The Other Girl

by C D Major

  ALSO BY C D MAJOR

  Writing as Cesca Major:

  The Silent Hours

  The Last Night

  Writing as Rosie Blake:

  The Hygge Holiday

  How To Find Your (First) Husband

  How to Stuff Up Christmas

  How To Get A (Love) Life

  The Gin O'Clock Club

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by C D Major

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542021814

  ISBN-10: 1542021812

  Cover design by Emma Rogers

  To Naomi – for endless cheerleading

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Prologue

  I’m Edith.

  I’m a patient.

  I’m a loony.

  I’m a woman.

  I’m innocent.

  I’m guilty.

  I used to be someone else.

  I’m a victim.

  I’m a villain.

  I lie.

  I tell the truth.

  Whatever I do it always ends the same way.

  I’m Edith.

  I’m a patient.

  I’m a loony.

  Chapter 1

  NOW

  Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, 8 December 1942

  There’s smoke, shouting, steps: the whole building is awake and shrieking.

  It’s the middle of the night. They are locked in. The keys are on the other side of the doors, the locks on the outside of the shutters. If they call out, will someone hear them? If they pummel at the wood with their fists, can they force their way out?

  They stumble, the smoke makes them cough, makes their eyes sting, fills them up.

  The heat is already unbearable. Why is no one coming?

  Someone is crying, someone is hiding in the corner, someone still thinks she’s in her nightmare. Someone has dropped the thing she was holding.

  Their bodies press together, all trying to reach the windows, to break out, to breathe in the cool night air. There are voices outside, faint, calling out, shouting instructions. The women pull at the shutters, claw at the wood. At one of the windows, someone is free.

  There is more wailing; the smoke billows. The women can’t see. They feel along the walls and huddle together. As far from the flames as they can get.

  There is no time. No help.

  The fire is everywhere. Screaming.

  The whole building is scorching, searing . . .

  Chapter 2

  BEFORE

  Summer 1927

  Mother is bent over, clipping the pink roses with her big scissors. I am sitting on the rug on the lawn, Mrs Periwinkle is opposite me and I am pouring her tea. Mrs Periwinkle has both her eyes, not just one like my doll from before. She is cleaner too, with a creamy face and two pink circles for cheeks. Mother says I have to be careful not to spill the tea on my white dress, but she is being silly as the tea can’t really spill.

  It is quiet at this time of day, nothing moving down the road, no rumble of carts or motor cars passing. I can hear a fantail in the trees. I like it here the best, sitting near the orchard with the honey pear trees, away from the other side of the garden and the churchyard with the crooked gravestones that you can see through the gaps in the fence. The church is huge, the spire always showing us where home is when we walk or get the motorcar back.

  Father is in his study writing a sermon. Tomorrow is when he will stand up at the front of the church and everyone comes to listen to him talk. Before bedtime I am allowed to see him in his study and he has started to read to me from the Bible. I like the other book Mother has with the pictures of the ladies in tall cone hats and long dresses best, but Father says I need to know the scripture and I don’t say anything about the other book because I don’t want to make him angry.

  Father is very important and lots of people stop and tip their hat and say hello to him when we walk around Dunedin. I like it when he wants me to go with him to see the people he calls parisners and it is just us together. Mother and I make visits to the parisners too and she tells Mrs Clark to make the biscuits with the walnuts on top to take, and Mrs Clark huffs as she bends over the separator and wipes her floury hands on her apron but she makes the biscuits, warm on my tongue with the insides all soft.

  Mrs Periwinkle has asked for more tea and I pour it out as I talk to her. She is wearing a blue dress with two petticoats underneath and I make sure they are neat around her. I hope she is not too hot; there are hardly any clouds today. She always wears her matching hat and her large blue eyes are wide, above a small red mouth. I tell her about the new ribbon Mother bought me for my hat and about how when we were in Dunedin we saw a man with only half a leg. I always have to tell her things because I don’t have anyone else to tell any more. I think of a silhouette in the bed next door to me, a sleepy smile across the narrow gap: she always listened. I miss sharing my bedroom.

  Mother has stopped snipping the roses and the big scissors are lying in the grass nearby. The edges look sharp, the sunlight flashes on the silver surface. I feel my fingers twitch as I look at them. I’m not allowed to touch. I look back at Mrs Periwinkle. Sometimes I want to snip her hair off.

  Above the house a trail of smoke leaves the chimney. Mrs Clark is inside by the coal range and we are having the soup in the big shiny saucepan. She let me help her knead this morning: the dough was sticky and stretchy and didn’t smell like bread. I like the smell better when it is cooking.

  Mother has picked something up, her back to me, and I open my mouth to ask her how soon it is until the soup is ready. Nearby the fantail chirrups.

