by Maria Hoey
Jacqueline picked up the photograph and read again what was written there:
Luca and Adela 16th June 1985.
Sheheld the photograph up to the light and stared into the eyes laughing down at her. Luca looked a little older, twenty-four, twenty-five perhaps, but he was still beautiful then. The girl by his side was short enough so that she could rest her dark head on his shoulder. Her colouring was similar but nobody, thought Jacqueline, even from a distance, could mistake this girl for Lilly. She touched the stranger’s face – a pretty girl, but the wrong girl. Jacqueline hoped she had been the right girl for Luca.
It was not until she was drying her hair that she thought about the wording of the note. She picked it up and sat on the bed and reread it. What had Dawn meant by Luca did not know where Lilly was now – why now? She tried to shake it off, told herself that she was reading something into nothing. She had come to a dead end and she simply had to accept it.
There was a knock at the door. “It’s only me,” said Dot.
Who else would it be, thought Jacqueline. “Come in, Dot.”
Dot came in with a tray on which was a pot of tea, a plate of toast and a dish of honey. “I know you said you didn’t want anything but I thought you might fancy having this in the privacy of your room.” She put the tray down on the table and glanced at Jacqueline. “You look a bit down in the mouth. He’s perfectly fine, you know. I sent him for a lie-down.”
“Who?” said Jacqueline, her mind still on the photograph.
“Magpie.” Dot sat down in the window seat and surveyed Jacqueline. “I thought you might be worrying about him, but clearly not.”
“I’m sorry, I was thinking about something else. But, like you say, Magpie is fine.”
“Then it was bad news after all.” Dot gestured to the note in Jacqueline’s lap. “Is it about your sister?”
“That’s the problem. I thought it might have been, but it turns out not.”
“I’m sorry, that must be disappointing,” said Dot, “but I wouldn’t give up. Missing people are found all the time, you know. Only the other day I saw on the news where a woman who had been missing for more than twenty years was found alive and well. She wasn’t the first, and I’m sure she won’t be the last.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen this time,” said Jacqueline.
As Dot closed the door quietly behind her, Jacqueline picked up the note and read it once more. Looking up, she caught sight of herself in the mirror and thought about what Dot had just said.
“The last lost girl,” she said quietly.
She wondered if it was Lilly she was thinking about or herself.
Someone was knocking at the door again. Jacqueline turned over onto her side on the bed and ignored it. The knocking sounded again, more insistently this time.
Oh, go away, Dot, thought Jacqueline, go away and leave me in peace.
“What?” she called out, not caring that she sounded impatient and rude.
“There’s a couple of people here to see you,” said Dot. “I’ve put them in my sitting room. Come down when you’re ready.”
Gayle and Eddie Sexton were sitting side by side on the small two-seater sofa. There was a tray on the table before them, a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits, but nothing looked as though it had been touched. Gayle’s head was on Eddie’s shoulder but she straightened up when Jacqueline came into the room. There was a paper tissue in her hand, as though she had just been crying or was just about to start.
Jacqueline looked from one to the other of them.
“It’s not Alison, is it,” she said, “or the baby?”
When Gayle shook her head, Jacqueline said, “Then what is this? Why are you here together?”
“We came to talk to you, Jacqueline,” said Eddie.
“Really? I thought you’d told me all you had to tell, Eddie?” Jacqueline wondered that her voice could sound so light when a cannonball seemed to have materialised in the pit of her stomach.
“He did,” said Gayle. She shifted as though she were uncomfortable and moved to the edge of her seat. “I mean he told you all he could, but it’s not that simple, Jacqueline.”
“Why isn’t it simple, Gayle?”
Gayle glanced at Eddie. “Because we haven’t been honest with you, Jacqueline, none of us have.” She pawed at the tissue in her hand. “But the time has come for the lies to stop. I realised that yesterday when you told me all that stuff about finding Luca’s sister. It made me realise that you still thought there was some chance of finding Lilly. And that thing you told me about the radio – I had no idea you’d been blaming yourself like that all this time. I knew then that we couldn’t let you go on like this, spending your life on some wild goose chase.”
