‘About that photograph in the bedroom,’ he started, then stopped, his gaze shooting towards Ollie.
‘Oh my God!’ Her heart leaping into her mouth as Ollie let out a squeal, she shot up and flew to where he’d fallen trying to climb out of the sandpit, Steve close behind her. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right, sweetheart,’ she said, dropping down beside him to assess the damage. ‘He’s cut his knee,’ she said, her alarmed gaze going to the blood dripping from his leg and plopping starkly into the sand.
‘It hurts.’ Pale with shock, his face creased with pain, Ollie was doing his best not to cry, and failing.
Laura hugged him close as the tears rolled wetly down his cheeks. ‘It’s all right, baby, I’ve got you,’ she whispered. ‘I will never let anyone hurt you again, I promise.’
Seventeen
‘Is he all right?’ Laura asked worriedly, as Steve slipped back into bed after climbing out to investigate a bump in the night.
‘Fast asleep,’ he assured her with a tired yawn. ‘His book fell off the bed. He must have been having a sneaky read.’
His new scissor skills workbook. Laura had bought it because, besides teaching children how to use scissors, it had an array of animal patterns and shapes to cut out. He’d been so excited when she’d given it to him after their trip to the zoo, she’d decided to leave it with him. It wouldn’t hurt him to browse it under the softly undulating theme of his night light, and he deserved a bit of a treat after being so brave about the injury to his knee, which had turned out to be not as bad as it looked, thank goodness.
Yawning herself, she snuggled into Steve as he wrapped his arm around her. She’d been the tiniest bit annoyed with him for agreeing to let Sarah pick Ollie up early tomorrow. She and Joe wanted to take him out for a meal, she’d said. Ollie would no doubt love it, but Laura was concerned about disrupting his visiting schedule. Steve had an arrangement: Saturday morning to Sunday evening. Yes, Sarah had agreed to swap weekends, but still, Laura didn’t want them to take him off early. She didn’t want them to take him at all. She loved being with him, getting into his mindset, where the troubles of the world drifted away and everything was magical, and all things were possible.
A smile curved her mouth as she pictured the giraffe he had painted so vividly in her mind. His big blue eyes sparkling, his trip to the zoo fuelling his imagination, he’d told her a story at bedtime, in which the superhero had been Mr Giraffe, whose neck ‘growed and growed and growed until his head was poking above the clouds’, he’d said animatedly, stretching his own neck.
‘Grew.’ Laura had laughed and gently corrected him. ‘Mr Giraffe’s neck grew and grew and grew.’
‘Grew,’ Ollie repeated, his brow furrowed in concentration.
‘That’s right. Good boy.’ She beamed, delighted – and wondered whether Sarah bothered to correct him. She really ought to. Laura would hate to think of him struggling verbally when he started school. ‘And then what did Mr Giraffe do?’ she’d prompted him.
The furrow in his brow deepened. ‘He looked down from the clouds and saw some people were crying.’
‘Oh no.’ Laura had widened her eyes in pretend alarm. ‘Why were they crying?’
‘Because they’d lost their friends,’ he went on, with a sad shake of his head. ‘So he growed … grew … some more and said hello to the little stars.’
Because that was where all the lost people went. Laura had gleaned what he meant. Steve had told him that was where his grandad had gone after he’d died; that he was a twinkling star, looking down on him from the night sky. She’d thought Ollie’s story was quite lovely. Snuggling closer to Steve, she forgave him for not being as assertive as he should be. She couldn’t stay angry with him for feeling compromised. How could she when he’d brought her Ollie?
Hearing Steve’s breaths slow, she listened for a while to make absolutely sure Ollie had settled, and then, her eyes growing heavy, her thoughts drifted. His small hand in hers, she was walking with Ollie through a pleasant woodland, where bees buzzed happily pollinating wild flowers and big red butterflies fluttered breathtakingly from petal to petal.
And then her mind shifted. The dream grew darker. Woods turned to bricks and mortar. His hand had slipped from hers. He was no longer with her. Nowhere to be seen. Not safe. Her throat caught as she heard them twisting and grinding, wild vines as thick as giraffe’s necks, snaking their way up the walls as she moved silently around the objects that were there, yet not. Through the house that was familiar, yet not. Her dream hazily superimposed over reality, she negotiated the stairs, her tread soft, determined, unfaltering. She didn’t flinch as a spider as big as the palm of her hand scurried across the wall a hair’s breadth from her cheek. It was huge, hunch-legged, obviously escaped from the zoo, but there was none of the petrifying fear she’d felt as a child when faced with such threats, no thudding heartbeat, nothing but the urge that drove her, placing her feet blindly, steadily, one in front of the other as the voice in her head persisted. You have to find him. You have to save him.
The lounge was her lounge, but different; brighter, like an overexposed photo. The furniture was solid, yet ill-defined; blurry, jagged edges, like the memories that floated on the periphery of her mind, day and night, night and day. Her one abiding recollection was that of his trusting little face, his wide eyes, the truest sky blue and crystal clear with the innocence of childhood. Trust broken. Innocence lost. She had to find him.
The patio doors – her eyes travelled towards them, refocusing … click … the lens of a camera, shutter closing, shutter opening. She found them locked. She knew they would be, to keep her in, keep the memories out. She moved instinctively, releasing the catch, sliding them open. Wind whipped her hair as she stepped quietly onto the patio, whispering through the leaves on the trees, imploring her more urgently, Hurry, hurry. Her gaze moved to the pool. Sunk into the lawn, it wasn’t there, yet it was, its surface rippling; fracturing like broken glass as the wind stirred it.
‘Oh my God, what have you done?’ She heard her behind her, the woman who’d paraded herself as their mother, who was no mother at all. ‘What have you done?’
No! Laura tried to say it out loud, but though her head screamed it, her lips jammed together and wouldn’t let the sound out.
‘Laura …’ A male voice spoke, snatching her away. Steve. He shouldn’t be here. He didn’t belong here in this time and this place, which was another time, another place.
Futilely, she stretched out a hand, trying to hold onto the memory her mother claimed wasn’t a memory as it slipped from her mind back into the water.
‘Come inside, sweetheart. It’s wet out here.’ She sensed him approach her, his tone cautious as she watched the soil fall from the sky to rain down on the soul that would always be lost.
Disorientated, she fixed her gaze on the water as it receded. Soon it would be gone, fading from her mind like an ebbing tide. ‘I have to sssave him,’ she stammered uncertainly.
‘It’s okay, Laura.’ He held her as she took a stumbling step forward, needing to follow him to the place where his spirit never rested. How else would she find him? ‘He’s safe. I promise,’ he said softly, steering her around to face him.