Now she saw it. Now she was afraid. As if the threat hadn’t just been in my head, but I’d said it aloud. The jolliness disappeared from her face along with the sympathy. I stepped closer. She stepped away. Now she was near enough to the wall to feel its cold stone through her habit. Genevieve’s molecules still inhabited this room. Her laughter still echoed from its stones.
It was the man I’d seen earlier. I knew it. Had they brought her directly to him? Or had they let him shop, as if for a puppy? Perhaps he had walked up and down the rows of cots, peering into every one, until my Genevieve’s bright blue eyes stared back at him. So alert. So beautiful. So plump and rosy on mother’s milk. Worth any price the nuns asked. Perhaps she’d performed her new trick for him and laughed. Enchanting. I’ll take this one.
And Sister Mary Clare handed my baby right over to him. Genevieve, bundled into a stranger’s arms and carried away. And all the while I was working in the very same building.
The nun stared straight at me. You’d think the shape of my face would be something she’d remember her whole life, but her eyes never took me in. Not really. All she saw was her counterfeit kindness, reflected back at her as something real. Her gaze was no more authentic than the studied furrow in her brow, now, as if she cared about me. As if she hadn’t presided, jolly and smiling, over the kidnapping of my child.
A criminal. In the course of this story thus far I have described to you a variety of crimes. But none – none – is more heinous, more violent, more unconscionable, than this one. The theft of my baby. Nothing I could unleash upon Sister Mary Clare could ever equal what she’d just done to me.
My fingers twitched. They rose, almost without me. I placed both hands around her neck. How satisfying her gasps – first of shock and then of pain. She tried to gasp but couldn’t. No oxygen for her, my hands saw to that. Her eyes bulged. Her hands came up to claw at my arms but I worked with the strength of a mother protecting her child – too late but none the weaker. She tried to bat me away but her blows were like air, as if she knew she had no right to defend herself.
It felt good. It felt like the beginning. I would kill her and then I would leave the convent and find the rich, slick-haired man and retrieve my baby. But first this sweet task, choking Sister Mary Clare until her face turned blue. Once she was dead, I would smash her head against the stone wall, one sharp blow. When she fell to the floor, I’d smash her head a final time, breaking it open on the hard-tile floor, that cruel pink and blue. Sister Mary Clare made a gurgled sound of fear, which only fuelled the pleasure I took in harming her. Soon you will be dead.
I could feel her pulse beneath my hands, steady and stoppable. Slowing down. Against my palms, her throat tried to gurgle but couldn’t. I pressed harder. Her eyes bulged. Good. Excellent. Good. I’d scarcely known my own strength. It was the first religious moment I’d encountered between these hallowed walls.
Then a baby cried. Perhaps it was Susanna’s baby. That distinct hungry mewl, sharp and desperate. My milk let down with a searing sting, soaking through my shirt and apron. I let go of the nun. Sister Mary Clare raised her hands to her throat, stroking away what damage I’d done, reclaiming the room’s oxygen with great honking inhalations. I could see welts, red now; by evening they would be black and blue. She stared at my chest, milk spilling through my dress and apron, its sweet smell filling the room.
How far away was Genevieve at that moment? Every second brought her further and further from my arms. If I raised my hands again, if I killed Sister Mary Clare, I’d be incarcerated for good. There would be a trial. My parents would discover my whereabouts through newspapers. The harlot who strangled a bride of Christ. I would spend the rest of my life in prison, if I was lucky enough not to be executed.
So I kicked off the clogs and ran from the nursery with my soiled apron, in my stockinged feet. Out of the convent. Into the nuns’ graveyard. The children from the orphanage played in the yard, I could hear their voices rising up into the air. When I got to the iron gate, I only had to kick the bar, turn sideways and squeeze myself through, just as I’d practised. I ran away from the road, across the fields. After a while, in the distance, I heard the convent’s bells and then a constable’s siren.