The Daughters of Foxcote Manor

by Eve Chase

  On a table beside him is a bowl of walnuts. A silver nutcracker. A wicker basket containing a blown ostrich egg. Everything is clammily still. Loaded with meaning. I immediately want to leave.

  As Helen kisses him briskly on each cheek, he squints over his shoulder at me. “Daddy, this is Baby Forest.” Her voice fills with wonder again. “The foundling. Found.”

  Painfully slowly, her father puts on the spectacles that hang on a chain around his neck and peers at me, frowning, with an expression of dispassionate curiosity.

  “As I explained on the phone, Daddy, she’s Big Rita’s adopted daughter. And . . . yes, hold on to your hat, Annie’s mother. I’ll explain how that happened later. Teenagers on smartphones basically.” Her father looks understandably confused. He scratches the folds of his scraggy neck. “Sylvie, this is my father, Walter Harrington.”

  I struggle to smile. My armpits are wet. I can hardly breathe in here. There’s something toxic, cloying, caught in the dust our feet kick up.

  “Dear girl, I owe you an apology.” There’s a wheezy rattle in Walter’s voice.

  An apology? For what? For a moment, I just stand and stare at him, forgetting my manners. My heart flutters.

  “You’d better sit.” Helen steers me to a nearby chair, like a fussing aunt, and pushes me into button-back upholstery. “There’s no easy way of telling you this, Sylvie.”

  I glance at Walter, adjusting his bow tie, his expression stern. There’s a drop in pressure in the room, headachy. The visit suddenly feels as if it could detonate in any direction. Why did I trust Helen? Why am I here?

  “Daddy and his housekeeper, a psychopath called Marge, they planned it.” Helen’s voice vibrates with fury. A vein pulses under her eye. “You being found in the woods.”

  Even the wooden African masks on the wall scream, “What?”

  “Marge put you on that tree stump.” Helen shakes her head, as if she can’t quite believe it herself. “She left you there. Your birth mother couldn’t bear to do it.”

  “Is this some sort of joke?” She walked away. Only it wasn’t my mother? It was Marge? Marge of the flying fig roll. The room swims in the green lamplight.

  “No, I’m afraid not.” Helen’s face sags with regret. “The rest of us had no idea at the time. None at all. Please believe that. Big Rita never knew, did she, Daddy?”

  Walter nudges up his glasses, which leave an indent on either side of his nose. “Correct. Although I was scared she’d guess.”

  My feelings hurl around like angry children. I don’t know how to be in my skin. What to say. What to do. I don’t care about who died now, who killed. I must leave. But when I try to move my legs, they’re useless mush.

  “After Don died, Daddy cut Big Rita out of our lives. Brutally.” Helen’s mouth thins to an angry line. “Took out court orders. You like a lawyer, don’t you, Daddy? Threatened her, said if she ever spoke to the press, to anyone about that summer, he’d hammer her life into the ground, drag her name through the mud.”

  “You . . . you . . .”—I feel faint with rage—“arsehole.”

  Walter puts up his hands in surrender. “In my defense, I was crazier than my wife by then. I just didn’t know it at the time.”

  “Just say sorry, won’t you?” says Helen icily. “For once in your life, Daddy.”

  Walter bows his head. His pate looks fragile and pale, like the ostrich egg in the bowl. “My deepest apologies, Sylvie.”

  I cannot look at him, this reserved, entitled man, who thought he was above the rules and treated a baby like a doll.

  “I selfishly thought the baby, you—gosh, how strange life is—would save my marriage. Rescue my beautiful Jeannie.” Everything starts to feels unreal. Dubbed. “I stayed out of the way, even when I got back from overseas, and I hid away here, in this apartment, just to give her a chance to bond with you, the baby she craved, quietly, in the woods.”

  Feeling vulnerable, unshelled, I try to stand again, but my legs are still not working, and I sink back into the chair.

  “I’d never have thought of such a preposterous thing on my own. Marge presented it, like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a . . . a stroke of luck.” He drags at his wizened cheeks with long, thin fingers. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  I grip the sides of the armchair, like Caroline in an airplane seat during turbulence. I want Caroline. I should have told her I was coming here. She’d have stopped me.

