Lost Daughter

by Ali Mercer

  It is a reassertion of the norm, and Rachel supposes this is the adjustment she, too, must make; to pick up where she left off, and carry on with this strange life she has made for herself. She certainly isn’t up to jollying him out of it; his mood matches her own. Anyway, it’s only been a couple of weeks since the service, and it is not yet two months since Viv’s death. Surely in time he will feel ready to leave the home again, if only for a little while.

  All that Sunday she has a faint headache, which could be residual stress or might equally be foreboding. She’s not wholly surprised when, that evening, her phone rings, and it is Mitch.

  ‘Rachel,’ he says. ‘How are you?’

  He sounds hesitant, almost embarrassed. It’s the way people speak when they want something, when they’re trying to curry favour and anticipate being refused. It’s the way she speaks to Mitch; it’s not the way he usually speaks to her.

  ‘I’m OK, thanks. Been better.’

  What do you want, Mitch? She can’t ask outright – she doesn’t want to offend him. But he must have a reason for calling, so why doesn’t he just come out with it?

  She asks, ‘Is everything OK? Is Becca OK?’

  ‘I wanted to extend an invitation, actually. I was wondering if you’d like to come over sometime, just for a chat, to talk things over.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Well – you know. Just the way things are now. And Becca’s a big part of that, obviously.’

  Is it mean-spirited of her to suspect an ulterior motive? It’s fair to say that they have been getting on a little better, overall. But you couldn’t exactly call it a cordial relationship, not yet. He usually seems keen to keep her at a distance: so what’s changed?

  They haven’t yet formally started divorce proceedings. That ordeal is yet to come… So far, he hasn’t seemed to be in any rush, and she has been inclined to leave things as they are for as long as possible. They’ve agreed the terms of their separation, and have minimised the disruption for Becca: isn’t that enough? But perhaps it isn’t. Not any more.

  ‘Should I be talking to a lawyer, Mitch?’

  ‘We probably will have to, one of these days. But I’d just like to approach it all in a different way. I think we need to, for Becca’s sake.’

  ‘Is this about the summer holidays?’

  She has tentatively suggested that, if Becca was willing, she could take her away for a few days sometime in August, perhaps to Cornwall or Devon. Mitch has yet to come back to her with a definite response. If it happens, it will be the first time she and Becca have spent more than a Saturday together since she moved out of Rose Cottage. The Easter break and school holidays had passed by in much the same way as when she was still working full-time in London, with Mitch looking after Becca at home.

  He hesitates. ‘It might have a bearing on that. Just come, OK?’

  ‘If this is what you think is best for Becca… then OK.’

  ‘I don’t know what time would suit you? Is there any time one evening next week when you’d be free?’

  He sounds so wary, so defensive. What on earth can he have to say that he’s so nervous about?

  ‘How about next Saturday? Before or after I get Becca?’

  ‘No… no, that won’t do. It would be better if Becca was somewhere else. How about during the day? Can you get some time off?’

  She’s grateful to him for not suggesting that Becca could go home with Amelia Chadstone. Perhaps he has accepted that she still doesn’t feel entirely comfortable discussing that friendship, that it reminds her of things she would rather forget. She agrees that she will ask, and they say goodbye.

  Well… maybe it really is possible: perhaps they can be more amicable? Why not be hopeful? Sophie had said she was doing better, after all.

  That night she dreams that she’s Leona, standing in a field of bluebells; and her daughter has been returned to her and is in her arms, but is a baby again, as if she had never been given away.

  Forty-Two

  The door to Rose Cottage is opened not by Mitch, but by a completely different man.

  That’s the first shock.

  But actually, it is Mitch – Mitch clean-shaven, with his hair trimmed, and that jagged scar on his hand, pink now rather than red, almost faded enough for someone not to notice straight away unless they know where to look.

