The girl who never knew

“You’re the girl who never knew,” she said as she scoured the woods for more fallen sticks to throw off the bridge. She’d never played the game before and I was surprised that at eleven she still found it fun, glad that she hadn’t moved on from her childhood just yet. As she examined the available fallen twigs for their winning potential, she’d asked about the locked shed at the end of the courtyard to my new flat. The door was old and rusted, but there was a new padlock on it, robust and certain. The landlords were clear that they didn’t have a key and didn’t know what it contained. The way they said it hadn’t invited further questions and I hadn’t pursued it, hadn’t thought about it since the day of signing the interminable papers to get away, get into my new home.
The weak spring sun shone like a runner straining for the finishing line as we walked on through the park and she told wild tales of doorways to dead bodies and vampire cities underground. She was captivated by the possibility of adventure that was locked behind that door; adventure she made it clear she thought I was foolish to ignore.
“I think I’d rather be the girl who never knew if that’s what’s behind it,” I said, trying to get her mind on lighter matters. I was glad that this strange quirk at my flat and my own apathy had combined to fire her imagination, but all her stories lead to the death of a father ever since her own had left. None of us knew how to ask her about it.
“I like to be the girl who never knew, anyway. It’s better not to know and then we can imagine whatever we want. It’s better to believe in magic.”
“I don’t think Steve believed in magic, did he?” she asked, quickly adding as I looked away, “But that’s why you’re not a proper grown up and a cool auntie” Her smile seemed apologetic as she moved on to ask about last night’s episode of Dr Who. I seized on the opportunity to change the subject; like her I preferred fabricated monsters to my personal demons. My fresh start was fast turning stagnant for me, and I worried over the day when I had to answer those hard questions and lost the shine in her eyes. By the time she’d run out of stories to tell , the sun was starting to lose its battle against the tenacious chill of winter. I took her back to my sister, who was waiting at my flat, grateful to have had the chance to enjoy a coffee and read a book in peace. She hadn’t wanted to talk about her recent divorce, either, just asked if I could help her get some rare time to herself. We were a family who all savoured our silence and took refuge in the stories of others.
After they’d gone, I thought about what my niece said, and I realised the wisdom in her words; with the clearheaded perception only a child can offer, she’d not just given me the title for a story - she’d written mine. I’d always thought that being the girl that never knew had its protections and on better days, I’ll still think there’s nothing to know. People look for a reason for the absence of love, even though the presence of it never requires the same justification. But I realise I’ve stopped asking questions; I’ve stopped believing that there are lessons to be learned. I always was the girl who never knew, but now at least I was admitting it, settling into the world as it was, not how it could be or how I wanted it.
Still the phrase haunted me, how she’d said so brightly “You’re like a girl in a story.” I turned it over in my mind as I straightened the minor disturbance to my little world that the family visit had created. I chewed on it with my dinner, kept returning to it when I was trying to lose myself in a film on TV. I’d seen it before, some second rate Stephen King adaptation that didn’t scare me and was all too easy to tune out from. My niece’s words kept returning to me and repeating like an intrusive ringtone, “You’re the girl who never knew.”
I had to find the key.
I was still getting used to the new flat, there were more cupboards and drawers than I needed and I still kept forgetting where I’d put things. I worked my way through the small flat and came up empty. I stopped after pulling everything out from under the kitchen sink, and finding nothing but three almost empty bottles of bleach and a startled spider. I shut the door rather than deal with it; the girl who didn’t want to know.
Spiders aside, I knew I had to be braver, for my niece I had to keep asking questions. If only I could find that key, open the shed and turn the discarded implements over in my hand. Then I would be a proper grown up, I’d know the truth and still let her keep her stories.
I almost gave up the search. I’d looked back through all the paperwork from my tenancy agreement and realised that there was nothing I could do. The shed was listed as part of the property, but listed as locked and absent of a key as if it was a feature. It was presented in such a matter of fact way, as if no one would ever ask for the key, ask what it held. I thought perhaps I was taking it all too seriously, I was just being oversensitive as usual. It was better to keep it as a locked door to adventure; I sent an email to the letting agents on the off chance that they had a key they’d missed, and then another to my niece asking her to write me a story with her usual flourished illustrations as to what she believed lay behind the door.
I went to bed and although her voice punctured my dreams I’d got used to sleeplessness long before today. I’d gone beyond weeping over it, and tried to let the cold ache of my emptied heart rest. Although the place was still new enough to me to seem unfamiliar and unfriendly in the dark I closed my eyes and tried the deep breathing my doctor had suggested. I tried anything that kept me off the pills he kept threatening as a solution. The clock said four am when I finally gave up and went to make myself a drink. I made some camomile tea, which I hated, it tasted like lawn clippings to me but I kept hoping it would brew up the serenity promised on the box.
