Bitterhall by Helen McClory (story books to read .txt) 📕

it was worth much less in those days. I don’t remember the sounds of sawing or workmen stomping through in their boots. I remember it being a heavy quiet place, even before my parents left.

My sister wasn’t born yet so I had a bedroom to myself. The walls felt thick and cold all the time. The ceilings slanted at different angles. Everything, in my memory, was painted a heavy, glossy dark green. But I wasn’t scared – I didn’t have much reference for frightening things, I think. We’d always lived in old, ramshackle places, moving around a lot. So as children go, I was sturdy and not prone to letting my mind run on in that way at least. My parents, they don’t talk about what they saw, or much of what they did. Only years later they mentioned it just the once, so I still don’t have a frame of reference for what happened.

It was winter, anyway. I was woken up early in the dark by my mother clattering into my room with a suitcase. She was oddly silent, packing some things for me. I asked what she was doing; she put a finger to her lips and pulled me out of bed. She did not ask me to get dressed, or even put shoes on. We went down the stairs and outside. I squirmed at the shock of the cold, and she slapped me on the arm, holding me up by it, and whispering. I don’t remember what she said. Behave, probably. Da was behind the driving wheel of the car, cigarette in hand. Windows rolled up. I remember that because he normally kept them rolled down no matter what the weather, to let the smoke out.

We got in the car. Da started the engine and began backing out of the drive. Suddenly, mam jabbed at the windscreen. ‘There she is,’ she said. ‘The cold bitch.’ That’s when I opened the door and let myself out of the car. Still don’t know why I felt the need to do that. We weren’t going fast, and I didn’t hurt myself. I ran back to the house, slammed the door, stood up on my tiptoes and turned the lock. After a few minutes I heard Da knocking, lightly, then hard. Proper ramming on the door. Then he stopped knocking, and, after a little bit, I heard my parents drive off. They didn’t come back that evening.

After they had gone, I put myself back to bed and, somehow, fell right asleep. I’d never been left alone before. I got up in what felt like the middle of the afternoon, made some bread and jam sandwiches, played house, put myself to bed. I wanted a bath, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop the taps going once I started them – that was a big concern, that I’d flood the house and be carried out on a wave of water. That Mam and Da would be disappointed in me for not being able to look after myself. Otherwise, I was calm, collected; that’s how I remember myself.

That night, the ‘cold bitch’ came to my door. I don’t know how she had been with Mam and Da to frighten them so witless, but she wasn’t in any way cruel or menacing to me. Her dress trailed on the ground below her feet. It was yellowish, hemmed with lace, like something kept folded in an old drawer. I remember wanting to touch it, and leaping out of bed to do that. The cold bitch just hovering there, in the doorway of my room, as I, chubby, little, ran at her. I tried to grab and pat at the cloth of her dress. I tried to put it in my mouth. I remember the texture of it, believe me when I say that. It was crumbling, stiff as dead leaves. She drew back. Whispering voices. A noise like cutlery being put away. I came forward. ‘Please,’ I said. Her face is hard to recall. She had a big mouth, if she had one at all.

I stayed out of bed, lying near her hanging there, for what felt like hours. I brought my plastic farm animals and played them with her until I got pins and needles and said, ‘I’m going to bed again. Please don’t let anyone come in the house.’ And no one did come for another whole day. In the morning there was a piece of cooked chicken laid out on a plate, very pale looking and damp. But I didn’t eat it. I made myself some bread and butter. And then I suppose my parents came home for me later – a day later? And later we moved out.

When I finally asked them, in a pique, why they left me, my da looked aghast. He said they hadn’t left me: they’d been locked out of the house for two days. The locksmith couldn’t let them in, the windows were lead paned and there was much debate about opening them by breaking, but it would have been very expensive, irreplaceable glass lost forever. Note they didn’t say I locked them out. They were locked out. Mam said she would have panicked, but that I knew my stuff, even then. ‘On the phone, you said you’d brushed your teeth all by yourself. No harm done.’ That was all they had to say on the matter. I know I didn’t speak to them on the phone, it had a loud ring and it didn’t ring, the entire time when I was there alone.

Healthy Things

‘And so, well, you’re the only one that remembers it like this?’ Daniel said.

‘Maybe I’ve supplied extra details over the years. Maybe she was not anything but a curtain across the door, fluttering in a breeze. But I felt like she was more. And how do you explain the time spent locked in the house by myself? My parents were freaked out, still are.’

‘Pretty strange, I’ll admit, though I