Chapter 13: Such is life

The next day Jim Dolan took his two daughters for a walk, far enough and long enough for his wife to leave. 

Helen couldn't remember if her father had spoken to her that day, or if he had made her tea when they returned to the empty house, or if he had kissed her goodnight. But she did remember lying in her bed, closing her eyes tightly, and engaging all her senses with as much intensity and receptiveness as she could muster. 

“Are you there?” She asked, fearing that she was fooling herself into imagining the impossible. 

“We are here sweet Helen. We are here, and we will always be here.” 

Wounded Child and Leana could not save Helen from her fate, but they could provide some comfort for her along the way, and the events that had played out so long ago, meant that Helen would be prevented from making her most devastating decision. 

Days rolled into weeks, and weeks into months. Helen still saw the pitying looks, and she felt the shame of being unloved, and the pain of being unheard. 

When she wasn't at school, Helen spent much of her time alone and crying, and when she was at school, she spent much of her time in the sick bed, feeling the pain that ran up from her right-hand side, just above her pubic bone, across her belly, and ending just below her heart. 

Each night in her bed, she would close her eyes and make contact with the young voices that soothed her and kept her company, when she felt all alone and abandoned. There were two voices, and two distinct personalities. She loved the younger one. “She is a playful spirit” thought Helen. “The other one is heavy and hard to be with at times. But she lies with me and wraps her arms around me when I cry, and I believe she knows exactly how I feel.” 

When the family visited her, Mary Dolan could scarcely hide her dismay at the tragedy that had befallen her son and her granddaughters. Her son's silent anger forced her to contain her emotions, but she knew the pain they were all going through. Sitting quietly, she sensed the presence of Leana and Wounded Child. She looked at Helen. 

“I have something for you” she said. 

She picked up the plastic bottle of holy water, which always stood by her front door, and was shaped in the image of the Blessed Virgin. Instead of opening the bottle, she reached behind it for an older, equally sacred object. 

Mary handed the small clay figurine to Helen, who felt the smoothness of its contours, and its inner softness in spite of the hardness of its exterior. She looked into its deep and dark blue eyes, and saw there hope and longing. 

“I believe this belongs to you” said her grandmother. 

Helen placed the clay figure into her pocket, and her grandmother smiled. 

“All will be well” she said. 

“For everything is exactly as it should be.” 

Helen returned to the noisy living room, where her grandfather was telling lewd and bawdy stories, competing with Bob Monkhouse, who blasting at full volume from the TV set in the corner of the small room. Helen's father was sat behind a newspaper, his dislike of the tabloids overcome by his need to shut himself out and to pretend he was elsewhere. And her sister, who had been sat being a good girl, got out of her chair to help her grandmother make the tea. 

After her brief dalliance with Helen in the realms of the mysteries, Mary Dolan had reverted to type, giving love in the only way she knew, desperate to fill the aching and loveless void which she felt in herself, and sensed in her family. 

“Have some more cake Jimmy, just a small one. There’s some lovely angel cake here”. 

“Have some battenburg cake, Jimmy, it will do you good.” 

Blind to his passive and angry resistance, Mary forced the cakes onto her son, with the desperation of a pusher, distributing cheap drugs to secure a new generation of addicts. 

Helen reached for the object in her pocket. She needed the reassurance that it was there, because any hope of human connection she had felt when her grandmother had given her the clay figure had evaporated, and she felt alone again, while the adults around her got on with the business of pretending they were ok.