Facing the Light by Adèle Geras Page A

special sound that made her tremble.
    â€˜I was looking for you, Daddy,’ she whispered. ‘I only came here to look for you.’
    â€˜And why would you think to find me here, may I ask?’
    Because it’s where you go when you paint, she wanted to say, but couldn’t bring out the words.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ she said, hanging her head.
    Ethan Walsh strode to the chaise-longue and Leonora, sitting frozen, unable to move, felt his hard fingers on her flesh, pulling her to her feet, leading her to the door, pinching her hard on the upper arm, muttering things above her head as they went.
    â€˜Never. You are never to come up here again, do you understand, Leonora? Never. You are quite forbidden to come into this room. Am I making myself completely clear?’
    Forbidden
. What a horrible word, Leonora thought. I hate it. It sounds like a wall of black ice.
Forbidden
. Shelooked at her father. He’d knelt beside her by now, bringing his face closer to hers. He put both his hands on her shoulders, and shook her slightly. His eyes were full of something Leonora didn’t recognize. Something she’d never seen before and couldn’t give a name to. All she knew was that the love she usually saw in his eyes when he looked at her had disappeared and this person, shaking her and pinching her shoulders with bony fingers, didn’t like her a bit. Hated her, perhaps, and there was something else there in his face, too. Daddy looked scared. White and thin-lipped and frightened.
    â€˜Yes, Daddy,’ she said, ‘I understand. I won’t come up here again. Not ever. Never. I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.’
    â€˜Don’t say that!’ he almost shouted. ‘Just go back to your room and stay there, please. Wait for Nanny to come back. I have to think.’
    He turned away from her and blundered back into the Studio, slamming the door behind him. It sounded like thunder in the empty house, filling the corridor and reaching down the stairs so that the whole building seemed to shake. Leonora looked at the closed door, imagining her father standing at the window with the blank backs of the canvases staring out at him and the dried-up paint flowers turning black under the fire of his rage. She ran all the way back to her room and flung herself face down on the bed. Stars and blossoms of scarlet and purple exploded under her closed eyelids. Never. She never would go there again. It was a horrid room, cold and unwelcoming and filled with a light that was too bright.
    The hankie in her pocket. As soon as Leonora remembered it, she knew that she must hide it. If Daddy found she had it, he’d be angry all over again. She didn’t know how she knew this, nor why it would be so, but she could feel in every bit of her body that it was true. Wherecould she put it? Nanny Mouse went through her drawers to make sure they were tidy, and if she left it in her pocket it would be found when her clothes were washed, and all the lily of the valley scent would be gone forever. Then suddenly Leonora smiled. She knew where it would be quite safe.
    She got off the bed and went into the nursery. There, she crouched down in front of the dolls’ house. She took her mother’s hankie and folded it over twice. Now there was lace only on two sides of the little square. It can’t be helped, she thought. It has to fit … like that … there. She tucked the fine cotton neatly over the body of the doll that her mother had made to look like the real Leonora, and for a moment she felt as though the lifeless stuffed body was indeed truly
her
, and that
she
was the one lying there, safe under a lace-trimmed coverlet that smelled like her mother. She sat back on her heels and looked at the doll’s bed. They’ll never see it there, she thought, because grown-ups don’t look properly. I shall know about it, though, and I can come and sniff it whenever I want