by Anni Taylor
“It’s unbelievable that we actually met the night that that fortnight started,” I mused.
“Yes.” His eyebrows lifted in a look of bewilderment. “If only we’d known.” A smile flitted across his face then. “Since you don’t remember, I’ll set the scene for you. There was a group of very drunk Scotsmen carousing at the bar. One of them was drunker than the others and trying hard to convince himself he was having a good time. Jessica planned to meet me there at the hotel the next morning. I wanted a divorce. But she was desperate to try to get back together one last time. I shouldn’t have agreed, but I did. Anyway, the group started singing loudly—and I must apologise for hurting everyone’s ears. I spotted a lovely girl, sitting alone and looking sad. I took your hand and started dancing with you. I thought you’d run away afterwards. But you didn’t. You stayed and chatted for a while. Then you got a phone call and you fled.”
“Jessica must have arrived at the hotel early,” I said, “because she spotted me talking with a man and she called me on the phone, ordering me to return to my room. She told me I was to stay there in my room the whole time. That much I remember now. So, what was she like during that trip? She must have pulled out all stops to get the marriage on track again.”
“You’d think so. But she was strange. One minute all over me and passionate—and the next minute dead cold. How can I describe this? Even when she was passionate, it was a desperate, disconnected kind of passionate. At first, I thought she was just anxious for us to work things out. But most of the time, she barely looked at me. She didn’t love me. She just loved the idea of the marriage and the house. She liked everything perfect, everything her way. That’s what she was going to miss, I think.”
I placed my cup on a side table, then crisscrossed my arms over my shoulders, my thoughts spinning away again. “I didn’t guess that about her. I just thought she was all about Rhiannon. Protecting her against the world, you know what I mean.”
“She wanted to be number one in Rhiannon’s eyes, always. In a jealous sort of way. She even tried to stop Rhiannon and me from being close. She’d get upset if Rhiannon wanted Daddy to read her a story instead of Mummy. Things like that.”
“I noticed Jessica was upset a lot.”
“Aye. Upsetting herself was a talent of hers. Always jealous of me and Rhiannon. And jealous of the Chandlishes and what they had. She didn’t want to stay here at Braithnoch. She wanted us to move away. She wanted me to take on bigger projects and stop locking myself away at home, so we could buy some big fancy house in Edinburgh.”
“I thought…” Hesitating, I sucked in my lips. “I actually thought you might be abusing her. Hitting her. Because she seemed upset so much.”
Alban shot me an odd look. “You thought that about me?”
“I’m sorry. Yes, I did. Besides Jessica being upset, she had bruises. We all know now that Peyton made those marks, but I didn’t know that at the time. And, one morning I heard you shouting at her….”
“It kills me to know you thought I was hurting Jess. I think I know which morning you’re talking about with the shouting. Jess had told me I needed to stop the photography profile and send you home. She said she couldn’t bear having a stranger living at Braithnoch, and if I didn’t tell you to get out, she was going to take Rhiannon and go somewhere where I couldn’t find them. Very damned dramatic. I didn’t understand it at all. The portfolio idea had been Jessica’s in the first place—she was the one who wanted me to go further in my career and she was the one who urged Greer to start contacting magazines. I shouldn’t have lost control and started yelling at her though—that was dead wrong of me.”
“I knew Jessica didn’t like me being here,” I told him. “I know why, now. She played the victim well.”
“Yeah. Yes, she did. I’m pretty certain that a doctor in town—Dr McKendrick—thought that Jess was a victim, too.”
“Dr McKendrick?” I said in surprise.
“Do you happen to have met her?” he asked.
“Yes, I went to see her when my medication went missing.”
