The Cottingley Secret

by Hazel Gaynor

  I took my usual walk along the stream yesterday evening. I like to listen to the soft cooing of the wood pigeons in the branches as the sun gilds the fields and the sheep. I stopped to pick some wildflowers and my eye was drawn to something caught in an eddy. At first I thought it was pieces of old cardboard, all sodden and bent out of shape, but I noticed drawings on them. I brought the sodden pieces back to the cottage and set them on the windowsill to dry. Only then could I piece them together, like a jigsaw puzzle, and would you believe it, they were drawings of fairies. Quite lovely too. I wonder if that was what I’d seen the girls scatter into the water, if Elsie’s photograph wasn’t of flowers in front of Frances—but paper fairies! I’ve placed the fragments of paper into my special box of Aisling’s things.

  I still keep the lock of her hair and yours in my locket. It is all I have to know that either of you were ever real: a single lock of hair. One as black as night, the other as red as a harvest moon. And here I am, trapped in a permanent twilight where nothing makes sense and I must dream my unquiet dreams of our beautiful little girl, playing with the fairies. Hair like flames in the setting sun. The beauty of all things around her.

  Stay safe, my love.

  You are always in my heart and in my prayers.

  Your ever loving wife,

  Ellen

  x

  Tears slipped silently down Olivia’s cheeks as she read her great-grandmother’s words, some of them almost erased with the passing of the years and the many hands that, like hers, had held these fragile memories. In reading Ellen’s letters, Olivia felt incredibly close to her and to this distant part of her past. Her great-grandmother Ellen, like her Nana and her mother, was part of who she was, part of her story.

  It didn’t surprise Olivia that Ellen had seen Frances and Elsie take the photographs, and had found their torn-up cutouts, as Frances had worried somebody might, but she was glad Ellen had kept the girls’ secret safe. She wondered what had happened to the fairy cutouts. Lost, she imagined, over the decades.

  At the bottom of the box was a withered posy of dried wildflowers. Olivia knew them: harebell, bindweed, campion, and bladderwort. With the letters was a collection of paintings, some small enough to fit inside a locket. All of them were of the same red-haired girl, and always she was surrounded by fairies and flowers. Olivia knew the girl in the paintings. It was, unmistakably, the girl from her dreams.

  “Aisling.” The name fell from her lips in a whisper, as if someone else spoke for her.

  “Excuse me, but we’re closing now.”

  Olivia jumped at the voice beside her. The librarian smiled and apologized for giving her a fright.

  Olivia began to gather her things. “Sorry. I lost track of time.”

  “Don’t worry. Everyone does. Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Yes. More than I was looking for actually, but there’s one other thing I’d like to find.” She asked where she might find local newspaper reports from the early 1900s.

  “Do you have a name you wish to search for?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our microfiche might bring something up.” He checked his watch. “The main reading room is open for another half hour if you want to try.”

  It didn’t take Olivia long to find several reports from local Bradford and Bingley newspapers regarding the disappearance of five-year-old Aisling Hogan. They stated that she was last seen by her mother when she’d checked on her before going to bed, and that the child was reported missing the following morning. She was known to sleepwalk, the reports said, and the conclusion reached by the local constabulary at the time was that she had fallen into a disused well or an old mine shaft. Only one report mentioned that the mother, local schoolteacher Ellen Hogan, of Irish descent but now living in Cottingley, believed her child had been taken by the fairies.

  Olivia hadn’t heard the name Aisling used in connection with her family until Nana had first mentioned it shortly after Olivia had started to read Frances’s story. Having read about Frances’s dreams of the little girl, and having read Ellen’s heartbreaking letters to her husband, Olivia now understood why Aisling’s name had never been mentioned. Her disappearance was so distressing that nobody in the family could bear to talk about it. Aisling’s was an incomplete story that had tormented her mother until her dying day. No wonder she chose to believe her daughter had gone to play with the fairies.

