Doll by Nicky Singer Read Free Book Online

spot looking at the chopped red flesh, the pieces of it, falling away from his knife and thinking this, it looks like blood. Drops of blood, falling away from the knife. And I want to make it stop. I have to stop that blood, that knife.
    “ Pull yourself together, Tilly ,” says Grandmother. “ You don’t know what you’re talking about .”
    And Gerda says: “Mama’s all right. Mama loves you. She’ll be better in the morning. Go now, Tilly.”
    But I can’t go. I’m transfixed. And any minute now Luca’s going to stop chopping and ask why I’m hanging around here with my mouth open.
    “Aargh!” screams Luca.
    He has cut himself. He has gashed the tip of his left index finger.
    Bright red blood is blobbing on to the chopping board.
    “It’s only petals,” says Gerda. “It is only petals falling. Red rose petals.”
    “Aah, aah, aaah,” shouts Luca.
    “Stupid git,” says Chef.
    Luca turns to the basin behind him, runs his finger under a stream of cold water.
    While his back is turned, I stretch up to the chopping board. Put my finger in the blood, smear it. It smells familiar. It smells of metal. In the blood are chilli bits and chilli seeds. I scoop them up, put them in the starched white pocket of my apron. Then I take out the rubbish.
    The alleyway is cool, a breeze coming down from the street above. I breathe deeply. Take a stinking lungful of rotted vegetables, stale beer, car exhaust fumes, cold stone floors.
    Only petals. Just red petals. I put my hand on Gerda, around her wrist. Feel the prick of the tiny, red glass beads. The triangular point of one in my fingertip. Just red petals.
    I lift the bag of bottles, push it up towards the mouth of the green wheelie bin. This wheelie bin is empty. The first of the bottles thud on to plastic, then they begin to crash and smash on top of each other. A single wine bottle jams itself into the corner of the black bag, refusing to budge. I put my hand deepinside the bag, wrest it free and fling it into the bin. It bounces, clinks, spins and settles.
    I am calm now.
    The bag is torn. I throw it in the ordinary rubbish and then I head back through the kitchen.
    Luca’s finger sports a blue plaster. He is crushing garlic, using the heel of his hand on the back of that very sharp knife. He smiles.
    “Hi, Tilly,” he says. “How ya doing?”
    “Fine,” I say.
    He nods, crushes.
    “Who’s plating up?” yells Chef.
    “Coming, Chef,” says Luigi.
    And I’m coming too. Up the steps and into the different hubbub of the restaurant. I will not look at Table Seven.
    “Did you bring me any chips?” asks Aaron.
    “No.”
    “I’m starving,” he says plaintively. “Starving.”
    I busy myself stacking crockery.
    “Do you know those people at Table Seven then?” Aaron asks.
    “No.”
    “Why are they looking at you then?”
    “They aren’t.”
    “They are. At least he is. The boy. Is he your boyfriend?”
    “Shut up, Aaron.”
    “You should have got me chips. I’d’ve got you chips.” He scrapes lettuce into the bin. “And she’s looking at you.”
    “Who?”
    “The woman. The one with the big hair and the red nails.”
    Mrs Van Day looking at me and thinking what, saying what? That poor creature, to think of that poor creature and her mother.
    “The mother who loved you,” whispers Gerda.
    But I hear something else, something very high and very clear, above all the noise of the restaurant. Something louder than the scrape of forks and knives, and the conversational din, something that cuts right through low music and the whisper of my beloved and it is one word.
    “Darling.”
    And I can’t really have heard her say it, because she is so far away. But I’m looking now and there she is, Mrs Van Day leaning across to her daughter, and herbody language says it too. “Darling. My darling.” And Mercy smiles, she opens, blossoms there in the gaze of her mother. Her mother who loves her right now. Her mother who is alive.
    Ping! The