“Why is it a wild goose chase, Gayle?” said Jacqueline. Now her voice sounded to her as curiously toneless, as though no violent emotions were churning inside her, as though the world had not shifted on its axis.
“Because there are things you should have been told a long time ago, and I’m sorry you weren’t. But it wasn’t up to us then – there were other people to consider. And when I spoke to Eddie he agreed.”
“Was it Eddie after all?” Jacqueline turned and looked at him. “Was it him?”
“No,” said Gayle, her voice sounding weary, “it wasn’t Eddie. Eddie did nothing.”
“Then what? For God’s sake what, Gayle? Tell me.”
“That’s why I’ve come here today,” said Gayle. “To tell you. And hard as this is going to be for me to tell, I know it will be even harder for you to hear. But, if you’ll listen, I’m going to tell you now what happened to Lilly.”
Chapter 51
1976
It is New Year’s Eve. Jacqueline hates New Year’s Eve, she has always hated it. “Christmas is for children,” her mother used to say, “and New Year’s Eve is for adults” and her and Daddy would get all dressed up and go to a dinner dance or something. Before Lilly was old enough to do it, a baby-sitter would come, Nanny before she died, Aunty Carol sometimes, or sometimes a girl from the town who always tried to give Jacqueline bull’s-eyes to go to bed early, but Jacqueline did not like bull’s-eyes.
This year Jacqueline doesn’t think her mother even knows it is New Year’s Eve, or if she does she doesn’t care, because she spends the whole morning in bed. Daddy goes down the town as soon as he has his lunch and, standing at the window watching him go, Jacqueline notices something white under the evergreen bush. She thinks it might be snowdrops. She remembers reading somewhere that it is good luck to ring the bell of the first snowdrop you see in the New Year. It isn’t quite the new year yet but Jacqueline thinks there is no harm in being early. She lets herself out of the house. It is a bright sunny day but very cold. She is right – there is a clump of snowdrops under the bush, as though they are sheltering from the cold wind. She gets down on her hunkers, reaches out and very gently rings the tiny white bell. She rings another one just for luck and makes a silent wish. It is the same wish she makes all the time now. “Please let Lilly come home.”
In the evening, Daddy goes down the town again, Gayle watches Z-Cars in the sitting room and their mother falls asleep on the sofa in her dressing gown. Jacqueline sneaks out of the sitting room and goes upstairs to her parents’ room. It doesn’t take her long to find Lilly’s radio. It has been pushed into a corner at the bottom of the wardrobe, behind her mother’s summer shoes and sandals. Jacqueline takes it and goes to sit on her parents’ bed. She turns the radio over in her hands and wonders if anyone has switched it on since the morning she played it in the field, waiting for Lilly to come home. She pulls up the aerial as far as it will go, then turns one of the silver dials until the buzzing noises stop. A man’s voice says, “And now on this New Year’s Eve we’ll continue with the hits of 1976. This one is from the Electric Light Orchestra – ‘It’s a Livin’ Thing’.”
Chapter 52
Afterwards
Lilly came back. Seven years afte
r she disappeared, she came back. It was the fifteenth of November 1983. Gayle answered a knock on the door of her and Eddie’s home in London to find Lilly standing there. At first Gayle had not known who she was – some woman selling something, she had supposed. The person on her doorstep had not looked like Lilly, not Lilly the way Gayle remembered her, fifteen going on sixteen. This was a twenty-three-year-old woman, heavily pregnant and with a bad perm. And then the stranger said Gayle’s name and burst into tears and in that moment Gayle had known that a miracle was taking place and had held out her arms to her lost sister.
