Third place:
Door to Door
by Robbie Bellekom
Arthur practised his smile in the mirror. It was a good smile, he thought to himself, a really good smile. The kind of smile that sealed deals. But, even in his own mind, he could hear the lie.
The smile was like Arthur in many ways. It drooped at the edges. It wavered and faltered as it struggled to hold its position. Arthur did not let his gaze stray from it. There was nothing else in that mirror he wanted to see.
He ran his hands through his thinning hair, carefully flattening it over the bumps that protruded from his scalp, and put on his hat. The grey fedora was the final part of what Arthur liked to think of as his uniform. The suit fit badly. It had been given to him by his supervisor, a hand-me-down from the previous incumbent, a much taller man with a much larger appetite. Arthur flushed, from the grey collar of the much-washed shirt to the tips of his protruding ears, as he remembered the righteous indignation he had so quickly let drain away after seeing the smug condescension on his supervisor’s face. They didn’t even give him the courtesy of hiding their disdain, he thought glumly as picked up his battered leather sample case and the thin plastic key card from the desk. He left the hotel room as he did every room he entered, unchanged.
It was a watery autumn day and the leaf mulch underfoot squelched unpleasantly as he walked. Juggling a street map, his case and a small notebook, he checked the address against his list. Alighieri Terrace. A light rain spotted the battered pages of his map and he hurriedly folded it. It was a bit old fashioned he knew. His thoughts slipped guiltily to the standard issue smartphone he had been issued, which still sat in its unopened packaging back at HQ.
“I don’t know why you bother” his friend Aleister had said last time he’d stopped by for an assignment. “It’s all online these days. You’re out of date, old man.” The ‘old man’ had stung a little. Arthur was almost certain they were the same age. They all were.
He fixed his smile, checked his hat was firmly in place and knocked – in what he hoped was a confident manner – on the first door. As he waited, listening for the sound of footsteps, the building next door caught his eye. How could he have missed that? Had he been that caught up in his map reading? The spire rose unmistakably into the heavens. He felt a deep fear clench in his gut but it was too late. The door swung open to reveal a smiling woman in the oh-so-telling dog collar. The heat rose again in Arthur’s skin. He willed the blush away as he stammered an excuse about wrong numbers, wrong streets, maybe even wrong cities and backed away. Once he was several houses clear and his pulse had returned to a pace that didn’t suggest an imminent heart attack, he gathered himself with a few quick deep breaths just, as the meditation tapes had suggested. Arthur had never been confident around religious types. It was not his territory.
The next house would be the one, he assured himself. The doorbell played a cheery tune, always a good sign for a potential customer he felt. The woman who answered the door in towel dressing gown and curlers, eyed him suspiciously despite his winning smile.
“Good morning Ma’am. Can I interest you in a temptation today?”
The words “not interested” died on her lips as she took in his words.
“Is that some sort of makeup brand? New type of chocolate? she asked, her eyes piercing into him.
“No Ma’am. Here to offer you the very finest Hell has to offer. We do excellent, unbeatable deals on everything from arson to avarice.” The practised patter rolled off his tongue so easily it was a relief after the rocky start to his day. “We have some exciting new sins in cyber crime for the up-to-the-minute sinner. Or if you’re looking for something more classical, you can’t go wrong with our Seven Deadly range.”
“Are you some kind of devil?”
The question was blunter than usual but Arthur was used to the line of thought. “No Ma’am. Just a salesman.” he lied easily, repressing the urge to check his hat still covered the conspicuous spikes rising from his crown. “Have you ever envied your neighbour’s new car? Wished you could spend all day in bed? That you could eat what you liked and never gain weight?”
The woman’s lips pursed and Arthur imagined he could feel her sizing him up. He was sure he had lost her but –
“That last one. How much?”
“We have an excellent payment plan in place.” he said, maybe a little too quickly he, thought, catching her sharp look. “Pay nothing now. Then after death it’s a mere score of decades wallowing in a great storm of putrefaction.
