by R. P. Bolton
‘Think about what?’ Tom said.
Silence followed. Ellie wasn’t sure if Danny had fallen asleep or passed out or what.
‘Why were you scared?’ Tom prompted.
There was a long silence.
When Danny finally spoke, the last piece of Ellie shattered.
‘Mia told me she was eight weeks pregnant. We were going to have a baby.’
74. Now
‘I killed my friends’ baby. And that’s why I don’t deserve one of my own.’
She’d said it. She’d opened the door that held the past and no matter where the truth went, she’d never be able to lock it in again.
Dr Monk leaned forward and locked her gaze with Ellie’s.
‘You didn’t kill anyone. What happened to your friend was not your fault. It was a terrible, awful accident and for your own sake as well as your daughter’s, you have to stop heaping the blame on yourself.’
From the corridor came the sound of a baby crying. Ellie squeezed the damp tissue into a ball. Little white flecks stuck to her fingertips. From the night Mia and her unborn baby died, guilt had lived inside her like a secret bitter heart, beating a painful rhythm no one else could hear. You don’t deserve to be happy.
‘The fact you have carried this suffering shows you’re a caring and compassionate human being,’ the doctor continued, fingers rattling over the keyboard. ‘And you absolutely deserve to be a mum and to be happy. Your daughter deserves to have you. I do think you need specialist help and that’s why I’m making this urgent referral to the mental health team.
‘You should hear from them in the next few hours. Definitely within twenty-four. Please ring the surgery if you need us before then. And in the meantime, go home and just enjoy your family.’
She wiggled the mouse then firmly tapped the return button with her fingernail. The sound had a mechanical quality to it. Like the click of a lock, the drawing of a bolt. A door opening.
75. Now
‘I couldn’t resist them,’ Carol said holding a pair of daisy-printed bootees to the camera. ‘What do you think?’
‘That we’re going to have to get a bigger house if you don’t stop buying her stuff,’ Ellie said.
Roger’s midsection passed behind her mum. ‘Another bloody pair of shoes? She’s had a baby not a centipede, Carol.’
‘Cheeky sod,’ her mum said, pretending to swipe him. ‘And anyway, it’s my granddaughter’s first Christmas. I’m contractually obliged to spoil her.’
‘Can’t wait to see you,’ Ellie said.
‘Me too, love. Not long now. You sound so much brighter,’ her mum continued. ‘The doctor helped then?’
Ellie let the unspoken I told you so slide.
‘I’ve got an appointment with the mental health team tomorrow. But to be honest, just talking to the doctor really helped.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ her mum said with palpable relief. ‘Oh, I cannot wait to see my beautiful girls.’
‘We can’t wait to see you either,’ Ellie said. ‘I love you, Mum.’
She put the phone in her pocket and stared out of the bedroom window. A perfect winter sunset streaked the sky above Mosswood with peach and gold. The first stars would soon appear, glimmering in the indigo sky. From the bathroom came the sound of Trinity splashing and Tom singing.
Speaking the truth for the first time had been cathartic. Just hearing someone say it wasn’t your fault lifted some of the weight. She prodded the guilt experimentally, like a sore tooth, and felt a twinge of pain. More habit-forming than any meds they handed out at Willow Lodge, the guilt would never leave her, but what she had to do for Trinity’s sake – for all their sakes – was find a way to make her peace with it.
‘Can you pass me a clean onesie?’ Tom called from the bathroom. ‘I forgot to bring one in.’
‘Sure,’ she replied, walking over to the nursery.
Jungle animals smiled down on her. The room was cosy and peaceful and warm. Everything she could ever want for her daughter.
She opened the top drawer, releasing the scent of lavender. Tom had been right all along – this was all about Mia, not Mary Brennan, a woman she had never even met. And that’s what she would be talking about tomorrow at her appointment. How dreams and stories and tiredness and guilt had got jumbled up in her head. Mia’s baby who never got chance to be born. Mary’s baby forcibly adopted. And underpinning everything, fear that she didn’t deserve a baby of her own.
Everything always came back to babies.
She picked out a sleepsuit patterned with stars and rainbows. Cute.
She smiled.
Everything was going to be fine.
76. Now
Hours later. She woke up cold. No, not just cold, frozen solid. Fingers and toes simultaneously burning and numb while breath streamed from her nostrils in vaporous clouds. For a second, her eyelids refused to open until she prised them apart. Her brain felt foggy. Doped. She couldn’t understand how the bedroom window had come to be wrenched back on its hinges.
Tom slept on, face down with his arms wrapped around the pillow. She placed the back of her hand quickly on his neck. It burned. The heat of Tom’s skin in marked contrast to the ice of her own. Was she dreaming?
Singing.
Faint, in the arctic chill, the first few notes rang with the clarity of ice. She strained her ears. The volume increased.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
Ellie’s teeth started to chatter.
Careful not to disturb Tom’s deep slumber, she climbed over him.
Out of bed, the icy air stung her bare skin, raising goose bumps on her arms as she shut the window. Low clouds parted, revealing a smudged thumbprint moon above trees like cardboard cut-outs. So quiet. So still. None of the comforting bustle of the city streets, only acres of darkness.
Taking her dressing gown from the hook, she clawed her toes into her slippers.
‘This isn’t real,’ she whispered. ‘This is a dream.’
She tiptoed across the bedroom, stopping dead at the slight creak on the threshold, but Tom didn’t move a muscle. On the landing, light fell from the open nursery and lay in a sliver of gold across the green swirls of the carpet.