The baby was Luca’s. Lilly had been with him almost the whole time since she ran away on the night of the Festival Queen Dance. She had never, she told Gayle, planned it that way; it had just sort of happened. And it probably wouldn’t have happened at all if her sandal hadn’t broken. She was almost home when that lace thing on her shoe snapped and she had to take it off. Then a long-distance lorry driver came along and stopped. He offered her a lift and so she took it. He told her he was headed for the ferry, on his way to England, and so Lilly got the idea, why not go with him? Just for a laugh, she said, and to teach Luca a lesson for being so unkind to her about winning the Festival Queen Competition. She knew he’d be going back to his hometown at the end of the summer so why not go there and wait for him? What an adventure it had seemed, what a laugh, and she even had her prize money, one hundred whole pounds tucked inside her shoulder bag. So that’s what she did. Instead of going home she asked the driver to take her with him on the ferry. They were halfway to the ferry port when it crossed Lilly’s mind that she might need a passport. The driver told her you didn’t need a passport to travel between Ireland and England. He said there was a chance she might be asked for some sort of identification, but she would be unlucky if so. He went back and forth all the time and was hardly ever asked. Lilly was lucky. And then, once she was dropped off on the other side, it was easy. She made her way to Coldhope-on-Sea and checked into a bed and breakfast. For a while she lived off the money from her prize and just enjoyed herself. She had, she told Gayle, a great time. She even found the fair Luca’s grandfather ran although she didn’t dare go inside the fairground. She was too afraid the English police might be looking out for her, but it was, she said, a thrill just to stand at a distance looking at the big wheel and imagining Luca’s face when he came back and found her waiting for him. And when her money had almost run out, she got a job working in a café on the seafront. That was a bit of pain, she said, but she got good tips and so she put up with it and waited for Luca.
He came back in the middle of August. At first he was angry with her and he was different too, she said, different to the way she remembered him. Quieter and sort of mad with the world. He told her to go home and let her family and the police know she was safe but Lilly said no, it was too late for that now. She didn’t want to go home, she didn’t want to go back to school and do her stupid Leaving Cert. She was having an adventure, she liked being free and she didn’t want it to end and, if Luca wouldn’t let her stay with him, she’d go off on her own. She told him so and in the end she talked him round, because Luca loved her and she loved him and they wanted to be together. At first they managed to keep the fact that they were together a secret from Luca’s grandfather but he found out somehow and he and Luca had a big row. Luca’s grandfather thought Lilly was trouble and would only ever bring trouble to Luca too. He told Luca to get rid of her. So they decided to move away to a town in another part of England where Luca could get work with another fair. At first they went to Wales and stayed there for a while. When Luca heard about work in a fair in France, they decided to move there. They stayed in France for almost six years, moving around from town to town and fair to fair. At first Lilly loved it and found it exciting but over time she began to grow tired of the life. By the time she was twenty-two, she’d had enough and wanted to settle down in a proper house and live a normal life.
About the same time, Luca’s grandfather sent a message to him that Lilly’s father had come to Coldhope-on-Sea and was sniffing around the fair there. Someone had told him that Lilly had been seen in France with Luca and he wanted to know where Luca was now. Hearing this only made Lilly more unsettled and she and Luca had a huge row. And so she ran away again. It was to teach Luca another lesson, she told Gayle. It had worked well in 1976 so why not now? It was summertime, so she went to the coast and spent a couple of weeks there getting some sun and just enjoying herself. By the time she realised she was pregnant and went back to tell Luca, the fair had moved on and Luca with it. She tracked down the fair but Luca had moved on again, leaving no message for her. She had no idea what to do but, thinking he might have gone back to England, she decided to do the same.
As soon as she got back, she went to Luca’s grandfather, but Ned claimed not to know where Luca was. He not only refused to take Lilly’s word for it that the baby was Luca’s, but also insulted her and pretty much told her to get lost. When Lilly said she had nowhere to go and almost no money, he told her that wasn’t his problem. He said if she had nowhere else to go she should go home to Ireland. Upset, Lilly had run off, but just as she was leaving the fairground a girl came running after her. She said she was Luca’s sister, Dawn, and she gave Lilly a piece of paper with a name and address written on it – Gayle’s name and address which their father had left with Luca’s grandfather as a contact in case he heard any news about Luca or Lilly. Dawn told Lilly that her grandfather had thrown it away but she had picked it up and kept it just in case.
And so, Lilly had gone to find Gayle.
