The Chosen One
by Sandra Crook
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
It seemed that at that moment, a rising tide of tension permeated the house. Even Taylor became crotchety, often bursting into tears when Ellie leaned clumsily over the pram, her plump face blocking out the light and making the baby uneasy.
If Helen suggested going for a walk, Ellie always wanted to push the pram, even though it was difficult for her to control it, short as she was. Several times, Ellie pushed it perilously close to the edge of the pavement, and Helen was on tenterhooks until finally Ellie grew tired and relinquished control to her mother.
She tried to find ways of diverting Ellie into other activities so that the baby could get some peace and, she reflected guiltily, so that she could have the baby to herself.
But Ellie wasn’t interested. “I need to be here for Taylor,” she protested one afternoon when Helen suggested she enroll for piano lessons, horse-riding sessions or the local Brownies pack. “She’s my sister, and I need to look after her.”
“But I can look after her, Ellie,” said Helen. “You don’t want to be hanging around the house when your friends are all out there having fun.”
“She needs me,” insisted Ellie, tugging Taylor out of the crib and heading towards the door.
“What are you doing?” said Helen, anger and anxiety making her voice sound unnaturally harsh.
“I’m going to play with Taylor in my room,” said Ellie, tightening her grip on the baby as Helen advanced upon her.
Taylor started to cry.
“The baby stays with me,” said Helen in a steely voice, reaching down for Taylor.
There was a moment’s resistance as their gazes locked, and then Ellie, sensing the determination in Helen’s eyes, relaxed her grip and allowed the baby to be taken from her. She watched resentfully from the door as Helen, her heart thumping uncomfortably, laid the grizzling baby back in the crib and covered her with a blanket.
Helen rocked the crib for a few minutes whilst the baby’s whimpers died away and she struggled to regain control of herself. “Now then, Ellie,” Helen said brightly, making a superhuman effort, “how about you and I make some cookies together?”
Upon reflection, she felt she had probably been a bit too abrupt, but the prospect of Ellie taking Taylor up to her room and being alone with her had evoked an inexplicable sense of horror and concern.
Ellie watched her cautiously from the doorway, twisting the door handle this way and that, kicking at the carpet. “What about Taylor?”
“Taylor’s asleep right now. But, if she wakes up, she can watch us bake, can’t she?”
Ellie walked slowly into the kitchen, pausing to stick her head right inside in the crib as she went past. The baby stirred, and Helen held her breath, hoping she wouldn’t wake up.
“Why can’t I take her to my room?” Ellie asked, as they were rolling out the cookie mixture on the kitchen table.
“She’s not a doll, Ellie. Babies should be with a responsible adult at all times, at least until they are a bit older. Anything could happen, and you wouldn’t know what to do.”
“Anything like what?” asked Ellie curiously.
Helen felt that gnawing sense of anxiety again. She looked at her daughter’s plump face, flushed with concentration as she pressed out the biscuits with a pastry cutter. They’d always enjoyed baking together, but Helen wasn’t enjoying it now. She knew she was doing this only so that Taylor could have some peace. It shouldn’t have to be like this, she thought.
“Did you grease the baking tray, Ellie?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Oh, sorry, forgot.” Ellie climbed off the chair on which she had been kneeling and went to get the butter. “Can Taylor have one of these cookies when they’re baked?” she asked.
“Taylor’s far too young for solids yet, Ellie. Maybe in a few months.”
The moment was over, and Ellie did not try to take Taylor to her room again. Nevertheless, Helen tried not to leave the pair of them alone in a room for more than a few minutes. She couldn’t explain the reason for this, not even to herself, and her concerns increased when, a few days later, she returned from a moment in the kitchen to find Ellie half in and half out of the crib, attempting to stuff cookie crumbs into Taylor’s tiny mouth.
“Ellie!” she shouted angrily, and Ellie, startled, nearly tumbled off the side of the crib, causing it to rock wildly. Taylor began to cry.
“She’s hungry,” insisted Ellie stubbornly.
“What did I say to you about Taylor not being ready for solids, Ellie?” Helen said. “I told you it would be several months before she could try them.”
