“Some of them belonged to me when I was a little girl, and the others didn’t have a home, so they came to live here.”
Marion lined the toys up in rows, and Lydia pretended she was the schoolteacher and they were the children. Then the bears were the audience in a theater while Lydia put on one of Mother’s old hats, a silk scarf, and what must have been several thousand pounds’ worth of jewels to sing “Three Blind Mice” for them. Marion clapped and cheered with delight. At eight o’clock that evening, when Judith came to collect her, Lydia sobbed and pleaded with her mother to be allowed to stay longer.
“If you act like this, I won’t let you come and visit Margaret ever again,” Judith said. The look of distress in the little girl’s eyes gave Marion a glow of pleasure.
From that day on Judith brought Lydia round to visit Marion at least once or twice a week; perhaps a babysitter canceled at the last minute, she had to go out on an important errand, or even, “Lydia just begged me to let her come over, Marion, you know how much she loves playing with you.”
Marion bought special food, things that Judith herself would never have allowed the girl to eat: crisps, chocolate, gummy bears, and fizzy drinks. During the summer months they went to the beach for picnics. While most adults seemed to lose patience with children and their fanciful, repetitive games, Marion never got bored playing with Lydia. It fascinated her to watch the child as she went about arranging her toys and chatting to herself, a look of concentration on her chubby pink-and-white face. She had felt such love for the little girl, she almost wanted to gobble her up alive.
She once overheard Judith and Lydia’s father talking while drinking wine one evening on their patio.
“We really don’t know anything about these people, Jude—do you think Lydia should be spending so much time there?”
“Oh, Duncan, don’t be so bloody paranoid, they are both as harmless as old carpet slippers. He does have the air of the disgraced scout leader about him, took early retirement from some public school, but I should imagine he’s only interested in boys; anyway, he spends all his time down the cellar playing with his train sets. Lydia never sees him. I admit she is a bit loopy, but quite sweet, never had a child of her own and desperate to love someone else’s.”
If John was around during Lydia’s visits, he would pull faces that she found terrifying or grab hold of her and tickle her tummy until she went red from screaming. John, of course, was only trying to entertain her, he just didn’t understand that girls didn’t like rough play, so Marion tried her best to keep Lydia out of his way.
Lydia was five, sitting at the dining room table eating lunch, when she asked:
“Why do things grow up? Why doesn’t everything stay little?”
“I don’t know,” said Marion. “I suppose because the little things need big things to look after them.”
Lydia picked up a piece of cheese on toast from a plate decorated with fairies and goblins dancing in a woodland glade. The design was entitled Midsummer’s Eve and came from a collection of six that hung on Marion’s bedroom wall. The others were Christmas, Whitsuntide, Easter, All Hallows’ Eve, and Twelfth Night; the plates were collector’s items and meant only for decoration, but since Lydia liked them so much, Marion let her eat off them from time to time.
“Marion, are you big or a little girl?”
“I’m a big person, of course.”
Lydia chewed thoughtfully on her toast.
“But you don’t have anyone to look after.”
“Well, I suppose I have John. We look after each other.”
“Is he your husband?”
“No,” laughed Marion. “He’s my brother.”
Lydia’s sweet face hardened into a strangely grown-up expression.
“I don’t like him. He’s scary like an ugly smelly wolf.”
Marion was shocked. Should she say something? Tell her off for being so rude about a grown man? But she could never bring herself to get cross with Lydia. Marion remembered that Dad had always called her “young lady” when she was in trouble, for some reason.
“That’s not a very nice thing to say, young lady.”
“Make him go away, then we’ll be able to play games without anyone messing things up.”
“I can’t do that, he’s my brother, Lydia.”
Then suddenly Lydia picked up the plate and threw it on the floor, where it shattered into pieces.
“Oh!” exclaimed Marion. “Lydia, why did you do that? You know how precious that plate was to me!”
The child stuck out her bottom lip defiantly.
“It was a silly plate. You’re too old to have things with fairies on them.”
The sight of the lovely broken ornament made Marion feel as if something sharp had lodged into her heart. And to think the other plates had lost a brother. The set would never seem the same again. In that moment she loathed Lydia, even though she knew it was wrong to hate a child. While she was picking up fragments from under the dining room table, Marion saw a glint of something shiny between the floorboards. Rubbing her finger across it, she remembered stuffing the sweetie paper there when she was young. After several minutes had passed Lydia slipped off her chair and peered under the table.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” snapped Marion.
“I’m sorry I broke it.”
Marion lowered her head and put her hands over her face. I won’t let her see that I am hurt. I won’t let a child know she has done this to me, she told herself.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care about the stupid plate.”
“Then why do you look so sad?”
“I-I’m not sad at all, Lydia.”
“Don’t tell fibs!” scolded Lydia in a mocking voice that made Marion’s ears hurt. “You were crying. I can tell.” She fought the urge to grab Lydia by her pale arm and drag her back to her mother.
“I was just thinking about things, aren’t I allowed to do that? About when I was a girl.”
Lydia slid under the table and positioned herself cross-legged opposite Marion, then she reached out and pulled her hands away from her face.
“Were you sad when you were little?”
Marion sighed.
“Sometimes I was sad, yes.”
“Was it because of John? Because he was nasty to you?”
“No, it wasn’t. Not because of John.”
“Then why was it?”
Marion felt the anger rising again. She knew she shouldn’t be cross with Lydia but she couldn’t help herself.
“I don’t want to talk about it. Now, you be quiet, miss, or I shall give you a good slap, do you hear me?”
Lydia’s small face went pale with shock, but she didn’t move; instead, the two of them stayed sitting beneath the table saying nothing until Judith rang on the doorbell to fetch her daughter.
? ? ?
DESPITE THE BREAKING of the plate, Lydia carried on coming to the house to see Marion. For her eleventh birthday, Marion bought her a Beachtime Boogie Babe, even though Judith had deemed the toy with its long blond hair and skimpy bikini “an offensive stereotype of femininity.”