I heard a sudden roar in my ears, my own voice shouting, “Ellie, for God’s sake, don’t touch it!” and felt myself snatching her up, almost before I realized what I was going to do.
There was a long moment of silence, Ellie hanging limp and heavy in my arms, my own breath panting in my ears, and then her whole body stiffened and she let out a wail of indignant shock and began to cry, with all the desolate surprise of a child told off for something they had not realized was wrong.
“Ellie,” I began, but she was struggling in my arms, her face red and contorted with upset and anger. “Ellie, wait, I didn’t mean—”
“Let me go!” she howled. My instinct was to tighten my arms around her, but she was thrashing like a cat, digging her nails into my arms.
“Ellie—Ellie calm down, you’re hurting me.”
“I don’t care! Let me go!”
Kneeling, painfully, trying to keep my face away from her thrashing hands, I let her slide to the floor, where she collapsed with a wail onto the rug.
“You’re mean! You shouted!”
“Ellie, I didn’t mean to scare you, but that doll—”
“Go away!” she wailed. “I hate you!”
And then she scrambled to her feet and ran from the room, leaving me ruefully rubbing the scratches on my arms. I heard her feet on the stairs, and then the slam of the door of her room.
Sighing, I went through to the kitchen and tapped on the tablet. When I clicked through to the camera, it was to see Ellie facedown in bed, plainly bawling, with Maddie sleepily rubbing her eyes in puzzled surprise at being woken up like this.
Shit. She had come to me last night for reassurance—and for a moment there I had thought we were making a breakthrough. And now I had screwed it up. Again.
And it was all because of that vile little doll’s head.
I had to get rid of it, but somehow I could not bring myself to touch it, and in the end I went through to the utility room and got a plastic bin liner. I slid it over my hand, inside out, like a makeshift glove, and then knelt, and reached under the sofa.
I found I was holding my breath, absurdly, as I reached into the dark, slightly dusty space, my fingers groping for the hard little head. I touched hair first, just a few straggling strands, for the little porcelain skull was almost bald, and I used it to tug the head itself closer, and then closed my hand over it in one firm, swift movement, like scooping up a dead rat, or some insect you fear may still sting you, even dead.
I was gripping it hard—as if the force of my grip could stop it exploding or escaping from my grasp. It did neither. But as I stood, gingerly, I felt something twinge in my index finger, a shard of glass, so sharp I had barely felt it go in. It had pierced the bag itself and driven into my finger, drawing blood, which now dripped with a steady rhythm onto the wooden floor. The head was not china, I realized, but painted glass.
At the sink I pulled the glass out of my finger and then wound my hand in a piece of kitchen paper before wrapping the head in a tea towel, and then another bin bag. I tied the top and stuffed it deep, deep into the rubbish bin, feeling like I was burying a corpse. My finger throbbed as I pressed down on it, making myself wince.
“What happened to Ellie?”
The voice made me jump, as if I’d been caught hiding the evidence of something guilty, and swinging round I saw Maddie standing in the doorway. Her expression was slightly less truculent than usual, and with her hair standing on end she looked like what she was—just a little girl with a comical case of bed head, woken up too early.
“Oh . . . it’s my fault,” I said ruefully. “I’m afraid I shouted at her. She was about to touch some broken glass and I scared her, trying to stop her. I think she thought I was angry . . . I just didn’t want her to hurt herself.”
“She said you found a doll and you wouldn’t let her play with it?”
“Just a head.” I didn’t want to go into the whys and wherefores with Maddie. “But it was made of glass, and sharp where it had got cracked. I