Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen (ready to read books .txt) 📕

Our short wedding ceremony was over as quickly as it began. Afterwards felt like the real part. We booked a table in a tapas restaurant for lunch and the three of us sat and ate and drank until it was dark outside and the day was over.

I did think of Dad and of Evie, of course. I hadn’t thought this day would come but I would never have imagined that if it had, they wouldn’t have been there. Though I wished Evie had been able to come, part of me remembered how she’d acted when I’d last seen her – how her words stung, how she’d treated me coldly, indifferently. A ridiculous and selfish part of me called out for my sister; the sister I’d had before.

‘I’m not going to give a speech,’ Santa said to me, when Thomas was ordering more food. Her cheeks were flushed slightly from the wine, and I could smell it, just lightly, on her breath. ‘But I do want to say to you: you and Thomas, you are happy together, and you are happy apart. And that’s good, very good to see. With his father, if we weren’t together, it was the end of the world. It was too much. It could only have ended badly. It shouldn’t be like that. It makes you so you’re not happy by yourself. But I look at my son and I look at you and you can do both. It’s very good.’

She squeezed my cheeks as though her words could not express enough and then she turned to Thomas, delighted, and asked if he had ordered some sherry.

When we each had a small thimble of chilled sherry in front of us, Santa said again, ‘I’m not going to make a speech. But to Kit and to Thomas, who love each other.’

And at that moment, we told ourselves the lie that so many before us have told, not that it makes it any less real or true or comforting.

That nothing could dent our happiness, that we were the masters of our little world.

Thomas met my eyes and we drank.

NOW

I try to give Mimi some water but she won’t take a sip. She’s slumped drowsily over my shoulder and won’t lift her head.

‘Baby, wake up. Please try to have a little drink,’ I say. There’s desperation in my voice but it does nothing to revive her.

‘Mimi? Mimi?’

I hear the sound of gravel crunching on the drive.

THEN

Not long after we were married, Evie invited us to her house.

It felt like a summoning of sorts, maybe an apology, perhaps a clearing of what lay between us. We had not spoken face to face since the day she’d paid in the money from Dad’s estate. I’d written to her about our sudden and unexpected wedding; the messages she’d left about coming and then not being able to had been curt and brief.

Though there was a lot that I wanted to talk to her about, the day that we visited her opened another gully between us. It felt odd that she had not been there for our wedding, but it was again, understandable and not of any consequence other than that I wished we could have shared the day together.

I saw the shape of Evie approaching through the warped glass. She was wearing something brightly green – emerald, almost.

When she opened the door, her smile was red and gleeful – she looked like another being to the person who’d last opened the very same door to me.

‘Come in, come in,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry we’re late—’

She batted my apology away as though she were swatting a fly. ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s just brilliant that you’re both here. There’s someone who really wants to see you.’

She smiled again, straightened her dress, it hugged her waist and flowed out into a wide skirt.

We followed her into the kitchen.

‘Look who’s here!’ Evie exclaimed.

Then the bang of plastic on plastic.

A murmur and a gurgle.

Jakob, sitting in a highchair, as though he had never left.

NOW

I look through the window and make out the shape of a child sitting in the back of the car.

For one moment, I freeze. I have the urge to hide, to run, but with Mimi still draped over me I walk towards the front door.

The engine turns off. A part of me is thumping, yelling.

Get out. Disappear. There’s still time.

The car door opens and closes almost silently. Then another door. There’s the same sound: the shush and thud of open and close. I can hear the tread of footsteps across the driveway. I can hear a young voice prattle – I can’t make out words, just the up and down of his timbre. Then I hear Evie, in answer to him. I hear her laugh.

Then the footsteps stop. Where they should have carried on and the door should have opened, there is silence.

She’s seen the broken glass. She thinks there might be someone in the house. I run through quickly what she will do: she will call for help, she will return to the car, I will not see her. It’s what I wanted, to not be seen by her but now, with Mimi sick, I need her. I need help.

I rush to the front door and try to open it but it is of course locked. I dart as fast as I can, carrying a groaning Mimi, to the hole in the glass that I made and I shout out to her.

‘It’s me. Evie, it’s me, it’s me.’

It’s harder clambering out of the hole than I remember climbing through it. I pick my way past the shards of the glass; I’m looking down at where I’m stepping when I can sense that they are in front of me, that they have seen me.

Evie’s mouth has dropped open, her goSphere is in her hand by her side and in her other, she holds the hand of my nephew.