Page 52 of Clever Little Thing

“I just need to know where they are.”

“Breathe,” she murmurs. Pain stabs my calf, and my leg jerks again. Rain steps back. I think I kicked her by accident.

“Is this supposed to hurt?” I ask.

“I’m barely touching you,” she says.

“This isn’t working.” I clutch my towels around me and burst out of the room, then rush along the corridor to Dr. Beaufort’s office. I pound on the door. No answer, and it’s locked. A blast of cold air comes from the lobby, raising goose bumps on my arms and legs, and I fling myself towards it. Dr. Beaufort is heading out the front door, bag over her shoulder, clad in a sensible winter coat, a wearable duvet that makes no concession to style.

“Charlotte. Oh dear.” She takes in the towel I’m holding around my naked body, but I’m past caring about such things. She looks around for help. Rain pants up and drapes a fluffy robe over my shoulders.

“You told me to relax,” I babble, clutching Dr. Beaufort’s sleeve. “But I can’t relax when I’m so worried about Stella. Would you expect someone to relax when their baby is trapped under a car? But I still tried. Ask Rain.” I turn around, and Rain is edging away, but she doesn’t contradict me. “Now you have to make the effort to hear me out,” I tell Dr. Beaufort.

“I need to send a message first.” She unlocks her room for me, and I sink onto the sofa. I’m sure she’s texting her partner to tell them she’ll be late. I feel a pang as I imagine what she’s writing:Don’t forget Eddie’s got karate tonight. Save me some spag bol!And then smiley face, spaghetti with hovering fork, heart, heart, heart. Does she know how lucky she is to have a normal family life?

Finally, she trudges in, closes the door, and sits down.

“You’re right,” I say. “I need to tell you the whole story. But how do I know if I can trust you?”

She settles into her chair. Her face is kind, truthful. “I want to tell you about something that happened to me. My mother came back once, after she died.”

“Metaphorically,” I say. I brace myself for some theory that we all have to exorcise the spirits of our mothers as we grow into our true selves.

Dr. Beaufort shakes her head. “I saw her, at the foot of my bed. She was as real as you or me.”

I’m astounded. Maybe supernatural experiences are more common than I realized, but no one ever talks about them, for the same reason I’m having trouble telling Dr. Beaufort about mine. “In fact,” she continues, “I know several people who have had vividencounters with the dead. I don’t leap to the conclusion that they have a mental illness.”

I gape at her. Maybe it is possible, after all, to tell her and have her believe me. She smiles at me, and I feel myself relax a little. I bet that when her children have nightmares, she brings warm milk with honey and tells them the tale of how they were born until they fall back asleep.

“What if the spirit who returns isn’t your mother?” I ask, just to be sure. “What if it’s someone who you thought was more of a peripheral figure in your life?”

“I’m here to listen, not to judge,” she says, and I launch into the hardest part of the story.

Then

29.

When I came in from seeing Irina, Pete was at the kitchen counter, in a late-night Zoom meeting. I waved at him, glad that he wasn’t going to get in my way. I had to see Stella, and if that meant waking her up, so be it. When I got to the top of the stairs, I leaned against the wall to catch my breath. My lungs felt constricted, the baby rammed underneath my rib cage.

Then I pushed open Stella’s door. Because this was light-polluted London, her room was never truly dark, and I could see that her bed was empty, the covers flung back. With a jolt, I realized that she was standing in the middle of her room. Was she sleepwalking? If so, I didn’t want to startle her by turning on the light. I tiptoed up. Her eyes were open, but that didn’t mean she was awake. I laid a hand on her shoulder, wondering if I could guide her back to bed. But I couldn’t move her. Surely a sleepwalker wouldn’t have thisstrange density. I pushed at her shoulder: nothing. I felt like even if I shoved her, she wouldn’t fall over. She was definitely awake.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Not much.”

I shivered. The same thing Blanka did on weekends.

Irina’s grandmother believed that a bad spirit could get inside a pregnant woman. Could a bad spirit get inside a child?

“Listen to me. Why won’t you eat when it’s just me and you?”

“I don’t like eating in front of you.”

I never saw Blanka consume a crumb.

“Why do you have Blanka’s handwriting?”

“My handwriting,” she whispered back.

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