Close Call

Chapter 10

With the doll and the scrubbing brush, the silver coin and her bobbin tucked safely in a small shoulder bag, Peony headed for the backdoor.

"Don't go without..." Cathy didn't want to say goodbye. She already lost one daughter to the hole in the dump.

"Mum, stop. It's not like it's the first time. I'll be back, you'll see. I'm not like them. I don't know why but there's something different. Perhaps because I can see them for what they are."

"And what is that?" Cathy almost demanded. Peony said nothing as she had expected. Even she couldn't explain exactly what it was that she was facing.

Cathy kissed her daughter on her forehead and hugged her close.

"Just remember I love you okay?"

Peony nodded but turned away before her mother saw the tears welling in her eyes.

She strutted down the street trying to convey a confidence that she did not feel. She wished Philip had returned and that she wasn't going into this alone.

*

Philip walked around the back of the mill. He followed the river to the weir and then sat down on the bank, ignoring the dampness soaking into his jeans. Pulling a few stalks of grass up and twirling them between his fingers, he tried to pin-point exactly what it was he was missing. Why was it that when he and Peony went into the Workhouse they could come out and yet the others could not? What made he and Peony different? Why were they aware, why could they come and go freely?

"What's the key?"

He threw the grass stalks into the water and watched them carried by the languid current. One or two caught in the reeds at the water's edge prevented from joining the other continued on downstream, like boats moored in a port or people trapped in time held fast by the mementos they collected.

-The land is reaching out, finding equilibrium – it's seeking balance.

"Peony is right! The marble. That has to be it! And Peony has the bobbin."

Was it these trinkets that made Philip and Peony different, was it because they were carrying a part of the past with them?

As he was fishing his phone from his pocket, a trout broke the surface sending ripples across his reflection and for a moment the image stuttered and Philip could have sworn that the person staring up at him was not himself but Peony; his hair, but the eyes were unmistakably hers.

"No, it cannot be..." but it could so easily. It had been sixteen years clear, going on for seventeen.

*

Cathy was waiting in the kitchen, hovering by the kitchen sink debating whether to pick up the phone when it rang. She snatched it up,

"Philip, I was about to call,"

"Why didn't you tell me Peony is my daughter?"

"How did you? Did she...I,"

"I figured it - you mean she knows?"

"I haven't said in so many words, but she's smart."

"Why didn't you tell me then, before I left?"

"You were going away to study. It was all you had on your mind, all you had dreamed of. I couldn't take that from you."

"So you chose to take my daughter from me instead? All that time lost, wasted..."

"Philip!"

"You gave my daughter's childhood to that wretch you married and who dumped you?"