SHATTERED DREAMS
an excerpt

In some parts of my novel we hear the child's voice take over the narration from the adults and learn how certain events are interpreted from her point of the view. The following is one of those examples:

CHAPTER NINE

Lucy stood by the crib and watched the baby sleep. When he’d first returned home from the hospital her Mummy had said she was Bobby’s guardian angel and would always be looking over him. She liked that – begin thought of as so special again.

Her Mummy had acted really funny when Bobby came home. She watched him all the time, like she was scared he would stop breathing again, and she hated leaving his side to go and get anything. That was when Lucy had first started to help look after Bobby. She fetched clean nappies and took the dirty ones to the special bucket outside the back door – the one that Tia always wanted to sniff for ages when she went outside for a pee. Lucy was even given the extra special job of watching the baby when her Mummy had no choice but to leave the room for something.

Of course her parents really trusted her with that job because she had already proved she knew what to do if the baby stopped breathing. Daddy said she was his hero because she had saved the baby’s life but Lucy thought he was wrong; it had been her Mummy who had saved Bobby, not her. Lucy remembered watching her Mummy as she breathed into his mouth and used her fingers to push down on his little chest. Her Mummy had been crying the whole time but she still remembered to tell Lucy how to call the ambulance lady on the phone and she had held the handset to her Mummy’s ear so she could speak to the lady herself. Lucy believed her Mummy was the real hero because she could make a dead baby live again as if by magic.

The very best bit about how her Mummy and Daddy acted, though, was the way they’d treated her. For the first two weeks her Mummy had hugged her for no reason at all. One minute she’d be looking at the baby and the next she was cuddling Lucy and telling her how wonderful she was. Daddy, too, surprised her by bringing home presents for her and Tia or, even better, when he’d taken her to the movies on her own and left Mummy at home with the baby.

That had been the best day ever. They’d bought big boxes of popcorn, fat juicy hotdogs in warm funny shaped buns smothered in thick, sweet ketchup. They’d drunk orange soda until they were fit to burst and scoffed chewy, mouth-watering wine gums until their jaws ached. It had been so wonderful, so special, sitting in the dark with her Daddy laughing at the crazy stuff on the big movie screen and knowing they were there all because of her; because she was Bobby’s guardian angel, Mummy’s special little girl and Daddy’s hero.

Even at school she had been treated differently for a while. Her teacher, Mrs McCormack, had stood up two days after it had happened and told everybody all about it. First of all she’d explained what apnoea was and she wrote the word on the blackboard so everyone would know how to spell it, then she’d asked Lucy to stand at the front by her desk and tell her classmates how she had phoned the ambulance lady on 999 and that her Mummy did a special technique called CPR. When she was finished her tale and everybody heard that the baby was alive and well they all broke into clapping and cheering. Later that morning, during playtime, Jade and Amy had come over to her specially and asked her to tell them all about it again. They asked questions and stared at her with their mouths wide open when she told them about her Mummy blowing into Bobby’s mouth.

In fact, for the whole week she was the most popular kid in her class and even some of the older kids and teachers she didn’t even known said “Hi, Lucy,” when they passed her in the corridor. She felt so good, so special, and it was a huge crush to her ego the following Monday when things began to tail off. By the end of that week Amy and Jade were back to whispering to each other behind their hands and Lucy felt even more along than before – now she knew what she’d been missing all this time. She would do anything to get that great feeling back... so she started to hatch a plan.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“How about a nice glass of rosé?” shouted Bob from the kitchen. “You haven’t had a drink now for nearly a year. It’s not as though you’re breast feeding anymore.”

Mmm, a glass of wine did sound nice and there was no reason for her to keep abstaining. Marie had tried to keep her milk production up whilst the baby was in the hospital but the pump she had was difficult and uncomfortable to use and she just couldn’t express enough. Her milk began to dry up then and, though she still leaked a little every now and again, there was not enough to feed the baby with. The staff at the hospital had put him on formula anyway, just as a temporary measure they said, but with her own milk drying up she decided just to keep him on the bottle. Besides, she consoled herself, he’d already had the cholostorum in his first couple of days and that was the most important bit after all. “A glass of wine would be lovely,” she replied. “Make it a large one but stick some soda water in it will you?” There was no point getting drunk.

Bob wandered back through to the lounge with two large glasses in his hand, one red wine and the other rosé. “Oh, Darling,” said Marie, “you haven’t gone and opened two bottles, have you?”