“Putrefaction?”
“A bargain I’d say.”
“For how long?”
“Couple of centuries.”
“Hmmm. Pass.”
And the door slammed in Arthur’s face with a finality that couldn’t be challenged. The rain was shifting quickly from drizzle to downpour. The ink in his notebook smudged as he ran a finger down the list. A deep breath (in and out, let the breath flow through you like a peaceful brook, just like the tapes said) and a moment’s focus was all it took to bring heat to a finger tip and neatly burn the address of the disappointing house away. One more on this street and he could return to the office.
The next house, the next house would be the one. He knew it. It had to be. He weighed his options as he walked up the concrete path. The grass of the front garden was overgrown and weed-ridden. The paint of the door was peeling and cracked. Not avarice then, he thought firmly. Sloth perhaps? He scolded himself gently for being judgmental. What was that phrase about glass houses? Whoever lived in this house was the one who would change things for him. They would be his big success story. This would be the one they’d talk about until Judgement Day. It had to be. Arthur needed this one to go well, and not just to make up for months of missed targets. He needed this. He drew himself up to his full inconsiderable height, fixed the smile and knocked.
The man who opened the door was everything he had expected and less. Heavily bagged eyes squinted down at him as he reeled off his script. Arthur watched fascinated as the man’s thick hand rose heavily to his unshaven chin and scratched laboriously as a thought was slowly constructed. Finally the man spoke.
“You with Al’s lot? Off the Facebook?”
Arthur felt the shreds of confidence he had scraped together evaporate. “Aleister? We’re in the same office. Yes.”
“He your boss or something?”
“We’re colleagues.” Arthur stiffened. “Of course, there are limits to what our online team can offer. The in-person service -“
“He’s going to help me kill my brother.” the man interrupted. “He showed me how he scammed me out of our business. Said there’d be no cost in this life.”
Classic Aleister, Arthur thought bitterly. The double setup. Persuade one party to cheat the other, then cash in on the revenge plot. It was slick. It was stylish. It was so Aleister. It wasn’t Arthur’s style and never would be. He was old school and took pride in that. He knew he couldn’t change. The world had moved on and he was stuck in this rut until Judgement Day.
Arthur became dimly aware the man was still talking, animatedly now. This damned man seemed entirely unaware as the last dregs of pride and hope washed out of the bedraggled salesman on his doorstep. The rain hammered down as the man thanked Arthur for checking in and closed yet another door in his face.
Arthur stood a few moments longer staring at the uneven paintwork. A small idea was forming in the fog of his despairing mind. Would that work? Probably not. He should just head back to the office. He would dry off, pick up a new list of addresses, pack up his samples and hit the road again. Yes. That would be best. His thoughts carefully spelled out the plan as the idea below, in his subconscious, took shape. He dared not focus on it in case it slipped away, like the memory of a dream.
So, despite his plans, it wasn’t entirely a surprise to find his feet leading him back the way he had come and up a neat brick path to a cheerfully painted door. Keeping his mind purposefully empty, he let a shaking fist rise to gently knock. There was still time to run, every nerve in his body screamed but something else inside him held firm. The door opened and a smiling – if somewhat confused – face looked up at him.
His tongue fought him as he formed the words. “Reverend? I’ve a few things I’d like to confess.”
Second place:
Scholarship Girls
by Anne Howkins
The crow-like headmistress swoops down on Janice as she comes out of the library with a stack of books.
‘What are you wearing, Janice Robinson?’ she booms, her voice ricocheting down the corridor like a rubber bullet, a warning to other miscreants. The gaggle of ankle-socked girls about to follow Janice out of the library, all wearing the staring-eyed baby owl expression common to the first formers, turn tail before Miss Lyons spots them.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Lyons.’
‘Not your first lapse is it Janice? You know the rules. I expect better from my scholarship gals. Report to me in the morning. I expect to see you dressed correctly.