As on all my sleepless night, exhaustion hit my limbs as soon as I left my bed, but I knew the tension would return if I went back to bed. I waited for the kettle to boil; my eyes were hot with insomnia and I struggled to get them into focus, scalding my hand as I missed the mug and poured the water on my hand. I ran it under the cold tap, cursing my continual bad luck. As I stood at the sink, letting my hand be numbed by the cold water, I saw it. A key, hanging from the window, too large for the lock on the frame and new like the padlock on the shed. It seemed to glisten in the blue light of early dawn, and brought my eyes into complete focus. I took it down and it felt cool in my hand, soothing the angry raw burn and quieting the voice in my head at last.
I knew it was ridiculous to be so excited about finding a lost key, but I felt like I’d seized some measure of control at last. I pulled on some clothes over the large man’s t-shirt I still slept in and pushed my feet into broken-backed trainers. Despite my added layers, the fresh air slapped me awake and nearly brought me to my senses. I had a fleeting image of myself as a child at Christmas and not the “proper grown up” I wanted to be. I didn’t need to do this now, but I’d never sleep until I knew what lay inside and I wasn’t yet so used to sleeplessness to recognise the moments of madness it can nurture.
I shuffled down the courtyard to the shed and put the key in the lock. As it turned, I felt a chill at the back of my neck. I thought about the film I’d half-watched earlier, how I’d laughed when the hero had talked about his hackles rising. Then the words seemed stilted, a poorly constructed stock-phrased fantasy and the hollow sound of my laughter in my own empty living room had frightened me more. I thought of all the dim-witted horror movie heroines I’d shouted at in frustration as they walked blind to their doom as I looked back at the sway of the curtains against the back door. The dim fluorescent light from the kitchen flickered as I pulled off the padlock and opened the door.
The first thing was the cold, not the fresh chill of the early morning, but a bone aching bitterness which drained my energy. I sat on the cold stone flags but hardly felt the damp seep into my trousers. Needles of fear pierced my limbs and my hands shook as I leaned forward, mesmerised by the profound black emptiness that confronted me. I had to know what was inside.
My eyes were still adjusting to the gloom inside the shed, shapes shifted under the stuttering light from the kitchen. A real grown up would have brought a torch, but those memories of the afternoon with my niece was far from my mind as I inhaled a sour stench. It was a hopeless smell, cheap perfume and strong cigarettes in an airless bar, a horror of an entirely different order. Thoughts of my own dating misadventures broke that early spell and my mind cleared as I strained to see through a newly descending morning mist. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the yawning black emptiness of the shed, and patted my throbbing burnt hand on the ground, searching for the key, but it had gone.
Deep inside the darkness, I could hear a the sound of a strangled scream. I remembered how years before my ex boyfriend had laughed at my fear when I’d first heard foxes mating outside the window. Then I’d stayed awake in terror as their tortured-sounding wailing had made me afraid to open the curtains as I sat with my phone gripped in my hand, waiting for him to get home. Then I couldn’t imagine a sound more chilling, but this noise was so bleak, it echoed in my head, not touching the still silence of the air. It was a supernatural sound, and in my fright I kept fumbling for the key, even though I knew now it would never be found.
I edged away like a crab, unable to stand or even turn away as I kicked the door. It banged against the frame and the pitched scream in my head knocked me backwards. I rolled onto my front, and as I moved my hands to my ears to try to block the sound I felt familiar hot tears in my eyes. I wanted to turn away in revulsion but I had to close that door, I had to shut it out. Slowly, my eyes fixed on the dying bay tree on the opposite side of the courtyard, I edged forward and slowly pushed the doors closed. I lost a shoe and it caught and dragged on the door. I kept pushing, my battered trainer fell inside and I used the other foot to hold the doors together. Without taking my foot from the door I rolled onto my back again and sat up. I grasped the padlock and ignored the burning sensation in my hand to hold it tight. At last thinking clearly, I realised I didn’t need the key to lock the shed again. Quickly, I looped the padlock round the loops in the doors and as the locked clicked shut the noise abated. I felt the strength return to my limbs and I stumbled back inside, inhaling the fresh scent of the flowers my sister had brought me and settling into the silence.
I thought of my niece and her wild tales of adventure, and of the nights I’d lain awake, tortured by my own uncertainty. Now I am the girl who knew, and I liked the child’s tales of the girl who never knew better. Like the fallen dry twigs that had made up the afternoon’s games, I’d been thrown off a bridge, but the current has yet to carry me to the other side.
Even when I gave in and let the doctor prescribe pills, I never slept in that flat.