Elly
THEN
“That’s what it was like, when it popped.” A quick tongue darts out from between the woman’s neat teeth and she catches a drip of amber juice before it hits the table. “I think about it all the time.”
The table is covered with sticky spoons left in pots of preserve, jugs of milk growing warm and starting to spoil.
A cornucopia appears on the table each morning: tart green apples vivisected and sprinkled with sugar, freshly baked loaves of bread studded with seeds, stoneware bowls full of steaming porridge.
The women also eat a surprising amount of meat – so much meat – at every meal.
They tear into tender strips of steak, they chew on kidneys stewed with mushrooms, they peel the fat from bacon with their fingers.
And yet, here she is.
The minutes pass, and then the hours, and here she is still.
Elly looks down at the pulpy mess in Margot’s hand and tries to remember it’s a plum. “I almost feel sorry for you,” Margot tells her dreamily, “that you’ve never felt it before.”
Elly lets herself imagine it: the wet pluck of an eyeball from a socket. It makes bile creep up the back of her throat. She shudders.
“You’re easily scared,” Margot is saying, nodding, matter-of-fact. “Like a little mouse.”
“My angel.” A deep voice from behind them, smooth as coffee shot through with honey.
Haina.
Haina, with her dark eyes and steady stare. Her hands are in Margot’s curls, brushing them gently back from her face. “Shall we let Elly eat her breakfast in peace?”
“Sorry, Haina.” Margot raises her hand to her mouth and starts to lick her sticky fingers. She looks like a cat, finally fed. The juice drips onto her faded Coca-Cola T-shirt.
Elly feels Haina’s palms land on her own shoulders. Their warmth is palpable, even through her T-shirt. When she looks up, Haina is smiling down at her. “Have you been made to feel welcome, Elly?”
Elly nods. It’s the truth. The other women have welcomed her like a lost sister since she arrived two days ago.
Margot showed her the bed in the dormitory where she’d sleep, gleeful that it was the one beside her own.
Janine, with her shorn head covered with silvery scars, brought her some spare T-shirts, which Elly gratefully accepted though they smelled of sweat and dirt.
Lakshmi showed her where the bathrooms were and then asked if Elly wanted to borrow her lipstick, a dark damson shade almost worn down to the nub.
Isla and Iona – the red sisters, the other guests call them, on account of their fiery hair – immediately wanted to talk about the baby, looking at her stomach with darting, quicksilver eyes.
Their plaits are braided so close to their scalps that they pull the papery skin at the temples taut, giving them permanently startled expressions.
Each day, they ask if they can touch her belly.
They squeal and clutch each other when the baby kicks.
Haina is still watching Elly. Her eyes are the colour of carob, two shining beetles embedded deep in her skin, which has a Middle Eastern warmth.
Her lips are full, bud-like, her nose long and sharp at the tip.
Elly has watched the way Haina glides through rooms, elegant as a ballerina but with more ferocity than flourish, beautiful in the same way that a blade is beautiful.
There is something uncompromising about her, something urgent, though her composure is as calm as a still pool.
Two days and forever ago, when Elly had found the house – or when the house had found her – she’d seen Haina standing in the doorway and been struck by a thought that hasn’t left her since: that she should never give this woman any reason to be disappointed in her.
That night, when Elly had arrived with a dirty, tear-streaked face, her bones so heavy she could barely stand, Haina had led her into a circular room with stained-glass windows and old books lining the walls.
She wrapped Elly in a blanket, sat her in an armchair by the fire and pressed tea into her numb hands.
Run, part of Elly’s brain had screamed. Run, now.
But she’d done enough running, and the room was so warm, so comforting, the woman in front of her wearing an expression so welcoming and concerned that it had all come spilling out: Ethan, the wedding, the baby, the blood on the cottage wall, all of it.
As she spoke, Haina held Elly’s hands in hers, pulled her close.
She stroked Elly’s hair and cooed in her ear, You’re safe here, my angel, he will never find you, and Elly had felt as though she were melting, as if her body had finally been given permission to surrender.
The sun was coming up when Elly said, “I just don’t understand how I’m here.”
“You’re here because you needed us. The house – the house always knows.”
“We’ll have our first session today, Elly,” Haina says now. “After lunch. If you feel ready for it.”
Elly nods, biting the inside of her cheek.