  “We need a drink.” Helen starts clinking glasses at a trolley. She presses a gin and tonic into my hand. I take a swig, feeling as though I’m slipping through the protective net I’ve sewn around myself. Trying to grab things to stop my fall.

  “Marge kept everything about you rather vague.” He nudges his glasses up his nose with his thumb. “But I can tell you that your mother was young, nineteen, I believe, and very, very pregnant when she realized. I’m afraid she didn’t know the father’s full name. A sailor of some sort. She gave birth at home, in secret, her own mother as midwife, if I remember rightly. Lived on the other side of the forest, a strict religious family. Dirt poor. Private people. But Marge knew them—she knew everybody, made it her business—and offered a way out.” He grimaces, and something that might be guilt flashes across his features. “I’m not sure she’d have had much choice, your mother. Not like girls do now.”

  The ice in my glass cracks. Something inside me does the same. I’m struck by an overwhelming urge to reach back in time and pluck the baby away from all these people—not just the rural family into which I was born, but the Harringtons too. The next moment, as a swig of gin burns down my throat, it occurs to me that this is what my parents did. The “truth” is less about that blood-soaked summer than about the legacy of my adopted parents’ daily small acts of love—what was created anew, rather than what was lost. It’s like seeing myself in the mirror for the first time.

  “I’m sure your birth mother was the anonymous caller who tipped off the police the night Don was shot.” Walter is silent for a moment, sifting through the event. “Of course, she was meant to have gone by then. On a ship.”

  “A ship?” I breathe. Jo.

  “A cruise ship,” Helen confirms. She hands me a tissue. “She worked in the kitchens.”

  This hurts my heart. There can’t be many workplaces grimmer than a greasy boiling kitchen under the waterline.

  “Wanted to see the world,” said Helen, her voice choking up. “Isn’t that right, Daddy?”

  He nods. “And she got to Canada in the end. Just not straightaway.” There’s a hint of annoyance in his voice. “Not like she was meant to.”

  Canada. She couldn’t have got much farther from her family. I wonder if she ever forgave them, if she’s got one of her own now, a nice husband, grown-up children. And if she’s ever told them about me or if I’m a tiny precious secret.

  “But that summer she hung around, checking on you. Marge couldn’t get rid of her and was terrified she might snatch you back. And the girl might well have if she hadn’t seen how well Rita cared for her . . . you, I mean. Held you, sang to you, all that mumsy stuff. Marge said that’d made a big difference. It stopped her.” He raises an eyebrow knowingly, as if aware of a closer call. “Just.”

  Something in me slides. Starts to thaw. I fight this. It’s dangerous to imagine my birth mother was anything but heartless. Not young and scared and manipulated. In a different era, Annie. And it’s strange, fissuring, to think that it was Mum, then just a young nanny, Helen’s Big Rita, who might unwittingly have stopped my birth mother from reclaiming me, rerouting Fate, taking my hand and leading me into a whole different life. I can’t take it in.

  “It’s true, Sylvie. We always felt watched,” Helen says. “I used to sense someone out there in the trees, but she was so quick, so deft, like a woodland creature. I never actually saw her.” She lays a jewelry-encrusted hand on my arm. “
She stayed as long as she could. But she had to bolt after making the call to the police, or she’d have been questioned too. She’d have been rightly terrified.”

  A new feeling opens inside me, like the heron’s wings. Forgiveness of sorts. If not forgiveness, understanding. And a sadness so sharp and sweet it feels like relief.

  “So you see, Sylvie.” Walter takes off his glasses and rubs his rheumy eyes. “Marge’s mad plan failed. And I failed you and your birth mother. I promised I’d give you every advantage and I didn’t. The shame is mine, all mine.”

  My childhood rushes past, imperfect and happy: wind-blistered beaches; the gnarly apple tree in the garden; Dad in his workshop, soft-leaded flat carpenter’s pencil behind his ear; me and Caroline rushing into the cottage with handfuls of wild flowers for Mum, and Mum beaming and saying, “Wow. Aren’t I just the luckiest, most spoiled mother in the world?” I swallow. Feel a charge of pride and truculence. “I had every advantage, Walter.”

