There was once a king, who ruled over a rich and fertile kingdom, and the king had a daughter, who was the most beautiful in all the land.
One day, a huge and terrible ogre came to live in the wild forest at the edge of the kingdom. Each night, the ogre came out of the forest and stole away great handfuls of chickens, until almost all of the chickens had gone. And each night after, the ogre came out of the forest and stole away three or four sheep at a time, until almost all of the sheep had gone. And each night after that, the ogre came out of the forest and stole away a fat cow, until almost all of the cows had gone. The people despaired and called upon the king for help, and the king sent many men to search, but the men were frightened of going too far into the wild forest, so the ogre could not be found.
Lucy’s first meeting with Faith went very badly. Lucy felt afterwards that she should have known, because bad things always come in threes. In the morning she’d spilled Ribena down her new top, and then she’d arrived at Shelley’s to find that her friend’s dog was sick and they had to stay in and wait for the vet instead of going swimming. Bad things always come in threes, and Lucy always felt she should have known that something was wrong when Shelley’s mum dropped her home, far earlier than expected. But she didn’t know, and it was a cold shock to stand on the doorstep and to look through the living room window, and to see a stranger wrapped around her dad. It made her head spin so fast that for a second, for the smallest fraction of a second, she thought that maybe her mum had come back. And when that fraction of a second was done and she knew that wasn’t right, it made her stomach flop over so she felt sick.
The three of them sat down in the living room to talk. Her dad had tidied up while Lucy had been gone, the cushions were plumped and the faint smell the hoover left behind hung mustily in the air. It fought with Faith’s perfume. Sweet perfume. Lucy sat in the armchair by the fire and her dad and Faith sat side by side on the sofa. The TV was off. Lucy and her dad never sat in the living room with the TV off.
‘Do you remember that training day I went on?’ Lucy’s dad asked when they were settled, leaning forwards, leaning towards her, narrowing the gap over the coffee table.
Lucy nodded. Faith smiled nervously. Lucy tried not to look at her.
‘Well, that’s where I met Faith.’
He explained it all so tactfully, she could practically hear him picking the words, carefully, as though they were made of glass, stacking them delicately in front of him, building a wall he couldn’t even see in the gap over the coffee table.
‘I didn’t want to say anything to you before because I wasn’t sure if it was serious but, well, I think it is.’
A shared smile on the other side of the glass wall. Hands slipping into one another’s.
‘And I’m glad you two have finally met, because I think you’re going to get on really well.’
He grinned. Faith smiled nervously.
Lucy said nothing.
Faith flashed a look at Lucy’s dad, who nodded encouragingly, and Faith turned the nervous smile around. ‘Your dad’s told me all about you,’ she announced, brightly, brittle bright. ‘How are you getting on with your gymnastics?’
‘Shelley’s dog died.’
Her dad’s face melted in sympathy. Faith’s face, for a second, for the smallest fraction of a second, froze hard. Brittle hard.
Now, the king’s daughter was as clever as she was beautiful, and seeing the misfortune that had befallen the kingdom, she thought that she might help. One night, she took the fattest cow that had not yet been stolen and left it at the edge of the forest, knowing that the ogre would never resist such a tasty treat. Sure enough, in the morning the cow had gone. But the king’s daughter had a plan: before she had left the cow, she had tied a bag of grain to its back, and she had cut a tiny hole in the bag of grain. As the ogre had carried the cow back to its lair, the grain had spilled from the sack, leaving a trail that led deep into the forest.
It seemed an age before Lucy was released from the living room, with the hoover smell and the TV off. From the stairs she could hear Faith simpering, ‘Oh, that was horrible, I never know what to say to children.’ And her dad laughing, ‘You were eleven once!’ It seemed an age before she reached the sanctuary of her bedroom, and it was only then, safely then that her silent, startled brain began to move. She remembered the training day, two whole months before. She remembered every time since that she had gone to Shelley’s after school or stayed the weekend at her nan’s. She remembered every evening spent alone with a babysitter.
That night, Faith stayed for dinner.
After that, Faith stayed for dinner a lot, and sometimes they went out, all three of them, and sometimes Shelley came too, whispering to Lucy in the cinema queue, ‘Your dad really likes her, though.’ And he did. He laughed a lot when he was with her and he smiled a lot more than usual even when she wasn’t around. Except when Lucy tried to talk to him about her, tried to get him to see the brittle that she had seen. Then he got all serious about giving Faith a chance. And then he got annoyed with the ‘sulky face’ and the ‘nothing nice to say’. And when Faith brought back the doll from her business trip to Prague, presenting its baby-face and pink ribbon to Lucy as though she expected her to be thrilled, he finally got angry and told Lucy she was being nasty and ungrateful and he didn’t want to hear it anymore.