  Without his long hair and beard, he looks much more like anybody else – like someone who might be spotted mulling over lawnmowers in a DIY store, or pushing a trolley in the supermarket: the kind of domesticated man Mitch once would have been desperate not to become. He seems softer, and more approachable. More settled, somehow.

  ‘Come on in,’ he says.

  His tone is friendly enough but he looks uncomfortable, as if he is resigned to this particular meeting but would like to get it over with as soon as possible. He is wearing a shirt she hasn’t seen before, and – this is the most uncharacteristic thing of all – he has taken the trouble to iron it.

  Or has Becca pressed it for him? No way. Surely that would never happen.

  She follows him into the kitchen. Is it her imagination, or does the house smell different? Has Mitch been experimenting with new recipes – something with coriander in it, perhaps? Or maybe he has bought a new kind of polish, or a different brand of bleach. He must have had a bit of a clean-up recently: everything looks unusually spotless.

  Mitch invites her to sit, offers her a drink; she accepts a glass of water, and he fetches himself one, too.

  When did you fall in love with me? she had asked him once. And he had said, The first time I saw you.

  When a couple finally, definitively falls out of love – beyond anger, beyond reprisals – is that also a point that can be remembered later? Is that where they are?

  ‘I have something I need to tell you,’ he says.

  Has he rehearsed this? She suspects he has.

  ‘Go on,’ she says.

  He grimaces. ‘It’s not an easy thing to say.’

  ‘Let’s build up to it, then. Let’s talk about other things. How’s work?’

  Maybe he is trying to tell her is that he has got a new job – that would explain the haircut, the ironing, the shaved-off beard. And she can see why he might be anxious about it – the basis of his custody of Becca is that he is the one who is around at home. That, and the fact that he is the one Becca wanted to stay with.

  And there was the time Rachel had put him in the hospital. It might have been an accident, but she’d still hurt him and Mitch would be able to use it against her in court if he chose.

  Mitch says, ‘It’s all going pretty well, actually. There’s been a fair bit of demand for these.’

  He gets up and releases a tea-towel from the rubber sucker stuck to the side of the kitchen cupboard – when had he put that up? When had he become the kind of person who thought to put something like that up? He brings the tea-towel to the table and spreads it out in front of her with a flourish that seems entirely over the top: as if it’s precious, as if the gesture of showing it to her is important.

  It is certainly a perfectly attractive tea-towel, printed with a fetching design of miniature strawberries.

  ‘Very nice,’ Rachel says.

  ‘There’s a huge market for upmarket homeware, if you get it right.’

  He whisks the tea-towel away and hangs it up again before returning to his seat.

  ‘Half the battle is knowing what the market is,’ he continues. ‘Then you just have to figure out how to reach it.’

  Is this really the man who had always been so scornful of anything to do with business, and who had dismissed the public relations industry as a waste of time?

  ‘So what is your market?’ Rachel asks.

  Mitch grins at her like a schoolchild who is delighted to know the answer. ‘Our market is the kind of woman who buys expensive shoes and hides them from her husband.’

  Our market?

  ‘Especially the ones who are stuck at home wit
h small kids and only the internet for company,’ Mitch goes on. ‘This kind of thing is a relatively guilt-free purchase for them. Anyway, I don’t suppose you ever did that.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Hid your new shoes from your husband,’ Mitch says. He folds his arms and twinkles at her. But the last thing Mitch has ever been is twinkly. Just when did he get so happy?

  ‘Of course I didn’t,’ she says. ‘Mostly if I bought new stuff it was to wear to work, anyway, and I paid for it with my own money.’

  Mitch looks slightly wounded. ‘All right, all right, I was only joking. I’m perfectly well aware that you always earned more than me. You never let me forget it.’

  ‘That’s not fair. I bent over backwards not to make a big thing about it. Do you think I wanted to spend hours and hours commuting and working and being away from home, and barely seeing Becca? I did it because I had to. Somebody had to pay the bills, and you either weren’t willing or weren’t capable of changing things so that could be you.’

