Chapter 24: Chapter 23

I was lying down.

I felt my arms beside my body, my legs were outstretched and my head was heavy.

I tried to move, but couldn’t. Something was holding me back, pinning me to the mattress.

I tried to lift my hands, but they were stuck.

‘No…’ came out of my mouth, my lungs swelling with panic. Stress made my heart pound frantically against my ribs.

I tried to get up, but there was something stopping me.

‘No…’

Everything started pulsating again, like an endless nightmare. My fingers started squeezing, scraping, digging. I couldn’t move.

‘No, no, no!’ I screamed. ‘No!’

The door burst open.

‘Nica!’

Different voices filled the room, but I carried on thrashing about, not seeing anyone. I was blinded by panic. All I could feel was my immobilised body.

‘Doctor! She’s awake!’

‘Nica, calm down! Nica!’

Someone cleared a path through them and wrenched me free.

I gasped and frantically scurried to huddle up at the head of the bed. Distressed, I squeezed the fingers of the hand I found next to me. The person who had freed me stiffened as I gripped them with everything I had in me. Trembling, squeezing my eyes shut, I put my forehead to their wrist.

‘I’ll be good…I’ll be good…I’ll be good…’

Everyone was watching me breathlessly.

The hand I was holding closed into a fist, and I prayed they wouldn’t let me go. It was only when I opened my eyes a few moments later that I realised whose hand it was.

Rigel looked at me, his jaw clenched. He planted his eyes on Dalma and Asia – and a man I had never seen before – and stonily ordered: ‘Out.’

There was a long moment of silence in which I didn’t look up. Then, I heard the sound of their footsteps slowly walking away.

Anna came towards me.

‘Nica…’

She placed her palm on my face. I felt her warmth on my cheek. This was my bed, my room. I was no longer in The Grave. I realised that what had been constraining me before were just the bedcovers, someone had tucked me in too tightly.

There were no belts, nor woven steel.

‘Nica,’ Anna whispered, desperately. ‘Everything is okay…’

The mattress sank under her weight, but I couldn’t bring myself to let go of Rigel’s wrist. I gripped it until Anna’s fingers delicately slid into mine and loosened their grip.

She slowly stroked my hair, and I heard Rigel walking away. When I looked up in search of him, I just saw the door closing.

‘The doctor’s through there.’ Anna watched me, shaken. ‘We called him as soon as you got home…I’d like him to take a look at you. You might have a fever, or light-headedness…I changed your clothes, but maybe you’re still cold…’

‘I’m sorry,’ I interrupted her with an exhausted sigh.

Anna stopped talking. She watched me, mouth open, and I couldn’t manage to hold her gaze.

I felt empty, broken and flawed. I felt destroyed.

‘I wanted to be perfect,’ I confessed. ‘For you. For Norman.’

I wanted to be like the others. That was the truth.

But I was still naïve and fragile. I repeated I’ll be good to myself because I had the constant fear of making a mistake and being punished.

The feeling of the belts on my skin had scarred me to the point that sometimes even too tight a hug, not being able to move or simply the feeling of powerlessness could trigger panic attacks.

I was ruined, and I always would be.

‘You are perfect, Nica.’

Anna stroked me slowly, shaking her head. Her eyes were full of anguish.

‘You’re…the sweetest and kindest person I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet…’

I stared at her, my heart empty and heavy. But in Anna’s gaze…

In Anna’s gaze there was no blame or condemnation. There was just me. And in that moment, for the first time, I realised that Anna’s eyes were the colour of the sky.

With that clear surface and those white clouds, with that freedom I’d sought in so many different faces, I saw my reflection in her eyes.

There was the sky I’d always been looking for. It was in Anna’s eyes.

‘You know what struck me the first time I saw you?’

Tears stung my eyes. She smiled a slightly broken smile.

‘Tenderness.’

My heart broke with a soft, boundless pain.

A pain so bad it was good. Her face blurred through my tears.

‘Tenderness, Nica,’ Mom smiled at me. ‘Tenderness, always…Remember that.’

I saw them both, as if they were inside of me. Mom passing me that blue butterfly, Anna handing me a tulip.

Both of them with that passionate look, both of them with shining eyes.