He left the doll sitting in the corner of her room, sitting in the wicker chair that she no longer fitted. He left it watching her, staring at her. Brittle stare. And then he walked away, on his side of the glass wall, and Lucy became quieter and quieter, and went to bed earlier and earlier, and woke up with red, puffy eyes.
The king’s daughter followed the trail until she was far deeper into the forest than her father’s men had ever dared to venture. The only sign of another soul was the far off sound of a woodcutter chopping wood, but the king’s daughter was not afraid and she followed the trail on and on until she eventually came to a clearing with a great cave at one side. And sitting in front of the cave was the terrible ogre itself!
The king’s daughter slipped behind a tree to decide what to do, but as she did a twig snapped beneath her foot and with one great leap the ogre was at her side. ‘What’s this creeping in my lair?’ it growled. ‘A young and tender morsel! You’ll do nicely for something sweet after my dinner!’
On the Tuesday before Lucy’s twelfth birthday, it rained. One by one, everyone from gymnastics got picked up, dashing out of the school porch to the damp, homely warmth of a waiting car. One by one they went, until only Lucy was left. It got late and dark and cold, and she was beginning to finger the mobile in her pocket when a car pulled up, the driver’s window dark against the curb, and honked.
It wasn’t her dad’s car.
It honked again and she peered around to see if anyone else was coming. Then the window wound down. ‘Lucy, your dad’s been caught at work so I’m picking you up. Now come on, I’m in a hurry.’
Lucy didn’t move, caught between not wanting to go and not being able to stay.
‘Lucy, will you come on!’
Faith was impatient today. No laughing. No smile.
‘Oh for God’s sake!’ She climbed out of the car just as Lucy gave in and made a dash for it, opening the door so suddenly that Lucy had to swerve to avoid it, skidding on wet leaves and losing her balance. Faith caught her by the arm, steadying her, but Lucy pulled away. Instinctive. She left Faith standing in the cold, persistent rain. Faith let out an angry breath of air before she got back into the car. Brittle angry.
When they got home she made Lucy do her homework straight away, before watching TV or even having something to eat. She said that Lucy’s dad had told her to make sure it got done. So they sat on either side of the dining room table in the yellow glow of artificial light, Lucy working on her maths and Faith glaring at her laptop. Outside, the rain pattered on dark windows. The drip from the broken guttering set up its usual percussion on the bins beneath: tappety tap, tappety tap, tappety tap, tappety tap. The rhythm always got inside Lucy’s head, and once she’d noticed it her fingers started to join in, absently drumming on the table: tappety tap, tappety tap, tappety tap, tappety tap.
‘Lucy, would you stop that please.’
Lucy stopped. For a moment. She stopped automatically, and then realised that Faith was getting very annoyed by whatever was on the laptop. And Faith was getting even more annoyed by the drumming of her fingers. So she counted to ten, staring intently at her textbook as though she were so absorbed in her work that she had no idea what her fingers were doing, and: tappety tap, tappety tap, tappety tap, tappety tap.
‘Lucy, I said stop that!’
Dutifully, Lucy stopped, suppressing a triumphant little smile. She had no idea how long it would be before her dad got back, but this was a far better way of passing the time than maths. She counted to ten again and: tappety tap, tappety tap, tappety…
She was pulled to her feet, launched across the table, slammed forward so hard that her hipbones smashed painfully against the wood. Her wrist burned where Faith’s grip twisted her skin too far round and they were nose to nose. ‘How about I break all your fingers and see if you can still do it then?’
The ogre carried the king’s daughter to the cave, which was filled with a huge mound of bones from all the cows and sheep and chickens that it had stolen away, and tossed her in on top. Then it bent its head to a great boulder and rolled it across the entrance, sealing it tight.
Lucy’s dad knocked on her bedroom door and slid in, but he didn’t come over, the way he usually did when he found her sobbing so hard; he stopped just inside the door. ‘Are you alright?’ he asked, and there was an edge in his concern.
Lucy slowly uncurled on the bed until she could see him. She wanted to hold out her arm and show him the angry red mark that screamed evidence around her wrist. But there was an edge, and her wrist stayed cradled in her lap.
‘Faith told me what happened.’
Tear drowned eyes widened.
‘And you know she didn’t do it on purpose.’
‘But she did! She grabbed me…’ How could she not have done it on purpose? How could he possibly think that?
‘Of course she didn’t!’
He was angry.
‘She wanted to stop you from falling, that’s all, and she’s very sorry if she hurt your wrist when she caught you but she did not do it on purpose and I don’t want to hear you say anything as spiteful as that again. You should know better than to be running in the rain.’
Angry with her. Cold. Cold frosting up the glass.
The next day at school, Lucy kept her jumper pulled down over her hand so nobody would see the bruise.
Four months later, Faith moved in.
