Lullaby Girl (6 page)

Katgrrl:
Well mayb oneday.

VinylVultures_666:
So what date u actually goin?

Katgrrl:
13jan.

VinylVultures_666:
Bloody hell

Katgrrl:
U shd come up visit before I go.

VinylVultures_666:
I’ll miss you, Katherine.

Katgrrl:
Come up this weekend. We’ll talk

VinylVultures_666:
Cant leave th shop

Katgrrl:
Well. We can write

VinylVultures_666:
R u sure about this Kathy? Just all so sudden …

Katgrrl:
I’m in love, Tim.

Katgrrl:
U ther?

VinylVultures_666:
Just b careful with this guy. Ok?

Katgrrl:
Yessir!

VinylVultures_666:
I’m serious. Any trouble, u call me. Ok?

Katgrrl:
He’s not a serial killer!

VinylVultures_666:
Promise.

Katgrrl:
Ok I promise. If u promise to stop freakin out so much.

VinylVultures_666:
I just care.

Katgrrl:
Promise

VinylVultures_666:
Ok Cap’n

Katgrrl:
Xx

VinylVultures_666:
Xxx

>Katgrrl has logged off

5

On Friday we have a special teatime in the day room. There’s a cake with my name iced on it, an’ little square sandwiches an’ jelly an’ fizzy lemonade. Mrs Laird makes ev’ryone sing ‘Happy Birthday’. Then she turns on the television an’ we watch a film about a talkin’ dog. That goes on for ages. When iss finished Joyce says iss time for bed, an ev’ryone goes out of the room. I’m goin’ to go too, but Rhona comes out of nowhere an’ says, ‘Happy Birthday, hon.’ At
birthday
, her hands make little rabbit ears in the air. Then she gives me a pot of nail varnish. We sit by the fire an’ paint our fingernails gold. Rhona puts a candle on the last of my cake, I blow it out, an’ we share the frosted slab onto our plates. My nails look strange, all painted up like that. I wonder if I used to wear nail varnish. Before. Together we look at our fingertips. Twinklin’ like jewels as they dry.

‘Are you ready to talk about Magnus?’ asks Rhona. When she says that, she doesn’t look at my face. Maybe that’s somethin’ Mrs Laird taught her. A brain trick. But it doesn’t work. I jus’ get mad. I stand up, throw my cake on the floor an’ leave the room. She doesn’t call out or try to stop me.

Back in my room, I scratch my nails clean with toilet paper. I can’t bring myself to throw out the varnish, but tomorrow I’ll tell Rhona I did. It’ll hurt her feelin’s, I’m sure, but right now I’m glad about that. I’ll teach her not to say that name to me.

My face is hot. When I’ve calmed down a bit I find the hole in my mattress an’ stick my hand inside. This is where I keep my bit of newspaper. They’d go mad if they knew I had this, but, like the nail varnish, I can’t make myself get rid of it. I stole it from Mrs Laird’s sittin’ room on the day we opened the curtains.

Daily Post. Thursday, 11th May 2006

Snub ‘n’ Sly Girl

Lawyers dealt a
kick in the teeth
to our fundraising campaign yesterday, when they
forbade
further press access to their client – the Loch Oscaig ‘Lullaby Girl’. The childlike amnesiac – now known as ‘Katherine’ – shot into the limelight last month after washing up on the banks of a remote loch in Scotland. Initially believed to be mute, she astonished carers one day with a rendition of a
Danish
lullaby, and continued to sing it compulsively.

Her story won the hearts of our readers and led to the formation of the Lullaby Girl Foundation, which has so far raised over £12,000 towards the brunette’s psychiatric care. But now lawyers have
snubbed
our readers’ generosity by
ordering the removal
of Daily Post reporters from the vicinity of Gille Dubh Lodge in Cairndhu – where Lullaby Girl currently resides.

Reactions have been mixed since yesterday’s ruling, with some doubting whether Katherine had a part in this decision at all. ‘I saw her the day they pulled her out the water, and she
didn’t know her arse from her elbow
,’ comments photographer Malcolm Gray. ‘We were inside Gille Dubh last week, and she’d barely progressed, mentally.’ Our correspondent Zoe Rutherford, upon whose initiative the LGF was founded, had this to say: ‘It’s
just so selfish
, and so disappointing for everyone involved. After everything we’ve done for her, you’d think she’d give a little back.’

