Magpie: The gripping psychological suspense with a twist

by Sophie Draper

  I called to Duncan to go after them. I’d thought I didn’t have the courage to look at her; they had asked me, but I’d said no. At sixteen weeks, she was no bigger than a small pear. I’d caught a brief glimpse of her shape but turned my head away, too fearful of what I might see. I’ve regretted that ever since. It’s haunted me, that failure to even look upon my newborn daughter in those first and last moments. But I wouldn’t leave her to be thrown in to some furnace, disposed of in such an impersonal, functional way.

  We can deal with it, they’d said. There are procedures. You don’t want to go to the crematorium, she won’t be the only one; there will be other babies and it’ll only distress you further.

  I’d felt suspicion rise over me. They’d asked me if I was willing to let her be used for research. I’d said no. The very idea appalled me. She wasn’t just another body part, a liver or a kidney, or a sample of cancerous flesh. I couldn’t let my child be dissected or held in a jar. Or dumped and burnt with all those others. I sent Duncan running from the room and eventually he brought her back. In a simple plastic container with an opaque lid, no bigger than the size of a tissue box.

  We signed the forms and took her home, against all advice. Legally, they couldn’t stop us. I don’t know what they thought we were going to do with her, but surely it would be more dignified, more respectful and loving than what they had planned.

  I still couldn’t look at her, or even hold her. But I did give her a name.

  Evangeline Margery Henderson.

  In the end, Duncan said it had to be done now, not later, that already her body was decomposing. He’d do it, he said, I didn’t have to come with him. At the last minute, I tugged on his arm.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I want to see.’

  He took her out, holding her so carefully on a white muslin cloth in the cusp of his hand. I gazed upon her in silence. When he turned away, I tugged again.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I said.

  He’d found the perfect spot, deep within the reservoir dam, in a long-abandoned channel, where it would be dry and safe, where no one could disturb her and no animal could ever get to her … I couldn’t bear to think of that.

  ‘The old tunnels,’ he said. ‘The old waterworks beneath the dam. I know how to get in there. No one will ever know.’

  I nodded.

  The reservoir was the place that meant the most to us, where Duncan and I had spent so much of our time together as students. Where Evangeline had most likely been conceived.

  We went together. We carved out a dry ledge well away from the main channels and tucked her box into it. Duncan bricked the whole thing in and I gave him the coin. The puppetrider.

  ‘Place it next to her,’ I said, folding his fingers around the coin. ‘Let her take it with her, to wherever, whatever that might be.’

  I don’t know what I believed. Death is something we each of us choose not to think about. Until we must. He did as I bid.

  My mother had given the coin to me when I was a child. She’d said her mother had given it to her, that it had been found in the water, the river near the house where generations of the family had once lived. She’d kept it all those years, waiting to pass it on. She said that it was the most precious thing she had, apart from us children.

  She’d spoken with love in her heart.

  So I passed it on. I gave it to my daughter.

  Duncan used the coin as a marker for her grave, cementing it between the bricks end on. There was this unspoken pact between us after that. That we would never speak of her again. We both of us wanted to move on.

  Is that a sin? Wanting to forget and move on? To live?

  CHAPTER 71

  CLAIRE – AFTER

  To the east, the night sky fades to pink and a haze of vacillating colour radiates across the horizon. Dawn and dusk are the two times of the day when the landscape in this valley shimmers, like the spring and autumn equinox, on the cusp of one state and another. This is when the mists thrive, when both sun and moon are present in the sky, bending the fragile light, allowing the creatures of both worlds to meet.

  As I stand on the dam, I think of myself like that, straddling one world and the next, alone in my head with all the memory and pain trapped within. I never dreamed for one moment that I would ever have an abortion. You don’t. This hadn’t been an unwanted child; unplanned, yes, but never unwanted.

  I remember the anti-abortion leaflets at the student union, pictures of aborted foetuses, lurid headlines of moral judgement, religious assumptions about the value of life from the moment of conception. Those few days between hearing the news and effecting the abortion were the worst days of my life. And no one cared. Or so it seemed to me. Duncan didn’t want to talk about it and I couldn’t share it with anyone else. We hadn’t told our parents or family about the pregnancy and Duncan didn’t want me to now. They’d only pass judgement, he said. Complicate matters. I knew he was right. And I couldn’t share something so personal, so devastating with anyone else. I wasn’t offered counselling or any other support. Just a medical result and a choice to be made. Sooner rather than later, they said.

  I scoured the internet. I cried and cried and sat there tormented by the need to make a decision, thinking about all those arguments for and against, about when a baby can survive outside the womb. But Evangeline could never have survived outside the womb. The prognosis was so bad, it was highly unlikely we’d even get to term. There was no further discussion about this with the doctors, no debate. There was no need – the diagnosis was unequivocal. The consultant immediately assumed I would, should, of course, abort. They waited only for my signature on that wretched form. My signature. Not Duncan’s.

  Duncan. I couldn’t forgive his indifference. His refusal to talk. It seared in my heart that he wouldn’t let me talk about it. That he wouldn’t share the burden of that decision. I loved him so much then. Coward – that’s what I thought later, in my bitterness.

