Paula laughs, and for once I laugh too, not even minding her bloody tooth any more. ‘Okay then,’ I say, reaching my hands out towards the mummy doll. ‘I do really want her to be a mummy.’
I have a really fun game with the dolls. The beautiful mummy takes the ginger ugly girl to the park and they go swimming in the lake (which is really just Paula’s blue rug). Then they go home and the mummy doll makes plates of beans and sausages from the ginormous kitchen and the ginger doll eats it all up with a knife and fork instead of her fingers. I take a book from Paula’s bookcase and the mummy doll reads it to the girl doll, who stops feeling ugly because the mummy tells her red hair is like a beautiful rose.
‘Did you do all those things with your mummy?’ Paula asks after some time and I nod my head and smile.
Later, when Bernie collects me, she asks me about my time with Paula. ‘You look very happy today, Louisa,’ she says, her lovely blonde hair shining in the sunshine.
‘That’s because I’d like you to be my mummy,’ I tell her, remembering all the times Bernie has taken me to the park and cooked my dinner and read me bedtime stories. ‘And Paula says if you’d like someone to be your mummy then they can be your mummy.’
‘Oh, sweetheart.’ Bernie bends down and takes hold of my hands. She has water in her eyes like Timmy Tears but I think they might be happy tears which she gets at the end of films sometimes. ‘I can’t be your mummy, darling,’ she says all of a sudden, the water now trickling down her cheeks. ‘But I can be like a mummy until we find your forever family.’
I don’t say very much after that. My mummy who isn’t really my mummy drives the car all the way back to the home which isn’t really my home. I look out of the window and try to find my forever family who are lost somewhere. Or perhaps they are hiding… like Timmy Tears’ bottle under my bed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Louisa
Now
Light seeps into the darkness, a gentle flutter like the flame of a tealight. I know I am seeing but only partially, my eyelids flickering, glints of blue and glimmers of gold dancing together as one. Somewhere in the distance sounds circulate, similar in style and yet differing in tone and volume, like a pianist striking several keys at once. I force my eyes open and the sounds sharpen into speech – or perhaps the other way around. I look up into a sea of faces; mouths moving but not necessarily in sync with the words which surround them. A sickly sweet aroma of ginger and cinnamon sails past me, carrying a spliced memory through its middle.
Something bad has happened.
Slowly, everything starts to align: words become meaningful, fitting perfectly into the shape of human mouths.
‘She’s waking up,’ says somebody close by. ‘Don’t try to move.’
‘What’s happened to me?’
‘You’re all right, you’ve just fainted that’s all.’ A woman, with greying eyebrows and a matching perm, touches my forehead, her hand so cold it almost burns. ‘What’s your name, love?’
‘Louisa.’
‘Don’t try to move, Louisa, you fell with quite a force and banged your head.’
‘Why did I fall?’ I say thickly, remembering only now that I’m in the middle of Chester town centre, seemingly on my back in the middle of the market.
‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’
I fight through the slush of my brain in order to remember what happened but it’s too hard. It almost seems as if the place where my memory belongs has been scratched down the middle. I think I went to meet Magda. That memory is there but hazy, her multicoloured hair almost dreamlike. Did we meet for coffee? I swallow, testing the question, and am quickly rewarded by the taste of ginger, which soaks into my taste buds. ‘I felt dizzy,’ I say to the woman who crouches over me. There are other people still milling around, stood straight, in clusters, offering me quick, pitying glances between conversations. ‘I came out of the coffee shop and then there were lots of people,’ I continue, more for my own benefit than for hers. ‘I tried to break free and then…’
The blood suddenly drains from my face. ‘Cory!’
I jump to my feet, ignoring the sharp pain which slices through my head. ‘Where’s my baby?’ With sudden clarity I remember everything: Magda, Annette, the psychic, the crowds, Cory, and finally him!
‘Calm down, Louisa, calm down.’ The woman jostles forward and grabs hold of me, her hands on my forearms, a cloud of breath in my face.
I try to fight her off, swivel my head from left to right, panic soaring from zero to a hundred in less than a breath. ‘Where is he? Where has he gone? He’s taken my son!’ The man’s image swims into focus: jagged back teeth, icy blue eyes, hair as red as fire!
The crowd of people circle me once again, their interest suddenly revived. A black tunnel of terror closes in as I realise the pram has disappeared.
‘Calm down, he’s here, he’s safe!’
A man’s voice pulls everything back together. I look over at him, follow his eyes down to a pram, Cory’s pram, positioned a metre or so away from me, by a stall which looks smoky and hot.
I am standing over the pram before I even realise I have moved, gazing down at a tiny white bonnet which pokes out from underneath the cover. ‘Oh God, thank God.’ My breathing levels out. ‘He’s safe, he’s okay.’
‘Sweetheart, you’ve obviously had a fright. You need to…’
‘I have to go.’ I grab hold of the pram’s handles, shrugging off the woman who may or may not be the same one who had hold of me a moment ago. I plough through the crowd, ignoring the multiple protests to wait for an ambulance, ignoring the searing heat in the back of my head. All I know is that I have to get home, I have to get home and make Cory safe.
‘Louisa!’
Her voice skims across the heads of the crowd. Spinning around, I see her several places back, her eyes wide and unblinking. ‘Are you all right?’ she mouths as she attempts to elbow her way through the throng of people separating us.
Annette! My insides burn for a reason which I don’t have time to analyse. There is no way I want to speak to her right now. Turning back around, I continue to fight my way through the remainder of the crowd, the pram acting as a ramrod.
Up ahead, the mouth of the market comes into view. I speed up, the finishing line rewarding me with a blast of cool air. I now know without any doubt that things have gone far enough. No matter what the consequences, I have to tell James.
I arrive home in less than twenty minutes. Rummaging around inside my bag, I pull out everything bar my house key. My head is pounding from where I fell and fresh exhaustion tugs at my eyelids. Tutting, I stuff my hand into the side compartment of the bag for the second time in as many minutes. My purse, leather and bulky, is easy to locate, but a quick swipe to the left and right confirms that my house keys are definitely missing. I rack my brain as I try to remember when and where I last had them. Just as I open the main compartment of the bag again, intent on emptying everything out onto the floor, the door flies open. ‘Bloody hell you scared me then.’
James stares down at me, silence resting in the space between us. He is dressed in a creased shirt and trousers, the laces on his shoes untied. ‘What on earth have you been doing? Why didn’t you answer your phone?’ His questions hit me head-on, making it hard for me to reply. I look down at my watch, the hour and minute hand stuck together on the five. ‘Is Cory all right?’ he asks, craning his neck to look over the pram’s hood.
I bristle. ‘He’s fine. And it’s only five so I really don’t know what you’re worrying about.’