  As people began to return books to the desk and pack away their bags, Olivia scrolled through the last few reports. Her hand stilled as she read a short article from a local newspaper from the 1950s.

  The remains of a young child were discovered yesterday when excavation began on a new housing estate in Cottingley, West Riding. Although formal identification is not usually possible in such cases, investigating officers were able to confirm that the remains are those of Aisling Hogan, a young child who was reported missing in 1916, close to the area of their discovery. The remains were found with a small stone figurine, carved into the shape of a fairy. It was described in detail to investigators at the time of the disappearance by the child’s mother, the child’s father having made it for her. A surviving relative, Martha Kavanagh (née Hogan), who now lives in Ireland, attended a private ceremony where the child’s remains were interred at St. Michael’s and All Angels Church cemetery, alongside her parents.

  Tears fell silently down Olivia’s cheeks as she read the report. Nana had known. She’d been able to say good-bye to the sister she’d never met, but whom she remembered when so many other memories were now lost to her. It gave Olivia some small comfort to know that Aisling had been found and given a proper burial. Perhaps it was better that Ellen had died believing her own version of events, because believing in fairies was far easier than knowing her little girl had died in such tragic circumstances.

  Olivia was the last to leave the library. Her footsteps echoed as she walked out of the lofty room—reminding her of all the women in her life who had come before her, and whom she knew walked beside her still.

  Seventeen

  Cottingley, Yorkshire. Present day.

  Cottingley was everything Olivia had imagined as she’d read Frances’s story, her descriptions were so vivid and true: the heather-clad moors that dropped into wide, tumbling valleys, the narrow streets, the terraced houses like books on a shelf, Number 31 propping them all up like a bookend. She recognized it all, just as it had been seen through Frances’s impressionable young eyes. But Olivia didn’t just see the familiarity. She felt it, deep within her bones. Just like when she returned to Ireland, she had a sense of coming home, a sense that she had been here before, had once walked these streets and pulled her hat over her ears against the sharp prick of the cold east wind.

  She stood opposite the humble stone-built house, where so many stories had been told and so many secrets were once held. She imagined Aunt Polly standing in the doorway, excited to see her sister and her niece, all the way from Cape Town. She could picture Uncle Arthur with his great big hands, and Elsie, as tall as the lampposts, a spark of mischief in her eyes. She saw Frances, hesitant at the gate, because something had drawn her attention away toward the darkness beyond the end of the street.

  And then she heard it. Faintly at first, and then louder as the wind changed direction: the unmistakable rush and tumble of water. Following the sound, Olivia walked through a small opening between two of the houses where the ground sloped sharply down toward a shallow stream. The beck.

  Everything was exactly as Frances had described it and yet even lovelier. The little waterfall. The willow bough seat. The sunlight illuminating the leaves on the trees. It was perfect.

  Glad to be alone, Olivia sat for a moment, absorbing the essence of this enchanted place where her family had once lived and played, laughed and cried, and where magical things had caught the attention of watchful young girls. She listened to the breeze as it whispered through the leaves, listened to the quiet chatter of the water as it gossiped about the th
ings it had seen long ago. She took off her socks and boots, dipping her toes into the frigid water, smiling to herself as she heard the distant echo of laughter as Frances and Elsie had planned their joke.

  After crossing the stream on the stepping-stones, Olivia dried her feet with her cardigan, put her socks and boots back on, and clambered up the other bank. She followed a narrow pathway through the trees where the grass had been flattened by other walkers and secretive nocturnal creatures. As if in a dream, she walked on, led by some instinct, by a distant memory.

  Emerging into a clearing, she saw the remains of a small stone cottage, the roof having collapsed long ago, exposing rotting timber beams where crows now sat in silent respect. A low wall ran around the perimeter, enclosing what would once have been a garden but was now overgrown with a dense wilderness of long grass and weeds and wildflowers. Olivia picked her way through, resting her hands against the old walls, absorbing the soul of this place her dear Nana and great-grandmother had once called home: the cottage in the woods where bluebells came right up to the door in the spring and a fairy ring grew at the base of an old elder tree.

