Читать книгу Trapped: The Terrifying True Story of a Secret World of Abuse онлайн | страница 32
‘Five,’ I said quietly, dropping the half-mauled bar into the bin and then bending to pick up the wrapper.
Phoebe balled her fists and threw her head back, wailing a tortured roar of fury.
‘Well done, my dear. Good on you!’ The old man who had watched us inside the shop shuffled over and patted my arm. ‘Old-fashioned discipline, that’s what she needs. Shame you didn’t do it when she was a toddler but at least you’re on the right track now. Let’s hope it’s not too late.’
Shamed, I gave him a crooked smile and turned towards home, praying the outraged Phoebe would follow me without further protest.
She repeated everything I said for the rest of the day – apart from the time she spent screaming for no discernible reason. By midday Emily and Jamie had lost all trace of humour and decided to seek refuge in the garden. Shutting themselves away in the summerhouse, essentially a shed with curtains, they played cards and board games for the entire afternoon. How I longed to follow them and draw up the barricades behind me. I felt guilty that the placement was spoiling the start of their school holiday but at least they were together and it was probably best they gave Phoebe a wide berth for a few days, in case she took it into her head to lash out at one of them again.
My attempts to engage Phoebe in some sort of constructive play failed. She seemed to lack any imagination, preferring to walk around in circles like a caged animal, talking incessantly. Every now and again she would enter a period of calm, when she would sit and chat like any other eight-year-old girl. Once or twice I broached the subject of the mother and baby in the shop, explaining that if she couldn’t say anything nice, it would be best not to say anything at all. She responded with a blank expression, as if the incident had been a figment of my imagination. Sometimes it was as if Phoebe had just emerged from a coma and had no access to old knowledge, even if it was from only a few hours earlier.
At least with her hair now clean and less matted, she looked a bit more ‘normal’, bordering on pretty actually, when she wasn’t flapping her arms in a crazy way. I wondered how she behaved at school and whether she had any friends she could play with. She couldn’t seem to sit still, even for a minute. It was as if she had restless leg syndrome that had spread to her whole body (my mum would have called it ‘Syvitis Dance’). Whatever the cause, her strange actions were exhausting to watch and my appetite was shot to pieces by the time we sat down for our meal that evening.