A Dark Dividing (24 page)

‘No.’ It came out angrily. ‘She isn’t my mother,’ said Sonia, and this time there was an unexpected bleakness in her voice. ‘But I hate her.’

‘Why? Because she isn’t your mother?’

‘No.’ But Simone thought it came out a bit too loudly. ‘Because she smothers me,’ said Sonia. ‘I don’t mean she puts pillows over my face—’

‘No, I understand what you mean.’

‘She makes me listen to lots of old stories—I don’t mind that, although she goes on about it all the time. On and on. “Isn’t it interesting, Sonia?” she says. “Isn’t it nice that we share all this?” And she never lets me go out and see people—I hate that more than anything.’

When Sonia said all this Simone had another of those moments of awareness, and just for a few seconds there was the glimpse of a stifling home, rather old-fashioned, the brown-haired woman always there, always at Sonia’s side. Never going out anywhere, never seeing anyone else. The woman thought it was enough, though. We don’t need other people, do we? she sometimes said to Sonia. We have all we need here, with just the two of us.

Despite her fear Simone felt a pang of sympathy for Sonia, but she said firmly, ‘Listen, though, I can’t let you—um—kill someone. I’m going to push this thing back into place.’

‘You won’t be able to. It’s too heavy.’

But the wooden staves at one edge of the well-cover had splintered quite badly when it fell, and Simone managed to grip the iron frame itself. This time when she dragged the cover it yielded.

‘Don’t!’ shouted Sonia, and came forward in a lurching half run. She knocked Simone to the ground and they rolled across the dirty floor, locked together. Simone was perfectly at home with rough and tumble games, and playground scuffles, but for some reason the feel of Sonia’s body half on top of her like this felt wrong. Sonia’s eyes, staring down into Simone’s, were frightening. They were like twin black tunnels, and if you looked into them for too long you might see all kinds of terrible things and you might feel all kinds of dreadful emotions—Simone blinked and tried to look away and found she could not.

‘You’re not to stop me doing this,’ said Sonia in a hoarse angry voice. ‘You’re not to—It’s all right to hate people and to punish them! It is! It’s what they used to do—the children in the stories! The children who lived here!’

‘Get off me!’ shouted Simone, hardly hearing any of this. ‘You’re mad, I hate you!’ She struggled to push her off, but Sonia grabbed her throat and began to squeeze.

‘I won’t let you stop me!’ she said in the same furious half-whisper. Her fingers tightened around Simone’s throat: they felt like steel bands and a red mist started to form in front of Simone’s eyes. She’s strangling me! If I can’t get free of her, she’ll kill me! I’ll die! She had the wild thought that she could not possibly die here—she could not risk dying here—because of the ghosts. Once she was dead the ghosts would pounce on her because they hated her, she knew that already. They hated all ordinary children who had parents and homes, and they would take a revenge on Simone if they could. They would force her to be a workhouse child and make her sew shrouds, and they would lock her away behind the black clanging iron doors every night and even if she screamed and screamed for ever nobody would come to help her… On the crest of this thought she made one last huge effort and this time pushed Sonia backwards.

Sonia tumbled away from Simone, and went rolling and slithering across the floor. Simone had pushed very hard indeed and Sonia slid helplessly across the dusty floor in a jumble of arms and legs, trying to stop herself as she went.

But she did not stop herself. She skidded all the way to the edge of the open well, and as Simone shakily picked herself up from the floor Sonia fell over the edge and went straight down into the sour blackness.

T
HE SOUND SHE made as she fell was like a night wind whistling through an ancient cavern, or a train going through a tunnel in the middle of the night. It seemed to Simone’s horrified senses to go on and on for an eternity, but just as she was starting to be afraid that it would never stop it cut off abruptly, and there was a sort of dull squelching thud. And then silence.

Simone had absolutely no idea what to do. She was still feeling a bit wobbly from Sonia’s attack, but although she was not hurt she thought that when she could stop trembling she was going to be very frightened indeed.

And, most terrifying of all, it was not completely silent in here after all. As she began to walk warily towards the well she was aware of little sighings and creakings all round her. She thought that if she listened hard enough she might hear voices inside those sighings. The ghosts, murmuring to one another like gossipy old women, or like children giggling and telling secrets in a corner of a playground? Shall we take this one…? Yes, she’d do very nicely, wouldn’t she…?
Let’s take her, and we’ll make her sew shrouds and scrub floors alongside the rest of us… She looks pampered and properly
-
fed and nicely-clothed
—
let’s show her what it’s like to be a pauper, nobody’s child, unwanted, unloved…

Yes, if she was hearing anything she would be hearing the ghosts. But I won’t listen, thought Simone firmly. In any case ghosts can’t hurt you, not really.

Oh, can’t we?
said the whisperings.
Are you sure about that, Simone…?

I’m not listening, said Simone in her mind to the ghosts. I’ll try to see what’s happened to Sonia, and then I’ll think what to do next.

What she actually wanted to do was run out of Mortmain as fast as her feet would carry her, and burst into tears in her own house and hear Mother say everything was all right. She was dreadfully afraid that Sonia was dead, but if she was only injured and if an ambulance came out here at top speed—Simone knew about calling for an ambulance; she knew about dialling 999 in an emergency. She tried to remember if there was a phone box anywhere along the road, and could not.

She leaned over the edge of the well-shaft. ‘Sonia?’ she said cautiously, and then a bit louder, ‘Sonia? Can you hear me? Can you speak?’