Anna taking me by the hand, and Mom leading me onwards. Mom laughing and Anna smiling, alike and different, a single entity dwelling in two bodies.

It was that tenderness that united us, that kept us together…The tenderness that Mom had given me was what had allowed me a second chance.

I leant forwards and plunged into the arms of the woman in front of me. I no longer held myself back, hugged her tightly, no longer scared of being overly familiar or being rejected, and her hands held tightly, protectively, on to me.

‘No one will hurt you any more…No one…I promise…’

I sobbed in her arms. I let myself go. And in that desperate embrace, in that sky I could finally touch, I felt my heart confess what I’d never had the courage to tell her.

‘You’re…my happy ending, Anna.’

—

Later, after the doctor’s visit, she was still there.

I listened with deep affection to her heartbeat as she stroked my hair.

‘Nica…’

I sat up just enough to be able to look her in the face. She looked tentatively at my reddened eyes and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear.

‘What do you think about the idea of talking about this…with someone?’

Anna now knew why I couldn’t sleep at night, how terrible my childhood had been. But the thought of confiding in someone else twisted my guts to the point that I couldn’t breathe.

‘You’re the only one…I could talk about it with.’

‘Oh, Nica, I’m not a doctor,’ she said, as if she wished she was one just for me. ‘I don’t know how to help you…’

‘You’re good for me, Anna,’ I confessed in a little voice.

It was true. Her smile reassured me. Her laughter was like music. Her affection made me feel loved like I never had before.

I felt better when I was with her. I felt protected, wanted. I felt safe.

‘Do you still want me?’ I whispered, frightened. I needed to know, but I was afraid to hear the answer. I would never see my dreams in the same way without her.

Anna inclined her head, distraught. Then she clutched me to her with all her strength.

‘Of course,’ she admonished me. I loved her even more madly.

I wanted to keep her close, always. Every day, every moment, for as long as she’d allow.

‘I wanted to understand you better,’ she said, her voice sounding more fragile.

Then, I noticed that she was wearing a leather strap around her wrist, next to her watch. I hadn’t noticed it before. It seemed incongruous for a woman like her, more suitable for a teenager.

‘Nica…there’s something you should know.’

I instantly realised what she was about to tell me. I listened in silence.

‘You and Rigel…you’re not the first to have lived here.’ She waited a moment, then said, ‘Norman and I had a son.’

She looked up to see my reaction, but I gently held her gaze, calm and aware.

‘I know, Anna.’

She stared at me in surprise. ‘You already knew?’

I nodded and looked down at her leather bracelet.

‘I realised.’

From as soon as I had arrived.

The dark t-shirts I sometimes saw Rigel wearing that weren’t his. Klaus sleeping under his bed. The place at the table next to Norman, where the wood was slightly worn. The empty photo frame on the table in the hall, an absence that Anna hadn’t been able to completely erase.

I didn’t need to ask why she had kept him secret. She had done everything she could to make us feel like it was our home.

‘That day, at the institute,’ she said quietly, ‘the day we brought you home…it was a bit like a fresh start.’

I understood, because it had been the same for me. It had been like saying goodbye to a different life, and clutching at a second chance.

‘We wanted you to feel at home,’ she swallowed. ‘We wanted to feel…like we were a family again.’

I slid my hand slowly into hers, my colourful Band-Aids against her skin.

‘You are the best thing that’s ever happened to us,’ I told her. ‘I want you to know that. I…can only imagine how much you miss him.’

Anna closed her eyes. My words seemed to furrow lines into her face. A tear rolled down her cheek and her voice cracked as she said, ‘There’s not a day when I don’t think of him.’

She went to pieces like I’d never seen before. I pressed closer to her and leant my head on her shoulder, hoping to give her some warmth. My heart ached with hers. I felt her pain like a warm wave.

‘What was his name?’ I asked softly after a while.

‘Alan.’

I felt her looking down at me.

‘Do you want to see him?’

I sat up, and Anna brought a hand to her chest. She slipped off her long necklace with a round, shining, inlaid pendant. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her without it.

She opened it as if it was a golden, tiny book.

There was a photo of a boy inside. He must have been a little older than twenty. He was sitting at the piano in their house. His black hair framed his kind, smiling face and his eyes shone sky blue.

