One afternoon, about two weeks after I left hospital, I was sitting on the red velvet cushion of the window seat that overlooked the back garden. My knees were drawn up, and I’d pulled the flowered curtains closed to make a cocoon for myself. I heard the rustle of fabric and lifted my head to see Zac standing near, clutching a cup of chamomile tea in one hand and folds of chintz in the other. His knuckles were white, as if he’d been in dread of what he would find behind the curtain.
‘The cowslips are over,’ he said, handing me the tea and looking through the window. ‘Remember when you told me their leaves were like tongues? I love how you see things, Holly. I’m sorry’ – his voice was thick – ‘I’m sorry you missed the cowslips.’
I said that I was feeling a bit better, and watched his face light up as if it really mattered to him that I had glanced at the fields behind the house to look for the wildflowers that were no longer there.
During dinner that night, when he left the dining room to get himself another beer, I tipped the contents of two of my sedative capsules into his beef casserole and stirred it in. My own dinner was untouched, the elderflower he had poured me hardly sipped, and it was a measure of how he tiptoed around me that he said nothing.
Early the next morning, before the sun was up, I slipped out of bed. It was a summer storm. The air was so heavy with rain that I couldn’t see the lighthouse lamp, however hard I squinted, and this felt like another blow, another goodbye that had been stolen from me. The wind noise and the sea noise were one noise, and I couldn’t disentangle them.
I knew what Zac would find, when he woke from his pill-induced sleep, and what he would do. He would find the house abandoned, but I had left a trail for him. He would track me to a little-known, hard-to-access section of the cliffs.
It was a place where I once took him blackberrying. He hated it there, with the waves so fierce the spray reached us six metres up. He’d covered his face, but I turned mine to the water and lifted it to the sky in exhilaration while Zac said I was mad, half-jokingly, but also half in pride. The cliff jutted out over a section of the ocean where fishing boats had been lost, the currents ensuring that those who drowned there were never found.
Every step Zac took along the path to that cliff would be in dread. He would stumble upon my phone and clothes and shoes, beneath a tree that was bent by the fierce wind that had blasted it for a century. At the very edge, he would find the memory box, with the teddy bear still inside, left for him, but the photograph and footprint gone. He would think that I had taken them with me, into the sea, going where he could not follow.
Now Thorpe Hall
One year and ten months later
* * *
Yorkshire, Tuesday, 9 April 2019
It is 7 p.m. and I have been off the motorway for fifteen minutes when my mobile begins to ring. George’s name is flashing on the display, which is set up for hands-free and clamped into a cheap plastic holder that clips into an air vent. I press accept, hit the speaker-phone button, and say hello.
‘I thought you were going home,’ he says.
‘How do you know I’m not?’ Windmills are rising above a valley that is lined with dark brick houses.
‘Lucky guess.’ There is the tap of fingers on a keyboard. ‘I discovered something you might find interesting.’
‘What?’ I am leaving the rows of houses behind. To my left is a small lake, which channels itself into tiny streams, criss-crossing through fields of deep green.
‘Eliza was working at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She was there from January 2012 until March 2017, flying back and forth between the US and Europe as part of the job.’
Zac said in that London hotel that Eliza had been in the US for a few years, and I’d found something along those lines a few days ago, when I did an Internet search on her.
‘Here’s the thing,’ he says. ‘I found some medical records for her in the US.’
‘What kind of records?’ The fields are dotted with new lambs, chasing their mothers. I am not sure why, but I am holding my breath for his answer.
‘She was seeing a reproductive endocrinologist soon after she arrived there. She was only thirty-two, but the diagnosis was premature ovarian failure.’
The scenery outside my car window seems to mock what George is talking about. It takes me a few seconds to form the words. ‘Eliza was already in full menopause?’
‘Not my area of expertise, but as far as I can understand it, yes.’
I’m racing through the implications of this, trying to be calm and rational and drive safely when my heart is pounding so hard it seems to be echoing in my own ears.