  Mother turns and I see what she is holding. It is a large, grey rock and suddenly I am pushing backwards on my hands and I don’t care about my white dress. I fe
el my eyes go big and round as she walks towards me. My skin goes cold and I can smell the sea, sharp in my nose, feel the damp sand clinging to my tunic, hear the waves.

  ‘Edith, can you run inside and—’ Mother stops then.

  My chest is going up and down, up and down. I’m still crawling backwards on the grass. Away. He had walked towards me like that.

  ‘What’s wrong, Edith? Are you unwell?’

  I can’t stop staring at the rock in her hand.

  ‘Edith?’ Mother has her head tilted to the side.

  ‘No, no, no, no.’ My voice is high and loud. The fantail soars away.

  ‘Edith.’ Mother stops.

  I take little breaths, my ears full of the crashing waves. ‘That was what he hit me with.’

  Mother frowns, two lines in the middle of her forehead. ‘Edith, don’t do this. Why do you . . . ?’ She takes another step.

  ‘No.’ I tremble. ‘Don’t. Stop. He hit me, he hit me over and over.’

  Chapter 3

  NOW

  Declan was alone in the room with the policeman, the man’s stomach spilling over too-tight trousers, a button missing from his waistcoat. Declan poured him a glass of water. The policeman sniffed it suspiciously, then left it sitting on the side by the jug. Licking a fat finger, he turned a page in his pad.

  ‘You a doctor here, then?’

  ‘One of the junior doctors, sir, yes. I started a few weeks ago.’ Declan sipped at his own glass. ‘My first job,’ he added, thinking of how relieved he’d been to tell his father when he’d received the offer.

  The policeman grunted and looked around the small room: the two wooden stools, the medicine cabinet in the corner, the iron bed frame, leather shackles dangling from it.

  Declan heard the footsteps, glad not to have to search around for something else to say. He’d been up all night, since the alarm was raised just before midnight, trying to help. His brain was sluggish and his throat felt thick, clogged with the night’s horrors.

  The door opened and the second woman was ushered inside. The second of only two survivors. From a building housing thirty-nine women.

  Declan hadn’t seen this patient before, but that wasn’t surprising; there were hundreds living in the main building. She was clutching a nurse’s arm, still dressed in dirty nightclothes, a shawl thrown over her shoulders, her thin frame bowed forward. Someone had wiped her face but the soot marks still streaked her neck, a smudge remaining on her right cheek. Her curly hair, unbrushed and loose, fell down her back. The policeman pulled on his belt as he watched her sit on the stool.

  The nurse left with a curious glance back, part of the drama, the whole place crawling with talk of what had taken place just hours earlier. Declan shifted in his seat, an uncomfortable straight-backed chair reminding him of chilly school classrooms. His pad rested in his lap. He was taking notes for Doctor Malone, who was still busy talking with the fire chief in the grounds. As Declan sharpened his pencil, he noticed the young woman watching until the neat curl of shaving fluttered to the floor.

  The policeman launched right in, no introductions, just straightened and began his questioning.

  ‘You are Miss Edith Garrett,’ he said, checking a note in his pocketbook.

  The woman said nothing, still staring at the shaving on the floor. She looked younger than her twenty years. Declan glanced at the brief information he’d been given: Edith Garrett, an in-patient for almost fifteen years. Her hands met in her lap, one resting on top of the other.

  ‘Miss Garrett, you were a resident in Ward Five, is that correct?’

  Were. Declan noted the past tense with a heavy heart.

  The policeman continued as if she had responded, ‘Can you talk us through the events of last night?’

  The woman remained silent, her brown eyes not flickering from the spot.

  The policeman sighed, frustrated perhaps by another unwilling patient; the first survivor hadn’t said a word either. ‘At what time did you notice that something was wrong?’

  Wrong: what an understatement. Declan swallowed, seeing again the wooden building lit up with livid orange flames, the noises that he knew he would never forget, and then, worse perhaps, the silence from inside, just smoke and smells and . . .

  Edith looked up at the policeman, her mouth lifting a fraction. Was she even listening?

  The officer bent his head forward and down, raised his voice. ‘Can you tell me how you came to be outside the building?’

  Declan watched the patient blink, a strange half-smile forming.

  The policeman stood up, threw Declan a look, as if he were complicit in this rebellion. His voice became even louder, the words sped up. ‘All the doors and windows had been locked at the last check, so, Miss Garrett, how was it that you came to be outside?’

  Her smile was gone. She tipped her head a fraction to the right, reminding Declan of a rifleman he had once spotted: the fragile bird with brown feathers flecked with ochre, so still, a twitch of its head as it searched amongst the leaves at its feet.

