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

for how much I loved her, even when I hadn’t slept for nights on end, even when everything in my body was telling me to sleep, when I heard her cries as a newborn, there was nothing that would stop me from rushing to her. But through it all, even when I felt so sure of who I was, what I was doing, how to soften her cries, the very particular rocking that would soothe her, I was hounded by a voice of doubt. Some nights when she would not settle in her Moses basket, I would bring her into bed with us. As soon as I cocooned myself around her, she would fall asleep. There was a large part of me that didn’t want to do it; it would be an instant IPS for starters. OSIP strongly disapproved of bed-sharing. Another bit of me was merely exhausted, would do anything to comfort her and couldn’t think straight about the choice I was making. And then there was, in the core of me, yet another voice that knew this was what she needed right now. To be close to me for those few hours. I could sense Thomas silently disapproving, although when I asked him, he always denied it, only saying he was worried that we were going to get into the habit of it. And I worried too. All the mixed messages and emotions and worries weighed down on me, when really I knew that sometimes she needed me close and that was all there was to it. But I was glad when in the next nights she’d settle again in her basket.

In the same way as I had first imagined her into being, sometimes she would glance over to me and I would see her long-limbed and beautiful. Her hair like a mane, her eyes dark and knowing. I would imagine her laughing with friends at a joke I would not understand. I would be able to see her creating something in front of her, making something that was just hers.

I was hungry for her. Hungry to see her become herself.

Hungry in a way that afterwards I realised was always laced with the fear that I would not see her grow up.

* * *

It seemed implausible that we’d got through the first few months without an IPS, but we did. We did. The date of her first birthday was etched in my mind; once she reached twelve months, it was probable she would not be extracted. Every day that brought us closer felt like a miracle.

After Tia and Jakob, I was so primed for OSIP that I saw them everywhere. I second-guessed everything I did. I was walking on a tight rope and waiting to fall, not feeling the thrill of being up there, of being able to balance at a dizzyingly high height.

I often would catch myself looking for Evie too. If there was anyone dark-haired nearby, my head would turn instinctively towards them. I was troubled by the thought that she might be the one to deliver the blow of an IPS.

One day, though, Evie rang to say that she and Jakob were moving up north for work. She had been promoted and could afford to live out of the quarters. It was a stilted, awkward conversation – there were no apologies and little emotion.

‘The house we have is completely secluded – our only neighbour is the boatyard that’s a ten-minute walk away.’

I feigned a little interest and resisted the urge to ask her why she did not ask after Mimi. I was relieved that she was moving so far away. I wondered if I would stop looking over my shoulder.

I didn’t.

* * *

When Mimi turned eight months, the first change came in the OSIP regulations. The number of IPSs were altered. The minimum you could receive was reduced. They were back down to nine.

A chance was being taken away, not given.

At first, we were not overly worried. We thought it most likely that we could continue as we had been. There was no real reason for concern. After all, we hadn’t received a single IPS up until then and so why would we receive one now that the threshold had changed?

Mimi had fallen ill with a sickness bug that wiped her out, but she recovered quickly enough for it not to worry us too much. But she’d not been ill before then and we had to log it with OSIP. We did so and although I wondered briefly about how OSIP might view it, I told myself that children get ill sometimes, that we’d done everything right, by the book.

There was a confidence, almost a swagger, to us then.

* * *

I’d dressed Mimi in a white and blue stripy coat that Santa had given her and we had been on our way to the park to feed the ducks. It was, at that moment in her life, her very favourite thing to do.

I loved these passions of hers, which lasted longer and seemed more committed than most childish fancies.

She wasn’t so interested in feeding the birds, as such, as watching them being fed. She gurgled when she saw them scrabbling over some pieces; she held her breath, gave an audible gasp, watching which duck would get to the food first. It was a stage, a drama of who gets and who does not.

I’d always start off next to her, in the pushchair. Then I’d retreat just a few steps back, stamping my feet to keep off the cold, perhaps suggesting that it was time to go, waiting for her attention to dwindle.

It never would, though. I would always have to call a close to the duck-watching sessions. Thomas once tried to wait her out but they had not come back for over two hours and, in the end, I had gone out to get them and called a halt to the experiment because it was time for dinner.

I’d hoped that we could drop in to