Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen (the gingerbread man read aloud TXT) 📗

in there. If you do not open this door in the next minute, we will use reasonable force to do so.’

Thomas and I both moved then; we rose from our seats as if pulled by strings from above. Thomas was there before me.

‘Sebastian Maybury?’ A plump man in spectacles peered over a goSphere. He was wearing a shabby green jumper which had patches sewn on to its elbows.

‘No, I—’

But before Thomas could finish, the man had pushed past him. Two more men followed him in. I can’t remember what they looked like, they merged together, grim lines of expression that were interchangeable and hard. They barged past each other as though they were competing in a race.

‘Evie Moss?’ the man with the goSphere said to me.

‘She’s my sister, I’m—’

He was already gone. Into the dining room, littered with our discarded bowls and glasses, the disassembled tower of profiteroles slumping at its centre. He paused, as though he might look under the table to see if they were crouching there, then moved onwards, through the kitchen, into the softly lit sitting room. Then came the gentle sound of Jakob beginning to cry and he ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

I went to follow him but one of the men who’d followed him in stood across the bottom of the stairs, a barrier.

‘You can sit down there,’ he said pointing us back to the dinner table.

I opened my mouth to object but Thomas was at my side. ‘There’s nothing more we can do,’ he said gently, and so we sat down again, helplessly. And we waited.

For a long time nothing happened. We heard voices from upstairs but not the words they were saying.

Now and again there was the bleat of Jakob’s cry but as quickly as it started, it would disappear as if were not really there at all. Then for a second, Jakob’s face suddenly appeared on the workSphere.

He’d been put down in his cot again and for just a few seconds he writhed towards the camera, his face wrinkled, his eyes searching.

Then, he was picked up again and disappeared from view.

NOW

I see myself in the reflection of the glass door. It looks like the type that’s mirrored from the outside but from the inside is transparent.

My hair is greasy, lying flat across my forehead and hanging over my shoulder, tangled, heavy and matted. I try to put my fingers through it but they get too caught up in its knots. Then I remember the glass and wonder if anyone is watching me. I quickly extract my fingers.

Is anyone there?

There’s no warming light shining from any of the windows, only the grey rays coming from the pale circle in the sky. I can’t hear the sounds of music or conversation or a workSphere’s prattle.

‘Shall we knock on the door?’ I say to Mimi as I look round the front door for anything that resembles a doorbell; I find none. ‘Shall we see if there’s anyone home?’

I make a big show to Mimi of knocking but she slumbers on. She shivers and that makes me knock harder. The glass is thick, my rapping muffled.

No one answers.

We walk around the whole building. Each window is dull, each door closed. It’s an impenetrable fortress.

I tell myself that there is no one here.

I tell myself that no one can see me.

Then I start to search for something heavy, something hard.

I find a pile of bricks stacked by a wall. I pick one up and then another and another. It’s difficult to do, holding Mimi at the same time, but I don’t want to put her down for a moment longer than necessary. I move them all in front of one of the large walls of glass.

When I think I have enough, I take off my coat and place Mimi wrapped up in its folds a safe distance away, around the corner, nestled in the grass. She doesn’t stir. It takes me a moment to be able to walk away from her and back to the window, back to my pile of bricks.

I throw the brick as hard I can into the glass.

It splinters, but it does not break.

My ears ache to hear if Mimi has woken up, if she makes a sound. But there’s none.

I throw another brick at the glass. It bends, it ripples but it does not smash.

I throw another. And another.

My reflection is broken into a multitude of fragments, I can no longer see my face.

Finally, I hear it.

A crack.

It only takes a few more and then we’re in.

I wait for the sound of an alarm.

I wait for someone to come rushing towards the splinter of a hole and demand what is happening.

I run back to where Mimi lies, my gaze fixed on the gaping cavity of glass that I created.

We wait and we wait.

When no one comes, when no alarm pierces, I lift Mimi up to me. She’s heavier than she was; I can feel a strain in my back from carrying her.

I kick through the shards around the hole and bent over, making myself small, we enter the house.

THEN

What was left after Jakob was gone from the house?

There was nothing, there was everything.

There was the space where Jakob had lain while we’d talked and ate and drank and simmered. The indent on his blanket, on the sheet.

There was all the stuff, the things that had been so important to his survival back then. The baby bottles, the car seat, the especially expensive pram. Everything had come at great cost now that manufacturing was so affected by the population drop. There were the things he loved in that short time he had been with us. The wooden toy with two eyes at its centre, shaped like a sunflower. The black and white patterned muslin cloth he was always drawn to.

There was an emptiness that filled the house, that was leaden in our bodies. It weighed down our hearts, ached in our