You Said Forever

by Susan Lewis

  Imagining him in the dawn hours, driving through the vines in their trusty Volvo, probably on the phone to Will, or catching up on the day’s radio news, she closed her eyes. Maybe by now he was already out organising the pickers … Wherever he was, she ached to be with him. In past years she’d always helped with the harvest; everyone did, it was a joyous, strenuous undertaking that connected them to the very essence of winemaking in a way that nothing else could. She wouldn’t be a part of it this year, but at least all the signs were for a good vintage.

  Ron and Maggie’s home turned out to be every bit as elegant and welcoming as Charlotte had felt certain it would be, for Maggie had a way of making a place feel loved and lived in just by being there herself. With her merry eyes, infectious smile and enveloping warmth she was as natural a homemaker as she was a mother. She had an extraordinary knack for making people feel safe, especially children, which was why she and Ron had taken up fostering when their own two had flown the nest. It was how she and Charlotte had met, when Charlotte had been forced to remove a troubled and troublesome young boy from his home on the notorious Temple Fields estate. She’d brought him to Maggie and Ron, and in just a few short days this remarkable couple had introduced the boy to talents and interests he didn’t even know he had. Tragically for him his mother had been allowed to have him back, and Charlotte had no idea where he was now, though it was likely to be in a young offenders’ unit along with several members of his extended family.

  It had been a great loss to the community, not to mention disadvantaged children, when Maggie had decided she couldn’t continue as a carer. She got too involved with her charges, and the emotional wear and tear had begun to affect her health.

  ‘This place is wonderful,’ Charlotte told her, looking around the large pale blue and white kitchen with its towering sash windows, hanging-rack pans and fireplace niche for the Aga. Past the deep sills full of herbs and candles there was a captivating view of the garden, and no doubt when the fog lifted the outlook down to the estuary would be one of the best in the area.

  ‘It’s lovely, Auntie Maggie,’ Chloe informed her. ‘Just like the photos you sent, but better.’

  Embracing her, Maggie said, ‘Oh, it’s good to see you, my angel. Did you bring that rascal Boots the bear with you?’

  Chloe twinkled as she glanced at Charlotte. ‘Mummy thinks I don’t know he’s in the suitcase,’ she confided. ‘I said I was too old for him now, but I saw her sneak him in anyway.’

  Charlotte was rigid with guilt. Once Chloe realised what was happening – if it did happen – she’d be as desperate for Boots as she’d been when she was her father’s victim and the bear was her only friend.

  ‘So did the flight seem very long?’ Maggie asked, putting a glass of juice and a cookie in front of Chloe.

  ‘It was OK, but I’m glad it’s over. Mummy is too, aren’t you Mummy?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Charlotte confirmed, remarking how Chloe’s best behaviour had taken no time at all to assert itself. It was the Maggie effect, of course, but it was also a part of getting her own way over coming here.

  What on earth did she think was going to happen? Was she seeing this as a holiday? How long did she imagine they were staying? She hadn’t asked, and Charlotte hadn’t tried to explain anything; there would be plenty of time for that when it could no longer be avoided.

  As a hearty meal was a staple in Maggie’s kitchen, the one she had bubbling away on the Aga was ready to be served the instant Charlotte and Chloe returned from their rooms after freshening up. It was a delicious home-made lamb tagine, followed by upside-down pudding and lashings of cream. A hard feast for Charlotte to cope with at what was only seven in the morning for her and Chloe, but Chloe had no problem at all.

  ‘Your sister’s coming tomorrow,’ Maggie announced over coffee and cocoa.

  Charlotte’s eyes widened with surprise as Chloe clapped her hands.

  ‘Is she bringing the twins?’ Chloe asked, referring to her ten-year-old cousins.

  ‘I wouldn’t expect so,’ Maggie replied. ‘They don’t break up for Easter until the end of the week, but Auntie Gabby is very keen to see you.’