“Don’t worry,” he replied as he leaned over and switched off the table lamp at his wife’s side, “I won’t make you drink the whole bottle… unless you want to.”

The room felt very cosy with just the glow from the open fire and the television in the far corner of the room. Bob’s eyes twinkled in the firelight as he handed her glass to her and she knew he had something more than wine on his mind. “What’s that look for?” she asked, trying to sound very innocent but hoping Bob had the same idea as her.

“Oh nothing. I was just thinking you looked a bit hot and flustered in that sweater, that’s all. Maybe you should take it off?”

“I didn’t realise I looked hot and flustered. Are you sure it’s not just the glow from the fire?” She liked these little games with her husband. It seemed such a long time since they’d last played, what with the pregnancy and then the scare with the baby. Unless, of course, you counted that first night when Bobby was in hospital… but that had been something else entirely; they hadn’t made love, or even sex for that matter. It had been more of an animal instinct between the two of them but it lacked any kind of sensuality of consideration for each other. Marie missed the intimacy and thrill of something simply, but lovingly done – like a single finger trailed down the length of her body; or a breath at the back of her neck which could cause goosebumps to tingle the sensitive skin.

“Oh, I’m positive you’re hot,” Bob laughed as he took a sip of wine and watched his wife over the top of the glass. “And I’m pretty sure, if you aren’t flustered already, I can get you that way fairly soon.”

“My, we do have a high opinion of ourselves, don’t we?”

“An opinion formed over many years of patient study and practice; of knowing just where to touch and for how long.”

Just listening to her husband talk was having the desired effect on Marie. Her breathing began to quicken and a shiver ran down the length of her spine. She took a small sip of her wine to lubricate her dry palette and savoured the forgotten flavour. God it tasted good. She took a more generous mouthful and allowed the wine to sit on her tongue for a moment before swallowing.

“But what about the kids?”

“What about them? Lucy’s fast asleep and we’ll hear Bobby if he wakes up.” Or the monitor goes off, he thought. “Everything is perfect and it’s about time we had a bit of fun of our own.”

“Okay, I agree… but shouldn’t we just check on Bobby once more to make sure?”

“No, I don’t think you should. I think Bobby’s okay and you are stalling, young lady. Come on, let me help you take off that sweater before you melt.”

Marie smiled and let her anxiety slip away. Bob was right and if she wasn’t careful she’d turn into one of those paranoid mothers who ran to the doctor’s surgery at the first sign of a sniffle. “But what if I get cold once I’ve taken it off? I’m only wearing my bra underneath…”

“Then come and lie down in front of the fire with me… you’ll be nice a warm down there.”

Marie giggled and abandoned herself to her husband’s seductions, slipping quietly to the floor so that she didn’t wake up her sleeping children.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Lucy looked at the little clock beside her bed and read the red numbers slowly; 9:45. She knew that was very late, but not late enough that her Mummy and Daddy would have gone to bed yet. Still clutching her favourite teddy bear close to her chest, she crept to the top of the stairs and peered over the banister. Although she could see the flicker from the television set, she couldn’t hear the programme. She did hear her Mummy giggle once, though, so they must have been watching something funny.

Lucy tiptoed down the corridor to Bobby’s room and slipped silently through the door. She knew she had to be really quiet because her Mummy would hear her on the walkie talkie monitor downstairs. Her plan would be spoiled if she wasn’t careful and then she would never get to be the special girl at school again or have any more unexpected treats from her parents. If her plan worked, though, she would be remembered as Bobby’s guardian angel forever and her Mummy and Daddy would love her always.

Trying to figure out how to get past the special monitor attached to Bobby’s crib had been the hardest part. She had thought and thought really hard. At first she had wondered if she should switch off the alarm attached to the bars, but Mummy always checked it was on before she left the room. For a while she thought she would never come up with a way to stop the monitor buzzing but then an idea had come to her. She remembered she had been late for school one day just before the summer holidays because her Mummy’s alarm clock hadn’t gone off. When they checked to see what was wrong they found that the plug had not been pushed into the wall properly and so it wasn’t getting any power to it. Lucy knew that was what she had to do. If she pulled the plug out, just a little, the metal bits would come away inside the wall and there would be no power to the monitor.

