In the bus shelter, the rain starts to fall more heavily on the corrugated roof, and a slab of snow slides off, landing in a slushy heap on the pavement. I shiver, rub my arms.
The metal seat is thin and hard against my body. I listen to the rain, watching the grey mess of old snow and rain mingle on the pavement.
I get on the bus and pay for my ticket with the money Rebecca lent me, taking a seat near the back, lowering my head in case any of the other passengers recognise me.
My bag is on my lap and I unzip it to check the Black Magic box is safe. It’s really me I want to check on. I’m not sure how safe I feel, but Swan Lake never kept me safe. It was my prison.
I get off the bus at Greystone train station, and use the last of Rebecca’s money on a return ticket to Willow Heights.
Where Elizabeth is.
From Willow station it’s a short walk to the hospital, but the rain slows me, running in tears down my face.
I’m inside the hospital grounds. I just need to find her flat. The address is on all the letters she sent me, letters I never replied to, but always read.
Daisy’s death is heavy on my mind. Death, close around me. Oblivion, which is what I thought I wanted.
I remember Elizabeth’s first letter, a year after I was signed into Swan Lake. She’d been too brain damaged to write earlier. Last year, she was well enough to move into her own flat within the grounds of the care facility.
I look into the window of the flat and see her lying on the sofa. The room looks warm and cosy.
Snow begins to fall lightly on my shoulders. I tap on the window and she looks up, her golden blonde hair falling on her cheek. She recognises me at a glance. I see her mouth speak my name.
I press the wet glass with my hand, wanting to touch her, and she must feel the same because she runs then, to the front door. I hear it open and turn, and she’s there, too close to see, her arms around me and her lips on my cheek and her skin against mine.
‘Amy! Oh my beautiful daughter.’
My mother isn’t dead.
My mother is very much alive and is holding me tightly, scared to let me go.
I think I was eight years old when I wandered into my father’s shed and saw the photographs. But my traumatised heart, my damaged brain, had smudged out the truth.
And then I remembered to forget.
My father raped Elizabeth when she was only thirteen. They forced her to hide the pregnancy. The woman I thought had been my mother pretended she’d given birth to me.
On the night of my seventeenth birthday, my father gave me his special camera.
I held it tightly, even as the argument unfolded. Elizabeth tried to snatch it. I thought she was jealous, that’s why she was so angry. I didn’t understand what she meant, when she shrieked at Dad that she won’t let him, that she will stop him. That she will reveal the truth.
Elizabeth ran into the shed, the forbidden dark room. I followed.
I watched her smash open my father’s chest with a hammer, and then I saw them. The DVDs. She told me everything about my father’s abuse. Then she told me her secret.
I was her daughter.
Then my father entered the shed. I remember my sister begged him to leave us alone, that she wouldn’t report him if he let us leave.
But I wasn’t going to keep quiet.
I took my phone out, threatening to call the police. Elizabeth begged me not to, scared of the man who abused her as a child.
My father came at me. The look on his face scared me to death. He was like a toothy monster, bent on killing me.
But Elizabeth stepped in, protecting her child, and everything after was a blur.
I heard an almighty crack as Elizabeth’s head hit concrete. I stopped, afraid. I’d seen what my father was capable of.
An ambulance took Elizabeth away. I wasn’t allowed to go with her. Police Constable Clark arrived at the scene. My father had me taken under custody. He told the police it was me who hurt Elizabeth. I was mentally unstable, addicted to drugs, it was a tragic accident. His word as the mayor over a little hysterical girl, made it easy for him to have me sanctioned in Swan Lake until I was deemed safe to be let out.
I blamed myself for Elizabeth’s brain damage. I should have kept quiet. And so I did.
Until Shepherd came back into my life.
‘Are you happy?’ Elizabeth says. ‘I only want my baby girl to be happy.’
She holds me tightly, and starts to hum her lullaby.
‘Yes, Lizzy. I am happy. When I was nine I met a boy, and we fell in love.’
52
ME
In the dayroom, the smell of roses and citrus and pine. The television is too loud. The shattered jigsaw puzzles are on the floor. I head down the corridor, and pass an old patient in a wheelchair. She’s wearing Fab5’s red plaid T-shirt.
My heart sinks when I find Diana alone in her room. She’s thinner. Her bones are the only thing left in her arms and hands. Her eyes fall open. She stretches her fingers at me. They rock the way light does at the bottom of a swimming pool.
The plastic patient bracelet