  The policeman cleared his throat, shifted his weight. ‘Miss Garrett, I must prevail upon you to answer.’

  She didn’t. The policeman breathed through his nose, the clatter of a trolley sounded somewhere in the corridor outside, the rattle of metal, a male voice called to someone. Declan fidgeted in his chair, pencil poised.

  ‘Miss Garrett, need I remind you of the terrible incident that has happened here?’

  The question led to nothing more from the woman. Declan attempted to catch her eye. She twisted a little on her stool, looked right at him, her eyes round, brows raised, as if she’d just woken, as if she’d just noticed him there. Then, as if he had said something pleasant, her face broke into a different smile: wide, a row of straight teeth, eyes creased. Declan sat upright, struggling with an appropriate response, the confusion knitting his eyebrows together.

  ‘Miss Garrett, if you could please talk us through last night. We are putting together a timeline of events.’

  She turned towards the voice then, as if she’d only just noticed the policeman, too, despite the fact he was enormous, his frame squeezed into the space between the hospital bed and the cabinet.

  ‘Last night.’ She repeated the two words. Declan was surprised by her voice, suddenly in the space: strong, clear.

  ‘Yes, you were found outside at’ – the policeman flicked back through the notes, squinting at his own scrawls – ‘around 1 a.m. How did you get outside? When did you get out?’

  ‘She got out too.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Martha.’

  ‘Miss Anderson, yes, we were just speaking with her.’

  Declan recalled the mute woman who had been in the room moments before. It hardly qualified as a conversation.

  ‘She got out too,’ Edith repeated.

  ‘Yes, we know that.’ The policeman gritted his teeth, the words pushed out between them.

  ‘I saw her. I—’ She stopped abruptly, screwed her eyes shut.

  Declan wondered what she’d been about to say.

  Edith changed tack, talking with her eyes closed as if back there, reliving it all. ‘I climbed out of my room, there was so much smoke. So much. I felt along the edge of the window; the shutter, it was broken. They hadn’t fixed it, you see.’

  ‘You climbed out? Of what? A window?’ the policeman checked.

  Edith’s face cleared, eyes opened again. ‘The window, yes, they hadn’t fixed the window,’ she said. ‘I’d told Bernie but . . .’

  She became distressed very quickly then, her face collapsing.

  ‘She was upstairs too. Bernie,’ she whispered.

  Declan watched her eyes darken as she repeated the name, fingers worrying at thumbs until she grasped her hands together in her lap. ‘She’s gone. She’s gone.’ Repeating those two words she started to gently rock on the stool, back, forward, back.

  She scooped forward, picked up the curl of pencil shaving from the floor, clu
tched it to her chest in both hands as if it were precious. ‘She’s gone.’

  Bernie. He had a patient called Bernadette. Young, shy, gentle. He felt a terrible slice of fear course through his chest.

  ‘She’s gone.’

  He stared at Edith, aware his face mirrored the distress on her own. Then, without warning, her mouth gaped open and she began to laugh, slowly, her head tipped back, her neck on show, tidemarks of soot highlighting the creamy skin beneath. The laugh, hiccoughed and strange, merged with tears in her throat, became sobs that shook her whole body.

  ‘Gone.’

  The policeman turned away from her, muttering under his breath. Declan reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, held it out to Edith. She scraped back her stool, the sobs stopping as abruptly as they had begun. The handkerchief in his hand hung limply in the gap between them.

  He pulled back, off-kilter, placing it back into his jacket pocket beneath his white overcoat. Shouldn’t have done that. Doctor Malone told him not to get in the way. He heard footsteps, a command from outside the room. One tear rested on Edith’s cheekbone, marking a clear trail through the smudge. Her expression was passive again, brown eyes now dulled as she turned towards the noises too. He realised he was holding his breath.

  Doctor Malone appeared in the doorway then, almost obscuring the young nurse standing behind him, just a thumbprint of soot on her pristine white hat, a strand of sandy hair escaped, needing to be pinned; her eyes rimmed red, a smile plastered on too late as she looked at Edith.

  ‘Ah, Detective, how are we getting on here?’ Doctor Malone’s voice hadn’t changed despite all the events of the last few hours. Brash, confident. As if he were checking up on the weather. His large, grey moustache twitched as he waited for a response.

  The policeman looked at him, then back at Edith, and grunted.

  Doctor Malone eyed the girl on the stool. ‘Edith, you can finish up here. Nurse Shaw will take you off, get you dressed.’

  Edith nodded quickly, the knuckles on her hands growing white as she clasped them together.

  Doctor Malone looked across at Declan. ‘Doctor Harris, we’ll catch up shortly. I need to go and see the pathologist, see what we can do about the bodies. Then we’ll need to discuss today’s routine – as you can imagine, it is awry.’