Janice watches the harridan stomp away to her office, gown flowing behind her, mortar board anchored onto a mass of grey curls, wondering how she can tell mum. It had taken her hours to make the dresses from the non-regulation red gingham, bought from the market stall for three pounds a yard less than the department store. She’d been so proud of them, had said it would be fine, nobody would be able to spot the difference. Mum hadn’t met Miss Lyons, having managed to avoid three years-worth of parents’ evenings. Another black mark on Janice’s scorecard.
‘’Excuse me, Mrs Sandford,’ Janice says, pushing her classroom door open, ‘here’s the book you wanted.’
‘Thank you, Janice. Is there a problem? You look a little flushed?’
‘No, I’m going to be late for my dinner.’
‘Lunch, Janice, it’s lunch. Well, you’d better get a move on.’
‘Yes, Mrs Sandford.’
‘Oh, Janice.’
Janice’s stomach does its familiar lurch. Surely Miss Lyons hasn’t got here first. Mrs Sandford will hear about her misdemeanour soon enough.
‘Yes, Mrs Sandford.’
‘Thank you for the book.’
Janice heads for the cloakroom to put the books in her locker, wishing she’d left them on her desk. She manages to get past the cackling, prattling queue outside the dining room without hearing her name. She wonders how her classmates would react if they knew she saw them as a flock of hungry vultures, roaming the school for titbits of gossip to pluck from the bones of the outsiders, the girls left out of their stupid cliques and cabals, the girls not meeting their ridiculous criteria for acceptance. Criteria changed on a whim. For all the noise Miss Lyons makes about her girls being la crème de la crème, the headmistress is no Miss Jean Brodie, either in looks or manner, no matter how much she thinks she is. And her girls, Janice knows, are no more than institutionalised savages preying on the weak.
The cloak room is empty. Janice deposits her books and goes through the pockets of her blazer for a tissue.
‘What are you doing Janice Robinson?’
Janice looks up at the perfectly heart-shaped face of the Head Girl, Isobel Jones, the only girl in the school Janice admires. Isobel, with her perfect shiny blonde bob cut so sharp it slices into Janice’s heart. Isobel, with her Oxford place, with the prospect of a life with possibilities. Cornflower blue-eyed Isobel looks at Janice, and asks, in the flawless voice that Janice can pick out of the choir when they praise the Lord in morning assembly, ‘What are you doing in the cloakroom? You should be at lunch.’
Janice apologises, and mutters something about books, and a left behind hankie, knowing full well that Isobel thinks she is looking for money in satchels and blazer pockets, feels the pit in her stomach deepen a little further.
Isobel sits on a bench, scans the cloakroom.
‘Look Janice, it’s hard for scholarship girls, you’ve got to be squeaky clean. Lyons hates us, we’re the untouchables as far as she’s concerned.’
Janice lets Isobel’s words sink in.
‘You got a scholarship?’
‘Yes. Same one you did, daughters of impoverished mining families.’ Janice hardly recognises Isobel’s hardened face. ‘Dad watched my grandpa cough his guts up, coal dust did for him. He made damn sure that dad didn’t go down the pit. They hate me for it. The girls, Lyons.’
‘But she made you Head Girl.’
‘She had no choice. Top of the year, hockey captain, choir, tennis captain, I was too good for her not to. That’s the way to beat her. She’ll still find fault though. Dad taught at her last school. He knows what she’s like, won’t take any of her crap. Look, you weren’t, you know… all that bother about stuff going missing?’
‘No, no,’ Janice almost shouts, ‘I’ve just got books from the library.’ She opens her locker, shows Isobel the date stamp in a history book.
‘Don’t let anyone catch you here alone, they’ll have you for it you know. Find a way to make it you. Bitch eat bitch in this school.’
Janice feels her stomach unknot, just a little bit, because Isobel Jones knows who she is. Isobel Jones knows what she feels.
