The Lamb

by Lucy Rose

Mama explained to me that a house didn’t mean bricks, four walls and a roof. A house meant something in our hearts and people without them were called strays. They were the lost ones.

‘The rabbit woman asked herself, over and over again, Why did the hunter have to find me? Could it not have been my mama, my sister, or the other wise women of the burrows? Because that was true, it could have been anyone, anyone whose coat was shiny enough to tear from flesh, anyone who caught the human hunter’s fancy. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong person.’

thought of Papa. He wouldn’t have liked Eden. He liked quiet and unambitious women. Women you could look at but not hear. I knew that because Mama had been quiet around him. Only giving small pieces of herself if he was in a good mood, she hadn’t shared herself with him wholly.

I’d wanted to look exactly like Mama and now I did, but all I saw was ugliness.

‘I know you’re right here with me, but I’m trying to hold on to every detail because I’m scared you might disappear. So, I hold on. To the lines by your eyes. The corners of your mouth. Your eyelashes. Your freckles. I want to remember everything.’ Mama took another deep breath. ‘Just in case

you disappear down the long road and never come back to me.’

Our love was rotten, but still looking for the burning it craved; for anything to revive the embers that had gone out long ago.

but somewhere inside I knew she would always remember him and wonder where he was. And I would always remember how delicious he’d tasted.

‘That’s something he was an expert in. Loving the idea of someone. He loved the idea of me before he peeled back all the layers.’

‘Men love the idea of women. They love the question about a woman. The mystery yet to be solved. Then, when he discovers she has a personality all of her own, neuroses and quirks, just like him, he decides . . .’ Mama didn’t finish her sentence. ‘Your papa didn’t love me. He wanted a wife. That was the part that made my hunger stronger than I’d ever known. I was expected to be perfect and quiet. Compliant. I’ve felt that my whole life but never like I did when I was with him.’

‘No. But he didn’t love me either. It is such a lie that we have to love our own blood.’

‘Things are forgotten all the time. Good and bad. We’ve forgotten all the lives people have lived and all the quiet folk, but it doesn’t mean they weren’t important.’

I don’t always get dinner, I wanted to say, but I knew that one sentence would spill more than a river of secrets from me. Secrets the bus driver didn’t need to know. The cupboards are sometimes empty and I’ve seen silverfish in the jars of rice we keep on our shelves. The food is running out. It’s running out fast. There isn’t much of the stray left at all. ‘Mama is tired a lot,’ I said. ‘But she makes sure my belly is full.’ The bus driver nodded. I didn’t know if he believed me but my words were enough to satisfy him. Mama was right. Men always believe lies.

To me, he was a church. Calm, wise and quiet. Most wouldn’t realise that because he didn’t look like a church, but he was.

When I looked at Abbie, her eyes were large. She said nothing, but I knew one thing for certain. She was scared too. I had been too loud.

To Eden, the potential of who I’d become was so much more beautiful than the way I spoke back. The way I longed to be around Abbie even though I was supposed to hate her. The way I had my own mind.

wondered if this was what being a real human was: accepting you were pieces of other people too. The people you loved and the people you hurt.