But the king’s daughter was as brave as she was clever, and she wasn’t at all frightened of being left inside a cave to wait until she was eaten. She pulled from her pocket a small tinderbox that she always carried and made a little fire, to keep her warm and to let her see while she planned a way to escape.
The weather got suddenly hot. Everybody at school immediately stripped down, ties loosened, shirts untucked, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Lucy’s dad noticed, through the dirty glass, that Lucy wasn’t behaving quite like the others: she heard him talking to her nan about it when they went round to help clear out the garage. She heard him talking in the kitchen about big jumpers and thick tights and she heard her nan saying that it was probably just a phase, that she was at an age where girls often became overly self-conscious. She heard them telling each other it was nothing to worry about. So she kept quiet and got on with packing old tools into a box on the oil smell, grit floor of the garage, careful not to hurt herself on the rusty saws, the little kindling axe, her granddad’s old shears. She had to be particularly careful because her dad was also trying not to worry about how clumsy she had been of late. Before she went into the kitchen to join them, she made sure her long socks were pulled right up, in case her jeans rode higher when she was reaching for something and revealed the marks on her leg.
Making sure her sleeves went right over her hands was already habit.
It had become unusual for her dad to be around on a Saturday. Something important was happening at work, something to do with a promotion, and he had warned her that he would be out a lot for a while, but that was OK now he knew there was someone there to take care of her.
He was gone again the following weekend, leaving Lucy and Faith alone.
Lucy stayed in her room. It was safer to stay in her room, as long as she kept the volume of the TV down as far as she could. The baby-faced doll sat on the wicker chair and watched her. She could hear Faith moving around downstairs.
By mid-morning, she was hungry. She muted the flashing bright cartoons and crept over to the door, listening to see where Faith was, holding her breath so that she might hear the smallest creak of a floorboard or shuffle of a foot. A peal of laughter from downstairs told her Faith was on the phone, which meant that she probably had time to creep down to the kitchen and back without being noticed.
Cautiously, quietly, she turned the handle and pulled the door open, just a crack, just enough to peer round and to listen again and to be absolutely sure before she ventured out. Faith was still talking, so Lucy crept slowly onto the landing, chewing at her bottom lip as she concentrated on each soft step, the cuffs of her jumper balled up in the tension of each fist. Down the stairs, keeping to the side where they were quieter, stepping carefully over the loud one at the bottom, she tiptoed past the living room door. It was ajar, and she could hear Faith clearly, agreeing with the person on the other end of the line. Whatever they were talking about had obviously turned very serious, but Lucy paid no attention to the one-sided conversation. It was enough that Faith was occupied. In the kitchen she got on as quickly as silence allowed, grabbing a juice carton from the fridge, finding the multipack of crisps in the cupboard. She flinched against the noise as she fished a packet out, freezing, wide eyes fixed on the door, waiting to see if Faith was coming.
There was nothing.
She put the multipack away as gingerly as possible and headed back to the hall, speed now as important as silence, the last dash to safety, and it was such bad luck that the living room door opened at just the wrong moment and Faith saw her. Saw her creeping.
They both stopped dead.
‘What are you doing?’ Faith demanded. ‘I didn’t hear you come down.’
Lucy stopped breathing. Every part of her went hard, tensed against what might come, shoulders drawn up, arms clamped against her sides. She tried to make herself smaller, tried to draw herself in as though by pure, desperate willpower she could make herself disappear.
Faith’s eyes flashed. ‘Have you been listening to my phone calls? Is that why you’re sneaking about down here?’
She should have held out the juice and the crisps to prove her innocence, but they were pinned tight to her chest and wouldn’t move. She should have said something, but her mouth wouldn’t open.
‘Are you spying on me?’
Faith took an angry step into the hall, glaring through suspicious, narrow eyes, brittle narrow, and finally Lucy’s body moved, carrying her backwards as Faith came forwards, keeping the distance, keeping the distance, keeping the distance until she backed into the oven and had nowhere else to go, Faith still coming, accusing, spitting words, spitting into Lucy’s face, and Lucy’s hands came up to hide her face, letting the food drop unnoticed to the floor. Faith never touched her face, never left a mark where someone else might see, but this time Faith was really angry, this time the fear and the anticipation and the tight, sick knot in Lucy’s stomach seemed larger and harder and her hands came up to hide her face. But Faith didn’t hit her. Not this time. This time Faith grabbed her by the arm, vice-like grip, fingers digging deeply, painfully between muscle and bone, dragging her out of the back door, dragging her down the garden, dragging her on her knees when she tripped and her feet went out from under her for a few steps, until they reached the shed.
It wasn’t long before the king’s daughter realised that the smoke from her little fire was drifting towards the back of the cave. Following it, she discovered a hole in the roof, too small for an ogre to notice, but just big enough for her to squeeze through. Quick as a flash, she climbed out into the fresh air, where she could hear that the sound of the woodcutter’s axe had moved much closer.
