Free The Girl Below by Bianca Zander Page B

but couldn’t. Just as my neck collapsed, I managed to turn my head to one side and my mouth came to rest only millimeters clear of the foul liquid.
    I had taken drugs before, in reckless combinations, but this was different. I wasn’t out of it, I was hyperpresent, and fighting for my life. Somehow I found the strength to turn over onto my back. I concentrated on breathing, listened hard to the rhythm of my lungs. Slowly the water receded, started to melt away as if it had never been there, and the tiles were soon only damp. I got to my knees and spewed into the toilet, emptied my stomach of whatever rank poison had been there.
    Vomiting broke the spell completely, and I was surprised by how quickly strength returned to my body. I was still a little shaken, but I got up, turned on the light, and looked around the bathroom. It was orderly, solid, even homely, and I picked up my toothbrush and luxuriated in the ordinariness of cleaning my teeth.
    I was so relieved that my powers of observation deserted me. Then, treading softly down the hall, I heard a squelching sound and looked down at my clothes. They were soaked through and covered in a kind of mulch. In the living room, I peeled them off, and some of the mulch got on my hands and gave off the odor of mold. I thought back to the shrubbery I’d fallen into, and decided it must have been muddy underneath, though I did not remember it being so. But after everything that had happened that evening, it was a feasible enough explanation, and I tried hard not to think of an alternative.

Chapter Six
London, 1981
    I n the months that followed my parents’ wild party, I waited, tense with anticipation, for my mother to confront me again over the whereabouts of her locket. I thought it was only a matter of time before she spoke to Esther’s mother and exposed the fib I had told about Esther breaking it, and each day I rehearsed my confession.
    But autumn fell, and still nothing had been said. Mum simply acted as though there had been no locket. She never mentioned it, let alone my part in its disappearance. At first I was relieved, but as time went on, I was utterly bewildered and then finally just plain curious. Why did my mother seem not to miss the locket that had once been so precious to her? When enough time had passed that I was sure I would not be blamed for its disappearance, I found an opportunity to ask her about it. She was sitting at her dressing table, French-plaiting her hair, and I was going through the remains of her jewelry box when I found the silver catch that I had sliced off the locket. I held it up and contorted my face into what I hoped was a look of innocent puzzlement. “What do you think happened to the rest of it?” I said.
    Mum abandoned the plait, midfold, and took the piece of silver from my hand. “Someone stole it,” she said. “After the party.”
    “Who?” I said, my chest thumping. “Who stole it?”
    “I don’t know. It was very dark.”
    “You saw them take it?”
    Mum put the catch back in the jewelry box and snapped the lid shut. “No,” she said, seemingly irritated by my question, “I couldn’t see well enough. It was late at night.”
    Though I asked her again, once or twice, her answer was always the same, and soon enough, I forgot about the locket and became preoccupied with other momentous things, such as Christmas. That was the year I ruined it for myself, by myself. At nearly seven, I was far too old to still believe in Santa Claus, but believe in him I did, with a fervor that bordered on religious fundamentalism. Every year on Christmas morning, I woke at three or four A.M. —sometimes as early as midnight—and pounced on the pillowcase bulging with toys at the end of my bed. It wasn’t the toys I was after, but their supernatural smell: a sugary aroma of nutmeg, fresh snow, and reindeer fur that to me was the essence of magic. To try and preserve the perfume, I held off playing with my presents for as long as