  And that’s how our unhappiness began. His betrayal. Everything that came later was just consequences.

  On the maternity ward, I was hustled into a side room at the end of the corridor. It was clear that some of the midwives thought differently. That I had made a ‘choice’ that some of them abhorred. They scowled at my request for pain relief, as if I didn’t deserve it. They told me not to leave the room or walk down the corridor. One of them even jabbed my arm so roughly with her needles that I whimpered every time. She didn’t seem to notice. All this as my body was wracked with the pain of contractions that had no real purpose.

  I took every drug I could lay my hands on and listened to music to distract myself from the cries of the newborn babies further down the ward. I guess if your work is all about bringing children into the world, you perhaps don’t want to participate in the flip side of that. Abortion. I can understand that.

  It was my choice. Not Duncan’s, not the doctors’, nor anyone else. My body, my responsibility, my decision. My failure, my fault. Ultimately, I was to blame, not God or science or fate, nor anyone else, that was how I felt. Then. I see it differently now. Oddly, it was an easy decision to make, however painful, because she was so profoundly affected.

  ‘You’ll go on to have another one.’

  It was one of the older, more experienced midwives, sitting on the edge of my bed.

  ‘There’s no reason to worry this will happen again. Not at your age. I’ve seen so many other mums go on to have a thriving, healthy family. You’re only twenty-three. You’ve got all the time in the world, luv. Every time it’s a shake of the dice and the odds are so against this ever happening again.’

  She meant well. I know she did. The doctors had said the same. But I hated that phrase, ‘shake of the dice’. It was too casual, too random. Chance can go either way, for good or bad.

  With time, I have come to understand that this was fate, a cruel quirk of fate. I had no control over her condition. I was not to blame; nor Duncan, either.

  And I will alw
ays grieve for her. My daughter.

  CHAPTER 72

  DUNCAN – AFTER

  We were married, Claire and I. It was a marriage hastily arranged after she fell pregnant, before we got the news. Before the abortion.

  It had mattered to us both. Her, because she wanted that security for our child; me, because I thought it was the right thing to do. I like to think I’m a good man, but good men still make the wrong decisions. And I loved her. I loved her body and her mind. Her sharp intelligence and quirky sense of humour. I loved her fierce support of everything I did and her determination. We might not have married as quickly as we did, if she hadn’t fallen pregnant, but I always thought that eventually, once I was established with my career, we would get married.

  We didn’t tell our families. They’d have wanted to know why, to make us wait and do the whole big wedding thing. We knew both our families couldn’t really afford it. It was a madcap student wedding done on a shoestring – Claire wore a second-hand floaty summer dress, and I wore jeans and a dinner jacket. Martin tied a bunch of old cans to Claire’s bicycle and Claire and I rode it home, Claire balanced on the handle bars, the both of us screeching with laughter, not caring who saw or heard us.

  That evening we shared a bottle of champagne on the back doorstep of our student digs. We were penniless but happy then. Not after.

  Summer turned to autumn and I began my new veterinary career. After five years at uni, I was champing at the bit. I joined a practice in Derby as a junior vet and Claire found a position as a research assistant. No one knew about the baby. It wasn’t something either of us wanted to share.

  Things had changed. After the abortion, she seemed to pull away from me. She wasn’t carefree like before. In the days leading up to the abortion, she was so upset, I didn’t know what to do or say – there was nothing I could say. I couldn’t change the outcome. We had to get on with it, move on. I think when you see animals dying all the time, you come to realise life is cruel but you have to be practical. Save the next one. You do what you can, to the very extent that you can, but when there’s nothing more that can be done, you have to let it go.

  You can’t live with it otherwise.

  I think she thought I was indifferent. Or that I was even relieved. That I could get on with my career without worrying about being a parent. It didn’t seem to occur to her that maybe I had lost a child, too. That I couldn’t bear to talk about it over and over.

  Nor did it occur to her that I was worried it might happen again. I felt to blame, that it was my family’s genes, not hers. I could see what Becky, my sister, was going through. She was having all sorts of problems with her son by then with his own medical condition. The doctors told me no, it had nothing to do with what had affected Alex, that although it was a genetic abnormality it wasn’t one passed down through the family. But I still felt to blame, as if I had put Claire and our baby through all this.

  Becky is a passionate defender of pro-life beliefs. We could never tell her, she’d never have understood, even though Evangeline’s condition was profoundly different – survival under whatever circumstance just wasn’t going to happen.

  Everything I did after the abortion got spun the other way. My silence was indifference, my friendships disloyalty, my efforts to improve our lives arrogance and vanity. Claire accused me of being too immersed in my work. I accused her of being obsessed with making a home. She was nest-building, I guess, readying herself for another throw of the dice. As if somehow that would put things right. We bickered over money and location and everything else, punishing each other for each new offence. We stopped spending our weekends together on the hills. Sex was our only meeting point, a way to make up after an argument.

  Eventually, she fell pregnant with Joe. It wasn’t planned and I felt so guilty, putting her through that again. She was sick as a dog just like before and we spent nine months terrified something would go wrong. I know what they mean now about counting the baby’s toes.

