church she worships at. I wonder where her god is now. Or maybe he sent me to rescue her?
The more she describes her life, the more I want to know about it. The more I want to be in her world, and not her in mine. Later, when her voice fades, I assume she’s fallen asleep, so I slide two KitKats under her door.
I stay awake for much of her second night here, coming up with ideas of how to help her. I must’ve drifted off because I awake suddenly the next morning, aware of a presence in my darkened room. I can smell the smoke on her clothes and my heart instantly begins to pound. But she has the advantage and I can’t move quickly enough to prevent a hand from grabbing my throat and squeezing it hard.
‘Traitor!’ Mum snarls before dragging me by the arm on to the landing across the floor and then to the other room where she had been keeping Precious. ‘You gave her food,’ she continues. ‘You don’t feed the animals. You are done here.’ And with a mighty shove that sends me to my knees, it’s my turn to be behind the door.
‘Dad!’ I yell over and over again, banging on the door and hoping he can hear me. But if he’s in the house, he’s not responding. Later, and when the palms of my hands are too sore and splintered to continue, my heart sinks to a new depth. And I know there and then, that if Dad is not looking out for me, nobody is.
Hours pass as I pace up and down the bare floorboards hoping to be released. When I spot a rusty nail sticking out of a board used to cover the fireplace, I prise it out and absent-mindedly play with it between my fingers until it drops and rolls across the floor. It comes to rest next to the skirting board. I pick it up and have an idea. Carefully I press it hard into the wood until I have spelled out the words I will save them from the attic.
If this is the last place where I will ever be alive and someone ever reads it, I want them to know that I tried.