  Since Anthony had rung both Gabby and Maggie while Charlotte was on the plane to let them know why she and Chloe were coming, Charlotte shouldn’t have been surprised that her adoptive sister was making such an early visit. Though she loved Gabby dearly, she wasn’t looking forward to what she might have to say about the reason Charlotte was here, and she could only feel thankful that Maggie and Ron were hiding their own feelings so well for now.

  ‘I’ve made a list of all the places we want to see,’ Chloe informed them, a moustache of frothy cream crowning her upper lip. ‘Well, I want to see them and I think Mummy will too, because one of them is the village where she grew up, and the house where she hid me after rescuing me from my wicked first mummy and daddy.’

  Noting the change of language – rescuing instead of stealing, wicked first parents – Charlotte said to Maggie, ‘I should probably rent a car …’

  ‘Oh, you can use one of ours,’ Maggie insisted. ‘Mine is smaller, so easier to park if you’re going into town.’

  She’d forgotten about the stress of trying to park, and traffic jams, and road rage, it never seemed to happen in Havelock North.

  ‘Would you like to know what else is on my list?’ Chloe asked chattily.

  ‘Of course,’ Maggie encouraged.

  Intrigued, Charlotte listened as Chloe said, ‘I want to ride on the carousel that Mummy used to take me to after nursery when I was three, and please can we go to the cafe where they have great big brownies that I ate all up even though I was only little. Oh yes, I thought Mummy would like to visit the cemetery where her grandparents, auntie and brother are buried, you know, the ones who were killed by the evil man who was really after Mummy and Nana, but they managed to escape.’

  Since Charlotte herself had told Chloe about the carousel and brownies and even the tragedy that had robbed her and her mother of most of their family, it wasn’t the listing of these things that surprised and touched her, it was how thrilled Chloe seemed to be at the prospect of doing something for her mother.

  ‘Mummy and I both had evil daddies,’ Chloe informed Maggie and Ron.

  ‘Actually,’ Charlotte said gently, ‘if you remember, the evil man who killed my family wasn’t my daddy. He was Nana’s husband at the time, and the reason he went berserk the way he did was because he found out that I wasn’t his child.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right. Your real daddy was called Nigel and everyone thought he was Auntie Yvonne’s boyfriend, but really he was Nana’s. The evil man killed him too, and Auntie Yvonne. She was Nana’s sister,’ she told Maggie and Ron, in case they didn’t know, which of course they did.

  It had been dubbed the Temple Fields massacre, and was probably still known as that, though Charlotte doubted it came up often considering how long ago it had happened. Her mother’s injuries had kept her hospitalised for a year after the frenzied attack, and she’d been so afraid that the monstrous Gavril Albescu wouldn’t ever give up trying to find the innocent child that wasn’t his, that she’d agreed to let the rector who’d discovered Charlotte hidden in an attic room adopt her to keep her safe. Anna, whose name had been Angela then, had eventually gone to join her best friend in New Zealand and had been there ever since.

  It was during the months that Charlotte had been involved in Chloe’s case, here in Kesterly, that her mother had come to find her, and together they’d ended up hiding Chloe while a nationwide search had been under way for her. Eventually, miraculously, they’d managed to smuggle her out of the country.

  It felt like a dream now, or part of a story that someone had once told her, rather than something so deeply involving her. Of course she hadn’t thought anything through, she’d acted out of instinct and love. Knowing that Chloe was too fragile for care, that she wouldn’t even speak to anyone apart from her and Anna, she simply hadn’t
been able to hand her over to strangers.

  So she’d kept her, and had ended up being arrested, repatriated to England and had even spent some time in prison before Maggie Fenn’s brother, Anthony, had taken the case and got her out. Chloe had also been brought back to Kesterly, but not at the same time as Charlotte. A social worker had travelled to New Zealand to collect her from the authorities there, and as soon as she’d returned she’d been put into care. She’d stopped speaking, Charlotte had been told later, and because that was how she’d been when Charlotte had first found her, afraid to utter a word to anyone, it had broken Charlotte’s heart to think of the tiny creature she loved so much feeling so lonely and afraid again.

