Lost Daughter Page 4

  When they were younger, in the early days of the marriage, there had been times when they would lie in bed together and talk about which one of them would go first. George had always been insistent that it would have to be him. ‘I’d never be able to live without you,’ he had said. It hadn’t really been morbid; it had seemed a remote, hypothetical prospect, like the end of the world. Quite romantic, really. A way of affirming how precious the present was: of acknowledging how much their togetherness mattered.

  But then she had got pregnant. He had been tender with her then, too. So full of hope. It was before he had learned how much there was to be afraid of.

  Sometimes you just had to lie, even though it seemed the worst thing in the world to have done when your thoughts and memories were boiling away inside you and your husband was next to you snoring obliviously, sleeping the deep sleep of the man whose heart might have been broken but whose conscience was untroubled.

  God forgive her.

  The timer goes off and she returns to the kitchen. Nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice: the scent is instantly consoling. Her back protests as she stoops to take the barm brack out of the oven. She can’t have that. She can’t afford to get frail. Can’t get old. Or at least, can’t get old and infirm. Yes, the years are ticking by, but as long as she’s in reasonably good health it doesn’t matter too much, does it?

  George had been at peace when he passed; his time had come, and he had been free to go. But it isn’t like that for her. She isn’t free, and she can’t leave. She has to stay strong and well.

  She has so much still to do. She’s still needed, and George never knew how much.

  Perhaps, in a way, she had lied to protect him from ever having to know.

  She sticks a skewer in the barm brack and it comes out clean. She covers the loaf tin with a clean tea-towel and sets it aside to cool so that it’ll be easy to turn out, and switches off the oven.

  Mustn’t get forgetful. That’s not an option either.

  Best not put it off any longer. When you’re frightened of something, you should just try and get it over with. If you can.

  She goes to the hall cupboard, opens it, and there it is, to the side of her anorak, her good woollen overcoat and her mac: a blank, slightly battered green baize noticeboard. It still has a faintly ecumenical scent from all those years in the church office – the odours of cold old building, pine floor cleaner and modestly dispensed incense have all soaked in.

  It isn’t a big thing – it is perhaps two feet high and one foot across, about the height and breadth of a toddler with arms outstretched – and it is light, but still, pain shoots down her spine and into her thighs as she bends to drag it out, and then lifts it.

  She grits her teeth and carries it to the living room and props it up against the antique armchair, which George had never let anyone sit in and is so horribly uncomfortable she still discourages visitors from using it.

  Now for the photo.

  There aren’t many to choose from. A slim packet, which now lives in the bottom drawer of the sideboard. For years it had been hidden, like a teenage girl’s diary, under their mattress – George could be relied upon never to help change the sheets, so there was no risk of discovery.

  She has never shown these photographs to anyone.

  She flicks through them and makes her selection. The snap looks a little bit faded, even though it’s never been out on display. It shows a little boy in a brown corduroy jacket and red wellies, standing in a muddy lane. A happy boy. A boy who likes puddles, and doesn’t mind the rain.

  The Blu-Tack is in the drawer where it always is, along with the tape and parcel paper, the scissors and the drawing pins. It won’t do to pin or stick this, though. It won’t do to damage it.

  She had suggested to Leona that it might be best for the ladies to bring copies of their pictures, just in case, and had mentioned this to the one or two who had called in response to Leona’s flyers and posters. But she had neglected to organise a duplicate for herself. All it would have taken was a little trip to the photocopier at the newsagent’s. But she hadn’t done it. She really was getting forgetful.

  Or maybe it was just that she had wanted to put this off to the last possible moment, because she was afraid of how it would make her feel.

  She places the rest of the photos carefully back in the packet and sticks the one she has chosen on the noticeboard. Not at the top or in the middle – that would be presumptuous. Tonight is not just about her. So she picks a spot towards the bottom, somewhere to the side.

  It is only then that she allows herself to sob, and not for long.

