He was right. But I hadn’t heard that word in so long. I was back in London. The same feelings. I was nothing. Nobody. My body was not my own.
‘I tried to help you, Molly,’ I hear him say. ‘I gave you everything. And look what happened. You threw it all away.’
He was lifting my dress.
Whore.
Kissing my neck.
Whore.
Fingers inside.
Whore.
I hear his breathing getting heavier and he sniffs, deeply, pulling me closer to him. I could feel it against me, poking, like all those men had felt against me before.
‘You’d believe anything, wouldn’t you?’ he says.
Then I hear him laugh and feel his hands paw at my exposed skin.
I bend down as though offering myself to him and I feel his lust jump, a grunt out of his mouth as he grips at me.
There it is in front of me, lying in the dark, one of the stones like my daddy lifted to build our farm, covered in lichen, burnt with rain. It was a stone brought and carved by people we could never know, by our ancestors who knew more about the sun and the moon than we did.
I curl my fingers around it, pull it up into my palm, turn and smash it into his head, right into his temple, coming from the side, with the most force I could. He crumples in front of me, bent at the knees and falls, his trousers half open, the smirk leaving his face.
I stare at him and then tentatively I kick his body, at the shoulder.
He does not move. I bend down and turn his face over, black blood trickling from the wound on the side of his head.
Panicking, I pull his body to the edge of the mound. He’s short but he’s heavy and I feel my shoulders almost snap from their sockets as I strain to move him. I lie on the ground and put both boots against his side, pushing him and watching as his body slowly disappears down the side of the mound, falling and landing with a horrible thud.
I scan the road from my vantage point and feel breathless as I realise what I have done.
Have I really killed another man?
This time, there was no power, no force through my head and my hands.
This time it was all me.
I climb down the mound quickly and run to untie his horse, leading it over to where he has fallen. Gathering all the strength I can muster, I manage to get one of his feet into the stirrups, and I pull the horse, to drag Tubular, his head lolling on the ground, down to the swollen river.
I roll him off the bank, hearing his body hit the water and watching it submerge, before it floats to the top again and is taken by the fast-moving water. I don’t wait to see where it ends up - whether it gets caught in a tree or by a low hanging bush or whether it sinks again.
I take off the horse’s saddle and toss that in the river too. And then I slap the horse and send him racing over a ditch and out of the field.
I leave, cantering my horse out of the field and down the road, back to Brabazon, where Henry is busy with the final arrangements for the wedding we’ll be having in three days’ time.
He said he would do anything to please me. Henry Brabazon, the most loving man I had come to know. And he had no idea that he was marrying a woman capable of murder - twice.
* * *
There were so many faces I was overwhelmed by it all. Henry had said it would be a small gathering, but for me, there were still too many. Sophisticated, refined ladies. Gentlemen with top hats so shiny, if they bent down I could have seen my reflection in the flat surface of their heads.
My wedding face, painted and rouged. Beautiful, they told me. I looked beautiful.
Henry held a smile as wide as the moon. He did look happy. Marriage, it seemed, would suit him very well.
Better than it would suit me.
‘Lady Brabazon.’
It was the daughter of a landlord who owned an estate near Navan. I had seen her before, but she looked different now. It was so hard to tell who was who in the mass of faces, all congratulating us, all gripping my hand and kissing the air beside my cheek; the smell of their oils and perfumes going up my nose.
The fires burned hot in the grates. I could feel sweat glistening at the base of my back where the dress sat, tight. It was hard to breathe.
I wondered if he might have been found by now. Where he was, if he had washed up, out to sea? How long did it take to float from our river, out past the wide tide, where the banks met the park and the bridges and through the marshy land? What if he got stuck? What if the steamer was passing over him now?
I thought of the mullet, speckled and brown, their great mouths sucking and lumping the pieces from his cold, wet flesh. Then I thought of the children who might catch the mullet and take it home to be cooked for tea, how a family could be sitting around the dinner table, munching on that fish and the flesh of Tubular right now.
‘What a wonderful ceremony. And you look exquisite. A very fine dress, so delicate. I’ve never seen the likes of it before?’
The woman was looking me up and down, her eyes resting on my stomach, where the dress maker had stitched a set of pearls.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A new design. I ordered the material from London.’
I’d said those words a hundred times today. Perhaps it had been a bad idea to go with something so different, so modern. A talking point.
Henry appears by my side. He grips my arm and I am grateful for his presence.
‘Would you like a drink, my darling?’ he asks.
I nod. My throat is burning. Acid is leaking from my stomach, cutting me raw on the inside. It is the worry. I feel almost dizzy. It is so hot in here, so many people, the press of damp clothes and perfumes.
‘Henry,’ I say as he goes to walk from me and I pull at his arm. ‘I ... I need some air ...’
Concern crosses his face, he takes in my white cheeks and my wide eyes.
And then I see him rush towards me as I fall, forward, spiralling, a shutter of black closing in around my eyes, slowly blocking out the faces and the swirl of the crowd pushed into our great room. Celebrating our wedding. Celebrating the union of Henry and me.
