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She’s back. You have her back. She’s safe.
I let the words go round and round my head as I drifted in and out of consciousness. I thought I was right. I wasn’t in London, of that much I was certain. I could smell the salt from the sea blowing in from the doors we’d left open.
I was home.
‘Little bird,’ I heard my voice whisper into the early morning.
In my half sleep, I reached out needing to pull her close to me. To hold her tightly. To make her come apart in my arms as I attempted to erase my dream. But all I found was a void in our bed, a cold space where she should be, and my arms were empty, so very empty they ached. As empty as they’d been on the night my mama was taken.
Mama.
Suddenly, I was gone again. No longer dreaming, but caught up in a nightmare of my own making. Terror had me in its grip. It contracted its talons until all I could feel was pain where my heart should have been and its claws tearing at my skin. They flexed and released over again, raking up the memories I’d fought so hard over the years to keep locked away.
‘Mama… NO!’
I heard a child screaming. They shouted out again and again, before I recognised my own voice.
‘Mama. NO! Let her go… Let her go!’
My outstretched hand grabbed hold of the empty sheet beneath it. Acknowledging the feeling of abandonment, pain ripped through me.
They were gone.
I’d lost them both.
It was my fault.
‘Serafina. Serafina… SERAFINA!’ I could hear the desperation in my tone.
She didn’t answer.
My head was turning from side to side as I tried to bring myself around. This wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be happening.
Not now.
Not again.
“Pensa ai tuoi peccati.” The voice of my mama’s abductor came back to me after all the years of me refusing to listen. His tone was immediately recognisable as were his words. The words he’d repeated to her time and time again as he dragged her from our bed, underneath our blankets of old coats. I’d lashed out, connecting my cold, bare feet against his shins as I tried to get him to release her. When I’d opened my mouth to shout at him, only screams had left me. So, I’d pulled my fingers in tight and bit down onto my bottom lip as I flailed around in the dim light, reigning punch after punch on his head and body.
But he never even flinched. It was as though I didn’t exist and all the while he’d repeated and repeated the same four words over and over, “think on your sins.” Finally, he’d back handed me. I’d fallen back onto our straw mattress, with the taste of my own blood in my mouth, the ringing inside my head replacing her shouts and the tone of his voice.
And as I’d opened my eyes, I’d understood she was gone… they wereboth gone.
‘Pensa ai tuoi peccati… Pensa ai tuoi peccati.’ I could hear his words falling from my mouth. ‘No. NO!’
Slowly, the early morning light began to filter through the darkness. But the pain remained. The fear had me frozen to the bed, trapped there by my own guilt and as usual my stomach began to revolt.
Almost coherent, I stood up hurriedly, and on wobbly legs I rushed to our bathroom. After dry retching, and with water pouring from my eyes, I emptied the contents of my stomach down the toilet.
‘Salvatore?’ I heard her voice question.
Unable to answer her, I reached behind me and pushed the door hard to close it. Once again separating the light and darkness in my life.
Moving towards the shower, I stepped in… and under a blast of cold water I began to wash away the smell of my own fear.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SERAFINA
