February 20012 – London, St Johns Wood

“Noooooooooo mmmmmmmmgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh noooooooo mmmmmmnggggggggggg mmmmmmmahhhhhhhh ggggghhhhhhhhhh noooooooooooooo.”

Claudette, or what used to be Claudette wasn't bending any more. She was pacing the cage, as much as the cage, and her debilities would allow her to pace. The cage, looked big, but for a statuesque mature human being with extraordinarily long legs and a radically altered gate, the inner dimensions of the cage didn't take much pacing. But that didn't matter. The fact that it took barely two swinging steps for Claudette to semi crawl, in a stoop on her tortuous stilettos from one side to the other didn't matter. It was the soul destroying noises she was making that would creep up the spine of anyone who heard her. There were words in there, or a word 'no'. She hadn't broken any of Yazmyn's rules because she wasn't directing her words at Yazmyn or for anyone's ears. The noise, and that word was just a symptom of a depth of despair she had reached that she hadn't up to this point experienced before. The noise was a constant, a total constant volume of wet dripping noise that came from the hideously distorted lips of Claudette. Her full, usually sensuous lips were distorted simply because every so often she would stop, look through the bars and into the other cage. The one marked DAUGHTER. She would take in the sight of Tabby, her baby, her offspring, her daughter – absorb the terrible sight, look at the thing that used to be Tabitha and then a new pouring of that noise would emerge, each pouring a louder and more desperate tone than the last.

Tabby had been brought into the cage room on a leash by Serena. Strangely, the sound of her hobbled stiletto steps approaching from outside could be heard from the cage room, and Claudette had cocked her head to one side, like she was listening, like she was recognising those steps. Like somehow those stiletto steps were familiar to her for some reason but couldn't quite nail it in her head. That Claudette was in a different place and that she hadn't spared a thought for her one and only offspring since falling into Yazmyn's grasp didn't really register. Actually didn't register at all. Although, the fact that she wouldn't be put up for mother of the year anytime soon couldn't be solely blamed on herself. At least not here and not now and not under these circumstances. Claudette's attentions had been instinctively drawn to the only door in and out of the cage room. The electronic click and whir as the mechanism inside recognised the key card and sent the mechanism into action. Serena had been the first to enter, holding the leash. Claudette's head had tilted, and her eyes narrowed a bit as she tried to recognise the woman. She didn't. Even when Tabby came into the room proper, at first it didn't register with Claudette. She looked, then squinted her eyes, looked again as Tabby was brought in. Even without Claudette's own traumas she could be forgiven, at least a little for not recognising Tabby, her Tabby at first. The vision that made up her daughter was not the one she remembered. What had been brought into the room by that woman, on the leash was not the Tabby that Claudette remembered. There was a look, then a closer look as Claudette pressed her face up to the bars of the cage. Then another squint of her eyes as she tried to focus closer. Then closer still at the young girl being brought in to visit her. That thought did go through her mind, that the girl was young. What told her she was young was the weird manner in which Tabby handled her predicament. She handled it sort of, but in doing so gave away her teenage years and lack of maturity of stance etc.

“Noooooooooo mmmmmmmmgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh noooooooo mmmmmmnggggggggggg mmmmmmmahhhhhhhh ggggghhhhhhhhhh noooooooooooooo.”