The Turn of the Key
“The poison garden,” I said. “The one with the statue. Your mum said we weren’t supposed to go in there. Did you know?”
“We’re not allowed in without a grown-up,” Maddie said evasively.
“Ellie, did you know?” I turned to her, but she refused to meet my eyes, and at last I took her chin, forcing her to look at me.
“Ow!”
“Ellie, look at me, did you know those plants were dangerous?”
She said nothing, just tried to twist her chin away.
“Did you know?”
“Yes,” she whispered at last. “Another girl died.”
It was not the answer I had been expecting, and I stopped, letting her chin go in my surprise.
“What did you say?”
“There was another little girl,” Ellie repeated, still not meeting my eyes. “She died. Jean told us.”
“Jesus!” The word slipped out without my realizing, and I saw from Maddie’s smirk that that too would be stored up to repeat to Sandra next time she called.
“What happened? When?”
“A long time ago,” Maddie said. It was plain that, unlike Ellie, she did not mind talking about the subject. In fact there was even a kind of relish in her tone. “Before we were born. She was the little girl of the man who lived here before us. It’s why he went saft.”
For a moment I didn’t understand the last word, but then it came to me. She was saying the word soft but with a Scottish accent, repeating whatever Jean McKenzie had said to her.
“He went soft? Soft in the head you mean?”
“Yes, he had to be put away. Not straightaway, but after a while. Living here with her ghost,” Maddie said, matter-of-factly. “She used to wake him in the middle of the night with her crying. After she was gone. Jean told us. So after a while he stopped sleeping. He just used to pace backwards and forward all night long. Then he went mad. People do go mad, you know, if you stop them from sleeping for long enough. They go mad, and then they die.”
Pacing. The word gave me a sharp jolt, and for a second I didn’t know what to say. Then I remembered something else.
“Maddie.” I swallowed, trying to figure out how to phrase my question. “Maddie . . . is . . . is that what you meant? Before? When you said, the ghosts wouldn’t like it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Her face was stiff and expressionless, and she had pushed her plate away.
“When you hugged me, that day I first came. You said the ghosts wouldn’t like it.”
“No, I didn’t,” she said stonily. “I didn’t hug you. I don’t hug people.” But she had overreached herself with that last remark. I might have believed that she hadn’t said what I thought I’d heard, but there was no way I could forget that stiff, desperate little hug. She had hugged me. And the knowledge suddenly made me sure of what I’d heard too. I shook my head.
“You know there’s no such thing as ghosts, right? No matter what Jean has told you—it’s just rubbish, Maddie, it’s just people who are sad about other people who have died, and wish they could see them again, so they make up stories, and they imagine they see them. But it’s all nonsense.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maddie said, and she shook her head so that her straight dark hair flapped against her cheeks.
“There aren’t any ghosts, Maddie. I promise you that. They’re just make-believe. They can’t hurt you—or me—or any of us.”
“Can I get down now?” she asked flatly, and I sighed.
“Don’t you want pudding?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Go on then.”
She slid from her chair, and Ellie followed, her obedient little shadow.
I put a yogurt in front of Petra and then went round to clear the girls’ plates. Ellie’s was just the usual mess of toast crusts and spaghetti sauce, with as many peas as possible hidden under her spoon. But Maddie’s . . . I was about to scrape it into the compost bin when I stopped, turning the plate.
She had eaten most of her supper, but a dozen or so alphabet letters had been left, and now I saw, just as I was about to throw them away, that the letters seemed to be arranged into words. The phrase was sliding diagonally across the plate where I had tipped it towards the compost bin, but it was still just readable.
W E H
A T
E U
We hate you.
Somehow, seeing it there in the innocence of Alphabetti Spaghetti was more upsetting than almost anything else. I scraped the plate with a violence that made the spaghetti ricochet off the inside of the compost bin lid, and then threw it into the sink, where it hit a glass, and they both shattered, sending shards of glass and spatters of tomato sauce flying.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
I hate you too! I wanted to scream after their retreating backs, as they padded quietly away into the media room to fire up Netflix. I hate you too, you vile, creepy little shits!
But it wasn’t true. Not completely.
I did hate them—in that moment. But I saw myself too. A prickly little girl, full of emotions too big for her small frame, emotions she could not understand or contain.
I hate you, I remembered sobbing into my pillow, after my mother threw away my favorite teddy bear, too old, too shabby, too babyish for a big girl like me, according to her. I hate you so much!