  She and Chloe had become the nation’s love story during Charlotte’s trial for child abduction; in spite of knowing she was guilty almost everyone had been rooting for her, wanting her to get off so she and Chloe could be together again.

  Anthony, and the jury, had made it happen.

  It turned her hot and cold all over to imagine what that jury, or the public would think of what she was considering now. They’d all believed in the happy ending, that Charlotte and Anthony were taking the tragic, deserving little girl to a new country to start a new life where she’d be properly nurtured and loved and safe. And why shouldn’t they have believed that, when Charlotte and Anthony had been in no doubt of it at the time? It had never occurred to anyone that Chloe’s tragic past would rise up to torment her at such an early age; that having a brother and particularly a sister would antagonise the demons to such a horrifying degree. Nor would anyone ever have imagined that Charlotte would end up trying to protect her birth daughter by what she could only think of as casting out the cuckoo in the nest.

  If it happened there was no reason for anyone ever to find out. She hoped to god they didn’t, for the shame and guilt were already building to a horrible pitch; being on the receiving end of press condemnation and universal contempt would be beyond intolerable.

  But it wasn’t about her, it was about Chloe and what was best for her. Although Charlotte was already hating herself far more than anyone else ever could, seeing how differently Chloe was behaving now she had her mother’s attention all to herself was starting to convince Charlotte that she really might fare better as an only child.

  What had happened to Roxanne, she wondered. Had Polly ended up letting her go? She felt desperate to know, but there had been no reply to the message she’d sent, not even to say that it wasn’t possible to forward her email as Polly’s whereabouts were unknown.

  The following afternoon while Ron took Chloe into town to watch Kung Fu Panda 3, Charlotte, Maggie and Gabby stayed behind to talk things through in front of the sitting-room fire.

  ‘I just don’t know how you’re going to make yourself do it,’ Gabby protested, her beautiful, tear-ravaged face starting to crumple again. ‘I mean, I understand about Elodie, of course I do, and Martin and I have thought for a long time that things were coming apart for you and Chloe … I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she gasped as Charlotte winced. ‘You know what I’m trying to say, but that you’d give up on her …’

  ‘You don’t have to see it like that,’ Charlotte snapped angrily. She hadn’t managed much sleep through the night, so was on a short fuse already without having knives twisted in her guilt. ‘What I’m trying to do is the right thing for her.’

  ‘You mean for you. You took her, adopted her, gave her a lovely life until things started to go a bit wrong …’

  ‘They’re more than a bit wrong …’

  ‘But she’s not the first child to interfere with a baby. It happens. Talk to Martin, he’s a GP so he knows.’

  ‘They don’t all have the kind of background Chloe does. And if you don’t see it as such a problem, why don’t you offer to take her? She loves you and the twins, you have plenty of room and the wherewithal to give her a great life, so maybe you’d be better at dealing with her than I am.’

  Gabby baulked. This clearly wasn’t the kind of challenge she’d expected to come up against. ‘I thought you said she needed to be an only child,’ she pointed out lamely.

  Charlotte looked at Maggie who’d said nothing yet, had simply sat quietly listening to the sisters trying to thrash things out.

  ‘There’s a couple used to live in the next village to us,’ Gabby blurted, ‘they gave their adopted child back …’

  ‘It’s not a case of giving a child back,’ Charlotte interrupted tightly. ‘Chloe didn’t come from care in the first place, and anyway, they’re not items bought in department stores with open-ended return dates stamped on their bottoms. Once an adoption is made legal the child’s yours. It doesn’t belong to the state or social services, or anyone apart from you.’

  Gabby was confused. ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘That you don’t give a child back. You give it up, hand it over …’ She really didn’t want to be doing this; she could hardly believe what she was saying. ‘It all amounts to the same thing, I guess,’ she admitted weakly, ‘because what you’re really saying is you don’t want the child any more.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Gabby stated, ‘and this couple, no one ever spoke to them again, not even their own family. I swear, people actually ignored them in the street, and someone sprayed graffiti on the woman’s car calling her a child-hater. In the end they had to move away. I don’t know where they are now, but it was hell for them, and I couldn’t bear to think of you being treated the same way.’