If Eliza Wilmot was menopausal before Alice was born, she cannot be her biological mother. She could have used a donor egg, but that makes no sense, given that there’s little doubt that Zac is Alice’s father. It is one thing to believe he accidentally got Eliza pregnant during an affair while he was with me, quite another to imagine he actively participated in her fertility treatment in the way a partner would – though I can’t entirely discount the possibility.
Was Eliza ever really pregnant? Could Alice – must she – be mine? Those stories I’d found of stillborn babies swapped with living ones, and forced adoption, and the kidnapping of newborn babies. I’d tried to tell myself it was part of my mad grief, my wish for it not to be true that my baby was gone, my inability to accept it. I don’t know what all of this might mean for Alice. Until I do, I don’t want her put at risk by having it known. ‘Have you kept any records of this, George?’
‘No.’
‘Do you feel you need to?’
He pauses. ‘Do you feel I should feel I need to?’
I laugh, astonishing myself that I still can. ‘I’m not sure yet.’
‘Then neither am I.’
‘Why are you doing this for me?’
‘Because when you tried to help us, you got badly hurt. It’s the least we – I – can do.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘Me, nothing. Maxine—’ Do I imagine that he chokes back whatever he’d been about to say? ‘As she said, she’ll speak to you later. Where are you, Holly?’
‘Visiting an old friend.’
‘Tell me where you are. Please.’
‘It’s not as if you can’t figure it out, George. Uh-oh. I seem to be losing the signal.’ And I cut off the call.
It is dark by the time I reach Thorpe Hall, which sits below the main road in a little valley. I leave my car at the top of the narrow lane that leads to it, then walk down, lighting the way with my phone torch, which I switch off when I am close.
The ground is boggy, presumably from the run-off that must come from above. It looks as if the whole decaying house is about to be swallowed in a huge, quick-sanded gulp. I know from the map that behind the house is moorland, which ends at the cliffs about half a kilometre from the back garden.
Two withered pear trees, their branches entwining, stand in front of the house, silhouetted in the faint moonlight. There is a central portico. Latticed windows like small eyes, sunken in more of the dark Yorkshire brick, seem to study me, though there don’t appear to be any lamps behind them. Eliza and Alice are probably asleep, or at the back of the house.
It is too late to knock on the door unannounced. If I were Eliza, I would not open it at such an hour. In any case, I am practically falling over with exhaustion, and in no condition to act. I return to my car and retrace the route I took earlier, stopping at a crumbling old hotel that I earmarked along the way. Through the window of my room, I can see the shadowy ruins of an old abbey. I strip off my filthy clothes and take a shower. When I finally collapse on the bed, wrapped in a towel and with my hair still wet, I am so tired I feel as if drugs are coursing through my veins. I want to think about Alice, but I fall asleep the instant my eyes are closed, unable to think about anything at all.
Yorkshire, Wednesday, 10 April 2019
It is 9.30 in the morning when I stand at the door, gat
hering courage after coming so far. I take a deep breath and grab the knocker, which is in the shape of a lion’s head. I smooth the midnight blue dress with tiny moons, which I’m wearing again. I’d repaired what I could using the sewing kit in my hotel room plus a few extra that I’d taken from a stray housekeeping trolley. Then I’d brushed away the worst of the dirt. I am about to knock a second time when I hear footsteps approaching and the lock turning.
Eliza is wearing jeans and a grey sweatshirt, trainers on her feet, and her hair in a short ponytail. Behind her, I can hear Alice crying, and it is as if I am in hospital again, when those cries I thought were coming from somewhere else were actually coming from me.
‘Oh, Helen.’ Eliza bursts into tears and falls into my arms.
‘I was worried about you.’ I am craning my neck to look behind her shoulder. ‘Is Alice okay?’
She pulls away, wipes her face with an elbow. ‘I’m scared that maybe the iron supplement isn’t working fast enough – she’s so sleepy after the journey. And extra cranky. It’s since we got here – I’d never have brought her otherwise.’
I feel a cramp low in my belly, where my womb used to be, like the twitch of a phantom limb. ‘We can take her to A and E.’
