Читать книгу Trapped: The Terrifying True Story of a Secret World of Abuse - Rosie Lewis - Страница 5

With small, stumbling fingers Phoebe set her torch on the bedside cabinet, then rolled around her bed until her whole body became swaddled by her sheet, all the way up to her ears. Her cheeks burned with heat but determinedly, she began the awkward process again, this time with her duvet. By the time she had finished breathing was difficult but she felt safe, cocooned from the world outside.

She held herself still for a long time, partly to listen out for danger but mainly because her mummified state wouldn’t allow for much movement. The whishing came soon afterwards. At first it was gentle, a bit like the sound she heard when Mummy held a seashell to her ear but then the rustling began, filling her head until she worried that there would be no room left for her brain. The air around her came alive with the patter, drowning everything else out: the loud tick of the big clock in the hall, the muted conversations drifting up through the floorboards, even the whistle of the wind.

Everything in her room remained in the same place; the three-storey doll’s house with lifting roof, her white dressing table with the heart-shaped mirror and all the tiny glass perfume bottles lined across the top, and yet in an instant all became unfamiliar. The weak shaft of light from her torch no longer chased shadows into the corners of the room.

She began making funny groans like some of the children at school. The louder she hummed, the more muffled the horrible noise became. And she found that if she spun her eyes around as fast as she could, the pictures in her head got fuzzy too. The hand now pressing on her mouth no longer pinched her cheeks as painfully and the strange words hanging in the air transformed into the fairies that cling to dandelion stems, so light that if she blew hard enough they might float away on the breeze.

As the man dragged her out of her cocoon in one swift movement, chuckling at her attempts to protect herself, she sank deeper into her brain and pictured her father. In her mind he was dressed in his smart suit for work, tall and strong. She longed to call out to him, imagining that he would rush in to pick her up and keep her safe, but sensing that to yell would be dangerous, she bit down hard on her lower lip instead. She told the man that he could chose something from her room, anything he wanted, if only he would go back downstairs and rejoin the party. Her pleading made him laugh again.

In the morning it hurt to walk to the bathroom. She moved slowly because her pyjamas were wet and clinging to her legs. As she peeled off her night-clothes she smelt urine and her face grew hot with shame. Mummy would be sure to remove a star from her chart.

The thought brought hot tears to her eyes.