‘He’s got your eyes,’ I said in a whisper, and Anna, despite everything, smiled tearfully.

‘He was the only person that Klaus ever liked,’ she said, still with that shaky smile. ‘It was Alan who found him, one day on his way back from school, as a boy. Oh, you should have seen them. It was pouring with rain. Alan was holding him as if he’d found hidden treasure. They both looked so small and soaked.’

Anna gripped the photo, not brave enough to stroke it.

I wondered how many times a day she held that pendant in her hands. How many times her heart broke behind those eternally smiling eyes.

‘He loved playing the piano…He lived for that piano. In the evening, he’d get home, and no matter what time it was, he’d be there. He’d say, “You know, Mom, I can only speak through these keys and chords, and you understand me all the same.” And he was right…’ she whispered through her tears. ‘He could only speak through the piano. He wanted to be a musician, before the accident…’

Her voice faded and she swallowed.

That little pendant seemed incredibly heavy. I took her hand in mine, helping her to bear its weight.

‘I’m sure he’d have made it.’ I closed my tearful eyes. ‘I’m sure Alan would have become a great musician…and I’m sure he loved the piano as much as you love your flowers.’

Anna lowered her head, and I held her to me, letting our wounds join hands. As if that was the only way we’d find a cure, crying and bleeding together.

‘I never wanted to take his place,’ I whispered. ‘Rigel and I…no one could ever replace him. But the truth is…the people we love never really leave us, you know? They’re inside of us, and then one day we realise they’ve always been there, we can find them just by closing our eyes.’

Anna collapsed against me. I wanted to carry on, to tell her that our hearts are boundless, that they only know how to love, scars on scars, bruises on bruises. That I would have been happy to take that place next to Alan, however small and worn out it was. That I would be happy to fill it with all the colours I could…and to let myself be loved for what I was, exactly how I loved her, with my butterfly heart.

‘Let’s choose a photo together,’ I said. ‘That frame downstairs shouldn’t be empty any longer.’

—

A few hours after that conversation, I decided to get up.

I left my room, wrapping my hoodie around me, and glimpsed someone on the landing.

I didn’t know she was still there, but decided not to ignore her.

‘Asia.’

She stopped. She didn’t turn towards me. She never did. She had never pretended to accept my presence, and she wouldn’t start now.

‘I’m sorry about what happened to you,’ she said, somewhat flatly. I couldn’t work out if she was being sincere.

She started to walk away but I moved in front of her.

‘Asia, I’m not going to give Anna up.’

She came to a slow stop again. Something about the way she was standing gave away a hint of surprise.

‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me,’ I replied calmly. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ There was no hesitation in my tone, just a composed firmness. ‘You can’t know how much I’ve wanted a family. Now I’ve got one…Now I’ve got this chance with Anna and Norman…I’m not giving it up.’

I waited for a reply, but none came. Asia didn’t move.

‘I know you know what I mean,’ I carried on, my voice softer. I didn’t want to be domineering, I just wanted to make her understand.

I approached her slowly, trying to get my good intentions across.

‘Asia, I…don’t want to take…’

‘Don’t,’ she interrupted icily. ‘Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.’

‘I don’t want to take Alan’s place.’

‘SHUT UP!’

I jumped. She turned towards me and her eyes glowered. They were full of a pulsing suffering, a suffering that had never stopped bleeding.

‘Don’t you dare,’ she glared at me fiercely. ‘Don’t you dare talk about him.’

I noticed something possessive about her tone. It was different to Anna’s bare grief.

‘Do you think you know anything about him? Do you think you can come here and wipe out everything there was of him? No photos, no memories, no nothing! You know nothing about Alan,’ she snarled. ‘Nothing!’

Her face was twisted with anger, but I didn’t react. I looked at her with calm eyes and a truthful heart.

‘You were in love with him.’

