After what happened, most of Aisling’s things were scooped up and taken away, but I did manage to salvage her silver crucifix and her dark green kid gloves, both presents from me for the birthday and Christmas we had together. The thing I cared about most, though, was Aisling’s hairbrush, the one that still had her hair on it, the one I’d wound the strands of her hair around. I had not lost that sewing box. I did not lose things. It had been taken.
I tore apart my room, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. It had to be Mrs Wiggs. She was always nosing through my things, tampering, looking for any conceivable way to judge me. A second punch to the gut came when I remembered there was also the photograph of our graduation: Aisling in the row in front of me, Matron at the centre. Even Mabel was in there. I was devastated to think I’d lost these things for ever. I pored over every inch of that room, ripped out every item in every drawer, until I could no longer deny what was obvious: Mrs Wiggs had taken it.
I flew downstairs. Trembling, barefoot, and still in my nightdress – the same one I’d been wearing for the last week – I shot into every room, opening and slamming every door, shaking the house like thunder. Eventually I found her on the narrow staircase that led to the pantry with the china cupboard. Sarah and Cook were at the large table in the kitchen behind her.
‘Where is it?’ I shouted.
Mrs Wiggs looked startled. Then, as if she knew what was coming, she folded her arms across herself. Sarah, and Cook, whom I had very little to do with, both stared up at me open-mouthed, then when I glared straight at them, dropped their eyes to the table and carried on preparing dinner.
‘Mrs Lancaster, you are not making sense,’ said Mrs Wiggs.
She peered at me as if I were filthy: a rat she had been ordered to keep alive. She cast a knowing glance at Sarah and Cook, as if seeking validation regarding a previous conversation. No doubt they all gossiped about me. I thought about hitting her. I wondered if she’d ever been slapped across the face. Instead, I demanded she come with me to my bedroom. Again, she looked at Cook and Sarah, wanting them to share in her ridiculing of this inconvenience. I marched up the stairs. She followed behind at a glacial pace, I’m sure to antagonise me, just as Dykes had when she’d dragged her screaming bucket through the hospital on the day Emma Smith bled out.
When we entered my bedroom, she stood and gasped in shock at the horrific mess.
‘Good Lord, Mrs Lancaster, what have you done?’
‘There is a box missing from my wardrobe. It’s a small wooden sewing box – where is it?’
She didn’t answer, only stood with her hands pressed to her cheeks, looking about and shaking her head, as if it were a battlefield strewn with dead bodies and bloodied limbs.
‘Mrs Wiggs!’ I shouted. ‘Answer me! It was here, in my wardrobe! Why would you steal it?’
My hands shook, my whole body trembled with rage and I wanted to tear the hair from her head, wrench each strand out of that tightly wound bun and make her squeal. She just stood there, staring at me as if I were mad, while I shrieked at her, tossing aside clothes I’d already thrown onto the bed, hurling them now onto the floor and trampling on them, screeching that she’d done it all on purpose, that she was trying to trick me into thinking myself mad. She denied ever taking anything, denied it over and over. Her reaction made me doubt myself. She begged me to see what I had done to the room. I did look. I saw the mess and heard myself screaming. Then I became overcome with a paralysing fear: what if we did find the box and what if she saw that inside was a collection of worthless things, strands of hair collected in memory of a dead woman? I would seem deranged, and she would tell Thomas.
‘I’m going to send for a doctor,’ she said, and moved to leave.
I chased her as she made for the door. Her face turned back towards me as I pulled on her shoulder. Then she fractured into a million little mosaic pieces that broke apart and fell away, and everything went black.
*
When I woke up, I was still in my bedroom, in bed. The room had been tidied and everything was cleared away. I couldn’t remember if the episode had really happened or if it had been another one of my bizarre dreams. I looked under the bed to see if Mabel was there, or the pigs, or Aisling, but there was only the floor.
‘It’s not under the bed, Mrs Lancaster. I’ve looked,’ said Mrs Wiggs.
Her voice gave me a start. I hadn’t even realised she was in the room.
‘I’m afraid I do not know where this box is. It is obviously very precious to you, so I shall have the house turned upside down to find it, rest assured. I’ve asked Sarah to draw you a bath.’
As she came into focus, I began to understand what she was talking about.
‘Perhaps after that we should call a doctor,’ she said.
I shook my head. ‘No, I’m fine.’
‘Mrs Lancaster, you fainted, do you remember? In the middle of attacking me.’
‘I did not attack you, Mrs Wiggs. I was trying to stop you from leaving, that is all, and there’s no need for a doctor, I am not ill. I merely fainted.’
The windows had been opened. It was freezing. I pulled the bedclothes around me. Mrs Wiggs came and sat on the edge of the bed, trapping my legs under the covers.