She nods. ‘I was thinking I would. How did you find us?’
‘I went to your house. Your husband – Zac – told me.’
‘I see.’
‘I didn’t want you to be alone.’
‘That’s kind.’ She clears her throat. ‘How was he?’
‘The police came while I was there.’
‘They arrested him?’
‘Yes.’
She closes her eyes tightly. ‘Alice has stopped crying. She’s probably fallen asleep again.’ Eliza puts the door on the latch, makes extra sure by grabbing a key from a hook and slipping it in her pocket, then steps outside and pulls the door shut behind her. ‘Just in case – I don’t want her to hear me upset.’
‘It must be so hard, with a little one, to protect them.’
She takes a deep breath. ‘Zac told me who you are. Do you know, he wouldn’t even speak your name before? I thought – I imagined I’d hate you. But you’re just like me. Another of his victims. He might have smothered you too. He might have smothered me. How can I resent Jane for sleeping with him, when she suffered as she did? We were friends once, you know. Good friends. Am I an idiot?’
I shake my head. ‘Of course not. I’m so sorry, Eliza.’ And though I truly am sorry, I’m not sure exactly what I am apologising for. Is it that I will somehow take my child back, and leave Eliza heartbroken? That the thought of Eliza losing a child she clearly loves makes me feel sick in the pit of my stomach, despite the fact that she may have done this very thing to me? That I cannot decide whether she is innocent in all of this, perhaps believing she has adopted Alice legitimately, or if she has conspired with Zac to steal my baby? That I don’t understand why she has stayed with Zac if she sees herself as a victim? That beneath my gentle expression, I am anything but?
‘Were you going to tell me who you are?’ she says.
‘Yes, though I’d been wondering if you already knew.’
She shakes her head. ‘No. No idea until he told me yesterday. I would have said.’
Again, I’m struck by the thought that if Eliza is lying she is the best actress I’ve ever seen, and she would definitely pass a final interview with Maxine. ‘That’s what I thought. I’m not sure which of us was more terrified when he came home early on Friday.’
She puffs out a sad half-laugh. ‘I don’t even know which of your names I should use.’
‘Whichever you prefer.’
‘“A rose by any other name …”’ She puts out her hand and I clasp it in mine. It is clammy. ‘We must help each other. You and I seem to be the only surviving members of a horrible club.’ Eliza turns away to unlock the front door. ‘I need to check on Alice.’
We step into the silence of a dim entry hall that opens into a long corridor through the centre of the house. The doors that branch off it are all closed. I bump my elbow on a heavy cabinet as I hurry after Eliza. ‘Where is Alice?’
‘The room at the end. It’s where we’ve been sleeping. Upstairs the paper’s peeling from the walls – it’s wet to the touch, the damp’s so bad.’ She manages a grim smile. ‘I can’t tell you how many dead spiders were in the bathtub. I had to boil kettles and saucepans for hot water. The house is for sale, but Zac seems to be letting it rot.’
I think of the capital gains tax that Albert mentioned. At this rate of depreciation, Zac will owe practically nothing. Or perhaps he is hoping that the whole thing will fall into the sea – I can imagine his pleasure at such a revenge. Only a few miles away, in the middle of the nineteenth century, a small village tipped over the cliffs and was lost.
Eliza sighs. ‘I hadn’t wanted to run to my father. I was too humiliated. I think I’m going to take a little trip with Alice, after she’s seen a doctor – Are you okay, Helen? You’re not saying much.’
‘I’m just worried for you and Alice.’
‘I’ve been in such shock and grief since we got here, but this place is impossible.’ She lets out a half-laugh. ‘Plus, our supply of crackers and juice boxes is running thin.’
We have paused outside a heavy door. ‘Where will you go?’ I can’t let her take Alice away.
‘No idea yet.’ She pushes the door open.
Inside, there is a faded velvet sofa that probably used to be crimson, with the scrolled arms lowered on both sides to convert it into a bed. It is made up with a quilt and pillows that Eliza must have brought with her. The portraits in this room would be perfect for a haunted house. There is a woman who looks like the bride of Death, and a trio who make me think of an executioner, a condemned man, and the priest who will officiate at the burial, though I’m not sure the artist intended the resemblance.
