Prologue 

Undercover 

It’s squid-ink black, warm and quiet. All the outside sounds are muffled.  Sunlight shines orange, almost red, dimly filtered under the soft, heavy,  crimson  blanket.  I’m  playing  my  game,  counting  my  fingers  and  toes,  marvelling  at  how  they  work,  flesh,  bone and  blood,  see-through  fingernails peeping out into the world.  

I’m  curled  up,  legs  crossed,  knees  tucked  under  my  chin,  sucking  my  thumb. My eyes are closed. I’ve grown accustomed to my own little make believe world. No one is allowed in, no matter how much they tappety tap tap at the door.  

It’s just me and Mummy. Mummy and me. Tee hee hee.  

I can hear Mummy’s voice drifting down as she sings. Mummy sings like  a  lark,  all  swooping  and  fluttery.  I’m  close  to  Mummy, in  her  lap,  face  pressed  up  against Mummy’s  chest,  hearing  the  kettle-drum  heartbeat  that drowns out the world outside with its regular, soothing thumpety thump.  Sometimes,  after  Mummy  has  eaten,  her  belly  gurgles  like  the  emptying of a bath, loud liquid squeezing through a small opening. I wish we could stay here forever and ever wrapped up warm and safe. But I know that I’m going to have to come out and face  the music sooner or later.  

For now, I can dream and imagine a world with fairies and glow worms  and  people  without  edges  who  laugh  like  flowers  and  sing  like  birds.  Sometimes  I  can  feel  the  tension  of  other  deeper  voices,  but  I  curl  up  tighter and squeeze my ears completely shut and the other voices are sent  away. I flex and extend my toes, delighting in the way that the soles of my  feet alternately crinkle and stretch. I’m discovering my limbs for the first  time, testing my strength and finding my range. I’m impatient but I know  that wishing won’t make it happen. Nothing before its  time. The world  can wait until I’m good and ready to make my entrance. Regal, poised and  battle-ready. Armed with my shield and buckler. Well, fingers and toes to  begin with. The rest, I know, will come.  

One  snow-cold  day,  with  little  notice  or  fanfare,  it  is  time.  Mummy  is  moaning. I try to ask her what is wrong, but the words do not form. The  moaning gets louder, bouncing around inside my skull until it gets tight  and too suffocating and I shit myself. Oh oh, not good, not the way I had  planned this. Quite frankly embarrassing. This will not do at all. I have to  pull it back, recover my composure. All dressed up for the play, ready to  make my ‘Ta-da’ entrance, then tripping over my too-big shoes. I’ve got  to style it out, to get the audience laughing with me, not at me.  

The jumper is being pulled over my head, but the neck is too tight and it’s  stuck. I can’t hear and I can’t see. I’m being squeezed by the poloneck. My  eyes are held so tight they’re getting all bloodshot. I’m going to look like  I’ve been crying, damnit. My little heartbeat is thundering in my ears, ten  to the dozen. I can’t think straight. I want to shout ‘Stop. Not yet. I’m not  ready, wait, wait until I’m . . .’  

I’m imprisoned. The blanket is now a straitjacket inside a cell, inside a  prison. But it’s alive and pulsing like too many rubber bands cutting off  my circulation. Underneath the brown skin  I’m  turning  blue. No  one  said it was going  to  be like  this: endless  squeezing, screaming torture. It’s a bloody outrage. The ink and the squid  are merging, the fleshy tentacles constricting the life out of me. And finally  the jumper is over my head and I’m furious. How dare they! I did not agree  to  this,  I  did  not  consent.  I  want  to  tell  them,  ‘You  do  not  have  my  permission’.  I  want  to  write  an  angry  letter  to  The  Times,  signed  ‘Disgusted of Bradford’, but I can’t speak and I don’t know how to write.  

Me and the squid and the ink have slithered onto Mummy’s legs. My eyes  still squeezed shut, my legs kicking in fury. I want to go back. I want my  warm blanket and my squid-ink and my diluted sunshine. I want calm and  red-orange  and  the  gentle  rocking  from  side  to  side  when  she  walks,  carrying me in the cradle of her hips. Safe, secure, protected. But I know  there is no going back. And for the first time in my life, I cry. Valves shut  like doors slamming, others swing open and blood gets diverted.  I will  have to circulate it round my body all by myself now with no help from  Mummy.  

The  high-pitched  shrill wail  of grief,  pain and anger,  of lungs  suddenly  press-ganged  into  action,  sucking  in  harsh  cold  air  and  stripping  the  oxygen  from it. Alveoli blow up like little balloons as,  for the  first time,  outside  oxygen  crosses  into  my  blood.  This  breathing  malarky  is  hard  work. This is going to be my life from now on. No one will breathe for me.  No more swoosh and gurgle. Mummy’s heartbeat is no longer in my head.  I dare not open my eyes.  I dare not look at the new world order. Bring  back the orange and yellows and reds.  

I’m lying on Mummy’s chest on the outside now. Mummy and me. Boo hoo  hoo. 