I fainted. On my wedding day. In front of all our distinguished guests.
* * *
A fan flaps at my face. The cool air waves in sheaths over my cheeks and nose. It’s nice, I like it. But when I open my eyes I feel like I can’t breathe again.
My dress, I need to loosen my dress.
Henry is there, looking concerned. Poor sweet Henry.
They’ve pushed sugary tea into my hand, but it’s quivering. They hold it to my lips - the liquid surprises me, burns me. But I take some into my mouth and let it go down.
‘Darling, are you alright?’
No.
Don’t cross me Henry. I hurt any man who crosses me.
Where is he now, out to sea? Floating? Or under?
They bring me upstairs and Ruth loosens all the cord at the back of my dress. I lie down on the bed and want to take the whole thing off.
She sits with me and I let myself fall into a rough slumber, one where the room is spinning around me, where I think, get up, Molly, it’s your wedding day, you can’t sleep through it, you fool.
But this is my second wedding day. My first was in a small register office in Whitechapel, London.
And look how that one ended.
That husband, cold and wet and floating down the river out to sea.
Chapter Thirty-Five
MOLLY
It was foolish of me to think that I could get away with what I’d done. That it wouldn’t catch up with me - that it wouldn’t take its toll. I’d spent all my life being brash and getting on with things, facing up to what needed to be done, pushing through my problems and my circumstances, never really stopping to reflect on who I was, what I had done, what I had become.
When I should have been floating through the first weeks of marriage, I was instead falling down, further and further into a well of despair. Henry watched his bride turn sullen and silen
t, refusing to get out of bed in the mornings and staying up late at night, raiding the drinks cabinet, knocking back crystal tumblers of whatever alcohol I could find until the feelings went away. Of unrest. Of fear. Of blood on my hands.
I watched the newspaper, listened to the gossip from the servants. Had he been found yet? Where was he? Was there any way it could lead back to me - had I been careful enough?
The horse had turned up on a neighbouring farm, a stray, and they had kept it after asking around the locality. No one laid claim to it and it was a fine beast. The stables where Tubular had hired it from would have been looking for it and they’d have his name. I worried about it constantly - so much so that I thought about going to the farm in the middle of the night and perhaps slaughtering it, seeing it brought off to the knacker’s yard. It seemed death was always my way out.
Wondering about Tubular brought up the fears I had around Flann Montgomery and being caught. I couldn’t walk down the road to Dowth without reliving the night I left Ireland, the night I’d drawn my knife, the night I’d taken his life.
It was something I had chosen to do - to avenge the death of my father. But was it the right thing to do? Could there have been a different way - could I have found a way to punish him without extinguishing him completely?
I was surprised how the sadness reignited feelings I had buried around losing Oliver and even my father and mother. All of my fears jumbled into a great black sadness that closed in around me.
Henry took me to the doctor. I was prescribed opiates and laudanum and I took them all, washing them down with alcohol. The medication helped and I fell in to a routine of having good days with bad, but functioning all the same. I hired help in the shop, but I still made it weekly and I found when I did get in there and attended to some of the business, it took my mind off things, helped me heal a little.
We had planned to expand, to open up shops in neighbouring towns - Navan perhaps or Dundalk, but with the way I’d gone since we’d gotten married, with my moods low and the headaches, and sickness I suffered from the drink and the medication and the sadness, we put things on hold. Managing two shops was enough for the moment.
Then I found out I was pregnant.
* * *
Henry was overjoyed at the news. He swept me up and kissed me and subjected me to a barrage of questions about how I was feeling.
‘This is the news I’ve been waiting for,’ he said. ‘I’m so happy, my love, fantastic, you’re going to be a mummy. I’m going to be a father. I can’t believe it.’
I wanted to tell him that I was already a mother. That somewhere out there, my little boy had turned into a long-legged child, with feelings and wants and a personality that I knew nothing about.
Having suffered such a blackness over the past few months I worried that the pregnancy would send me over the edge, but it had the opposite effect. I had something to look forward to.
The months where I waited for the baby to grow and tickle in my belly were more enjoyable than I’d expected. Once the flush of the first weeks had passed and the nausea that took hold of my stomach all day and all night disappeared, I felt a joy that I had been unable to feel with Oliver.
This time, there was nothing to hide. When my stomach swelled and Henry put his hands there, to feel the baby growing inside, he looked at me with such pride that I couldn’t help feeling proud myself. I’d made him happy. And what joy to be with child so soon after our wedding?
Mrs Johansson fussed and Ruth asked after me every minute of the day.
‘Are you quite well, ma’am, is there anything you would like me to fetch for you?’
But I carried the pregnancy well. I started to bloom with it, to grow rosy cheeked and healthy, the hormones and swelling suiting me more than I could ever have imagined.
