This is seriously weird. I’m taking a few photos with my phone when a shrill cry makes me jump. It’s the baby. The baby is crying again, and it sounds like it’s coming from upstairs.
I freeze, listening intently. There are no other noises. No movement from upstairs. No sign that someone is in the house. Just the solitary sound of the baby crying. I move back into the hallway. The cries get louder. They are definitely coming from upstairs.
Surely Marielle and Henry wouldn’t be cruel enough to leave a baby alone at home.
I’ve got to see for myself. I can’t leave.
I head up the stairs, my heart pounding in my ears. The baby is still crying. I follow the sound, past the first door and along the landing to the next. The cries are louder now. I push the door open to reveal a nursery and the cries instantly stop. A pretty white cot sits in the middle of the room and I can just make out the dark, familiar shape of a baby in a Grobag, like I used to dress Rufus in at night.
There’s no way Marielle would leave her grandson asleep alone in the house. And then a thought occurs tome. Unless she hasn’t left the house and is here after all. I think of the shoes downstairs. Oh, my God. Have I got this completely wrong and she’s here? But I saw them drive off in the car. She told me herself they were away for the night. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and a cold feeling washes over me. I spin around, half expecting her to be standing on the landing, watching me. But nobody’s there. The action makes me topple against the nursery door and it bangs against the wall. I flinch, imagining Marielle charging down the landing to see what the noise was. But there’s nothing. I brace myself for the baby to start crying again but there is just silence. Gently I walk towards the cot. I can’t believe she’s left a baby here all alone. A cute, chubby-cheeked baby.
But there’s something wrong.
The baby’s eyes are open. Glassy.
My mouth goes dry as I reach over to touch the baby’s cheek. It’s cold and I recoil in horror. It’s so lifelike, but it’s not real. It’s not real.
The baby is fake.
21
NATALIE
A loud bang wakes her and Natalie sits upright in bed. Is the nurse coming back to feed her? She’s starving and she’s desperate for the loo. There is a small, windowless en-suite, which she’s been using, even though just walking across the room to the toilet is enough to shatter her. She doesn’t understand why she has no energy. With every movement she feels like she’s walked ten miles across a desert and she’s never slept so much. The strange nurse has been in a few times but mostly Natalie’s been too out of it to have a conversation with her, and any interaction has had a lucid-dream quality. Once she was sure she saw the rabbit move on the rocking chair. She’d only ever felt this way once before, when an old boyfriend had convinced her it would be a good idea to drop an acid tab at Glastonbury.
Natalie reaches underneath her to feel the mattress. To her shame it’s wet and so is the back of her hospital gown.
She thinks she’s been here two nights now. But it’s hard to know exactly because for most of it she has been in a fug. Why won’t the nurse talk to her and explain what she’s in for? What happened at the park? So many questionsswarm in her mind, and fear is creeping in as the blackness again wipes everything away, like an eraser to a pencil sketch.
In the early hours of the morning she was awake long enough to lug herself from the bed to the window. Not that she could see much, just the glimpse of a garden and a house opposite. And then the nurse had come in. The nurse who doesn’t speak. She’s always masked but there is something familiar about her eyes, which peer at her with such hostility. She’s not seen any other nurses or staff since she arrived, and it adds to her impending panic.
‘Eat up,’ she always says, after unveiling another dish. Despite everything, Natalie finds she’s unusually hungry so she does as she’s told and then, straight afterwards, always feels ridiculously tired and heavy-limbed, but the fear has abated and the hours drift in a wash of darkness.
She has no idea what time it is now, but that bang: it sounds as if someone is right outside her door. If only she could drag herself out of bed. If only she didn’t feel so tired.
The trolley by her bed is empty. The nurse hasn’t come to collect it. Usually after she’s woken from one of her heavy sleeps everything has been cleared away.
Natalie concentrates on trying to listen for sounds beyond her room. There is the creak of footsteps and a shadow moves along the narrow crack at the bottom of the door. With all the energy she can muster, Natalie swings her legs out of bed and crawls across to the door, not helped by the hospital gown she’s been dressed in.
She tries the handle. It’s locked. Why is she locked in?
She’s all alone. The only patient.
And then, with a sickening moment of clarity she acknowledges that she’s not a patient at all – but a prisoner.
22
LENA
The baby is fake.
I stare down at the doll in shock. It looks so real. It even cries like a baby. It must be on some kind of timer. Is this what Marielle pushes around in the pram? Does that mean she doesn’t have a grandchild? But I saw her with a woman I assumed was her daughter-in-law, Heidi, and she was holding a baby. I don’t understand.
Bile burns the back of my throat. I need to get out of here.
I sprint downstairs as though chased by ghosts, the echoes of the baby’s eerie cries still ringing in my ears. The eyes are the only thing about it that don’t look real. Everything else, those perfectly rounded cheeks, the tiny fingers … God.
My hands are trembling as I let myself in at my front door.
