Lullaby Girl Read Online Free Page B

Mrs . Only the staff call the oldies by their first names. I get the feelin’ they’d clip the rest of us round the ear if we tried. Mrs is safer. I don’t want to talk to ’em anyway. I don’t like talkin’ to anyone besides Rhona.
    In the conservat’ry, I start to feel better. The sky is pale, with hardly any clouds. Across the moor, the mountains are solid-lookin’. Rich, hot-chocolate brown. I sip my tea an’ look at ’em. Outside, the tree is perfectly still. It must have been windy in the night, cos thur’s lots more keys on the roof today. They cast a muddy shadow over the room, with little gaps of sky shinin’ through. It feels nice. Like I’m in a nest. This is the closest I get to goin’ outside alone. I’m allowed out without Rhona, of course. The fence is there, so they trust me to walk round the grounds. But I don’t want to. Iss big out there, under the sky, an’ I still can’t face it by myself. That’s okay, though, cos Rhona always says she’ll come with me. I think she even thinks iss her idea.
    The world over the fence terrifies me, though I know I’ve been out there before. Folk say the sea washed me up, an’ I know that that bit’s true. I remember the pain an’ exhaustion. Kickin’ in darkness. Thinkin’ I will die now . But my life before that stuff’s a myst’ry. Ev’ryone thinks I’m from a country across the sea. Or, well, they say that, but they say it in a way that sounds like they don’t believe it. I don’t know what the truth is. Sometimes when I wake up my head has little pictures in it, of things an’ places an’ people I don’t know. But they never stay clear for long, an’ I’m never able to piece them together.
    My song is the strangest part of all. I can reel off those funny-soundin’ words as easy as the ABC. But when it comes to their meanin ’, I’m stuck. Even when Rhona showed me what the words meant in English, I couldn’t understand. Iss jus’ about foxes an’ the sun an’ stuff. Why would I bother to learn that by heart? Iss part of me, like a dead plant rooted deep inside my head, an’ I don’t think I’ll ever dig all of it out. But I won’t sing it any more. How could I do that, before, in front of ev’ryone? What a clown. The song has started to scare me, cos iss a bridge to a part of myself I don’t know. I want to stay on this side, with Rhona an’ the conservat’ry an’ the tree. Things are simple here. I need things to stay the same.
    Voices drift through from the dinin’ room. Louder for a while. Then nothin’. I reach for my mug an’ iss gone cold. I drink the tea anyway. Nice an’ sweet.

3
    Saturday is music therapy day. Iss somethin’ I’ve stayed away from, cos I know now that that’s where I used to sing my song. But Rhona gets cross today when I say I won’t go. She says I’ll get no treats if I don’t start joinin’ in. I scowl.
    ‘I’ll be next to you the whole time,’ Rhona says.
    I grab her arm. We go down the stairs an’ follow the others into the day room. Thur’s a man at the front with a little white bit on his neck. ‘That’s the vicar, Mr Duff,’ says Rhona. He has a green guitar on a strap an’ he hugs it to his chest as he chats to Mrs Laird. Ev’ryone comes in an’ finds a chair.
    ‘Ready?’ says Mr Duff when ev’ryone’s sat down. He has a deep, boomy voice. Caroline comes round with bits of paper an’ shoves one in my hand. For a few minutes, ev’ryone talks at once. Then Mr Duff plays a note on his guitar, an’ they go quiet.
    ‘Page four,’ whispers Rhona. She opens the leaflet in my hands. ‘Amazing Grace’, it says. Ev’ryone starts to sing, an’ actually they don’t sound bad. The older ladies are the loudest – all warbly tra-la-la – an’ Rhona whispers iss cos they used to be in the village choir. When the song’s over Rhona says, ‘Well done,’ even though I didn’t join in. No one else looks at me, an’ that is good. They sing one more song, an’