Faces of Fear Read Free Page A

five nights as a penance for her passionate feelings, is witness to a miraculous vision of St Theresa, “incandescent as the sun”, who forgives her for feeling like a woman.
    At five o’clock she heard her mother carrying Toby upstairs for his bath. At half-past five she heard mummy singing to him in his bedroom, across the corridor. She sang him the same lullaby that she always used to sing for Gillie, when she was small, and the sound of it made Gillie feel even more depressed and left out. She turned her face to the wall and stared miserably at the wallpaper. It was supposed to be roses, but it seemed to have a sly hooded face in it, medieval-looking and misshapen, like a leper.
    â€œ
Dance to your daddy, my little babby. Dance to your daddy, my little lamb. You shall have a fishy, in a little dishy. You shall have a fishy when the boat comes in
…”
    Not long after her father opened her door. “Are you ready to say that you’re sorry?” he asked her.
    Gillie didn’t answer. Her father waited at the door for a while, and then came in and sat on the side of the bed. He laid his hand gently on her arm, and said, “This is not like you, Gillie. You’re not jealous of Toby, are you? You don’t have to be. We love you just as much as ever. I know that mummy’s busy with Toby a lot of the time, but she still cares for you, and so do I.”
    But what about me
? said Alice.
    â€œHow about saying you’re sorry, and coming down for some tea? There’s fish fingers tonight.”
    You never cared about me.
    â€œCome on, Gillie, what do you say?”
    â€œ
You never cared about me
!
You wanted me dead
!”
    Her father stared at her in disbelief. “Wanted you dead? What put such a thought into your head? We love you; we wouldn’t have had you otherwise; and if you want to know the truth you would have stayed our only child, and we would have been glad of it, if only Toby hadn’t been conceived by accident. We didn’t mean to have him, but we did, and now he’s here, and we love him. Just the same way that we love you.”
    Gillie sat up in bed with reddened eyes. “Accident?” she said. “Accident? Try telling Alice that Toby was an accident!”
    â€œAlice? Who’s Alice?”
    â€œ
You killed her
!” Gillie screamed. “
You murdered her
!
You murdered her and she never lived
!”
    Alarmed, angry, her father stood up. “Now, come on, Gillie. I want you to calm down. Let me call mummy and we’ll have a wee chat.”
    â€œI don’t want to talk to either of you! You’re horrible! I hate you! Go away!”
    Her father hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “The best thing for you to do, my girl, is to have your bathand get yourself to bed. We’ll talk some more in the morning.”
    â€œI don’t want your stupid bath.”
    â€œThen go to sleep dirty. It makes no difference to me.”
    She lay on her bed listening to the noises in the house. She could hear her mother and father talking; and then the bath running. The cistern roared and whistled just above her room. She heard doors opening and closing, and the burbling of the television in her parents’ bedroom. Then the door was closed and all the lights were switched off.
    Outside the window, the city was so thickly-felted in snow that it was totally silent, from Davidson’s Mains to Morningside, and Gillie could almost have believed that everyone was dead, except for her.
    She was woken by a bright light dancing on the wallpaper. She opened her eyes and frowned at it for a while, not quite sure where she was, or whether she was sleeping or waking. The light quivered and trembled and danced from side to side. Sometimes it was like a wide squiggly line and then it would suddenly tie a knot in itself, so that it formed the shape of a butterfly.
    Gillie sat up. She was still fully dressed and her leg had gone dead