“Okay, well, Jess and I went to see her after Jess had confirmation from another doctor that she was pregnant.” He paused, shaking his head. “Of course, Jess wasn’t really pregnant. Anyway, Jess had told me that she wanted to see Dr McKendrick because she wanted an abortion. I didn’t know how I felt—Jess gave me no time to consider my feelings. But I accepted that it was her body and her decision. Adding to the confusion, I was suspicious at this point, thinking that Jess might have had an affair and that was how she’d gotten pregnant. I’d been so dead careful with my use of condoms. But I went along to support her in her decision. But once we were in there, Jess totally changed. She suddenly said she wanted to keep the baby. I made an off-hand remark about getting a paternity test. I shouldn’t have said it, I know. It was wrong of me. But I couldn’t understand any of what was going on. Jess started crying and said she thought I’d be happy about the baby. And, so, in the doctor’s eyes, I looked like a great big belligerent monster.”
I now had my answer as to why Dr McKendrick didn’t have a high opinion of Alban.
I frowned. “But if you thought the baby wasn’t yours, why did you decide to stay with Jessica?”
“It took me a while to accept it. I didn’t think it was possible I’d caused her pregnancy. She’d been so hot and cold during our trip away that it made sense to me that she’d had a brief affair. But she talked me around. I ended up thinking I was being stupid to be suspicious of her.”
The conversation lulled. I could sense Alban’s despair over how much his wife had deceived him and much he hadn’t known.
There were still so many questions clouding my mind.
Alban had said to ask him anything, but the questions were all so awkward.
“I’m sure this is none of my business to ask,” I started. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter….”
“Isla, we need to put everything out on the table. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. So that neither of us is left wondering about things that only the other could answer.”
“It’s just, well, how did Jessica manage to fool you that she was pregnant for so long? I mean, I know about the fake bellies, but didn’t you ever see her undress? Didn’t you ever…uh…?”
“Have sex? That’s a reasonable question. We did a couple of times in the first two months. But then she said she was tired and had a condition some women develop in pregnancy—sciatica. And so I understood and left her well alone. She complained that it was getting worse and she needed to sleep alone so that I didn’t knock her and cause her pain during the night. She slept in another bedroom during the last months. In all truth, I was throwing myself into my work and trying hard to accept that this was going to be my life. With Jess. So, I probably blocked out anything that was a wee bit odd and didn’t notice it. A new baby was coming, and I felt I had no choice but to see this through. Jess’s stomach got bigger, and from my side, things just seemed much the same as when she was pregnant with Elodie. In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have guessed that the pregnancy belly was fake.”
“You never wanted to touch her and feel the baby kicking?”
“Of course. I tried a few times. She’d say the baby was asleep and wasn’t a very active baby anyway. Most of the time, she seemed to want to keep to herself and didn’t want anyone touching her. She complained mightily about people thinking they had the right to put their hands on pregnant women. She wasn’t like that during her pregnancy with Elodie. But I guessed that the whole marriage breakdown we’d been through had had a toll on her. She was irritable and weepy a lot and I thought it was my fault. She was even growing distant from Elodie—pushing her away at times.”
“That’s so sad for Elodie.”
“Aye. I tried to explain to her that Mummy was just feeling bad because of the pregnancy.”
I recalled the gold-painted larch cones. Had Elodie wanted to make those Christmas decorations to make her mother feel a bi
t brighter?
Thinking of the larch cones made me think of the forest. I was reminded of the aerial photograph of the forest on Alban’s office wall, and of the painting that hung beside it.
“Alban, I have a question. You don’t have to answer it.”
“Okay? Lay it on me.” But his voice sounded a little guarded. I was certain he’d picked up on the trepidation in my own voice.
“It’s the pictures on your wall—in your office,” I began. “I know what they are. Both of them are tracking the movements that Peyton took out of the forest that night. The night that he took Elodie.”
The muscles in his face and neck tensed. “You guessed that?”
I nodded. “I didn’t understand it at the time. I didn’t get why you’d keep something like that on your wall, to look at every day.”