  Birds sang in the trees around the cottage while the waterfall rushed ever onward behind the canopy of foliage. It was beautiful and serene. A private place that had known such grief and pain, and such unremitting hope and love. Olivia walked around the damaged walls, following a mossy path toward the ruined remains of the house. She peered through glassless windows, imagining the places where her family had once slept and eaten and where her great-grandmother had once sat as she’d watched two young girls play at the stream.

  At the front of the cottage, she bent down and pushed aside the long grass. There they were, just as she’d known they would be. A pair of small stone boots on the step, wildflowers entwined between, around, and inside them, poking through weather-worn cracks. The sight of them, so small, gave Olivia pause as she thought about the little girl who had once lived here, once played here. She had been much loved. And she would be remembered.

  Gathering a small posy from the wildflowers around her, Olivia took a moment for quiet reflection before leaving the cottage to its silent recollections, retracing her steps back through the woods, following the sound of the church bells that chimed the hour.

  It didn’t take her long to find the grave.

  The headstone was small and weathered, the inscription partly erased by decades of rain and wind. And yet Olivia walked straight to it, crunching over the gravel pathways, past neatly tended plots, and around the church walls where pigeons roosted in the eaves and rooks cawed their rowdy welcome from the rafters.

  It was the most colorful and vibrant of all the graves. Purple and pink, lavender and yellow, blue and green wildflowers bloomed all around it. Not one shop-bought bouquet. Not one pot plant. Something else had tended this grave.

  Olivia bent down, running her fingertips across the lettering on the headstone.

  “Here lies Aisling Hogan, who went to play with the fairies. 1911–1916.”

  Blinking through her tears, Olivia placed her posy of wildflowers at the foot of the headstone.

  “For you, Aisling. You can rest now.”

  The breeze stilled around her.

  All was silent.

  All was as it should be.

  She sat for a long time, thinking, remembering, paying her respects at the graves of her great-grandparents, Ellen and Robert, and paying her respects to little Aisling, on behalf of all those who hadn’t been able to. Only when the sun dipped low on the horizon and a cool breeze nipped at Olivia’s arms did she walk back into the village, to her room at the local pub.

  She had just turned the key in the lock when her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was the nursing home. Could she come as soon as possible? Nana had taken a turn for the worse.

  SHE WASN’T TOO late, but the nurse said it wouldn’t be long. She must prepare herself, but how? How would it ever be possible to say good-bye to this woman who had become everything to her?

  She took a coffee, although she didn’t really want it, and crept quietly to Nana’s bedside. The room was neat and tidy, everything in its place. It was as if the room knew Nana was leaving and was already packed and waiting with her suitcase, ready for wherever she was going next.

  She looked unbearably frail and fragile in the bed, dressed like a summer meadow in her nightie speckled with pink and white flowers. Olivia brushed her fingers lightly over Nana’s hands, remembering how Nana used to rub the backs of her hands when she couldn’t sleep, troubled by dreams she couldn’t understand.

  The minutes passed slowly as the sun sank below the trees and the moon rose in an inky-blue sky, speckled with the first pinpricks of starlight. Olivia told Nana about her trip to Cottingley and how lovely the moors were beneath their heather blankets. “I found the cottage, Nana. It was exactly as you remembered it. A carpet of bluebells coming right up to the door.” She took a breath before she carried on. “And I found Aisling. She’s sleeping now, Nana. She’s safe.”

  Perhaps there was the slightest flicker beneath paper-thin eyelids. The slightest movement of fingertips. A distant sigh.

  Olivia could never be sure.

  As darkness fell, she sat in silence, watching the rise and fall of the blue blanket. Up and down. Up and down. In these final moments, everything else fell away and life came down to nothing more than the desire for the heart to keep beating, for the bedsheets to keep up their continual ebb and flow.