‘Look, let me know if you get into any bother. Can’t promise to do much, but I’ve managed to survive six years. Can’t wait for July. Just don’t come running when there’s anyone about. It’ll be worse for you if anyone sees you talking to me.’
Janice nods.
‘Right, off you trot and get your dinner.’
‘Lunch, you mean?’
‘Nah, it’s dinner in our house.’ Janice thinks Isobel’s laughter is possibly the sweetest sound she’s heard at school.
Isobel tugs at the hem of Janice’s dress.
‘Lyons spotted this yet?’
‘Today.’
‘On parade tomorrow morning then?’
A nod.
‘Okay, that’s something I can help with. Mum never throws anything out. Come round tonight, 8 Hill View.’
Hill View is a terrace of miners’ cottages optimistically named, as the only hill to be seen from the bedroom windows is the coal tip. Janice couldn’t imagine Isobel in a cramped little house like hers, had thought that she lived in one of the big houses on the Nottingham road.
‘You live in Skegby?’
‘Yea, that’s why I needed the scholarship, same as you. Only way to avoid the comp.’
‘Why aren’t you on the bus?’
‘Dad drops me off, I go to nan’s after school to make her tea. Now, go and eat!’
Janice sprints to the dining room, bolts down a plate of sausages and tepid mash, and the slice of cornflake tart Mary’s kept back for her. Not that there’s any need to keep back puddings, most of the girls won’t eat them, always being on one diet or another. Mary knows Stella, does her best to keep something tasty for her daughter. Makes sure she gets a proper meal.
Janice gets to the biology lab just before the bell for afternoon lessons rings. Sarah Wilkins and Julie Stanley sharp-elbow jostle past her on their way to the back of the room.
‘What are you smiling about, creepy Robbo?’
‘Yeah, you cow, what have you got to smile at?’
Janice ignores them. Isobel has given her armour, a determination to be better, the will to win.
Stella is asleep on the settee when Janice gets home. She creeps up the stairs as quietly as she can, although not much wakes mum these days. She empties the carrier bags Isobel handed her a few streets away. Her bed is covered with shirts, dresses, skirts, sports kit, even a blazer. Janice wants to laugh; she wants to cry.
‘You’re late home love, did you miss the bus?’ Mum looks round the door. ‘What’s all this?’
Janice tells her mum about Isobel, how the Head Girl lives a few streets away. She misses out her encounter with Miss Lyons. There’s stuff mum doesn’t need to know.
‘You don’t mind, do you mum?’
‘Phil Jones’ girl? Hill View?’
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
’No love, I don’t mind.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shall I come and do tea?’
‘No, I can manage. Had a good day today.’
‘That’s good mum. Do you want a hand on the stairs?’
‘I’ve got my sticks, I’ll be OK.’
‘Mum, Mary said to say hello.’
‘I’ll maybe go and see her soon.’
‘That’ll be good mum.’
Janice washes up, clears the kitchen table to do her homework while Stella watches Coronation Street. When her programme’s finished, Stella comes back to the kitchen, sits at the table.
‘You OK mum?’
‘I knew Phil. Before your dad.’
‘Well if he lived in Skegby…’
‘More than that. I was seeing him before your dad.’
‘What, you went out with Isobel’s dad?’
Janice pictures the man she’s seen dropping Isobel off at school. Getting her sports kit out of the boot. Curly sandy hair, same cornflower blue eyed smile as his daughter. Imagines having a different father.
‘We’d seen each other when he was still at school, he was a couple of years older than me. Then he went off to university for three years, stayed away longer. I’d always hoped he’d be back for me. When he did come back, he was married to Pam. They had a little girl.’
‘Isobel?’
Stella nods.
‘Things were difficult for them. Pam had had the baby blues, never got over them really. He was doing all the housework as well as working. Bumped into him one night at the Co-op, and we went for a drink, catching up. He said he thought someone would have snapped me up. Always a smooth talker he was. We shouldn’t have gone to the pub really…’
‘It was more than a drink?’