  A car passes by outside; the house is quiet again, and sweet with the smell of cinnamon. She kneels on the rug and gazes at the picture of her son as if she could will herself back there, to that muddy lane, to a long-ago day that was just beginning to clear, and the pain in her back seems to vanish.

  Eight

  Rachel

  It is snowing as Rachel arrives, just enough to be decorative but not so much as to give people an excuse to stay away. Worse luck. She doesn’t really know what she’s doing here. Still, she’s made it this far. It would be ridiculous to go scurrying back to the bedsit now.

  It certainly is pretty where Viv lives; it’s like being in a Christmas card. The fine flakes whirl and gust in the glow of old wrought-iron streetlamps, and the red-brick Victorian houses look as if they have just been dusted with icing sugar. On the other side of the road, the trees of the park are ghostly in the gloom.

  She finds somewhere to leave the car – it very obviously doesn’t belong here, among the executive saloons and family-friendly 4X4s – and makes her way to number 17. All the houses she passes are adorned with lights that glitter discreetly in the darkness, wound round garden topiary or fastened to gabled roofs. Rachel glimpses tinselly trees through the chinks between heavy curtains, and mantelpieces crowded with cards. If Digby Street is a kind of anonymous hell, Park Place is an English domestic heaven.

  One house has a nativity display on the windowsill: large plaster figures, faded with age, carefully arranged. The infant Jesus is soundly sleeping in Mary’s arms, blissfully oblivious to what is to come.

  A blind comes rattling down and hides the scene from view, and Rachel hurries on.

  Number 17 is at the end of a gabled Victorian terrace, like a row of gingerbread houses. Unlike its neighbours, it shows no signs of the season. No lights, no garland, no glimpse of baubles or the fairy on top of the tree.

  As far as Rachel is concerned, this is as good as a welcome sign.

  She steps up and rings the bell.

  It seems to take an age for someone to come. Rachel’s breathing is fast and shallow and sends thin plumes of cloudy white into the icy air. Finally the door opens, and she sees a crisp-featured, apple-cheeked old lady who might have been beautiful once. There’s a scent of something warm and spicy coming from inside the house, something enticing.

  Rachel says, ‘Are you Viv?’

  The woman nods and smiles encouragingly. She’s wearing pearls and perfectly applied pale pink lipstick, and her silvery hair, which has been tinted blonde, is as impeccably styled as the Queen’s. Rachel guesses that she’s in her late sixties. She clearly has absolutely no intention of letting herself go.

  ‘I’m Rachel Steele.’ Steele is her maiden name; she’s always used it at work – it had seemed like a useful way to separate her office self from her home self, the one who had become Mitch’s wife and Becca’s mother. Sometimes it complicated things having two identities, but it also made her feel as if she had preserved a little bit of her younger self, the girl who had been so determined to make her own way in life and establish her independence. She could do with a bit of that willingness to embrace the new tonight. ‘We spoke on the phone about half an hour ago. I work with Leona?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Come on in, you look half frozen. You’re very welcome.’

  She steps back to let Rachel into the porch and closes the front door
behind her. It’s like stepping into a warm hug after the cold air outside.

  ‘I didn’t actually say anything to Leona about coming tonight,’ Rachel says. ‘I mean, I saw the poster she put up, but I wasn’t sure I was going to make it until I phoned you just now.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Well, she’s here already, and I hope you won’t mind, but I took the liberty of mentioning you’d be here. I thought it would be better if it didn’t come as a surprise when you arrived. Anyway, I’m delighted you could join us.’

  Viv holds her hand out for Rachel to shake, and Rachel clasps it. Viv’s touch is light and dry. She’s wearing a gold wedding ring and an engagement ring set with one of the biggest sapphires Rachel has ever seen.

  ‘I hope you’re feeling hungry,’ Viv says. ‘We seem to have rather a lot of food, and not many people.’

  She leads the way into a sitting room with crimson rugs and long wine-coloured curtains and an open fire blazing. Leona is sitting by the fireplace at one end of a big L-shaped sofa covered in dull gold brocade. She’s gazing at the flames, apparently lost in thought, and looks more than ever like an eccentric Renaissance angel on a disappointing day.

