FASHION-DETECTIVE

The miniature dress is taking shape – it has a bodice and
skirt that exactly matches the one Kitty is wearing. And it isn’t
just limp fabric either. It is beginning to bulge and swell. The old
woman must also be sewing a doll to wear the dress, building it
up as she goes.
Another flash of lightning, and Kitty wonders sleepily why
she can’t seem to hear anything anymore.
‘Am I dreaming?’ she murmurs, and her voice sounds like it’s
coming from a long way away.
As she speaks, the old woman stops stitching for a moment.
Kitty blinks.
‘Did you hear me?’ she says.
The old woman’s paper-thin lips suck inward over her gums,
then she blinks her milky eyes and resumes her sewing.
The fire is blazing when Kitty awakens for the third time. The room
is illuminated and the old woman is bent over her work, the needle
flying in and out of the fabric. The doll has arms and legs now, and a
head with yellow woollen hair. In the light of the fire, Kitty can see the
diamond-shaped scraps of newsprint more clearly, can even read some
of the words:
Maisie Gummer
missing
Elizabeth Finch
Harriet Larkin
unable to recover
girl of fourteen
Bessie Smythe
searched in vain
Some of the newspaper diamonds look old. Very old.
A flash of gold glints on the old woman’s finger as she reaches
for a scrap of yellow fabric. She is wearing a ring, a simple thing
set with a single ruby. Kitty has seen it before.
That ring, she wants to say … That ring belonged to my
cousin Ruth.
But when she opens her mouth to say it, nothing comes out
but croaks and wheezes. Maybe she has caught a chill. The old
woman – is she so old, after all? – places careful stitches on the
doll’s face – a pretty, bow-shaped mouth under an elegant nose.
Who are you, Kitty tries to say. What did you do to Ruth?
What are you doing to me?
The woman’s mouth forms the shape of words, but Kitty
can’t hear.
For a fourth and final time, Kitty opens her eyes. She blinks heavily,
trying to shake sleep away. The hut blurs around the edges. Once
more, Kitty tries to rise from the chair, but she cannot move at all.
Coloured fabric flashes before her and she sees that the woman has
somehow exchanged clothes with her during the night. Now it is she
who is wearing the beautiful coloured dress, and Kitty is just wearing
rags.
The woman’s red lips curl in a smile as she makes another
stitch.
It’s getting harder for Kitty to open her eyes after each blink.
Stitch.
Kitty sees the doll in her coloured dress, red bow mouth
pursed shut. The woman is placing the last few stitches, the doll’s
piercing blue eyes and dark lashes.
Stitch.
The woman glances at Kitty with eyes that are the same
precise shade of blue.
Stitch.
The woman rises from her chair with a single graceful, fluid
movement. Kitty’s sight grows dim. The last thing she sees is the
woman move towards her. Then everything is milky grey and,
no matter how many times she blinks, Kitty can’t see anything.
She feels the doll pressed into her hands and, as she grips it, the
stitches come undone and the doll collapses into tiny scraps of
fabric and paper.
Kitty feels the faint brushing of air as the woman passes her.
Muscles creaking and aching, she manages to move her hand.
She reaches out, groping until her paper-dry skin brushes the
cool steel of a needle. She grasps it with twisted fingers, and with
her other hand reaches for a tiny piece of fabric and a diamondshaped
scrap of newspaper.
Stitch.
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