Lullaby Girl’s mental capabilities have been widely debated in the media since her appearance on March 15th. But some locals, such as shopkeeper Gayle Paton, have been raising different questions.

‘How can we protect ourselves if they won’t keep us informed?’ Ms Paton asked last night. ‘As far as we know this was
attempted murder
, and until that loony remembers what happened, we have to assume there’s
a killer on the loose
.’

Insiders say police are still to receive any solid leads, either on British or Danish soil, and this has raised
further questions
as to why her lawyers should try to remove Katherine from the public eye. ‘They can’t very well expect witnesses to come forward, if there’s no publicit

That’s where the paper tears off. I fill my head with those words, as I have a hundred times, an’ try to gain strength from my anger.
That loony
. That’s all I am to the people over the fence. How horrible to know they saw this newspaper two weeks ago. That all this time they’ve prob’ly been talkin’ about me. A
killer on the loose
sounds bad. I don’t like to think about that bit.

I forgive Rhona, I think, but I still want her to say sorry. Maybe she’ll come up later …

The newsprint feels grubby in my fingers. I fold the clipping carefully, three times. Then I kneel an’ put it back in the mattress.

#

Saturday.

We have Internet at Gille Dubh, an’ Caroline’s the one in charge of it. Most stuff is blocked, like email an’ news, cos Mrs Laird wants to limit
outside influences
, an’ we’re only allowed Wikipedia if Caroline’s sittin’ with us. I suppose that’s to stop us gettin’ upset. We’re allowed fifteen minutes per day, each, but not many of us really bother. Mary uses it more than me, but today she’s not here. She’s in the day room with the oldies, watchin’ a film about tap dancin’. Outside, iss rainin’.

‘I’m gonna pop the kettle on,’ Caroline says as she heads into the next room. ‘D’you want a cup?’

‘Yes please,’ I say as I scroll through a map of the moon’s surface.

Caroline comes back with somethin’ large an’ square hidden under her jumper. She grins at me, then whips out the chocolate biscuit tin an’ opens it under my nose. This is not chocolate biscuit day.

‘Quick,’ she says, lookin’ over my shoulder at the doorway. I dive in an’ grab a mint Viscount. Caroline an’ the tin whirl away. Hot water bubbles, an’ a teaspoon clinks on china. Then Caroline comes back with two steamin’ cups, an’ a Wagon Wheel hangin’ from her teeth. I pick up my cup an’ take a tiny, burning sip. The stripe round the edge is cornflower blue, but I don’t have the heart to tell Caroline I prefer the green one.

‘Thought you might be hungry,’ she winks. ‘Seeing as you missed lunch.’

‘I slept late.’

‘Figured,’ says Caroline, an’ takes a chomp out of her Wagon Wheel. Then she sits back an’ starts her crossword. She does a lot of crosswords. She must be damn clever.

Five minutes into my session, Mrs Bell comes in an’ asks for help to write a letter to her daughter in Hertfordshire. ‘Sure,’ says Caroline, an’ they sit down at the word processor. I glance up from time to time. It seems such a waste of energy – lookin’ up the right postcode an’ checkin’ the time of the last post collection an’ the cost of stamps – when they could jus’ send an email. It seems that so much of what we do here is about the
doing
. Not the end result. We faff around with things that don’t matter so that we’ll forget the bigger questions. About things that have hurt us, an’ will hurt us again if we stop to remember.

#

We meet in the day room for music therapy. Mr Duff hands round the photocopied song sheets, an’ we vote for the tunes we want to sing today. I put my hand up for ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, ‘Paperback Writer’ an’ ‘Michelle’, cos I like to sing the French bit. No one asks me to sing ‘Solen er så rød, mor’. Thankfully, ev’ryone seems to have forgotten that. Or maybe they jus’ don’t care any more. I could never stand at the front an’ sing like that now.

