Page 108 of The Memory Wood

I stumble forwards, expecting my feet to meet empty air, bracing myself for the stomach-clenching horror of a plummet. A scream is in my throat, but I don’t get the chance to release it because suddenly I’m on my knees, wooden planking beneath them.

We’re not at the cliff edge. That was just my overactive imagination. I’m inside, I think, but this isn’t the shack I saw earlier – I can’t feel the warmth of a wood stove. Then I remember the lean-to shed.

Annie instructs me to sit. I hear that jangling again and realize it’s a set of keys. Something heavy closes around mywrist. Seconds later, a door bangs shut. I don’t have to touch the manacle to know I’m wearing it.

For a while I just sit there, concentrating on my breathing. There’s a terrible poetry to this. I think of Bryony, and her accusations as she stalked me through my old home. How she’d laugh if she could see me now.

VI

Dawn brings my first visitor. I know the sun has risen because pale light pokes its fingers through the planking.

Mama sits against the shed’s far wall. When I look at her directly I see bare wooden slats, so I stare straight ahead.

‘That house. Those people,’ I tell her, thinking of my time with Rita, Ben, Ryan and Patrick. ‘It was no place for someone like me. For a while I thought it could be. But it wasn’t.’

Outside, a fresh morning wind is blowing. I hear the shack’s corrugated-iron roof lift and creak. If there was ever a time for confession, it’s now.

‘I killed him, Mama. I killed Elijah. I’m sorry, but I did.’

My voice breaks when I tell her that. Snot runs over my lip. ‘Don’t say you forgive me, because I know you can’t. I killed him because I wanted to live.’

Mama hugs her knees to her chest.

‘Those doctors, they kept asking if he was alive, if he was out there somewhere. What was I meant to tell them? The truth?’

The silence between us is awful, the worst it’s ever been. Tears roll down my cheeks. Some stuff just can’t stay buried. Elijah’s death is one of those things. When I think of my younger brother, my throat aches with the effort of breathing. I’ve never grieved him, not properly. For far too long Itried to make up for his killing by shedding my identity and letting him live on through me. But I made a poor Elijah, and the Kyle that arose in his place grew into something beyond my control, a creature that displayed every cruel or selfish impulse I’ve ever felt.

There are no more words, so I don’t try to find them. When I look up I realize that Mama’s already gone. All that’s left is the wind. I don’t expect to see her again. She’s a shard of memory now, nothing more. Outside, I hear the rattle of a latch.

VII

Cold air races into the shed.

Papa doesn’t appear right away, and my nose tells me why: he’s brought food – by the smell of it, something hot. He must have laid it on the grass, leaving his hands free to unlock the door. My stomach growls – apart from a handful of prawn crackers, in the last twenty-four hours I’ve hardly eaten.

Lifting my head, I carefully arrange my expression. It’s not too late to rescue this. Papa doesn’t give second chances, but there’s always a first time. We have a lot of history. I just have to remind him how useful I am.

Ultimately, of course, he isn’t the one I need to convince. I think of Magic Annie, standing in her caravan the day Gretel’s mother appeared on TV:There are people on this earth that have no business walking it.

She wasn’t talking about Gretel’s abductor; she was referring to the girl’s mother. I don’t know what Lena Mirzoyan did to attract Annie’s disapproval – I probably never will – but the possibilities are endless.

Since my bad dream two nights ago, I’ve remembered a lot of stuff. Back when Papa snatched me and Elijah, Annie told us that some women weren’t worthy enough to raise kids and, unfortunately, Mama was one of them. Good mothers didn’t bring up their kids alone. Good mothers didn’t feed their kids crap. Good mothers didn’t keep a filthy home, or drink alcohol, or do a whole host of other things.

I never recognized Mama in those descriptions, and I’ll bet the other kids who woke beneath the Memory Wood felt the same way. I know Bryony loved her mother. I’m pretty sure Gretel did too.

Annie never had kids of her own. Maybe that’s one reason she’s so fixed on how they should be raised. Then again, over the years, I’ve discovered she has strong ideas about almost everything you could imagine.

MagicAnnie, I called her. That name grew out of the smoke she made in her caravan on Native American days. It calmed my heart and filled my head with dreams. Over the years, I learned that it wasn’t the only magical thing about her; Annie has a hold over people that’s nothing short of spellbinding.

For one thing, she forced Leon Meunier to let her set up Wheel Town and made him rent Papa the cottage. I know that the women she introduced to him played a part in the agreement – the one I saw a few days ago, with theHUSTLIN’ tracksuit and peacock eyes, was the latest in a long line. But only Annie could have made it all happen.

She’s wrappedPapaso tight around her finger that he’s pretty much her slave. The things he’s done at her suggestion are too monstrous to describe, and yet sometimes I can almost understand why he did them. Annie makes youbelievethings about the world, about the way it should be. Her words are like whispers directly into your brain. The only way to stay safe around her – and, by extension, aroundPapa – is through total obedience. None of the other kids ever learned that, even though I tried to warn them.

‘That name is dead,’ she told me last night when we stood beneath the moon as it shone its light on the sea. ‘You burned it up, same as everything else, in that fire you set.’

It’s not easy to throw off a name. I know that, because I’ve tried. But perhaps Annie was never her real name to start with. Perhaps it’s just another of her lies.

One thing that Iknowis untrue is what she said I did in the Memory Wood. When I fled the Gingerbread House after Gretel kissed me, I knocked over the petrol cans in the hall. But I never went back to strike a match, and that fuel wouldn’t have burned without one.

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