Lucy got down on the floor beside the crib and looked underneath. She inched forward slowly, still careful not to make any noise, and slithered like a snake under the sleeping baby until she reached the socket. It was quite stiff and she had to put two hands on the plug and pull on it with all her strength. Lucy thought her plan would be spoiled then, as the plug flew from the wall and clattered against the crib leg making a terrible noise. She lay silently under the crib for a minute or two, wondering how she was going to explain herself, until she realised her parents were not coming. Maybe the noise hadn’t been as loud as she’d thought after all.

The little girl pushed the plug back into the wall slowly and stopped just short of all the way in. She snaked back out from under the crib and looked at the monitor. Too far; the green light still shone out from the plastic alarm. Lucy got down on the floor and slithered back to the wall again. She worked the plug out slowly, wiggling it back and forward a tiny bit at a time and pulled herself back across the floor. This time, when she looked, there was no light at all on the monitor. It just sat there like a dark shadow on the top of the crib and Lucy realised her plan just might work.

She stood and watched her little brother for a minute while she plucked up the courage for the next bit. It was wrong, what she was going to do; wrong and bad - but she had to if she was going to get back everything she’d had a couple of weeks before. She desperately wanted the people in her class to gaze at her and think she was brilliant and brave again, just like they did when she helped save Bobby the last time; she ached to have her Daddy take her out on special days with just the two of them again and she longed for her Mummy to just hug her for no reason whatsoever except that she was Bobby’s guardian angel.

Lucy slipped her hand between the bars and put it over Bobby’s mouth. The baby turned his head slightly but didn’t wake up and she prayed he would keep quiet, just for a little bit longer. That’s when she felt his hot breath on her finger and realised the baby had switched to breathing out of his nose. Lucy bit her lip in concentration and realised she would have to put her hand over his nose and mouth at the same time. She tried stretching her fingers but her hand just wasn’t big enough to do it and she pulled her arm back quickly and slumped to the floor in defeat. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought as she clutched her teddy bear to her chest. She hated herself for being so little and she bit her hand as a way of punishing it and her for being too small. The bite hurt and she did it again, but longer and harder this time. Tears fell from her eyes and landed on her teddy bear getting its head all wet. This was her favourite bear, the one her Mummy had given her when she first came to live with them, and she didn’t want to get it all wet with her crying. She grabbed it in her left hand and moved it to the floor so it could sit beside her and keep her company.

Lucy’s eyes followed the movements she made with the bear and her eyes rested on its pretty pink ears and soft fluffy face. It was quite a big bear but he was so soft that he could fold really flat and she could even squeeze him into…

That’s it! She thought excitedly. She could push the bear through the bars and put it over Bobby’s face until he stopped breathing, then all she had to do was wait a minute and call her parents to the rescue. Her Mummy could do the CPR thing again and bring Bobby back to life and everybody would treat Lucy like a princess for saving him again. It would be easy!

She decided to make sure everything was still all quite downstairs first, though, and crept to the open door. She stained her ears to listen but there were no sounds, no hint that anybody was coming up here soon, so she returned to the crib and picked up her teddy bear.

It was just as she’d thought – the bear slipped through the bars easily. Lucy took a big breath to give herself courage and placed the toy over her little brother’s face. All of a sudden the baby’s head began to struggle and Lucy realised he had wakened up. She knew she had to be quick now, before he started crying and alerting the grown-ups downstairs, so she pushed the bear down harder on the baby’s face. It took ages, far longer than she had imagined, but finally the baby stopped moving under her hand. Still, she kept the teddy there until she had counted up to twenty, just to be sure, before rolling it gently off Bobby’s face.

She pressed her face close to the bars and looked at her little brother closely. She couldn’t see any hints of blue yet, so she still had a little bit of time before she had to call her parents. He looked really sweet, lying there in the crib as though he was just sleeping, and Lucy reached her hand back through the bars to smooth down his ruffled hair. She realised she was really starting to love her baby brother, though not as much as she loved Tia, and she liked being his guardian angel.

Lucy counted to twenty again and walked out of the room to the bathroom. She’d known she would need a reason for being out of bed in the first place so she pretended to go to the loo and pulled the flush before wandering back into the nursery. Then, as though she had just found the baby that way, Lucy ran to the top of the stairs and screamed down to her parents.

“Mummy, Daddy,” she made her voice sound frightened, just like she had been that first day in the garden, “hurry Mummy - the baby’s stopped breathing again!”