The Doll's House

I stop, press pause and look around the room, checking that I’m alone. I listen for any sounds downstairs. When I hear nothing, I press record again.

‘My dolls are with me. Sandy and Debbie are sitting opposite, but Debbie is watching my mum and him. I stand up and walk down to the sea. I wobble back having filled my bucket to the brim with water. It feels heavier than me as I struggle with it, not wanting to spill any. My feet are sinking into the sand. My right arm is stretched and pained. The sun is dazzling. Debbie doesn’t take her eyes off the two of them. The closer I get, I catch the smell of his smoke in the breeze. I can hear my mother laughing. Her legs look long, tanned from our holiday in France. “Today is a treat,” she had said. “We don’t need the boys, just us two girls down on the beach.” But it isn’t only the two of us. She looks beautiful, my mother. She always did. I don’t want to look at him, but Debbie never lets him out of her sight. Did I know his name back then? I must have done. Perhaps I blocked it out. He stands up, stubbing out his cigarette into the sand. I look at Mum. She’s laughing. I see my sandcastles in his sunglasses, the ones blocking out his eyes. He doesn’t stand for long. He kneels down, then lies on the far side of my mother. Her head turns away from me to him. I hear whispers, the kind I hear downstairs when Debbie wants to shout. Instead of looking at them, I stare at the cigarette butt, the one he’s shoved into the sand. The more people pass, the deeper it gets buried. Soon it will disappear. The blue of the sea is blinding.’

I stop again, noticing the panic in my voice. I need to calm down. I press record again. Now my voice is more measured.

‘When he props himself up on his elbows, his head causes a shadow over me. His hair is brown, past his ears. My mother runs her fingers through it. He keeps his eyes on her. It’s as if I’m invisible. “Go and get her an ice-cream,” my mother says, but he doesn’t move, at least not at first. He turns towards me, as if he’s waiting for me to ask the question. He’s staring at me, and I don’t like it. I don’t say anything. “Go on,” she says, and this time he moves. As he walks away, he gets smaller and smaller, and all the time, my mother is watching him, until she picks up her magazine, holding it with her pink-polished nails, pretending she doesn’t care about him now that he’s gone. But she does care. She folds the magazine over, fixing her hair, smoothing the sand off her legs.

‘When he returns, he puts the cold choc-ice on her tummy. She jumps, then laughs again, before handing it to me. I want to sink like the cigarette butt into the sand. I turn away, my back to them, talking to Sandy and Debbie, feeling the heat of the sun burn the back of my neck, but not caring. I eat the choc-ice. When some of it drops on my legs, melting, I wipe it away, but it feels sticky, the sand hurting my skin, and they both laugh.’

I stop the recording. I press the play button and listen. The first time I met Gerard Hayden, he’d said that after regression some memories might come flooding back. But they feel disjointed. The man with my mother on the beach is the man whose face I saw at the door of my doll’s house. I remember he wouldn’t put his cigarette butts in the ashtray. Instead he would put them in the bin, or flick the butt into the bushes before entering the house. Dad was never there when the man came in the afternoon, at least not that I remember.

Part of me doesn’t want to press the record button again, but if I don’t, I might lose it. When I do, I wait a few seconds before I start.