  ‘Here she is,’ Viv says.

  Leona gets up and comes over to offer Rachel a peck on the cheek. ‘Good to see you. Well done for coming. I did wonder if you might, but I couldn’t be sure, especially as we hadn’t really talked about it much. Anyway, I’m sure it’s needless to say, but anything that we tell each other here is in the strictest confidence.’

  ‘Of course,’ Rachel says.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ Viv says to Rachel. ‘Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate? Sparkling white wine? It’s non-alcoholic, so you don’t need to worry about driving. I expect you know Leona doesn’t drink.’ Rachel hadn’t known this, though it doesn’t entirely surprise her; Leona is always so controlled, it’s hard to imagine her having a couple of glasses and letting her hair down. ‘She’s very health-conscious,’ Viv adds. ‘Though she does make an exception for cake!’

  ‘Cake seems like a pretty harmless vice, in the grand scheme of things,’ Rachel says. ‘I’ll just have a glass of water, please.’

  Viv takes her coat and goes off, and Rachel perches next to Leona on the sofa and takes in the choice of refreshments on the coffee table in front of them. There is a large bottle of fizz, open, and two old-fashioned wide-rimmed glasses, almost empty. There is also a cake, some kind of fruit loaf with a couple of slices missing, and a large plate of luscious-looking cupcakes, iced in pink with white writing, the same words painstakingly piped onto each one: BAD MOTHER.

  ‘Do tuck in,’ Leona says. ‘I made the cupcakes. The barm brack is Viv’s. It’s very good.’

  ‘Maybe later on,’ Rachel says. She’s too nervous to eat; she’d probably choke. ‘I’m really sorry, I didn’t think to bring anything. I should have. It was all a bit last minute. I only rang Viv when I got back from work.’

  ‘No, no, don’t apologise. At this rate you’ll be able to take some home with you. We’re a bit down on numbers. Very much down, actually. In fact… I think we might be the only ones who make it tonight.’

  ‘Oh. Well… I suppose it’s very close to Christmas. Maybe people are busy with stuff.’

  ‘I don’t know. Viv had quite a few phone calls. And not all of them were cranks. But when it comes down to it… maybe women like us have learned to be wary.’

  Their eyes meet; Leona gives Rachel a rueful, we’re-in-this-together smile, and Rachel does her best to return it.

  Just because you’re feeling anxious, doesn’t mean the threat you’re facing is real: Sophie Elphick taught her that. This is fine, all fine, sharing a sofa in a strange house with a woman who she met at work and with whom she has something big and painful in common. This is progress, opening up, reaching out.

  Leona reaches for one of the iced cupcakes and takes a bite out of it: the word BAD disappears.

  ‘This is what other people think of us,’ she says, and finishes it off. ‘I thought I’d take the bitterness out of it.’ She gestures towards the green baize pinboard leaning against the armchair next to the fireplace and says, ‘Anyway, there’s plenty of space.’

  There are two pictures pinned to the board. At the top there’s a photocopy of a snap of a newborn baby swaddled in a yellow cellular blanket, and beneath it is a faded glossy print of a sturdy toddler in dungarees and red wellies. It is not possible for Rachel to guess which child is Leona’s, and which is Viv’s.

  There is something ghostly about the pictures: not sinister, but melancholy. They lend the room a little of the atmosphere of a séance or vigil, as if this gathering is prompted by an unspoken faith that the power of collective longing might call the children back from wherever they have gone, and reunite them with their mothers.

  ‘You see the newborn? That’s my girl,’ Leona says. ‘That’s Bluebell. She was adopted when she was a baby. She’s nearly seven now. I do have some more recent pictures – her parents send me one every year, and we exchange letters on her birthday. Me and the parents, I mean, not me and Bluebell.’

  ‘Ohh…’ Rachel has no idea what to say. The bluebell tattoo on Leona’s inner wrist now makes sense.

  Viv comes back in and passes Rachel her glass of water. Rachel sips it and swallows, and sets it down with a conspicuously trembling hand.