When it came time to birth, I worried about the pains that were to come, but with the support of an attending doctor who offered me a rag with a substance on it to ease the baby’s entry into the world, I got through it quickly, the baby arriving with a slip on to the bed sooner than I expected, giving me a shock to see her - blue, breathing and wet.
Henry cried when he met her, coming into the room immediately after the birth, taking her into his arms, going quiet, staring, the tears sliding down his cheeks in a torrent.
‘My beautiful … beautiful girl,’ he said.
I was glad it was a girl. That it was different. A boy would have been too much, I think.
She was a bonny baby, light haired with dark eyes. I held her close to me, smelling the strands that had formed on her scalp, plastered there with an intoxicating scent.
We called her Sarah.
A few days after the birth, as I struggled with painful breasts and the baby squalled incessantly, the tears came back. They came from a well deep inside me. They poured through the night and when I awoke from a scratched, wretched sleep, they were there again, waiting in the morning.
With the crying, came an utter despair. My feelings disappeared, only to be replaced with a nothingness, a blackness, a space where my emotions had been before. I could control nothing. I wanted for nothing.
I realised I was searching for something, longing for something to cover up an aching chasm that had opened like a crater inside.
I was looking for Oliver.
My first born was the only thing that could have pulled me from the pit I had fallen into. And even if he was found, even if Henry himself walked through the door, hand in hand with a tall boy now, I had already missed so much. His first steps. His laugh. His discovery of the world of trees and building bricks and the books he loved to read and the songs he liked to sing.
How could I not have found him, through the police, through the children’s services, through my own ability as a mother to track down her child?
I didn’t deserve to have another baby. One, as bonny as this.
I didn’t deserve happiness, or to be married to a man like Henry in a house like this.
I didn’t deserve anything. I was nothing. Nobody.
And that was what fuelled the tears. Until they too dried up.
Until I had nothing left to give at all.
Chapter Thirty-Six
MOLLY
It was worse when I saw it.
Between his legs.
That he was a boy.
It was worse than Sarah.
A different kind of pain. One that went more inside, a darkness, a blackness inside my mind, that I would never lift myself out of.
I could see it now. The rest of my days. Without him. Without Oliver.
This was my punishment. I would pay for my sins.
And it was as though everything stopped that day.
The search.
The hope.
The thoughts that I would ever see my first boy again.
I had my new family now, a girl and a boy.
I would live for them.
At least I would try.
I would try through the blackness.
To be the mother I should have been.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
HENRY
Brabazon House, Co Meath, Ireland, Christmas 1915
Henry smells the pine needles as soon as he steps into the hall. The tree is fresh, taken from the woods that morning. He pictures his father and Arthur and Mrs Johansson standing in the hall, holding out glass baubles, Mrs Johansson having done most of the work, their mood good, the memory as clear as though they were all standing there in front of him.
He thought about Mrs Johansson, how she was the only constant in the house. She was getting old now and he knew that soon, she would retire. How he would miss her presence about the house, her words of comfort, her bad humour when she was tired and irritable. She was the closest thing he’d had to a mother.
He looked forward to seeing Arthur later - he so rarely came back to Brabazon these days. He wondered how he would be, how he would look, how he would act. You never knew with Arthur these days. He was so volati
le. He hoped he’d be in a good mood and that they would have a nice time together, no dramas, from anyone.
Henry worried for Arthur the same way he worried for Molly. There was a blackness among them, a heavy cloud that sheltered them, that shadowed their faces. It hung in the air around them as though it were tangible and he could reach out and tip their melancholy.
Molly had been carrying her cloud for years. It seemed to have appeared on the day they married, when she fainted in front of everyone. It was as if she awoke a different person, a worried, sorrowful soul.
When Sarah was two weeks old, he had found Molly in the nursery, crouching over the baby, her arms wrapped around the newborn’s body, rocking back and forth. She was trying to suppress her sobs, but it was the screeching sounds that escaped that drew him.
‘My love,’ he said, putting his hand on her shoulder, prying away her arm to check that the baby was OK, that she was breathing. ‘What is it?’ he asked, desperately searching the child for signs of life. Had something happened? Had she died?
But the child moved, wrinkling up her forehead and stretching out her miniature body. He watched as Molly pulled back and the child arched, the stretch reaching to her small toes.
Molly stopped her sobs but didn’t look up at him. He shook her gently, bending down to try to look at her face. She turned her head away and stared at the nursery wall.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she said quietly.
And she was right. How could he understand? She must have been traumatised. Perhaps it was the emotions coming out after the birth in a way that they never would from him. Women cried.
He was enthralled by Sarah. He found it hard to understand why Molly was not as attached to the baby as he was. He would come to the nursery each evening and sit with her for a time, feeling the weight of her in his arms, running his finger over her soft dark eyebrows. He was fascinated by the curve of her mouth, the dip above her lips, the scent of her as he held her against his neck and patted her back.
On the days when he worked at home in his study, he would visit the nursery and tell the nanny to take a break. He found himself longing to hold her when he was away from her. Molly though, was different.
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