The well seized on the words and sent them spinning back at her.

Sonia, Sonia… Speak, Sonia, speak, speak…

And what will you do, said Simone’s mind, if Sonia does speak? What will you do if a dead, echoing voice comes whispering up out of the darkness, and says, ‘Yes, I’m dead, and I’m dead because you murdered me, Simone’…?

It felt like a very long time before Simone finally managed to crawl back from the well and scramble across the room and out into the corridor beyond. Gasping with fear and panic she ran through Mortmain’s empty darkness, and as she ran it seemed that all the ghosts reared up from the dark corners and ran alongside her.

It’s no use trying to escape, Simone… We know what you did… We saw everything… We know what is and what has been, Simone… And wherever you run to, we’ll catch you… You’re a murderess, Simone… A murderess…

Along the narrow corridors with the watching iron stoves in their corners, and through the refectory with its sad echoes—I’m almost there now, I’m almost at the front of Mortmain, and the door that leads outside…

Don’t go, Simone… Stay here with us…

The shadows were very dark now; they were like black bony goblin-fingers and at any minute they might reach out to snatch at her ankles… Simone ran on, praying that she was going in the right direction. Once she did take a wrong turning, and found herself going down a passage that did not seem to lead anywhere. Thick swathes of cobwebs dripped from the low ceiling and stirred in the gust of air made by her frantic running; they floated outwards like thin ghost-fingers, brushing her face. She shuddered and pushed them away, and then retraced her steps, this time choosing a passage more or less at random, but then seeing with thankfulness the familiar outline of the central hall, with the decayed stairs, and the cracked floor.

And the half-open door leading out to the hill.

Mother was in the kitchen, stirring a huge pot of what smelt like chili con carne, which was Simone’s absolute favourite Friday-night supper, on account of they always had wedges of French bread with it to mop up the delicious sauce.

She looked up to smile when Simone came in, and started to ask how the rehearsal had gone, and then she stopped. Simone supposed she must look pretty awful; she was dirty and cobwebby, and she had torn her school skirt, and she was still shaking so hard she thought she might break into little pieces.

Mother said in her all-time best voice—the voice that shut out all the bad things in the world and made Simone feel safe—‘Sim darling, what’s wrong?’

And Simone, who had been trying very hard indeed not to cry, sat down on the kitchen chair and put her head on the kitchen table that smelt of chopped tomatoes and spices and home, and burst into tears, and said, ‘I’ve killed somebody.’

It took a long time to explain, and it was quite difficult to tell Mother about knowing Sonia and about talking to her all these years. But she did the best she could, and she talked quickly because of getting help to Sonia who might still be alive.

Mother listened carefully, only interrupting to ask a question here or there. She seemed more interested in the fact that Simone had been talking to this other child inside her mind. When had that started? she said. What kind of things had the little girl said? She did not say much about the fib over the rehearsal, although Simone thought she might say something a bit severe later on, and once she said, ‘Oh Sim, why didn’t you tell me all this?’ and Simone mumbled that she had not wanted to be thought mad because only mad people heard voices inside their minds.

‘Not necessarily.’ Mother got up to fill the kettle. ‘We’d better have a cup of tea and you’d better have sugar in it; sugar’s good for shock. And an aspirin or something as well.’ She got up and Simone saw that making tea and fetching the aspirin was all to give Mother time to think. When she had made the tea and found the aspirin bottle, she said, ‘The thing is that you’ve got an extraordinary imagination, Sim; you always have had. So it’s possible that at times you’ve mixed up what was real and what wasn’t. That isn’t a big deal, although we could maybe talk to someone about it—someone who knows a bit more than I do about things like that.’

‘I wasn’t mixed up about what happened at Mortmain today.’ Simone drank her tea and felt a bit better. She felt brave enough to say, ‘And I think we ought to get police and ambulances and things out to Mortmain in case Sonia isn’t dead—’

Mother had been pouring her own cup of tea, but she stopped in mid-pour and looked across the table, and said in a voice Simone had never heard her use before, ‘Sonia? Simone, did you say
Sonia
?’

‘Yes, that’s her name, didn’t I say?’

‘No, you didn’t. Oh, dear God,’ said Mother, and her face turned so white that Simone thought she might be about to faint or be sick. She was grasping the table edge as if she thought she might fall down if she did not cling on to something solid. Simone waited anxiously, and after a moment she said, ‘I’m all right.’ And then she said it again, almost as if she was forcing herself to believe it.

Simone said nervously, ‘About Mortmain—’

‘Yes. Yes, we’ll go back out to Mortmain shortly, just you and me, but first you’d better wash all that dust away. Have a shower and put a pair of jeans on and a sweater. And then I want to talk to you.’

Simone said impatiently, ‘But we haven’t got
time
for all that! Talking and showering and jeans—We need to go back to Mortmain—’

‘Yes, we have got time.’ There was a note in Mother’s voice that was not often there, and Simone said, ‘Um, well, OK,’ and went obediently upstairs.

When she came back down, feeling a bit better again because of the hot shower and the good-smelling soap and shampoo, Mother was sitting in exactly the same place at the kitchen table, staring in front of her at nothing at all. But she turned when Simone came in, and said, in a voice that was still not quite her own, ‘Come and sit down. And don’t look so fearful, you solemn little owl. I’ve made you some toast and honey. The chili won’t be ready for a while yet, and you’d better have something to eat.’