  “I love you, Nana,” she whispered, squeezing her hand gently. “Very, very much.”

  Nana slept.

  She didn’t hear.

  The hours slipped slowly away.

  Olivia had nothing with her other than the few remaining pages from Frances’s story. Pulling them out of her bag, she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and began to read aloud. Whether Nana heard her or not, she wasn’t sure, but she read on until the words began to swim about on the page and her eyelids became leaden, and she couldn’t fight the urge to sleep any longer. As her eyes closed, the final pages of Frances’s story fluttered to the floor like feathers, floating beneath the bed, where the final secrets would remain unseen, unread.

  THE NURSE SHOOK Olivia gently awake at dawn. She opened her eyes and glanced toward the bed. The blanket was still. The room echoed with the sense of a life departed.

  She was shown into a private room. While the nurse went to make tea and toast, Olivia stood at the window and watched the sunrise. It was peaceful and full of hope. A perfect day for a stroll along the harbor. Pappy would be waiting for Nana. She knew he would.

  The nurse set the tea on a table. “She always spoke very fondly of you, Olivia, even when she wasn’t entirely sure who you were.” Olivia watched the clouds, rose-tinted by the sun. “But there were moments when she remembered and knew exactly who you were. And she always told me she loved you very much.”

  Olivia’s hand stilled on her teacup as she turned around. “Did she? Really?”

  The young nurse nodded. “She often told me, after your visits. ‘She’s a grand good girl, that one. Always says she loves me. Isn’t that nice?’”

  It was all she’d ever wanted to hear.

  The nurse sat with her for a while, and they shared stories and memories of Nana. The tea had gone cold in the pot by the time a gray-faced man knocked lightly on the door. He was in a tartan dressing gown. Olivia recognized him as the man Nana had told her was an Olympic swimmer.

  He touched Olivia gently on the arm. “Please excuse me for interrupting, but I wanted to say that I am very sorry for your loss. Martha was a special lady. It was an honor to know her.” He crossed himself as he said this, and as he did, his dressing gown gaped slightly at the neck, revealing a thick ribbon and a flash of silver.

  When he’d gone, Olivia asked the nurse who he was.

  “That’s Tom. Swam for Ireland in the Olympics once. Never goes anywhere without his medal.”

  Olivia smiled through her tears. Perhap
s Nana had remembered more than she’d given her credit for.

  The nurse placed her hand lightly on Olivia’s arm. “Take your time, love. There’s no hurry.”

  There really wasn’t. On days like this, time simply wasn’t relevant. This was a day to be slowly absorbed, not swept away. Today was a pause before the page was turned and the story continued.

  Before Olivia left St. Bridget’s, she stepped into the dayroom. The cushions were all messed up. Out of line. She plumped and straightened each one and imagined her dear Nana smiling from somewhere far away, telling her she was a grand good girl. A grand good girl, altogether.

  Eighteen

  Ireland. Present day.

  The shop fell into a quiet mourning, and the window stopped blooming. The leaves began to brown and curl at the edges as petals tumbled from the flowers. Even the collection of white harebells in the coffee cup began to wither and die as the bright purpose Olivia had felt in recent weeks was clouded by fresh grief and the all-too-familiar ache of loss. Nana had gone, and Ross and Iris were leaving to start their new life in Kerry. The unexpectedly lovely world Olivia had discovered since returning to Ireland was disappearing too soon.

  She tried to take her mind off things by throwing herself into her work. While Henry looked after the shop, she went to meetings and house clearances and auctions. With each bang of the gavel, she forced herself to stop thinking about “what if” and “what might have been” and focus instead on what she needed to do for herself and the bookshop. In the evenings, with just the radio and Hemingway for company, she took out her bookbinding tools and began to work on Frances’s book. She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed the delicate intricacies of the task, how nothing else mattered while she worked. It seemed fitting that as she stitched and glued Frances’s memories together, she felt herself begin to come back together a little too.