Chapter 20
The baby was crying. Penny listened. Would her mother hear? She opened her eyes wide but could see nothing in the deep blackness of her small bedroom. She rolled over to face the closed door. The perfect line of light from the landing barely illuminated the carpet. She heard the door of the drawing room open downstairs and the soft tread of her mother ascending. There was the comforting ‘shush’ of her mother’s stockinged legs as they brushed together approaching Penny’s door, walking past, then headed into her baby sister’s room.
‘Have you had a bad dream, darling?’ her mother murmured.
Penny listened and caught the rustle of baby Suzie being gathered from her cot and into her mother’s arms.
Suzie had stopped crying and was snuffling. Penny heard the kisses and imagined them being dropped onto Suzie’s soft scalp and downy hair.
‘Mummy’s here, darling. It was just a naughty old dream. Now where’s Bunny?’
Penny, five years old, tightened her hold on her own teddy, Sniffy. She pulled him into her arms and sniffed his flattened, furry ear. She whispered to him, ‘Suzie has had a bad dream. She’s only got Bunny but I’ve got you.’
Eventually Suzie was soothed back to sleep and her mother walked back and past Penny’s room. Penny called, ‘Night-night, Mummy.’
She got no reply.
Penny Leighton didn’t feel right. She hadn’t been feeling right for a long time now. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she had felt right.
She