  ‘We’re on to introductions,’ Leona says. ‘I’ve just pointed out Bluebell.’

  ‘Pretty name,’ Rachel says.

  ‘Yeah, her adoptive parents kept it. I didn’t think they would.’

  Viv settles into an armchair. ‘That’s Aidan in the red wellies. He was just three years old then, and he stopped living with me when he was four. He lives in a care home now, has done for years. He’s in his forties now. Officially middle-aged.’

  There is a silence that deepens until Rachel realises that something is expected of her.

  ‘I haven’t brought one,’ she says. ‘I know you mentioned it on the phone, Viv, but I forgot.’

  ‘Maybe next time,’ Viv says. ‘No need to bring an original, unless you have a spare of course. We all know how precious photos are, especially if you don’t have many of them. Would you like to tell us anything about your child? Or children?’

  ‘I have a daughter. Becca. She’s thirteen. I split from her father earlier this year, and we agreed that it would be better for her to live with him.’

  Can she really bring herself to add Becca to the pictures on the pinboard? Becca would hate it if she knew. Those other children will have no memories of what their mothers were like before they were parted from them. But Becca does. Becca has been conscious of at least some of what is going on – too much.

  And Becca has been asked which of her parents she would prefer to live with, and she has chosen.

  ‘Do you still see her?’ Viv asks.

  ‘Yes, once a week, on Saturdays.’

  ‘Viv sees Aidan once a week as well,’ Leona comments. Her tone is sympathetic but matter-of-fact, as if they’re discussing the routine broken nights of early motherhood, or the trials of potty training. ‘I haven’t seen Bluebell since she was tiny. I just have the photos. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a cake?’

  She holds out the plate of cupcakes. Rachel hesitates, then thanks her and takes one. She peels off the paper and discards it and examines the icing. BAD MOTHER. She thinks of the effort that had gone into piping the words, over and over again onto each little cake, and how defiant Leona must have felt as she did it.

  What was the name of that Greek myth – the one about the girl who was dragged off to the Underworld and made the mistake of eating something there?

  Persephone. That was it: Persephone and the pomegranate. The lost daughter who ate fruit in the underworld and swallowed six seeds, which meant that she had to return there for six months of every year, and her mother mourned so hard that she brought down winter on the world of the living. Mitch had told her about it. He’d known about that kind of thing: h
e’d liked playing Professor Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle. And then he’d used her as a model for a painting inspired by that myth. The only time she’d posed for him.

  And now Mitch really does have her daughter. An irony surely not lost on either of them. And she still has the study for the painting, tucked away out of sight somewhere in the bedsit. Maybe she should get it out, put it on display: a reminder of a time before her relationship with Mitch turned bitter. Before Becca, even. When it had just been the two of them.

  Anyway, the cake is delicious: a perfectly melting mouthful.

  ‘Before I forget, there’s something I have to give back to you,’ Leona says to Viv.

  She rummages in her handbag, which isn’t really a handbag at all but a capacious leather satchel, and takes out a book: an old orange paperback copy of Kramer vs. Kramer, with a movie still of Dustin Hoffman holding up a little boy on the cover. She puts it down on the coffee table and says to Viv, ‘Thanks for the loan, but this book is the enemy.’

  ‘Oh, really? I thought it was rather interesting. It certainly has a case to make, as does the film – the idea that the mother shouldn’t always be the default parent.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s what I object to. I’m sure it lingered in the mind of many a judge handing down a final ruling after a custody battle, and it wouldn’t have influenced any of them in favour of women.’

  She glances at Rachel as she says this. Rachel does her best to look studiously neutral: better that they talk about fictional mothers than that they should start to try to elicit some kind of confession from her.

  Leona presses on. ‘OK, so here’s what I object to. Number one, he learns how to make his kid’s favourite breakfast and suddenly he’s a hero. Now when would that apply to any woman? A woman’s a loser if she doesn’t know how to do this stuff, not a star if she figures it out.’

  ‘Is that bit in the film?’ Viv asks. ‘I think it might be, actually.’