Asia’s eyes opened wide. I had hit the nail on the head. I should have stopped there, not said anything else, but instead I added, ‘That’s why you can’t stand seeing me here…Because I remind you of him, and he’s not here any more. Anna and Norman have moved on in their own way, but you haven’t. That’s it, isn’t it? You didn’t tell him,’ I whispered. ‘You never told him how you felt, he never knew. He was gone before you found the courage to tell him. That’s your biggest regret…that’s what you’re carrying inside, Asia. You can’t accept that he’s no longer here, and that’s why you hate me. But you can’t bring yourself to hate Rigel,’ I finally shot at her, ‘because he reminds you too much of him.’

It happened in a flash.

Anger got the better of her. She refused my words, refused to admit it to herself, so much so that her rage exploded and her hand lashed through the air. I saw her rings glinting and then her slap clapped like thunder.

I had closed my eyes, but suddenly realised that her slap hadn’t landed on me. Someone had pulled me out of the way and taken the hit.

I looked up, and was dismayed at what I saw. Under a wave of black hair, Rigel’s face was turned to one side, his normally poised shoulders now hunched.

Asia and I both stared at him, incredulous.

He straightened his head as his black eyes drove icily into Asia. Through gritted teeth, his voice dripping with a slow, chilling menace, he spat, ‘I want you…out…of here.’

Asia pursed her lips, her face a blotchy red. I detected a hint of shame in her eyes, which then flew to look over Rigel’s shoulder. Further down the landing, a dismayed face was watching her wordlessly.

‘Asia…’ Dalma murmured, disappointed by her daughter’s unexpected behaviour.

Asia clenched her fists, trying to suppress her angry tears. Then, with a swish of hair, she disappeared down the stairs.

Dalma, aghast, put her hand to her face and shook her head.

‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed. She seemed mortified. ‘I’m so sorry.’

She looked away and followed Asia down the stairs.

At that moment, I noticed that the shadow that had engulfed and protected me was no longer there.

I turned and saw Rigel walking away. I felt disorientated, shaken and confused.

As he disappeared around the corner, a call, prayer-like, left my mouth: ‘Wait…’

I wouldn’t let him leave this time.

Despite the feverish shivers running down my spine, I followed him. My bare feet pounded the wooden floorboards and I regretted not putting socks on.

Without realising what I was doing, I stretched out my hand and grabbed his t-shirt with the little strength I had.

‘Rigel…’

Almost imperceptibly, he tensed and clenched his fists. He still had his back to me, standing tall and stiff, but being so close to his body made me feel strangely safe.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why did you take that slap for me?’

All of my senses were directed towards him. All I could hear was the sound of his breathing.

‘Go and rest, Nica,’ he told me in a deep, measured voice. ‘You can hardly stand up.’

‘Why?’ I insisted.

‘Did you want to take it?’ he retorted, his voice harsher.

I bit my lip and fell quiet. I tightened my grip and then, eyes lowered, said, ‘Thank you. For talking to the detective…Anna said you told him everything.’

I still couldn’t believe it.

Anna had reassured me that I didn’t have to answer any questions, because Rigel had done so for me.

He’d told him everything: the screams, the slaps, the smacks, when She punished us by refusing us food. When she tied us up in the cellar, when she had smashed Peter’s fingers in a door just because he’d wet the bed.

He’d told him everything, not missing out a thing. Then, the detective had asked him if the matron had treated him the same way.

And he had said no.

Then, Detective Rothwood had asked if she had ever touched him in a different way to how she touched the others, in a way that wasn’t appropriate for children. Rigel, again, had said no.

And I knew that this was the truth.

Because the detective couldn’t understand.

The detective had never seen the matron moving his little fingers over the piano keys, with a light in her eyes that never shone for anyone else.

He had never seen them together, sat on the piano stool, his legs dangling off the floor and her giving him a cookie every time he played the right chord.

‘You’re the son of the stars,’ she would whisper to him, in a voice that didn’t seem like hers. ‘You’re a gift…a little, little gift.’

The detective couldn’t know that the matron couldn’t have children, and Rigel, so alone and abandoned, was the only thing she ever felt could be just hers.

Not like the rest of us, who came from broken families, who already had parents behind us. Not like us, who were just a heap of used dolls.

‘I hated her.’

I had the impression that this was the first time he had ever confessed this to anyone.

‘I hated what she did to you,’ he said slowly. ‘I couldn’t stand it. Every single day…I heard you…I heard all of you.’