  ‘Rachel, keep your voice down,’ Mitch says. ‘There’s no need to shout at me.’

  ‘I’m not shouting!’

  But she is. She’s furious with him for telling her she has no right to be furious. Why can’t he at least admit that she’d had to be the way she was – work-obsessed, constantly distracted and stressed-out – because of the way he was?

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Mitch says. ‘I had hoped we’d be able to have a civilised conversation. Clearly I was wrong.’

  And now Rachel finds herself yelling at him across the table: ‘It’s you! You’re the one who’s driving me crazy! I was absolutely fine until I came here and you started talking about… about tea-towels!’

  They are both on their feet now. He looks disgusted with her, as if she has let herself down and him, too. He says, ‘You know, Rachel, at times like this I wonder what I ever saw in you.’

  The door opens behind him and someone comes in.

  ‘Is everything all right in here?’

  It’s Leona, as incongruous here as a shadow without sunlight.

  Mitch moves towards Leona’s side. Suddenly he is all sympathy: ‘Did we disturb you?’

  Leona rubs her eyes. Her skin is slightly flushed, as if she has just been sleeping, and she glances at Rachel as if taking in a visitor she has not been looking forward to seeing, but knew to expect. She says, ‘I heard shouting, thought I’d better come down. What’s going on?’

  Why is Leona being so distant – as if they’d never really been friends? And why would she have been napping at Rose Cottage? It’s Rachel who feels as if she’s dreaming.

  Leona, here… In Rose Cottage… And pregnant.

  She’s wearing a strappy raspberry-pink sundress that emphasises rather than conceals her slightly swollen belly. She can’t be far along. If she was wearing different clothes, it might not even be noticeable. But as it is… it’s undeniable.

  It is as if Rachel is barely hanging on to a cliff-face and about to drop. And nobody is rushing to her rescue.

  ‘Everything’s fine, everything’s under control,’ Mitch says soothingly. He puts his arm round Leona and pulls her in towards his side so they’re facing Rachel as an interlinked pair, two against one. ‘You should probably go back upstairs.’

  Leona allows him to hold her close just long enough for it not to seem like a brush-off when she extricates herself and sits down. Mitch moves so that he is standing behind her with one hand resting on her shoulder, as if he is thinking of offering her a massage.

  Leona regards Rachel with steely defensiveness, then turns to Mitch. ‘You haven’t told her yet, have you?’

  ‘Well… I was building up to it when she started shouting,’ Mitch tells her.

  Rachel says, ‘Go on then. What is it?’

  Mitch looks from Rachel to Leona, who appears to be lost in thought. He shrugs and raises his hands as if in supplication or denial, the gesture of men down the ages who want only the quiet life that entanglement with women denies them.

  ‘I was trying to tell you,’ he says.

  Leona looks up and says to him, ‘I wish you’d let me do this.’ Then she says to Rachel, ‘You might want to sit down. This could come as a bit of a shock.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Rachel remains standing, looks from Leona to Mitch. ‘You mean you brought me here to tell me… No.’ She stares at Leona. ‘You mean to tell me that’s my husband’s baby you’re having?’

  Mitch clears his throat. ‘We are separated, remember, Rachel.’

  ‘But you told me you didn’t want another baby!’ Rachel yells at him. ‘You said you couldn’t face doing it all over again, all the nappies and the broken nights, and we couldn’t afford for me to give up work and we couldn’t afford the childcare. You told me you thought it would finish us off.’

  Mitch makes a small, helpless gesture. ‘I know. And that was what I thought. I wasn’t in a good place at the time. I didn’t think I was ready. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready. But this… It just happened.’

  ‘You idiot. Something like this doesn’t just happen. The two of you decided to do it, and you did it because you wanted to. I suppose it didn’t occur to you to use contraception.’

