Yesterday I thought I could do it. I could speak out. Tell. I could take control.
I knew I couldn’t go to my teachers; like Mrs. Davies, they don’t want to see what is under their noses. Kathleen would help me, but she is not here. Jane thinks I am weird and is only interested in Pete. Dr. Creane was the only person I could go to, that I could trust, but how can Dr. Creane believe me if he also believes her? How could anyone take me seriously when she is so radiant, so shining? How could he believe that she is a monster?
Maybe there is someone else I could go to, but I really can’t think who. And the more I think about it, the more my confidence seeps away.
July 30, 1982
She has done it.
She has taken the one thing that is precious to me and destroyed it.
At first I thought that I had lost my key. But then Jane couldn’t find a spare. She saw my panic and she got Pete to call the locksmith. I stood with Jane on the landing as he worked at the lock. He was a round man who was sweating in the heat and puffed as he worked, but seemed jolly. He had a huge grin on his face as he heard the click of the lock and stood back and opened the door with a flourish.
His smile vanished when he saw my room.
Jane gasped.
I heard a loud wailing noise. And then I realized it was me.
My room was trashed.
My books were strewn across the floor, pages torn out. My pens, pencils, schoolbooks had been scattered. My clothes turned out of drawers. It was as though a tornado had ripped through the space.
And my puppets …
Each one was missing its head. Their bodies had been flung about the room, torn down from their wall mountings and ceiling hangings and tossed carelessly about the place. Their faces peered up at me from the floor or rested facedown on the carpet. It looked like a bloodless massacre.
She had broken everything I care about, invaded my sanctuary and stolen my safety.
The locksmith left quite swiftly. Jane and Pete came up and made sounds of amazement and concern, but I stood rock still until they left me alone.
Now I am sitting here in my room, on the floor, surrounded by chaos and destruction.
And I am shaking. Quaking.
But not with fear.
With anger.
I am burning with it. Hot with rage. I can feel a surge of it within me as if I am swollen with it.
I hate her.
I hate her.
I hate her.
I hate her.
August 7, 1982
Thornhill is very quiet.
The whole house is holding its breath.
I am staying locked in here. The new key is on my side. No one can get in.
I don’t trust myself to see her.
I have such a fury. My anger is like a hot pulse, throbbing, biting, raging.
I am playing through the events of last week. Racing through the scenes. Turning it over and over in my mind.
She must have gotten the key when I swung my bag away from her in the hall.
Is this my punishment for speaking out? For saying what I think?
Jane and Pete have been up, taking it in turns to knock at the door and ask me to let them in, to “chat” about what has happened, to “talk” it through.
I don’t want to hear. I put my headphones on and listen to music turned up high. I am certainly not letting them in. I am not letting anyone else in. I don’t want anyone to set foot in here ever again.
I can’t touch the food they leave for me outside the door. My throat is too tight to swallow anything other than water.
I have started sorting out my room. I am piling up my papers and taping together my torn schoolbooks. My novels are back on the shelves. My pens and paintbrushes in their pots. I am trying to tidy—to fix it—to put it back in order.
But with my puppets I have another purpose. One by one I am stitching or gluing them back together, mending their clothes and putting them back in their right places. Not all of them can be repaired—some have bits of clay broken or missing—but I am doing my best to put them back together. Except that from each one, I am taking some small part. From each of my beautiful little friends I am taking a hand or a limb or some stuffing or some hair. I have made a pile of heads I will not replace, unhinged arms and legs. A mound of glassy eyes sits on my desk alongside tangled threads of hair. With every snip I make, with each cut, I am thinking of her.
When all the dolls have given me a contribution I replace them carefully, sitting or hanging them gently back where they were, where they can watch the room. Each and every one of them a little bit flawed—except Mistress Mary, that is.
She survived. Mistress Mary is the one that she missed. I found her under the bed, intact. Seems she is stronger than all the rest—just like in the story.
Only in The Secret Garden there is a happy ending. They become a family, they make one from sad and broken people.
But that isn’t going to happen here.
August 9, 1982
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Each time I close my eyes I can see her smile: that smirk.
I see the heads of my puppets staring up at me from the floor. Their limbs twisted the wrong way. Their clothes torn.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
I am hungry. But I can’t eat.
I can’t sleep.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
I know that I will show her what she is. What she has done. I am working on my revenge. I snip and cut.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
They want to come in, but I won’t let them.
They bang on the door.
They thump, thump, thump.
And my heartbeat pounds in my ears.
I am throbbing with anger.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
I’ve got it!
I know what I have to do.
I have worked out a plan.
August 11, 1982
I have been awake all night and it is nearly done.
I am dizzy with excitement, hot with anger, sick with hate for her. Sick of her. I am sick of it all.
I have made her. I have taken the remains of my puppets and I have stitched and glued them together to make her—not as they see her: not the confident, rosy-cheeked beauty with golden ringlets and blue eyes; but as I know her to be: cold, heartless, ugly in thought and mind. She is snot and bile. She is pus and spit and piss. She is a horror and I want her to see what she is.