‘I know why you can’t sleep,’ he had said to me, and I had replied to him unfairly. I had always thought that Rigel enjoyed the attention, that he didn’t care what she was doing to us. He had always been in her shrine, safe from everything else.

But it wasn’t really like that. Not at all.

It was as if someone had finally given me a light to shine through the fog. I better understood his looks, his behaviour, I understood why he always seemed so faded when he played the piano.

It was sadness.

He carried within him a piece of Her, a fragment of her sewn under his skin that he would never be able to discard. As much as he might have despised her, as much as he might have wanted to erase her, he would always have something of hers. I wondered if it was better to be hated or loved by a monster.

Why hadn’t he left, if he hated her? Why did he choose to stay?

I wanted him to speak again. To open up and explain that piece of his past that I had never been able to understand. How little did I know of him?

‘I know it was you who brought me home.’

Rigel stiffened, as if waiting for something.

‘It was you who found me…’ I said, a weak smile softening my lips. ‘You always find me.’

‘I can only imagine how that distresses you.’

‘Turn around,’ I whispered.

His masculine wrists emanated strength and tension, his tendons visible. I had to ask him a second time before he decided to listen to me. The fabric of his t-shirt fell from my fingers, and very, very slowly Rigel turned to face me. I felt a pang in my heart when I saw his face.

He had a nasty scratch on his cheekbone. His skin was red. It must have been from Asia’s rings when she’d slapped him.

Why?

Why did he hide his pain and let no one get near?

Instinctively, I raised my hand. From under his black hair, his eyes flitted warily towards it, as if he understood and was scared of my intentions.

Rigel seemed to suppress the instinct to recoil. Fragile but determined, I moved slowly, held my breath, and went up onto tiptoes. My heart brimming with hope, with all the tenderness I could, I stroked his cheek.

As I touched his skin, his vulnerable, lost eyes darted down to me.

Again, I saw that explosion of emotion. Again, I was dazzled by unfamiliar galaxies. Still holding my breath, still holding his gaze, I let my palm lie flat against his cheek.

It was warm. Soft and firm.

I was afraid of scaring him, that he would push me away. But he didn’t. I lost myself in his eyes, drowning in that deep, black ocean.

The next moment…his fists slowly unclenched. His knuckles relaxed, he became less tense. We looked each other in the eyes, and his face looked so docile it broke my heart. He let out a sigh through his nose, so soft and woeful that I could barely hear it.

With that expression of gentle resignation, Rigel let himself be touched. It was as if I had defeated him with a single touch.

He lowered his gaze and, with a gentle pressure that shook my soul, pressed his face against my palm.

My heart was beating desperately. A glorious, destabilising sensation flooded me, engulfed my soul, making it shine like the sun.

Rigel turned to meet my gaze. I wanted this moment to last for an eternity, for nothing to ever move again, for him to keep looking at me like that forever…

‘Nica!’

The moment shattered in an instant. Rigel leapt away from me, and being separated from him felt like the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. The next minute, Anna appeared behind me on the landing, looking shocked and upset.

‘What happened with Asia?’

I didn’t have time to reply before Rigel stepped between us. My eyes darted to him and I felt an uncontrollable impulse to stop him.

My mind was spinning. I was going mad.

Anna told me that Dalma had told her what she had seen, but I couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying. Thoughts of his dark eyes, his cheek, him yielding to my touch whirled like a roaring universe inside me. But the central force that held everything together was moving away from me…

‘I’m sorry, Anna,’ I whispered, before turning around and following him.

I couldn’t think clearly. I ran down the stairs, stupidly risking dizziness from the fever.

I needed to speak to him. To ask him questions, to get answers, to understand his actions, to tell him that…that…

I saw the front door open and Rigel was there, on the sidewalk. There was someone with him, but his name was already on the tip of my tongue.

‘Ri—’

I broke off as something – one singular thing, one familiar thing – caught my eye.

The world stopped still.

With wide eyes, I stared at her. Disbelief took my breath away.

I would never forget that cascade of blonde hair.

Never.

Not even after all that time.

It wasn’t possible…

‘Adeline…’ I whispered, astounded.

And then, Adeline stood up on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on Rigel’s lips.