Читать книгу Black Widow - Jessie Keane - Страница 10

The little girl was very afraid as she sat in the damp darkness. She felt very tired, very drowsy. She wondered what had happened to Daddy. They took him away somewhere, she knew that; those bad people took him away. He would never have left her on her own.

She expected Mummy to come and fetch her soon; she had been expecting this for what felt like hours now. Mummy was always watching her carefully, always. She whimpered in the dark, wanting her Mummy so badly.

The men hadn’t talked to her. One of them had held something over her nose and that was when she’d started to get really, really sleepy. One of them was small, like a lady, but Layla wasn’t sure about that. They wore hoods over their heads and that was scary, like they weren’t really people at all.

Layla so wanted someone to talk to. She would have talked to the lady, if she could, even though she had done this nasty thing to Layla. All her dolls and teddies were at home. Now she had no Mummy. No Daddy. Nothing except this horrible place.

When they had dropped her in here and slammed the trap door shut on her, she had been half-awake and had groped her way around her small prison. She found all the walls were dirt: slimy with moisture in places, bone-dry in others. There had been a little daylight left then.

But now it was night and she was cold.

She was able to stand up, although the top of her head touched metal. Metal like waves, like an old tin roof on a hen house. There was a sort of bed in the dirt, so that she could lie down on a rough blanket they had put there for her. They had put a dish of water on the floor; she’d kicked it over by accident when she’d been trying to grope her away around in here. There was some bread too, but it was stale. Like she was an animal.

Layla decided to pretend that she was an animal, someone’s pet. She ate the dry bread and licked the bowl clean of what remained of the water. Then she lay down and wrapped herself in the blanket.

Daddy would come back soon. Mummy too. They would never leave her alone like this, with these strange people who didn’t speak and who covered their faces.

She was an animal, curled up on her bed and waiting for her owners to come and collect her. She curled up in a ball, rocking herself, hands clasped around her knees. Suddenly, she was asleep.