‘Alice? Where are you hiding?’ Eliza moves quickly to the sofa, hurls the bedding onto the buckling floorboards. There is no Alice beneath it. Maybe the glowering paintings frightened her.
I feel like a fire swallower as I watch Eliza rush to the other side of the sofa, searching behind it.
‘Are you playing hide and seek, poppet?’ The faint echo of Eliza’s voice plays back to us like a ghost’s whisper.
My chest is burning, my stomach turning into a lump. There is a mahogany sideboard against the far wall, the wood peeling. I am terrified that Alice is trapped in it, starved of air. I yank open the doors so violently that the collage photo frame, which Eliza has brought with her from Bath, falls to the floor with a shatter of glass. The space inside the sideboard is empty.
I am calculating the amount of time Eliza and I were talking outside. Probably about fifteen minutes. Unlike the high lattices at the front of the house, there are sash windows in this room, large and low. Both are open.
Eliza is shaking her head, watching me take this in. ‘No. Oh no.’ The words come out in a squeak. ‘It was so stuffy in here, and damp-smelling. We needed air.’
We are running together to the window. About three metres away from the house, dropped in the high grass, is the stuffed kitty I remember Alice playing with on her first visit to the Paediatric Unit.
‘Is there any way that could have got there other than by Alice dropping it?’
Eliza is struggling to get her breath. ‘No. We came in through the front. We’ve barely left this room. I’ve been – frozen – since Zac told me he’d been with Jane. And Alice was so lethargic. She seemed not to want to move, so we snuggled while I read to her.’
‘Can Alice climb?’
She gulps. ‘We can’t keep her in her cot any more. She’s ready for a proper bed.’
Before Eliza has finished the sentence, I am opening the window wider and climbing out. ‘Call 999. She can’t have got far.’
‘I’ll go. I’m her mother.’
What I think is, No you’re not. But this isn’t the time for that fight. ‘I grew up in thi
s sort of landscape. I can find her faster.’
‘I told her I’d take her to the cliffs to see the puffins.’
I manage a nod. Already I am turning away from her, though I hear her shouting that she can’t get a signal so she’s going to run up the lane to the main road to try for one.
My first instinct is simply to scream Alice’s name. Instead, I make myself crouch down, trying to see the world from her height, trying to imagine the steps she would take.
If I were nearly two years old, and searching for puffins, I would zero in on where the grown-up pointed. Sure enough, when I look closely, there is a line where the grass bends slightly outwards on both sides, showing the path Alice must have made by trampling through it. The line is like a faint arrow, aimed at the cliff. Slowly, I follow it.
The sun is bright. The cliff edge lies beyond a wall of gorse. There is a breeze, carrying the heavy coconut scent, making the air seem malignant, and so intense I can almost taste it. The yellow flowers are too abundant, the bushes too dense.
I squint. Again, I crouch low, trying to see the world from Alice’s perspective. There is a natural break in the gorse. I crawl through it, partly to stop myself from a rushed panic that will make me lose Alice’s trail, partly to maintain her vantage point. Above, there is the deep-throated cry of a gull, the dark tips of its wings visible. I want it to shut up, so I can listen for Alice, who must be near.
My progress is so slow, but the crucial thing is to follow accurately, rather than risk going in the wrong direction and losing her. A metre ahead, caught on a thorny branch, is a scrap of white and pink jersey. It must have come from Alice, so I am likely to be close. I rise, stumble through the last of the gorse, and come out the other end.
Now The Miniature
Yorkshire, Wednesday, 10 April 2019
It is as if I have stepped through a tear between two worlds. After the silence, the sea seems to roar at me from below. The grass is so green and unexpected that its proximity to the salty water is impossible to take in. Crumpled beside a large rock to my right is a little girl. She is wearing white pyjamas sprinkled with pink fairies, and her feet are bare and bleeding. She is a metre and a half from the cliff edge.
I Spy Page 31