She had been about to say that the crumbs might have caused Taylor to choke, but suddenly that seemed like a very unwise thing to say. Why? What was happening to her? She felt as though she were becoming paranoid.
She tried to talk to Tom about it, but he became annoyed. “What are you saying? That our daughter might harm her little sister?”
“I just feel uneasy, Tom. I can’t explain it. She’s just too...” She couldn’t finish the sentence, unable to describe accurately Ellie’s overwhelming interest in the baby.
“Maybe you’re suffering from post-natal depression,” Tom suggested, concern clouding his face. “This isn’t like you at all, Helen. Do you think you should see the doctor?”
Helen gave up trying to explain. “Maybe I’m just tired,” she tailed off lamely, regretting having tried to share her concerns and feeling even worse about her dark sense of foreboding.
“I’ll try to get home from work a bit earlier for a while,” said Tom, laying his hand over hers. “Maybe you could have a late afternoon nap whilst Ellie and I look after Taylor.”
She smiled and tried to appear grateful. What she really would have liked would be for him to leave work early and take Ellie off her hands altogether, but she didn’t really feel she could say this after Tom’s initial reaction to her expressions of concern.
Tom was as good as his word, and in the weeks that followed, he was home by five o’clock, enabling Helen to go upstairs, ostensibly for a nap. It didn’t help; she just lay on the bed every afternoon, listening for the sound of Tom’s voice downstairs, needing to be sure he hadn’t left the baby unattended. When she didn’t hear him, she would go downstairs, claiming to be too restless to sleep, but usually she found that Tom had taken Ellie and Taylor out to the park, or that he was sitting out in the garden with them both.
Until that day.
On that day, unnerved by the silence in the house once again, she went downstairs. Taylor’s pram was outside in the garden, but it was empty. Ellie was nowhere to be seen. Anxiety began to unfurl in her chest, and her breath became ragged and painful. The side door to the garage was open and when she rushed in, she could see Tom’s feet sticking out from under the car.
“Tom!” she cried.
He shimmied quickly out from under the car, alerted by the alarm in her voice.
“Where’s the baby?” she screamed at him.
His face was blank. “Ellie’s looking after her out in the garden.”
“They’re not there, the pram’s empty.” The garage seemed to be whirling around. Helen staggered to the workbench to support herself, her brain racing with possibilities that until now she had managed to hold at bay.
Tom wiped his hands on a rag and pushed roughly past her to the empty pram. “They can’t be far,” he said worriedly. “I’ll just pop down the road a bit and see if I can see them.”
As he approached the gate that led from the garden out onto the street, it opened suddenly, and Ellie came through, smiling happily at them both. On her own.
“Where is she?” Helen screamed, tears coursing down her face. “What have you done with Taylor?”
Ellie’s smile faded and she regarded her mother with disapproval. “I took her back,” she said. “She was my present, and I didn’t like her. You’ve always said you should take things back if they’re not right, so I did.”
“Where did you take her, Ellie?” Tom asked urgently, holding Helen back as she struggled to reach her daughter.
Ellie’s mouth set in a way that made Helen’s heart sink. “Shan’t tell you,” she said.
* * *
“When can I come back home, Mummy?” said Ellie, one day when she and Tom were sitting at the picnic tables in the park. Katie, the supervising social worker was sitting at the next table, writing a report and trying to look as though she wasn’t listening.
“When you tell us where you took Taylor,” said Helen swiftly, before Tom urgently grabbed at her arm.
Katie looked up quickly and half-rose from her seat. They’d been advised not to cross-examine Ellie. Nobody really expected to find the baby alive, but the psychiatrist had said that if Ellie wasn’t pressured, she might eventually tell them where she had taken Taylor. But that hope was now three months old.
“Oh, right,” said Ellie, concentrating on filling in the colouring book with the crayons they had brought her. Her tiny pink tongue protruded from the corner of her mouth.
She glanced sideways at her parents. She knew they were lying. Once she told them what she had done with Taylor, they would stop coming to visit her.
So she never would.
Copyright © 2011 by Sandra Crook
