Jessie Keane - Stay Dead

‘That’s fine. You can wait down here.’ She turned to Dolly. ‘Come on then, girl, up the stairs.’

This wasn’t a shop with baby clothes. Bewildered, Dolly followed the woman up. They went into a tiny box room; inside there was a fold-up bed stashed against the wall, hectic violet wallpaper with sprigs of heather rampaging all over it. In the centre of the room, on the scuffed and worn purple carpet, was a yellow washing-up bowl steaming with warm water and frothy with soap suds. Beside it was what Dolly recognized as an enema, and an open packet of Omo.

‘We’ll soon have you straight again,’ said the woman, crossing to the fold-up bed and stubbing her cigarette out on an overflowing ashtray perched there. ‘Don’t you worry.’

Dolly had no idea what she meant, but she was a kid and this ugly gorgon of a woman was an adult; it wasn’t her place to question .

Then the woman turned back to her with a thin smile. ‘Right then, lovey. Slip your knickers off and stand over the bowl.’

Dolly didn’t know how she got back down those bloody stairs and out of that place in Aldgate. She was in agony. From the moment the woman had started pumping that Omo mixture into her, she’d been doubled up with pain.

‘Don’t you worry about that, you’ll come away, that’s what matters,’ said the woman in an irritated tone of voice because Dolly had the gall to complain and start to cry.

Dolly didn’t even know what that meant. Come away? Come away with what?

‘All right then, Doll?’ asked Dad when she came back downstairs, and he looked sheepish when he saw how white she was, her face twisted up with pain, before his gaze skipped away from her again.

‘Thanks,’ he said to the woman, and they left.

Dolly, standing at the bus stop and trying not to pass out, couldn’t believe it. Her dad had taken her to that horrible ugly frightening cow and let her do that dreadful thing to her. As they waited and the rain drizzled down, a young mother with a child in a pushchair stood nearby and the child howled its head off.

Shut up, you little shit, thought Dolly, looking daggers at the tiny thing, feeling she could hardly bear to have that near her, not when she’d had all this done to her.

‘Dad…’ she moaned, clutching at her stomach.

‘Bus’ll be here in a mo,’ he said brightly, smiling at the young woman with the kid, everything normal here, nothing to see.

Eventually the damned bus came, and they all piled on. Dolly didn’t know how she made it the whole length of the journey without shrieking out loud. Finally they were home, and Dad helped her up the stairs to bed and then left her there, closing the door behind him.

‘Dolly’s not well, but she’ll soon feel better,’ she heard him saying to Sarah out on the landing. ‘Don’t go in, Sar, she’s having a kip.

Dolly writhed on the bed in fearful agony all the rest of that day and all night. She couldn’t sleep through the pain, it was awful. When morning came and it got light she tried to get up, to get dressed. She could hear the others, her brothers and her sister, getting up, going downstairs to the kitchen, but she could hardly move, the pain was too great.

Somehow she got herself up on to the edge of the bed and hauled herself to her feet. It was then that she felt wetness and saw her nightie was soaked with blood. Another hot bolting spasm of agony shot through her and as she tried to stand up she felt something warm drop down between her legs.

Gasping, crying, she got the pot out from under the bed and crouched over it, and then it happened: the baby came away and fell straight into the pot with a sticky, stomach-churning slurp. Staring at it, Dolly nearly screamed but she didn’t, she couldn’t rouse the rest of the household, what would they think?

She’d been quite far along. In her innocence, she hadn’t known what the fuck was happening, but she could see it was a girl, fully formed and hanging by the cord, still joined to her. Horror gripped her then. It was a girl, a real child, and they’d sluiced it out of her like it was nothing.

‘Oh Jesus, oh angels,’ said Dolly, crying, desperate. She looked at the poor little kid’s face and nearly fell to the floor in shock. She’d committed a mortal sin, this was a human being and she’d killed it.

Another cramp sent the afterbirth sploshing down on to the floor. Dolly let out a scream then, she couldn’t stop herself .

Presently, as she stood there staring down at the abomination in the pot, there was a tap at the door. She cringed with panic. ‘Who is it?’ she shouted.

‘It’s me, it’s Sar. You all right, Doll?’ came her sister’s voice.

Christ, she couldn’t let poor little Sarah see this!

‘Fetch Dad will you, Sar?’ she called, and stepped away from the pot, wetness trailing down her legs and making her shiver with revulsion. She toed the pot under the bed and got back between the sheets, feeling blood sticking to her, messing up the bed. It was a horrible thing she’d done and she was shivering now, bleeding, feeling sick at what had just happened.

Dad was up within a couple of minutes, and came in the room, closing the door behind him. He stood there, and said: ‘Has it come away then, Doll?’

Dolly couldn’t bear to look at him. She nodded, swiped at her tears.

‘Under the bed,’ she said, and Dad moved forward, delicately stepping around the afterbirth, and pulled out the pot. Dolly heard him draw in a sharp breath.

‘Doll?’ he said.

Dolly turned her head and stared at her father. His grizzled face looked sweat-sheened and white; he looked like he was about to puke his guts up and Dolly knew why: he’d seen what she had seen – that the tiny dead girl had his face – the same chin, the same nose, everything.

‘You all right then, girl?’ he asked, and his voice shook.

Something hardened in Dolly then. She stopped crying, and nodded. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘But the sheets are dirty and so’s my nightie, I’ll need clean.’

He was nodding too. With a shudder his eyes went back to the tiny dead thing in the pot. ‘I’ll see you all right,’ he said.

Before he’d taken her to that ugly cow in Aldgate, Dolly would have believed that.

Now, she didn’t.

London, June 1994

‘Fuck, it’s you,’ said the man.

Annie turned. It was the day after she’d got to Ellie’s. She’d overslept so she had a quick bath, dressed, skipped breakfast, said hello to Chris, Ellie’s husband, who was sitting at the kitchen table and who grunted a reply. She braced herself and took a cab over to the Palermo Lounge to see what was happening there.

Answer? Not much. The big double red doors were closed, the neon sign was switched off, there were police tapes strung up and a beat copper was standing there, staring impassively into the middle distance. And now this other man had arrived, one she recognized. He was about six-three, with straight dark hair and dark hard eyes that endlessly scanned everything around him. He was formally dressed in a black suit, white shirt and tie. His downturned solemn trap of a mouth didn’t lift in a smile.

‘Oh! DCI Hunter,’ she said vaguely, and went back to staring at the front of the building.

He stood there with her, silent for a moment. Then he said: ‘I thought you might show up. A bit of a shock, yes? You knew her well.’