  “And a bloody lucky escape,” agrees Helen, gulping back her drink.

  “Look, Sylvie, if there’s anything you need, anything at all, property, money . . .” Walter begins.

  “I don’t want anything from you.” I stand up. My legs feel strong again. Made of steel. “Nothing.”

  “I will make it up to Annie and her baby.” Walter splays his hand on his chest. “I give you my word.”

  I only just bite back, “Screw you,” because Annie could probably do with all the help she can get, and stride toward the door.

  “Oh, must you go, Sylvie?” Helen says, as if I were leaving a dinner party early. “Stay for another drink.”

  “After all, here we are,” Walter marvels, incomprehensibly. “We end as we began. With a baby.” He brings the tips of his fingers together. “There’s an excellent bottle of Krug in the fridge.” He looks up at Helen. “Perhaps this time we can celebrate. Not grieve.”

  “Except we didn’t need to grieve my little baby sister, did we, Daddy?” The atmosphere in the room switches like a blade. My hand freezes on the door handle.

  “Not now, Helen,” Walter mutters, with an embarrassed laugh.

  “Why not?” Her lip curls. “Are you ashamed of Sylvie knowing?”

  The room grows smaller and hotter. I suddenly feel I’m in the presence of a family secret so murky I don’t want to hear it.

  Helen’s telling me anyway. “I had a little sister once, Sylvie. My father told us she’d died in hospital an hour after birth.” She speaks with cool ferocity. “But she didn’t.”

  Walter stares into the middle distance. He swallows hard, like he knows what’s coming.

  “She just wasn’t good enough, was she, Daddy? She was flawed. Monstrous.”

  “She was Don’s baby. She wasn’t mine.” Walter’s words come out choked, as if the bow tie is tightening around his neck. “Your mother couldn’t have coped.”

  “You told her a lie! She literally went mad with grief!”

  “I thought it was for the best. Everyone did. She was blue. Not breathing properly. And the face . . . the wretched child’s face.” Walter closes his eyes and presses his fingers to his temples, trying to dam the flow of images.

  The room starts to hum. An awful possibility is solidifying. Something so disturbing, my brain bucks away from it like a horse.

  “It was a cleft palate, Daddy. Just a cleft palate, I’m sure of it. But you saw a monster. Because you saw Don’s child. If she’d been yours . . .”

  “She wasn’t.” His face flushes, turgid with bitterness. “She wasn’t mine, damn it.”

  The humming sound swarms in my head. The room starts to shudder and contract violently. I lean back against the wall.

  “Are you okay, Sylvie? You’ve gone white as a sheet.” Helen’s face looms closer, all her features smudged, a painting melting.

  I try to get the words out. My tongue feels too thick. In my bag, my phone starts to ring. The outside world. Annie? The noise twists into my ears like wire.

  “Here, sip, darling.” She presses gin and tonic to my lips. My phone rings again. I push away the glass and check my phone, with dread. The hospital.

  52

  Rita, Now

  A woodpecker. A chiseling sound. Beak on bark. Or skull. But Rita can’t see the bird. She can’t see anything. Someone’s turned the stars out. It’s dark in there. Robbie’s not bothered by it. He can read the silhouette of the trees at night like an Ordnance Survey map under an Anglepoise lamp. Robbie knows where he is on a path by the timbre of the crunch beneath his soles. Rita needs Robbie. She fumbles around, arms outstretched, like blindman’s buff, looking for him, like a slipped thought. Then she remembers: Robbie’s not there. Robbie’s dead. She’s alone. She’s been alone for ten years now. And if she does get out of this forest, she will still be alone, so she doesn’t need to escape, does she? She can stay there. Peacefully disintegrating. Lie down on the soft mattress of earth while the woodpecker pecks and the dry leaves spin from the sky. Easier like this.

