She's Not There by F. E. Birch

Author:F. E. Birch [Birch, F. E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wire Books
Published: 2024-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

She hadn’t been to the park for over a week. It was easy to not go when she was poorly. Or pretending to be. She’d learnt how to pretend very well, so well that she wasn’t sure if she was really faking or really poorly.

Tomorrow was a school day and the poorly days had run out, run away like milk that turned sour, that Ma poured away in fat clumps like the clumps of sick that got caught in the back of her throat.

Maybe Ma might come for her after school, but she didn’t think so and she didn’t like to ask. Da had to work and Ma had to look after granny.

The last time she’d seen him he’d said, ‘I’ll see you again soon, my pretty, very soon’ and it was there in his voice, in the way that he said it, that gave her the shiver of fear.

She was confused. She didn’t feel pretty. She knew he was lying. She knew he didn’t mean it, not really, and she was glad. She didn’t want to be pretty for him. She didn’t want to be pretty, ever. Pretty wasn’t good but that was okay because she was bad, full of bad, like the fingernails she’d bitten off. Like the ends of her hair that hung in pigtails that she chewed so much that when the strands flapped against her chin, they were prickly. Like the skin she picked off her lips when they cracked, all dry and whipped.

She knew she couldn’t not go through the park on her way home and she knew that when she did, he’d be there, waiting in the bushes, waiting for her to tiptoe by, her eyes tight shut and ears pushed out from the inside so she couldn’t hear, but she would still know his rustling, his low whistling, his gruff voice calling to her. If she couldn’t see and couldn’t hear then she might, just might, get away without him seeing her or hearing her and she could pretend she wasn’t there, and he might not know she was. Maybe.

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