The shed was small and dark and damp in its corner under the leylandii trees. There was no window. Lucy stood in a tiny square of space amid the bikes and the junk and the boxes from her nan’s garage. She stood in a tiny square of space, fearful eyes trying to make out shapes in the gloom that eked through knotholes and slipped planks of wood, catching occasional movement in the shadows, spiders in the corners, not daring to move or sit down for fear of what she might disturb. Her socks were cold and wet from the grass outside; her arm ached painfully where Faith had held her and her breathing came in shallow little gasps, sobbing even though shock had stopped the tears, old tears drying prickling salt lines down her cheeks. She stood, terrified, in the dark and the damp, in a tiny square of space, and she waited.
When Faith eventually unlocked the door, Lucy didn’t move. For a moment they just stared at one another, Lucy blinking and squinting at the figure outlined in sudden blinding day. Faith looked odd. She looked like she’d been crying. She looked scared, and the scared was worse than the angry because Lucy didn’t know what would come from scared. Brittle scared. So for a moment, they just stared at one another.
When Lucy crawled back onto her bed, crawled stiff and cramping limbs into a tight, tight ball right up against the corner, it was four o’ clock.
The king’s daughter started back along the trail of grain, to find her way out of the forest, but she had barely begun when the ogre appeared before her with a cow slung over its shoulders for dinner. It was surprised and angry that she had got free. ‘But you won’t get away again,’ it promised. ‘I will put you in my cave and this time I will tie you up!’ And the ogre lifted her onto its shoulders with the cow, and carried her back to the clearing.
But the king’s daughter had been expecting this. She was as quick as she was brave, and while she had been escaping from the cave, she had made another plan. No sooner had the ogre bent its head to push the great boulder aside, than the woodcutter jumped out from behind a tree!
Lucy spilled the water. She didn’t mean to. It was an accident. It was only water. But Faith had been waiting for it all day.
They had both been waiting for it all day.
The woodcutter swung his sharp axe high and in one strike, chopped off the ogre’s head.
It was an accident, it was only water, and Lucy dropped to her hands and knees in her pyjamas, frantically trying to mop it away. But Faith walked in and saw, and when Lucy looked up into Faith’s face, brittle face, she knew. She knew this meant more than a slapping or a beating. And she knew that she couldn’t. Not again. She couldn’t spend a whole night standing in the cold and the dark and the damp with spiders crawling through her hair and rats scratching outside. Not again. Not this time. And when Faith caught her up, grabbing the bandage on her scalded arm, she cried out. And when Faith dragged her down the garden she screamed and she pleaded and she pulled back and Faith gripped tighter. And when Faith threw her into the tiny square of space she pushed to get back out, and she screamed and she pleaded, and she hit and she scratched and she fought and she fought and somewhere in the middle of it all she snatched a glimpse into Faith’s eyes.
And it broke.
The brittle broke.
She saw it crack like ice on a frozen lake and she, the weight in the very centre, dropped. Ice cold water engulfing, running through, and all around shards of the brittle, sharp, biting edges.
The first blow from the splintering hunk of wood sent Lucy stumbling back into the boxes and the junk, toppling it all over, raining down jars of nails and screws, spade handles clattering, deckchairs snapping, the sudden smell of turpentine making her choke until the second blow caught her square across her back, knocking the turpentine air from her, bringing her to her knees, narrowly missing the old rusty saws and the fallen boxes. With the ice water shock she felt the skin on her back pop under her thin pyjamas, breaking under the line of the wood, then a flare of white heat, and she still couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move, eyes bulging, mouth open, trying to gasp, panic trying to draw in some air, and the wood coming down again, smacking into her thigh with a dull, wet thud and she saw the axe sticking out of the fallen box with her Granddad’s old tools and the rusty saws.
When the king’s daughter and the woodcutter arrived at the castle, carrying the head of the terrible ogre, the people were amazed and there was great rejoicing. The king rewarded the woodcutter with fine clothes and many riches, and he called for a wondrous feast in honour of his very clever daughter. All the people cheered.
It was quiet when all the people had gone. Lucy sat very still on the edge of her bed. Very still. Inside she felt as smooth and calm as the surface of a tranquil pool.
Smooth and calm as an unruffled surface.
The baby-faced doll sat on its wicker chair and it occurred to her that it wasn’t watching her anymore; it was waiting. It was waiting for her. So she slid off the bed, slowly, moving slowly in case she sent a ripple across the calm still, in case she broke the surface, and she sat herself cross-legged on the floor. Their eyes were on a level here, so the baby-faced doll could see her properly.
‘There was once a king, who ruled over a rich and fertile kingdom,’ she began, and the doll listened intently. ‘And the king had a daughter, who was the most beautiful in all the land.’
(First published in ‘Sic’ by The Knot)