Knock Knock 

It’s thigh-deep snow outside. December 1962, the coldest winter of the  century. Mercy has come too early. They are alone. Mummy is too weak  to walk. But after the four left Back Home and the two born here, this  is her seventh child and she knows the routine. The cord is still attached,  thick, twisting and pulsing, a sturdy rope attached to a lifebelt,  connecting them forever. Mummy waits until the plate-sized, liver 

coloured afterbirth slithers out, following Mercy like a shadow.  Mummy can’t reach the scissors, so she leaves it still attached to Mercy,  but not to her. She can’t leave Mercy because it’s too cold. There is no  phone and Mummy is too tired to shout for the neighbours. Wrapped in  a towel, they wait while Mercy plans how to get back to the perfect  make-believe world inside her mother.  

The door slams. 

‘Liv,’ he shouts. ‘Ah wheh you deh?’ He’s dog-tired from  

the foundry. Ready for a hearty meal. He finds them in the bedroom,  blood and guts everywhere, mattress ruined. He looks at Mummy, sweaty and tired, clutching another pickney. He  uncrosses Mercy’s legs and peeps between them.  

Another girl.  

The upstairs bedroom, on the first floor at the back of the old  Victorian house, faces north so the February light is cold and anaemic.  The paraffin heater standing to attention in the middle of the room  throws out almost as much poisonous fumes as heat. Mercy has barely  left this dark, damp space since she came into the world six weeks  ago. 

Daddy is tall, very tall, a proper giant. But also skinny, sinewy with  muscles like knotted ropes. There is a wisp of a moustache, and  between thick black eyebrows, the bridge of his nose is pronounced  and his nostrils flare out. Cheekbones look like they have been cut  with a machete and the whites of his eyes are slightly yellow. If he  took off his hat you would see that his hair comes to a dramatic  widow’s peak at the front with deep recesses at either side. The Trilby  makes him go on forever. The grey double-breasted jacket swings  open to reveal a pale blue shirt and the matching suit trousers that flare  out before coming back into a turn up at the ankles. They are held up  with a belt and, to be on the safe side, a pair of black elastic and  leather braces.  

He takes a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket: Capstan Full  Strength. He taps the box twice on the side of the cot before grasping  the little gold strip between his thumb and forefinger and circling it to  open the pack. He takes out a cigarette and places it between his lips  in the corner of his mouth. Long fingers fish into the left-hand trouser  pocket and wrap around a chrome cigarette lighter, two inches square  with slightly rounded corners and etched with paisley pattern  markings, blackened with the oil from his fingers. With a practised  thumb, he flips the lid and a small leaf-shaped flame hovers, flickering  yellow at the top. 

He leans forward, cups his hand around the cigarette, inhales, and the  tip catches fire. The cigarette glows red and the paper begins to burn. He  sucks more deeply and then blows the blue-grey smoke out of the side  of his mouth, away from the baby. He picks her up.  

‘Shhhh,’ he says. ‘Hush noh pickney. Yuh madda soon- come, soon-come.’  

‘Eeeyaah, yaaah!’ Right in his face. Her cheeks reddening, her eyes shut  tight, her mouth a trembling oval. The cry hammers on his head. Where  did this one come from, this screaming bundle, weeks early, angry and  

demanding? He puts her back down in the crib and stares at her,  astonished at the intensity of her cry. The two of them face off. She will  not stop. He cannot bear it.  

‘Shut up,’ he says in a low, threatening whisper. ‘Shut up.’ The sound  penetrates her soft skull. Loud and insistent. Knock-knock. Knock-knock. ‘Shut-up. Shut-up.’  

This isn’t right.  

Mummy opens the bedroom door to see Daddy bending over the crib.  What is he doing?  

‘Shut-up,’ he says rhythmically, ‘shut-up,’ knock-knock, ‘shut-up,’ knock knock.  

‘Lord have Mercy,’ she screams. ‘Sonny, leff de baby.’  

She can’t run or even walk quickly. She has to hold on to the furniture to  get over to the crib. He is so intent on his task that he barely hears her,  the cigarette lighter held like a pen in his right hand, the corner pointing  at Mercy.  

‘Shut-up.’ Knock-knock. ‘Shut-up.’ 

She swoops and pulls Mercy out from under him. 

‘Puppa Jesus on the cross,’ she cries, as she puts the baby  

to her chest. Mercy’s head jerks to the left, automatically rooting for the  breast: the milk and the warmth and the slightly curdling smell. Mummy  gazes down at her, her thumb gently brushing the bruise blooming on  Mercy’s forehead. 

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SYNOPSIS: Bradford, December 1962. A precocious Mercy makes her reluctant entrance into the world, torn from the warm embrace of her mother’s womb, to a chaotic household that seems to have no place for her. Her siblings do not understand her, her mother’s attention is given to the Church, and the entire family lives at the whims of her father’s quick temper. Left to herself, Mercy finds solace in books, her imagination, and the quiet comfort of her faithful toy, Dolly. But escapism has its limits, and as the grip of family, faith and fear threatens to close in, Mercy learns she must act if she wants a different future; one where she is seen, heard, and her family set free.

Excerpted from The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson. Used with permission of the publisher, Cassava Republic. Refrain from reposting or reproducing this content without prior consent.