  Rita’s eyelashes knit together, sealing the darkness inside. A hand grabs hers. She tries to shake it away—she’s busy dying here!—but it’s strong as a carpenter’s clamp. She can feel its calluses, the thickened pad of skin under the wedding ring, the small hard scars from slipped hammers and nails, and she can hear Robbie’s voice, Robbie who is not there, whom she misses like a severed limb, Robbie, saying, “You damn well don’t give up, Rita Murphy. You’re needed.” Then something about life having the structure of a tree—concentric annual rings, stitched through by radial lines—as he rushes her through the shadows toward the tiniest chink of blue-white light, his hand gripping tighter, and then, out of the silence, a voice saying, “Rita? Rita, blink if you can you hear me.”

  53

  Hera, Now

  I tap a fingernail against my veneers impatiently. When will Sylvie be back from the hospital with news? I hate not knowing what’s happening. Her apartment seems smaller and pinker than ever, like the inside of a migraine.

  I begged to accompany her to the hospital. I even leaped into the lift, overcoming my fear of its clanking cell-like enclosure just to spend a few more seconds in her company. She could barely talk. She just said, in this strange broken whisper, “Tell me about your baby sister, tell me more.” So I described how, over twenty years after she was born, a charity leaflet had dropped through the letter box of my Battersea apartment with photos of cleft babies in the developing world. How I recognized my newborn sister’s face in theirs and searched for her but could find no trace.

  Outside the building, Sylvie sprinted in the direction of the tube. “I’ll keep Annie company while we wait for news!” I shouted after her. I’m not sure she heard me.

  I was still standing on the pavement, dazed, wondering why Sylvie was asking about the cleft, if she was in any state to get on the tube, when Edie rang. She’d just had a very bizarre call from my father, she said. What the hell was going on? I gabbled it out. No, he hasn’t lost his marbles. It was all true. Declaring a state of emergency, she insisted on escorting me to Sylvie’s apartment too. So here we all are. Waiting.

  It’s been over twenty minutes now. From the look on Annie’s face, I suspect we may have outstayed our welcome, such as it was: “What are you doing here?”

  “But Annie’s such a great girl!” Edie exclaimed in a loud whisper, a few minutes after we bustled past Annie into the apartment. “Why didn’t you say?”

  I felt such shame then. I still feel it now, more acutely than ever. I can’t meet Annie’s eye.

  “Just like Venice,” Edie calls over her shoulder. She’s standing on the balcony, her knotty hands on the balustrade, tapping her feet to music. A young man in a fedora is shamelessly playing a guitar on the deck of his narrow boat below. A straggly heron watches from the bank, one of the ugliest birds I’ve ever seen.

  “No offense, but I have no i
dea why you’re here and I’d like you to leave,” I hear Annie say. “This has got nothing to do with you.”

  I spin around, wishing I could tell her everything. But that’s her mother’s job. My mouth opens and closes.

  Incensed pink dots blaze on her cheeks. “I’ve ruined your son’s life, remember?”

  Edie turns from the balcony, silently imploring me to say the right thing. As ever, I have no idea what this might be.

  Annie digs her hands into her jeans pockets, revealing a slither of tanned tummy, ever so slightly rounded. The sight of it brings a lump to my throat. I want to rest my hands on the smooth skin. I want to talk to it. I want to say sorry.

  “You’re quite right, Annie. We’ll get out of your hair,” says Edie warmly, walking back into the room. She slings on her denim jacket.

  When I don’t move, Annie turns to me, polite again, despite everything. Well brought up. “Do you have a coat, Helen?” she prompts.

  “A coat?” I mutter, at a loss to stall my removal. I want to say, Let me stay here and get to know you. I’m so sorry. I’ve messed up. Instead I say, “Just that jacket on the back of the chair. The Chanel.” Stupidly, out of habit. Like the designer matters.

  When Annie glances at me, I can’t bear to think whom she sees. “Would you like me to call Elliot? Get him over instead? Maybe he could go with you to the hospital later.”

  She shakes her head.

  I have the urge to toss the damn jacket into the canal, if only to show her I’m not that woman. Because, my god, Edie’s right. Annie is great. Beautiful. Determined. She’s also Big Rita’s granddaughter. By some trick of the universe—or the internet—I’ve been given an unexpected second act, a new role, a new family. A second chance. And I’ve already blown it.