  Joe was born healthy and beautiful. And a new set of problems began. Joe’s problems. Every time I approached Claire, she pushed me away. She said I did the same. I think she was depressed, beyond the normal ups and downs of motherhood. But then hadn’t she a right to be? And the shadow of Evangeline still haunted us. Claire couldn’t forgive herself for what had happened, or me. How could she let me make love to her, she said, after Joe, when there was no longer any emotional connection between us?

  It was all about her.

  But there were two of us in this marriage, didn’t she realise that?

  CHAPTER 73

  CLAIRE – AFTER

  It was never the same again after Evangeline, even after Joe. Our marriage never had a chance. Joe was the accident – oh, God how I really, really hate that phrase. Joe was the only good thing that came from our marriage. But now Joe is dead.

  I look down at the dam. I feel the sense of enclosure, the depth of water, the vast energy held in check by this great wall of concrete. Man-made. That’s me, isn’t it? This place is all about holding back, keeping things under control. There has to be a balance, I see that now, between letting go and holding in – too much or little of either is destructive.

  Perhaps I should have had more sympathy for my husband. He held it all in and focused on the practical and I couldn’t reach him. I remember how Frances came to the Barn for dinner once, not long after it was completed. She was so in awe of the place, all the careful attention to detail, the smooth lines and perfect symmetry.

  ‘Duncan must love you very much,’ she said, when she followed me into the kitchen. ‘He talks of nothing else but how much he wants you to like the Barn, for you to be happy. If only all husbands were like that!’

  I saw it as intrusive. How dare she bring me to task, as if he needed my approval for anything he did, as if he was trying to make it up to me. And then it dawned on me. She knew about Evangeline. He must have told her, despite everything he’d said about keeping it from our families. I was so angry.

  But that wasn’t what she meant. Frances didn’t have an agenda. She meant to be kind – why didn’t I see it before? I’ve been so overwhelmed by my own feelings, my own needs, all this time, that I didn’t think of him. Everyone assumes it’s the mother’s loss, but it’s the father’s, too. I’d been so intent on wanting him to listen to me, that I hadn’t thought to listen to him. Or that Duncan must have felt he was losing me as well as his child. Evangeline, and Joe too. I failed Duncan even more than I failed Joe.

  By day, I have walked amongst people who carry on with their daily lives unknowing, uncaring of the grief that roots me to this place. By night, I have lain awake, immersed in my own fears, reliving every moment of the past as if that might change how things turned out. I have felt as if I could never leave this valley, here where my daughter lies beneath my feet and my son lay trapped in the water.

  It seems prophetic to me now, that the puppetrider coin, which I set in place to watch over Evangeline, found Joe. And now it has found me again. I clutch the coin in my hand as if my life depends on it. Like an unlucky penny that won’t go away.

  I turn to face the reservoir, draped with its sweeping layer of white. The day breaks and the fog begins to stir, weakening its grip. It separates to reveal dark ripples that move with the belly of a current that should not be there. A black shape appears through the mist, the water swaying back and forth, like it’s some ancient creature emerging from the deep, something prehistoric that’s always been hidden from human view. An island. I’ve never seen an island here before.

  I see green rock and stone blocks tumbling one over another. They’re gleaming wet. They morph into walls, broken and dysfunctional, but with the definite shape of a building. Gaping holes frame the sky where once there must have been huge windows and above it all stands a church tower, almost complete, from which a narrow steeple points upwards. At its tip is the leaning, twisted metal cross. The one I have seen slowly rising all this time.

  Sunlight i
s creeping down the hills and burning off the mist. The last few fragile strands slip through the gaps in the walls of the church and hang like giant cobwebs across the arched windows. The glass has long gone, but some wood remains, rafters and beams that hold up the tower. The rest of the building is barely stones and pillars that stake out the original shape of the church, rising from the earth like the empty husk of a whale. Green and wet, it steams gently as the day begins to heat.

  I don’t understand where this has come from. Perhaps it’s like before, when the church emerged in a drought. But there is no drought. Quite the opposite. The water flow in the reservoir has been reversed, taking the excess water over the last few days from the surrounding flooded land. It makes no sense, revealing once more the old church. It’s the church of St Bertram’s, isn’t it? Drowned all those years ago.

  The one that Harry’s daughter, Nat, told me had been demolished.

  CHAPTER 74

  CLAIRE – AFTER

  Is that Duncan standing by the tree? The fog has lifted completely and in my confusion about my memories and the island I hadn’t realised that was him. Why have I left it so long? I’ve been so near to him and yet so far. Is there still a chance for us? – I could believe that now. I’ve always loved him. I think he loves me too, despite what he said. If I can just let him.

  No more memories, no more pain, no more grief and hurt and loss. I think of that story of the wife who held on despite all that the faerie queen could throw at her. What if I go to him and tell him I love him one more time?

  I push away from the railing and run back across the dam. My shoes slap against unforgiving pavement. The sound bounces against the concave wall beneath like the lost cry of a child in an empty playground. My feet land on soft wood chippings and I race along the path into the woods. My eyes search for a glimpse of the dead flower tree and Duncan, and once more I see him in the distance.