‘Yes, love. Only the once, we’d had a bit to drink, he wanted some comfort. The next week your dad took a shine to me, and we were wed in three months.’
Janice passes her mum a tissue.
‘I always think, if he’d not gone away, you know…’ Stella looks at her white-faced daughter.
‘But he did go away mum.’
‘And maybe if I hadn’t talked to Phil at that do at the welfare, your dad would have been a bit kinder, not felt the need for a drink…’
‘Mum, you can’t change the past. The crash happened, you survived. I survived. Dad didn’t.’
‘They said it was the accident that put me into labour. Said you were big for eight months.
Janice bangs her fists on the table.
‘Mum, stop it, just stop it. You can’t change anything.’
When she’s got Stella calmed down, and upstairs to bed, Janice paces the kitchen. She feels dizzy, nauseous, lets possibilities flick in and out of her head. She stares at herself in the hall mirror, lifts her mousy hair so it hangs level with her chin. Sees her brown eyes staring back at her from her dad’s square-jawed face. She goes back to the kitchen table, finds the right page in her biology textbook, looks at the wedding photo on the mantelpiece.
‘Mum, you asleep?’
‘No.’
‘Mum, I’m not Phil Jones’ daughter, not Isobel’s sister. I can’t be. You, dad, me, all brown eyes.’
‘I know, that’s what Phil told me, last time I spoke to him. I just hoped, that’s all.’
First place:
Who Is The Fairest Of Them All?
by Lucy Grace
The house is quiet now, it settles and breathes out beneath me. I can relax whilst they’re not here. I’m sure they’ll be back. People think that because I’m old, I don’t understand what’s going on, but they have no idea. I see everything.
*
The crying is a mewling, a raw scraping like the cat caught in the gardener’s mole snare. There will be another disappointment in this house, before the day is out. The noise is coming from the lady’s bedroom. From my place at the top of the stairs I can see the corner of the landing where the man of the house is pacing outside the door. They won’t let him in. Water is pooling on the steps, sloshed from a basin lip by the harried housemaid. Silence thickens like sauce on the hob. The doctor isn’t here, nobody called for him. There is movement at the bedroom door and the man is stepping back. The housemaid rushes from the stifling copper taint of the overheated room and past me, quickly returning with the cook. What on earth they need cook in there for I have no idea. It’s a roomful of women now, the only men in the house are outside the closed door and outside the kitchen window, where cook’s eldest brother waits. He covers and uncovers greased black hair with his cap, eyes dark with not knowing. Both men are walking and waiting, one upstairs and one downstairs. Neither knows yet if the disappointment will be theirs.
The bedroom door is opening now and the man of the house swims in as cook swims out holding a bundle tightly against her bosomed apron. She is shaking her head to the man and from inside the room there is crying again, only this time it is not a rasping newborn, but the lady of the house, diminished.
Cook pauses at the top of the stairs to gather her skirts with one hand. I see the swaddled baby open its eyes and they are as black as coal, the hair dark and silky thick, and the baby looks directly into me, into its own reflection. I know this is the beginning of the secret. Cook is running down the stairs on surprisingly deft feet, and out through the kitchen door where she hands the bundle to her pacing brother and he is crying and looking and they all hold together, shocked. The brother sets off around the back of the house down the lane where he still lives with his mother and younger siblings, some still at school, but most in service in other, paler houses.
*
Everyone has been wearing black all week. The house is held darkened under cloth like a silenced parrot. The lady is up and out of bed, on occasion taking walks down to the bottom of the orchard. There is a patch of newly turned earth there. Sometimes the man accompanies her, but she returns alone, skirts dirtied in the mud.
*
No-one can find the lady. Tea was due to be served half an hour ago, but she isn’t sewing in the sitting room. She is vanished. I know where she is, but no-one ever asks me. No-one has thought to look outside. Cook is startled by a single knock at the window; leaving the jam boiling she follows her solemn brother down to the dirt patch where the lady is scrabbling on the ground. Tears fall on a clump of violets she is trying to plant in stony mud. Cook’s brother and cook help her up and back to the house, until the housemaid comes out to take his place. Cook’s brother melts away as the jam burns.
