The Woman in the Yellow Dress

The last time anyone saw their mother, she was wearing a yellow dress.

Not bright yellow.

Not cheerful yellow.

A faded colour, like old newspaper left too long in the sun.

Years later, Libertine would struggle to remember her face.

Coraline would struggle to remember her voice.

Yet somehow both sisters remembered the dress.

Memory is strange that way.

It keeps the things that make no sense.

The village searched for three days.

Men with dogs crossed the fields.

Women gathered in doorways and whispered.

The river was dragged.

The woods were combed.

Nothing.

No footprints.

No body.

No note.

It was as though she had stepped out of the world entirely.

Their father grew quieter with each passing week.

At first he insisted she would return.

Then he demanded she return.

Finally he stopped speaking about her altogether.

The silence settled over the house like dust.

Libertine was too young to understand.

Coraline was younger still.

Children do not comprehend abandonment.

They simply wait.

Days became weeks.

Weeks became months.

The front door remained closed.

The yellow dress never reappeared.

One winter morning their father loaded them into a car.

Neither girl knew where they were going.

The journey seemed endless.

Grey roads.

Grey skies.

Grey buildings.

Eventually they arrived at a place surrounded by iron fencing.

The building itself was enormous.

Cold.

Institutional.

The sort of place where laughter sounded inappropriate.

The Home for Unwanted Infants.

The sign hung crooked above the entrance.

Neither child could read it.

A nurse took Coraline's hand.

Another lifted Libertine into her arms.

Their father signed some papers.

He never looked at them.

Not once.

Years later Libertine would remember that detail more clearly than anything else.

The nurses were not cruel.

Neither were they particularly kind.

There were simply too many children.

Too many cots.

Too many tears.

Babies cried through the night.

Toddlers stared through windows.

Some were adopted.

Some disappeared.

Some remained.

The sisters learned to sleep side by side.

Whenever they were separated they became distressed.

Eventually the staff stopped trying.

Coraline developed the habit of holding Libertine's sleeve while she slept.

Libertine pretended not to notice.

Outside, seasons changed.

Inside, time stood still.

Then one spring afternoon everything changed.

A couple arrived.

A gentle woman with silver hair.

A tall man who smiled whenever he looked at

children.

They had no children of their own.

The nurses spoke warmly of them.

The sisters did not understand the paperwork.

Or the signatures.

Or the excited conversations.

They only understood that for the first time in their lives someone wanted them.

The house smelled of bread.

Fresh flowers stood in the kitchen window.

There were books.

Blankets.

A garden.

A blue slide.

At night the woman sat beside their beds and read stories.

Coraline listened carefully.

Libertine was one day going to write her own stories.

For a little while they were happy.

 Perfectly.

Magically.

Happy.

Which made what happened next so much worse.

One rainy afternoon a car pulled into the driveway.

The sisters watched from the window.

Their father stepped out.

Neither recognised him at first.

He looked older.

Harder.

More tired.

The adults argued.

Voices rose.

Doors slammed.

The silver-haired woman cried.

The tall man stared at the ground.

By evening the sisters were back in the car.

Taken away once more.

Their father believed their mother would return if the children were home.

He believed she would come looking for them.

He believed many things.

All of them wrong.

The woman in the yellow dress never returned.

Years later she would be declared legally dead.

A line on a certificate.

A conclusion without an answer.

But on certain nights, when moonlight spilled across the bedroom floor, Libertine and Coraline still spoke of her.

Not often.

Never for long.

Just enough to keep the memory alive.

Because somewhere beneath all the lies, secrets and tragedies that would follow, one question remained.

What happened to the woman in the yellow dress?