  Leona rests her tattooed hand on her stomach. ‘You have every right to be angry, Rachel. I just hope that when you’ve had time to think about it you might see it differently. This is a baby, not a catastrophe. A little girl or boy. Not that we know yet, either way. I don’t want to find out. But I think it might be a girl.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t rush to congratulate you. When did this happen, anyway? I suppose it must have been after you got back from France, right? That’s when you suddenly went silent.’

  Leona glances at Mitch. She looks frustrated by the way this is going: maybe she and Mitch had fantasised that it would all be sweet and lovely, that Rachel would welcome her and the new baby as if it was no problem at all.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘That was when it was.’

  Rachel turns to Mitch. ‘You took advantage of her. She’d just come back from meeting her daughter for the first time since she gave her up for adoption. She must have been all over the place. She was vulnerable. Did you know about all that? Because if she told you and you still went ahead and decided that it would be a really good time to sleep with her, I don’t like what that says about you, Mitch. I don’t like that at all.’

  Mitch folds his arms. ‘She did tell me about the adoption. Of course she did. She told me more about all that than you know. But that’s the past and this is the future, Rachel. You’re just going to have to accept that we’re in love and having a baby, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘That’s all…?’

  Rachel stares down at Leona. It all makes sense now. It’s so obvious. And yet she never would have imagined that Leona would do this to her. Not in a million years.

  ‘I talked about you to Viv, you know,’ she tells her. ‘We tried to work out what on earth was going on with you. We thought it was to do with Bluebell, that you didn’t want to see us because meeting her had changed things and you wanted to move on with your life. We even hoped that one day you’d change your mind.’ She shakes her head. ‘Here you are in front of me, telling me what you’ve done, and I still can’t quite believe it.’

  Her legs are about to give way under her. She subsides back into her chair, rests her head in her hands and closes her eyes. She can’t look at them any more. They have done this to her and they’re happy about it. Worse still, it is plain that they want – maybe even expect – her blessing.

  And as for Becca…

  What about Becca?

  Oh, Lord.

  Of all the further upheavals Becca doesn’t need… to have her beloved father suddenly absorbed in a new relationship and a new baby, to experience all the pangs of sibling rivalry a decade and a half too late…

  Somehow Rachel remembers to breathe. In… out… Breathe in the strawberry, blow out
the candle…

  She straightens up and opens her eyes. Leona is gazing at her expectantly, as if hoping to be forgiven on the spot, while Mitch is watching her as if he anticipates having to leap into action and defend Leona at any moment.

  Just look at him, the pressed shirt, the cropped hair… He is trying. He is making an effort. He is nearly forty and he thinks he’s starting over. New woman, new baby. Ready to do it all again, and get it right this time. To not have to look back and reproach himself for his failures. To be the new man, the new dad – practically middle-aged, but with spunk that still works. Who’s still got what it takes to get a younger woman into trouble, thank you very much.

  And Leona… this is a second chance for her, too. They both have too much to prove to let how Rachel feels about it come between them. Or Becca either.

  This baby is merely an almost imperceptible bulge in Leona’s dress but is simultaneously an unstoppable force that has breezed in to rearrange everything.

  This baby has made Rachel and Becca redundant, an irrelevance. It – whether it is a he or a she – will take Becca’s place in Mitch’s heart, and make it possible for Leona to take Rachel’s. How can it not be so?

  ‘It’s all so soon,’ Rachel says. ‘If I had known you were seeing each other, that would have been one thing. But this… It’s too much.’

  Mitch moves away from Leona and sits down. He slumps as if defeated and stares at his clasped hands as if he dares not raise his eyes. The scar is a red streak, a wordless reminder of why he’d asked her to leave.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rachel,’ he says.

  ‘It’s been a shock to us as well,’ Leona interjects.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be moving in here,’ Rachel says, not even attempting to sound indifferent.

  ‘Well, where I am is fine for now,’ Leona says. ‘It’s still early days. But yes – I’m hoping to spend a bit of time here.’ She glances at Mitch, and the two of them smile at each other.