The Little House Read online

  Ruth looked at her for a moment, not as a patient in need of help but as a woman looks at another woman when she has finally understood the odds that are stacked against her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t know them. If they really want to take him away from me, they’ll do it. They know lawyers and doctors, they even have judges as personal friends. If they want something they get it. I just have to hang on and hope that they will be satisfied with this.’

  The traffic was bad on the return journey and Ruth did not get back to the little house until the early winter dark had fallen. She looked for the light from the windows as she turned in to the drive, but they were dark. Only the porch light was on, to light her way to the closed front door. She felt a sensation of growing terror. They had done it. They had done what she had feared they might do. They had taken Thomas. The house was deserted, and her child was gone. She turned the car carelessly in the driveway and scraped the wing. There was an expensive sound of crumpling metal and the screech of paint against the gatepost. Ruth tore open the driver’s door and ran up the front path to the house.

  She fumbled with the keys and flung the door open, but she knew before she stepped into the dark and silent hall that the house was empty. Thomas was not there.

  For a dreadful moment she was certain that he had been injured: some accident, and Elizabeth had rushed him in her car to the hospital. ‘Oh, God,’ Ruth moaned, envisaging too clearly his face crumpled by some dreadful fall, his hair matted with blood, a twisted limb, a broken arm … ‘Oh, God.’

  She turned and ran from the house, out to the car again, and tore the car door open. She reversed back out into the lane, still on the same steering lock so she hit the gatepost again. This time she did not even hear the noise or feel the impact. She slammed on her headlights and stepped hard on the accelerator and stormed up the drive to the farmhouse. Frederick would know what had happened, and where they were.

  In the turning circle she braked and a spray of sharp gravel flew up from her wheels. There were two cars parked outside the house: Frederick’s and Elizabeth’s. Ruth’s mind was working furiously. If Elizabeth’s car was here, then she was probably here, Thomas was probably here – unless they had gone to the hospital in an ambulance.

  Ruth ran across the gravel to the front door, pushed it open without knocking, and went into the hall. The sitting-room door opened.

  ‘I thought I heard your car,’ Frederick said calmly. ‘How nice –’

  She pushed him in the chest, hard and angrily, forcing him back. She brushed past him and saw, at the fireside, Thomas, lying on his back on Patrick’s old nursery play mat with Patrick’s old nursery toys around him.

  For a moment she simply stared at him, as if she could not believe that the horror story of her imagining was not real, as if she could not believe that this was truly her son, and his grandmother on her knees on the floor beside him, showing him things, and tickling his palms to make him laugh.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Ruth cried harshly.

  Elizabeth looked up. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘What the hell, what the bloody hell are you doing with my son?’

  Ruth strode across the room and snatched up Thomas. He was startled and let out a little cry. Frederick at once stepped forward and then froze, very alert.

  ‘Ruth,’ Elizabeth said soothingly, ‘Ruth, calm down.’

  ‘I told you,’ Ruth gabbled, spitting in her anger. ‘I told you he was not to be taken out of my house. I ordered you to leave him there!’

  Elizabeth stretched out her hand. ‘I know, I know you did.’

  ‘I thought he was dead!’ Ruth screamed at her. ‘I got home, I thought he was dead! I came up here to see what had happened, what dreadful, dreadful thing had happened, and here you are, having tea, playing on the floor …’ Ruth suddenly collapsed into sobs. Frederick instantly moved, and took Thomas from her. The baby let out another wail and Frederick slipped from the room with him. Ruth’s knees gave way beneath her and she slumped to the floor.

  ‘Hush, Ruth,’ Elizabeth said gently. ‘Calm down, dear.’

  Ruth’s harsh sobs were turning into rasping breaths. She could not breathe, she could not get air. Elizabeth stood behind her, listening to her labouring for oxygen. Frederick came back into the room, without Thomas, and silently held up a key to show that Thomas was safely locked in the nursery. Elizabeth nodded and mimed a telephone, and mouthed the word ‘doctor’. He nodded at once and withdrew.

  ‘Shhh, Ruth, ssshhh,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Breathe, dear, don’t get in such a state.’

  Ruth did not even hear her. She was struggling in a battle against her closing throat and her constricting chest; her harsh rasping gasps filled the pretty room.

  Elizabeth could hear Frederick’s low, urgent voice in the hall but Ruth heard nothing, fighting in a world of growing darkness and growing panic and growing pain.

  ‘Drink this,’ Frederick said firmly. He put a cold glass in her hand and held it to her lips. Ruth gagged on the brandy and spat most of it back. Frederick held it to her mouth again and she choked and swallowed, and choked again. He knelt down beside her and gently cupped his hands over her mouth and nose. ‘Breathe gently,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right, breathe gently.’

  Slowly Ruth’s breathing steadied as she stopped hyperventilating. Frederick gave her another swallow of brandy, then he helped her onto the sofa, lifted her legs up. Elizabeth propped a pillow behind her head. ‘There,’ she said, and her voice was full of pity.

  ‘The doctor is coming to see you,’ Frederick said gently to Ruth. Her skin was pale and thick, like wax, he thought. ‘Just lie here. Have another sip of brandy.’

  Elizabeth slipped from the room and out to the hall, waiting for the sound of the doctor’s car. She did not want to be near Ruth. She could hardly bear to see that ugly distorted face. Ruth did not fit in the pretty room, in the ordered life. Elizabeth heard Frederick’s soothing murmur and the more distant whimper from the nursery, where Thomas was locked in, safely away from the anger and the tears. Then she heard the sound of the doctor’s car.

  She opened the front door as he was coming up the steps. ‘She had some kind of hysterical fit,’ she said softly. ‘She took it into her head that Thomas was dead and she came racing up here screaming and crying. Then she had a fit. Frederick is with her; she’s on the sofa.’

  He nodded, briefly pressed her hand, and went into the sitting room.

  Frederick was sitting in the chair at Ruth’s head, talking to her gently, very softly, giving her little sips from the glass of brandy. Dr MacFadden took in the scene and came towards Ruth.

  ‘Hello,’ he said gently.

  Vaguely she looked up at him.

  ‘D’you know who I am?’ he asked.

  She looked blank. It felt as if his voice were coming from a long way away, as if it could be nothing to do with her, as if she had tumbled down a long slope into a place where nothing mattered very much any more.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said. Her voice rasped, her throat was sore from screaming and that dreadful struggle for air.

  ‘Would you like to sleep?’ he asked. ‘Shall we get you into bed, and I could give you an injection and you could get some rest? You look all in.’

  She nodded. William MacFadden nodded to Frederick and the two men supported her and took her from the room. Elizabeth led the way upstairs and into the guest bedroom. The bed was made up; Elizabeth twitched off the covers.

  ‘Just slip her shoes off and get her in,’ the doctor advised gently.

  They laid her on the bed with a detached respect, as if she were a corpse. Elizabeth took off the shoes and noticed a ladder in Ruth’s tights. She pulled the cover over her.

  ‘My bag,’ William MacFadden said quietly to Frederick, and then turned back to the bed. ‘Can you hear me, Ruth? Can you hear me?’

  She turned her head on the pillow and looked at him. He thought he had never seen such a weary, tragic face. ‘Yes,�€