*
Another baby comes. She carries this one over the winter and it is birthed in the bedroom. This one has pale skin and pale hair and the man is proud. I hear cook tell him it looks just like the one that was lost. Only a few of us know that is a lie. The man is pleased he has mended the broken past. When he looked into me at the top of the stairs, I told him he was a fool, but he didn’t listen. Some people only see what they want to see. He will learn.
*
It has started to snow. The house is so cold that someone even painted the inside of the windows last night. Jack Frost is the one who does that. I don’t remember letting him in, but sometimes people slide underneath the doors. I’ve seen them.
*
She is talking to herself again, a half-whispered singsong of nonsense. As she passes me on the landing I look hard at her, showing my displeasure at the choice she made. Every baby deserves a life no matter how black its eyes, and it is wrong of her to deceive the man like this. Each time she looks at me I show her her wickedness and she loses a little more of her mind. Soon she will forget that her dark-eyed child is growing in the cottage in the village and will believe she actually lies under the dirt. She deserves to feel this.
*
The man has gone from the house. He left in a uniform when others came to collect him. The postman brings letters from France, but the lady puts them on the mantlepiece, unread. I am worried they might fall into the fire, but she has little concern. She moves as if underwater, slowed. Her pale daughter, Viola, is beginning to adopt these mannerisms too, drifting through rooms without leaving an impression, taking on quiet hobbies, reading and sewing. She rejects musical tuition, alarmed to leave a noise. Her mother loses sight of her and both begin to fold inward, but separately.
*
Cook’s brother is here again. He ran up to the house when he heard the news, but it was no use. The telegram said, ‘Lost At Sea’, but the man was lost to his lady wife a long time ago. She is still underwater. She no longer paddles, instead floating through dark reedy days, barely surfacing. Cook’s brother cannot reach her. When they were together before, there were sparks of love, secret moth murmurs and fingertip brushes. Only once was there the hurried connection on the floor in the sitting room, urgency and longing spilling out under skirts and buttons. She briefly stroked his skin, so different to her husband’s, and after he had gone she cried and knew that she could never live properly now. Once was enough. She looked at herself as she passed me on the stairs and I told her how it could be, but she wasn’t brave enough. Some of them aren’t.
*
There is a knock at the door and an air of excitement amongst the staff. The pale daughter has a pale suitor, and today he is taking her on a boating lake. She is unable to swim and a little afraid but knows he is her chance to leave. I look at her for the last time as she steps down the stairs, and I feel it is a shame that it will inevitably end here.
*
Today is another black day. The lady does not cry. I hear the staff talking about her after the service, how she stood at the empty graves side by side, father and daughter, looking without seeing, imagining their bodies in the watery depth. Cook finds it difficult to console her. The patch of bare soil under the tree at the bottom of the orchard has been reclaimed by weeds long ago and no-one goes there now. Few know it too is vacant – they choose not to be reminded it is there at all.
*
The house is filled with emptiness. Sometimes I forget that the lady is still here. She makes no noise as she slowly passes, her reflection is fading. I was disturbed this morning by a scratching at the window, but it is only the blackberry brambles enquiring against the glass. She does not see them. She is barely alive.
*
She has been dead and alone for several weeks. I keep an eye on her body as it passes through the indignity of rank smells and wet decomposition before it begins to desiccate. There was not much of her to begin with – she began to dry out when the staff left. Cook was the last to go. She too was elderly, and the money had ended years before. All that remained was the house – men in brown overalls came to collect the clocks and the dining table and the chandeliers. They tried to take me, but I clung to the wall with my fingers of brass screws. I am this house. I’ll deal with the next ones when they get here.
*
There are more years.
There are more others.