She’s heard about the sessions from the other women: an hour of one-on-one time with Haina, every week.
The guests talk about the sessions in revered tones and with a strange, dreamy look in their eyes, though no one has actually told her what she should expect to happen.
We’re very lucky that we have Haina to teach us, is all Margot will tell her.
Elly has been half-hoping and half-dreading the invite would never come.
Haina grins at her, revealing a row of gleaming, slightly crooked teeth. That smile takes Elly by surprise, momentarily dazzling her. “You’re going to fit in so well here with us,” Haina says. “I can tell.”
It’s incredible, how those words make Elly feel as though she’s glowing from the inside out. You could belong here, she tells herself, slipping the new reality over her skin. This could be your home.
When she blinks, Ethan’s face is there: the spray of russet freckles across his nose, his full mouth and knowing eyes.
She can almost feel his hand on her face, the softness of his skin and the cool grip of his fingers.
When the back of her head connected with the stone wall it had felt, just for a second, like he’d erased her completely.
I thought I told you to stay.
She blinks him away again, but her mum replaces him, along with a stab of guilt.
She wonders how she reacted when Ethan told her Elly was missing.
Are they out combing the woods for her right now?
Does her mum have nightmares of finding her bloated body in the river?
What kind of a daughter does that to her mother?
The cooling porridge in her bowl tastes like lead.
Haina never stays for the whole of breakfast, and so far, Elly has never seen her eat anything.
She only sips a small cup of espresso and watches the other guests.
Sometimes, she pulls them in close to her, like a mother comforting a child.
She whispers in their ears; she raises pastries to their mouths and catches the crumbs.
The room grows quieter as she stands and leaves, then resumes its low-level hum.
Margot leans her head on Elly’s shoulder, sighing.
She smells vaguely sweet, like cupcake icing.
“You’ll be one of us so soon, Little Mouse,” she says. “Isn’t that nice?”
One of us, Elly thinks absently. Is that what she wants?
To be one of them? She looks around the table again.
Some of the guests have already left the refectory for morning chores, but the room is still fairly full.
On the other side of Margot, Iona is rebraiding Isla’s hair, singing a quiet song in an unfamiliar language.
Her fingers are quick and pale as they work.
Across the table, Janine’s gaze is fixed on the butterknife laid askew on the plate in front of her.
Her eyes look far away as she runs a hand over her bald head, this way then that, agitating the bristles over and over.
Lakshmi watches her carefully, and after a moment, squeezes her arm.
Janine seems to break out of her trance and puts her hand on top of Lakshmi’s.
“I went away again, didn’t I?” she says.
Margot has raised her head from Elly’s shoulder and is gnawing at the remaining scraps of meat on a pork rib. When she’s picked it clean, she dips it into a jar of honey, sucking the sticky liquid from the bone.
“How long have you been here, Margot?” Elly hears herself ask. She feels too light, unrooted, as if she no longer belongs to a body. Even her voice doesn’t sound like her own.
Margot’s eyebrows dip into a frown. She turns the sticky rib over in her hands. “I don’t know,” she says after a long moment. “A long time.”
“Don’t you want to go home?” No answer. “How long will you stay?”
At that, Margot smiles. Her one eye seems to twinkle. “As long as it takes.”
Before Elly can ask what that means, raised voices across the table draw her attention. Janine has started to cry, the sound like an engine trying and failing to start. Lakshmi is whispering to her, holding both of Janine’s arms down, keeping her hands in her lap.
“I need to, just for a minute,” Janine says in a rough, hiccupping voice, struggling against Lakshmi’s grip. Her cheeks have turned a ruddy purple.
Lakshmi shakes her head. “You know what Haina says,” she tells Janine. “No hexing at the table.”
Hexing?
Elly watches as Janine begins to calm, her eyes squeezing shut as her breathing slows.
“Well done, angel,” coos Lakshmi. “Don’t think about it. Just be here now, with me.”
Beside Elly, Margot has stopped sucking on her rib, leaving it pale and abandoned on her plate. She’s wrapped her thin arms around her torso. “Poor Janine,” she murmurs.
“What happened to her?” Elly asks. “What brought her here?”
Margot gives her a look so sharp it steals the breath from her throat. “We don’t ask about before, Little Mouse,” she says, voice low. A warning.