“You must have thought I was pretty strange.” He exhaled heavily. “I had those pictures there because I was obsessed with finding out who’d killed my daughter. I’d seen a similar pattern in other places in the woods, ever since I was a teenager. Not just at Braithnoch Square, but in other places around Greenmire. Tracks in muddy ground, that sort of thing. I couldn’t get Kirk or the police to take me seriously. They thought I was grabbing at shadows.”
“Oh, God. It was Peyton making those tracks, all that time.”
He nodded. “Sometimes when I’d go for walks at night, I was certain I saw a pattern like that—in the way that someone had walked through the leaves or a faint set of footprints. But there was never anything concrete enough for the police. And I never caught the person doing it.”
“That was why you walked the forest every night—to catch the killer?”
“Yes. I was certain it had to be someone local. Because of the patterns I’d seen all those years. I even mapped out the exact route and walked it myself all the time, because I wanted that path to remain. I wanted the evidence there, so that if I ever found the person who walked about in that kind of pattern, I could show the police and say, look, it’s a match. I was driving myself mad, and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop.”
I eyed him sympathetically. “Rory suspected that it was someone local, too.”
“I know. I guess I was a bit harsh on Rory. He told the police about some paintings Elodie had done. I thought he was trying to cast suspicion on us—on Jess and me. After all, I had arrived home in time to have been the one who hurt Elodie that night. There was a lot of suspicion thrown my way at the time.”
“That must have been awful, to have people wonder if it could have been you.”
He sighed. “Aye. Like a dagger to the heart.”
A silence fell between us. I could sense the raw emotion wrapped up in what he’d just told me.
He fixed his gaze on me. “Isla, I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Earlier, when I said I didn’t want to put pressure on you, about Rhiannon, I meant it. But, I actually do know why you wanted to keep her. I just haven’t been sure whether it’s fair for me to show you….”
“Show me what?” My chest suddenly felt tight. There had been too many shocks over these past months. I didn’t know if I could take hearing about anything else.
He exhaled slowly. “I can’t keep this from you. When I went to see Jessica in recent weeks, she accidentally told me about a letter you gave her. When you first told her that you’d changed your mind about the baby, you put it in a letter. Jessica let it slip that she still had it, at our home. I went looking in the boxes where she keeps letters and old birthday cards. I found it there.”
I sucked in a breath and then released it slowly, trying to process the thought of a letter in my mind. A letter written in my own words. A nervous excitement pitted itself against terror inside me. Once I’d seen the letter, I could never return to this point. I couldn’t manufacture a picture in my mind of how I might have felt back then and use it to justify whatever actions I chose to take next. This letter would leave me in no doubt.
“Can I see it?” I said in a voice that was barely audible.
“Of course. But I want you to know that I realise that how you felt then is not how you feel now.” He took out an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to me.
With fumbling fingers, I opened the letter. It was written in my handwriting—unmistakable:
Dear Jessica,
I’ve started this letter a dozen times and thrown it away.
But I need to tell you that I’ve had a change of heart.
I’ve tried so hard not to feel the way that I’ve been feeling. When we first started on this journey, I thought I could go through with it. And in the first months, I was okay.
At first, the baby was just this inconvenient blob of cells floating somewhere inside me, making me feel sick and bloated. Making my waistbands tight. I felt very disconnected from the whole experience. Most of the time, I could just about ignore that I was even pregnant. The baby was yours and that was that.
But a pregnancy is long. The further along I’ve gotten, the more the baby has seemed real. I’m six months pregnant now, and the baby is a person with its own personality.
I don’t know if the baby is a boy or a girl, but it doesn’t matter. I can feel it moving and turning. I can feel it settling to sleep. I can feel it bump me back when I touch it. It’s started to feel like it’s part of me. And letting go is going to be as painful as cutting off something I need in order to live.
I guess this all sounds pretty stupid when I’d agreed that I was just to be the baby’s incubator and nothing more. I haven’t even finished my studies.
But I can’t let go.
I’ll find a way to return your money to you. I won’t cause you any trouble or ever let your husband know about this. I’ll return to Sydney and you won’t hear from me again.