At first, it had felt to Gayle like some sort of dream or a miracle: Lilly back, alive and safe and about to have a baby. She had wanted to ring home straightaway and let her parents know – but Lilly wouldn’t hear of it. She wanted, she said, to do it in her own time, and in her own way. And she promised she would. Eddie, when Gayle told him this, was furious. He said it was cruel to leave Frank and Stella in ignorance for one more second, that it wasn’t about what Lilly wanted anymore – she’d lost that right after what she’d done. Gayle had known he was right but she was terrified. She was afraid that if she went against her, Lilly might disappear again and they would never see her or the baby again. So she talked Eddie round and made him promise not to tell her parents until Lilly was ready. But she felt terrible about it, so much so that she stopped ringing them as much as usual. It felt so wrong to her, talking to them about ordinary things when all the time Lilly was in the next room. She tried to talk Lilly round but, each time she tried, Lilly just got so upset that Gayle let it be, trusting that in time Lilly would do the right thing.
Then Lilly refused to let Gayle take her to the hospital to have her pre-natal check-ups. Gayle wanted to register Lilly at the hospital where she herself worked but Lilly said she didn’t want to be in the system. Why couldn’t Gayle take care of her? She was a midwife after all, wasn’t she? Gayle explained that she was still a trainee midwife but Lilly said that, as Gayle was a qualified nurse, that was just as good. When Gayle tried to force the issue Lilly got so distressed that Gayle, worried for Lilly’s health as well as the baby’s, gave in and let her have her own way again. Lilly didn’t seem well to Gayle. She was sure her sister had not been taking care of herself. And she told herself that when the time came, she would take Lilly to the hospital to have the baby. She was certain Lilly would want that then too, but it didn’t work out that way.
Lilly went into labour early and Gayle wasn’t even in the house at the time. She had gone out to the shops to buy stuff for the baby and came back just in time to help deliver it. It was all very straightforward though – Lilly was fine and the baby was perfectly healthy. Gayle tried again to talk Lilly into going to the hospital but she refused, so Gayle gave in and cared for them both at home. But Gayle worried. Her sister didn’t seem mentally stable – all these irrational notions didn’t seem normal. And when, after the birth, Lilly became very quiet, more than quiet, Gayle worried that s
he might be suffering from post-natal depression. Then one day she found her holding the baby while in floods of tears. When Gayle asked what was wrong, Lilly said, “I want to go home. I want to go home and I want Mam.”
And once she had made that decision, Lilly wanted to do it right away. Gayle did her best to calm her down and managed to talk her into waiting another week until the baby was stronger.
To keep Lilly happy, she booked the ferry. She wanted to ring her father and let him know they were coming, but Lilly wouldn’t hear of it. She wanted to go back on her own terms, without anyone knowing about it. And once again, against her better judgement, Gayle let her have her own way. So what if Lilly was nervous about the whole thing? What mattered was that she was going home at last. Next to that, nothing else mattered. And she comforted herself with the thought of all the joy they were about to unleash on her mother and her father.
And so, without warning – no letter, no phone call – they caught the ferry back to Ireland. Lilly had a driver’s license. When Gayle had tried to question her about it, Lilly said “Don’t ask” so Gayle had not asked.
It was a very cold night in February, the 5th of February to be exact, when they knocked on the door of the house in Blackberry Lane. Their father had gone to the pub for a few pints and their mother had opened the door a crack and peered out. Gayle had been holding Lilly’s baby and, at the expression in her mother’s eyes, she had thought: she thinks it’s mine.
Then Lilly stepped into the light and said, “Mam.”
Their mother had known who she was straight away, not mistaking her as Gayle had for a stranger selling something. She had known it was Lilly and Lilly without another word had thrown herself into her mother’s arms and started to cry. Gayle, watching them, had noticed that her mother did not react the way she had expected or imagined. Instead she was very quiet, and Gayle could see from her face that she was in shock. She had been expecting shock, but stupidly had thought it would be happy shock – that their mother would be so beside herself to have Lilly home again that nothing else would matter, that she’d be so joyful that everything else would take second place. And there was joy, and tears and disbelief and all the things Gayle had expected – but there was something else too, something she had not allowed for. There was anger.