*
There is another sign on a stick in the garden. I watch the man from the van trying to put it up, but the brambles do their job and keep him on the other side of the wall. In the end he nailed it clumsily to the gate post, but I was pleased when the vines tapped and told me of the smears on his trousers, how the blackberry juice mixed with his blood from pricked fingertips and stained the painted white wood of the sign. That’ll show them.
*
It is Autumn again. There is a plump, shiny man with a clipboard in the hallway. He has glanced up here but not been to see me. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt – he has not yet realised it is my house.
I hear a car stop and a door slam, and the man moves towards the door. It opens onto a woman with eyes as black as coal and a dark, silky rope of hair. She seems familiar, back from the dead. She has not been in this house before. I watch as she steps gently over the threshold. The shiny man does not speak. He moves aside as she walks along cold tiles, busies himself with his phone as she explores the downstairs rooms. I steel myself to show her reflection as she passes, and she smiles at me. It is the second time I have seen eyes as dark as hers. All will be well.
*
There are others here. She has come here to live, and she has brought others. I hear them downstairs. The woman has a man with her, a man with beautiful skin and fierce hair. He walked past me on the landing and I reflected him directly, true and strong and proud of his family. I will allow him to stay. The girl children have surprised me. Here they come – the first one up the stairs is a replicant of her mother, smiling and shining and glowing with youth. She rakes her fingers through a dark fringe as she passes me, acknowledging yet not lingering, recognising my purpose and position in this house. She is quickly opening doors into rooms, putting her head in and out like a jack in the box, sure of herself and trusting her quick decisions. I like her.
She enters the end bedroom, the one with two windows, and I hear her feet on the boards as she walks to the window. There is a scrape of stiffened sash as she raises it four inches and puts her mouth to the gap.
“Lily!”
Our silence is broken as she calls out to the garden. I am startled by the youthful sound – it is not unpleasant, but unknown. It will take some getting used to.
Back in the hallway there is a softer tread. The first girl runs down to the half landing, greeting her sister. Side by side, the twins walk up the stairs. As they approach, I look again, unable to make sense of what I see. Both are the same height, weight, build, and have the same features – undeniably sisters. Yet whilst Poppy’s eyes reflect the deep black centres of her flowery namesake, Lily’s eyes are as pale as her skin. Her hair is blond and disappearing at the edges, her freckled skin reflected in my speckled glass. None of them know why she is the only white duckling in this family. None of them ask.
*
It is Christmas, and the house is full of warm smells and light. There is a party, and during the evening I finally see her, the baby who was not underground. She is an aged woman now, almost a century old. Her once black hair is iron grey. She rises carefully up the stairs towards me, trembling hand on the rail, and I know in an instant that I will show her her mother just once. After all, it was me who punished those who made the wrong choice years ago, I have a role here. I wait until I am sure it is her, until I hear someone calling, “Tea, Violet!” from below the stairs and then I know. I will give her the answers, she will want them. But people don’t seem to matter about such things now. It’s all strange to me.
She’s nearly on the top step, it has taken her a while to walk up the stairs on her aged legs. As she approaches and glances at her reflection, I show her. She stops and looks at the image of her unknown mother in the mirror. She touches the blond hair wonderingly, the translucent skin, she holds her hand to the blue veins on her neck. I see her notice the shape of her body fill the pale reflection perfectly; she turns, holding out her arms and lifting her chin to look directly into blue eyes. Raising fingertips to the mirror, she reaches out to touch herself, to connect with her mother and her secret past, just once. As she connects with the glass I let go of the lady’s image and return the reflection of Violet’s centenarian self and she looks, but not with disappointment, as her mother did.
*
Three generations of them live here with me now. I don’t interfere with this family much, they seem to get on without me. Sometimes, secretly, I show the youngest girls who they are, but never when they are looking. I wait until they are walking away from me, high ponytails swinging, and I lay their retreating reflections one on top of the other, dark over blonde over dark over blonde, until I can see no difference. I’ll get used to them. After all, some of them get used to me.
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