  Having witnessed for herself just how maligned and shunned failed adopters could be, Charlotte said, ‘We used to hate those cases when they came up. No one ever wanted to take them, because it was next to impossible to know how to deal with someone who’d led a child to believe they were part of a family, that they were loved and wanted, only then to turn around and say, “actually, you’re not the little cutie I was expecting you to be so you have to go back to where you came from”. Of course it’s always a lot more complicated than that, but believe me, I’m fully aware of the prejudice against people who give up on a child. I guess this is showing me how wrong it is to pass judgement without knowing all the facts.’

  ‘But you must have known them if the child was being given to social services,’ Gabby pointed out.

  ‘Not always, because people don’t always tell the truth.’

  Maggie said, ‘Well, we do know what’s going on here, and neither Gabby nor I are going to turn our backs on you. We only want you to be sure you’re doing what’s best for your family, and of course for Chloe.’

  ‘I think it’s best for Chloe to stay with you,’ Gabby declared forcefully.

  Realising she already couldn’t bear the thought of her world without Chloe in it, Charlotte fought hard with her emotions as she said, brokenly, ‘I’d agree, if we weren’t living on a knife-edge all the time. If the tempers weren’t getting worse, if I felt I could cope better than I’ve managed …’

  Taking her hand, Gabby squeezed it tight. ‘I don’t want to make things any more difficult than they already are,’ she promised, ‘I’m just trying to make sure you’ve really thought this through.’

  After an awkward pause, Maggie tried injecting a more practical note. ‘Have you contacted your old boss yet?’ she asked.

  Charlotte shook her head. ‘She’s still there though, and apparently she’s been promoted.’

  ‘So she could be in a stronger position to help you?’

  ‘If she wants to. I think she’ll be quite upset when I tell her what’s in my mind; after all, she moved heaven and earth to make it possible for me to adopt Chloe. Now I’m going to be one of those hateful people who come back and say sorry, but it’s not working out so I want you to take responsibility for this child from now on.’

  ‘But they’re not hateful,’ Maggie objected. ‘Like you they’ve probably done their best …’

  ‘Some will have, others won’t …’

  ‘But we know you have.’

  ‘What I did,’ Charlotte
cried, pressing her hands to her head, ‘was take a child that wasn’t mine, because I thought I knew best. If I’d brought her here that night, to you, they’d have let her stay with you until the right parents could be found.’

  ‘You don’t know that for certain,’ Maggie protested. ‘True, the law says you should have put her into the system, but you didn’t, and in the end it was the law that made it possible for you to keep her. No one could have known then that she wouldn’t thrive in a family with more than one child. And look at it this way, if you hadn’t taken her you wouldn’t have met Anthony and if you hadn’t met him you wouldn’t have any children at all.’

  ‘So you see, it all worked out for the best,’ Gabby chipped in cheerily.

  Used to her sister sometimes not quite getting it, or hitting the wrong note, Charlotte said, ‘It’s true what you say, Maggie, and obviously I wouldn’t be without Anthony and the children, but this is tearing me apart. I keep saying it’s the right thing for Chloe, but is it, really?’

  ‘Think about what’s happening at school as well as at home,’ Maggie advised gently. ‘She’s not settled. She’s struggling, and it’s up to you to do whatever you can to help her.’

  ‘By casting her off like she means nothing, has no feelings?’

  ‘You don’t have to phrase it that way, but however you put it, it’s not a decision you have to take until you’ve had some expert advice. Wendy, your old boss, will have plenty to say, I’m sure, and you’ll remember Julia Minor who was Chloe’s guardian for the court during the adoption?’

  Charlotte nodded.

  ‘Well, Julia could be very helpful to us too. She’s now a fully-fledged child psychologist – or do I mean psychiatrist? Whichever, Chloe responded very well to her, as you no doubt recall, so maybe she’ll be more willing to talk to her than she’s proved with anyone else.’

  Charlotte could only hope. ‘Are you still in touch with her?’ she asked.