I’m truly very deeply sorry,
Isla.
Tears ran down my face.
I’d written this.
This is me. My words.
I didn’t recognise the girl who’d written the letter. But I felt for her.
“This must have hit Jessica so hard,” I said finally. “I wasn’t a very good surrogate, was I? Surrogates are supposed to know that the baby isn’t theirs.”
His voice was gentle. “You weren’t a proper surrogate. By that I mean you hadn’t decided one day that you wanted to be a surrogate and then you had all the psychological testing and such. You were just a young college student in a desperate situation. And a married woman who should have known better took advantage of you.”
“And then, in turn,” I said, wiping my wet face, “I made Jessica become desperate and willing to do desperate things.”
“That’s not your fault.” His eyes glistened wetly. “The surrogate thing is not even the worst of what she did. The end part of her plan is the worst. The birth. She planned for you to have the baby in secret, with no one else in attendance but herself. She’s a midwife and she knows what can go wrong. She used to say that most births are fairly uneventful. And I think that’s what she was counting on happening with you. But at the same time, she knows how badly wrong that births can go. Sometimes she’d come home after the end of her shift with a story about a birth that went catastrophically wrong. She’d cry sometimes if the worst had happened and the baby was lost. A couple of times, it was the mother who died. The birth of Rhiannon happened unexpectedly, but she still stuck to her plan. Despite the terrible state you were in. And then she left you all alone in that place.”
I didn’t speak, watching the hurt building in his eyes, still feeling stunned by the contents of the letter I’d written.
“And then she sent that monstrous bastard to get you. Peyton,” Alban said, shaking his head.
“She didn’t know about Peyton,” I pointed out.
He was no longer listening to me. “She alerted him to the fact that Elodie was home all alone. He knew Jessica wasn’t coming back anytime soon. And the fucking bastard went s
traight to our house—to have his chance at Elodie while he could.”
His face crumpled, shoulders trembling. “My poor wee Elodie had no chance. No chance at all.”
I had no words left. I went to him, sitting on the arm of the chair and putting my arms around him.
He sobbed onto my shoulder. I cried with him.
Outside the glass wall, snow was falling.
50
ISLA
August 2018
It was summer in Scotland. Blink and you’ll miss it, the locals had told me. But this year’s summer had produced a lasting heatwave.
I wandered through the trees at the Ness Islands, snapping photographs. The day was rinsed with yellow sunlight, hot on my cheeks and bare shoulders.
I kept my face obscured under big sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat. These days, I was very recognisable. My picture had constantly been in the news.
Jessica’s face had been in the news even more than mine.
Her trial for the manslaughter of Peyton Chandlish had returned a verdict of temporary insanity. The jury was unanimous. At the time of finding out about the identity of Elodie’s abductor, she’d been stuck in a house with him, her emotions at flashpoint. No one had tried to stop her from killing him because no one had noticed her—everyone’s focus had been on stopping Alban from getting to Peyton. There’d been lots of witnesses to testify to her state of mind, including Officer Kirk Flanagan. Because it was a case of short-lived insanity, Jessica hadn’t been sent to a secure mental health facility. She’d been allowed to go free.
The court case over what she’d done that night in the church was yet to come. But she’d lost custody of Rhiannon.
The court had determined that under Scottish law, it was illegal for Jessica to have advertised for a surrogate and also to have given me money above the amount reasonably needed. The baby was determined to have been legally mine throughout the pregnancy and after the birth. Jessica would have had to apply within six months of the birth for custody, and that time period was long gone. The court noted her care of Rhiannon as a mother during the past two years, but ultimately decided that she didn’t have any custodial rights. Under an odd part of law—despite the DNA test proving that Alban was Rhiannon’s father—Alban would have to adopt her to make himself her legal father, and I would have to allow this. If I had been married to another man at the time Rhiannon was born, my husband would have been Rhiannon’s legal father, even though he wouldn’t have been Rhiannon’s biological parent.