Rhona sits with her back to us in an easy chair by the window. I look over once or twice, but she doesn’t turn round. It looks like she’s readin’, but there’s no book in her lap. I’m startin’ to feel bad about what happened. Maybe I should let her bring that hypnotist back, like she wants. Make up some stuff about Magnus. Would that make her happy?

At the end of choir time, Mr Duff puts his guitar away. He reads from his Bible in his boomy voice. Then he asks us to pray for old Mrs McRae, who runs the village post office. We seem to pray for Mrs McRae a lot. I’ve never seen her with my own eyes, but I often think about her an’ her bad leg when I sit at the conservat’ry window. I have a picture of her face in my head. I think she smiles a lot an’ has long white hair that she wears in a bun. Sometimes I wonder what’ll happen when she finally dies. Who’ll sort all the letters, an’ dish out the stamps, an’ cash Rhona’s wage slips?

When Mr Duff has gone, Mrs Laird wheels in the gramophone. ‘I’ve got a real treat for you today,’ she says, ‘from my personal collection.’ Then she plays the same 78s she always plays, an’ we get up to dance. As usual, Mary an’ me are partners. We tango up an’ down the room, bumpin’ into the older ladies an’ the furniture an’ the walls, until Mrs Laird orders us to calm down. As we flop onto the old church pew I look round for Rhona, but she’s not here any more. At dinner time she’s not there either. When the sun goes down I sit in my room with the door open. Rain batters the window. Rhona doesn’t show.

Why did Rhona have to find out about Magnus? That sleep lady told her, I jus’ know it. See, I can’t trust anyone here. An’ that’s no good, see, cos I can’t have ’em all whisp’rin’ about Magnus. Laughin’ at me behind my back. Sayin’ I’m weak. They’ll whisper to the papers, an’ the papers’ll whisper to folk outside, an’ then – jus’ maybe – the whisper’ll get all the way back to Magnus. I can’t risk that. I couldn’t handle it. I wouldn’t do it even for Rhona.

Magnus. I want you to know that I know. I know about you an’ I know about the pain you brought. I can’t see your face prop’ly. Not yet. But you’re here all the same. Hoverin’ over me. For nine long weeks, my life hasn’t had you in it. I ate my eggs from my green striped plate an’ I sat at the conservat’ry window an’ I slept under my mustard bedspread. When I could stand to be with people I joined in group therapy, an’ when I could speak I spoke my first words to Rhona. I watched the sun rise an’ I watched it fall. I watched the mountains change colour an’ the winds shift direction. All of that time you weren’t there. But that time is over now, an’ iss time I admitted it. You first showed up in a dream, an’ for some time I believed that that’s all you were. Then the sleep lady saw you too, an’ the cat was out of the bag. You
did
walk beside me once. You
did
hold my hand. You were part of my life – more than that, you were
ev’rythin
’ – an’ then, quite suddenly, you weren’t. They don’t know as much as me yet. Jus’ your name. But now they know you’re there, they won’t give up. Rhona says you’re the key. She’s tryin’ hard to bring you back out.

I’m scared of that, Magnus. I don’t think I can ever let it happen. There’s bad stuff tied to you, an’ I can’t risk settin’ it free. I did that once before, I think, an’ it turned me into a diff’rent person. I’m scared, Magnus. Damn you for coming back. If you’d stayed away, I wouldn’t have had to deal with you.

#

The clouds are low this morning. I pick at a plate of toast, an’ drink a cup of milky tea. As I sit in the conservat’ry, the wind sucks at the window.
Fwwwopp fwooopp
it goes, an’ blasts the roof in little flurries. Today, like yesterday, I’ve eaten breakfast alone. Rhona has been missin’ for three days, an’ I’m too scared to ask anyone why. I think yesterday was my day to have Mrs Laird talk at me, but no one came to take me there. In the afternoon there’s a keep-fit class in the dinin’ room, an’ I don’t like all the commotion, so I go up to my room. I keep tellin’ myself Rhona will appear soon. That the next face I see will be hers. But she doesn’t come in. No one even comes upstairs. I stare out the window till the clouds come right down, an’ after that I stare into the grey. Darkness grows, an’ the house grows quiet. At dinner time I can’t bring myself to go downstairs, so I lie on the bed an’ try to forget how hungry I am. Voices come an’ go. In the end, the room turns black.