Ellie narrowed her eyes. There was mud on the landing carpet. Mud on the walls. Dirty streaks on the handle that absolutely were not there when she went to bed three hours earlier. As she dabbed the wall, crumbling the wet soil between her fingertips, the night-light stuttered on the same line: Pretty maids all in a row. Pretty maids all in a row. Pretty maids all in a row.
Saliva rushed to her mouth and she had to put out a hand to steady herself. Telling the truth was supposed to draw a line under this.
How could it still be happening?
She was sleepwalking; she had to be. Having a nightmare and walking in her sleep. Go back to bed! she ordered herself. But her feet moved on, out of her control.
An arctic breath chilled down her spine. It seemed impossible, but the cold intensified as she entered the nursery. Pastel lights flickered across the ceiling projected by the night-light. As she touched the handle, something oozed from under the cot. A glistening darker patch on the grey carpet.
For a second, the room shimmered and she saw, lit by a dim bulb, a yellow chimney breast, and a kneeling girl with her mouth open. Long black hair stringy with sweat. Ellie blinked and when she opened her eyes, Trinity’s nursery reappeared.
Trinity.
At the same instant the name formed in her mind, she heard the distant cry of a baby. She hurried into their bedroom. The Moses basket was empty.
Shouting resulted in nothing more than a hoarse croaking so she grabbed Tom’s shoulders, shaking him hard enough to hurt her hands. He let out a gentle snore and turned over.
Wake up! she screamed in her head. The baby’s gone.
A frail cry came from the garden. Stumbling over Tom’s discarded clothes, she hurried to the window, had her hand on th
e sill when the cry stopped abruptly.
A tiny bundle lay on the concrete beneath the kitchen window. A lighter patch of blanket on the dark ground.
Everything came into sharp focus. She took the stairs two at a time, righting herself on the banister when she stumbled. A hundred knives stabbed her ankle, but she kept going, flying through the kitchen and out into the petrol-black night.
The shock of the cold stole her breath away. She gasped and the bitterness burned in her lungs. Behind her, the door slammed shut, forced by an invisible power so strong the whole house shook.
Ellie barely registered the deafening blast. Her hand crept to her mouth and she let out a silent moan. The world receded; the house, the garden, herself sucked into a black hole where nothing existed except horror.
On the concrete, the tiny, blanketed heap lay perfectly still.
Ellie had known fear before, but never like this. Her entire body vibrated with the thudding behind her ribs.
She took a tentative step. Reached out a trembling hand, hesitated and drew back. Couldn’t. Had to.
Propelled by dread, she stroked the sad bundle with her fingertips. Tugged.
The fabric unfolded like a flower. Empty.
It was just a blanket.
She sank to her knees and held the soft wool to her face, her silent sobs a tidal wave of relief. But it was short-lived. Where was the baby?
As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, dense black shifted and separated into individual, identifiable shapes. Trees, bushes. The pile of broken wood by the rose bed. Shadows cloaked the garden, silent and still, and from those shadows came the sudden perfect sound of her daughter crying and she saw a flash of white against the black soil of the rose bed.
‘Mummy’s coming,’ she shouted. The sound rang out in the clear night air.
She sprinted across the lawn, and had almost reached the baby when she stumbled, falling square on one of the stepping stones. Her knee exploded with pain.
‘Trinity!’
A square of light appeared as Tom switched the bedroom light on.
She scooped up their daughter, cosy in her stars and rainbows sleepsuit, and hugged her tightly. Despite the wintry chill, the baby’s rosy skin radiated warmth.
‘Sssh, shh,’ she said, rocking Trinity close to her chest. ‘Mummy’s got you. You’re safe now.’
The lights on Diane’s conservatory flicked on, throwing a shaft of light across their garden that illuminated a hole, roughly rectangular in shape, in the earth to her left. Despite the icy chill, sweat trickled down her forehead, dampening her hair. She shoved it back with the base of her hand, feeling mud smear her skin. Was something glinting in the dark earth?
She heard Tom shout, ‘What are you doing?’ and Diane call, ‘Ellie? Tom?’
The sound of the back door was like something snapping in Ellie’s head, thrusting her back into the real world. Rapid feet approached and a wavering beam of torchlight found her squinting at the sudden glare.
‘Ellie, what the hell are you doing?’ Tom said.
She shuffled on her knees and lifted the baby off the grass. Rocking back on her heels, she wiped the sweat from her forehead.
‘The torch,’ Ellie gasped. ‘Shine the torch in there.’
‘Hello?’ Diane called from the passageway at the side of the house. She hurried towards them, tying the sash on her dressing gown. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Can you hold Trinity?’ Ellie said, thrusting her into the other woman’s arms before she had a chance to answer. The baby’s sleepsuit was streaked with mud.
Ellie used her hands to dig out the earth around the edge of the hole.
‘What is it?’ Tom said, peering in. ‘I can’t see what’s – oh God.’
The torch beam trembled on decaying cloth. A tiny bundle, the size of a new-born. A glint of something white.
‘Ellie,’ Tom said gently pulling her away. ‘Stop.’
Six months later
Ellie looks at the almost-full suitcase on her bed. A lawnmower hums somewhere in the distance and above the mechanical sound, birds break into cheerful song. Even though it’s only just gone eight, spring sunshine floods the garden. Right in the centre, where the rose bed used to be, cherry tree blossom flutters like pink confetti. It’s only been there a few weeks, but given time and the right care, this sapling will grow into a beautiful, living memorial to Mary Brennan and her daughter.
It’s been six months since the night they found the tiny skeleton. The police had arrived within minutes of Tom’s phone call, followed by the forensic team who, with infinite care, excavated the burial site.
For weeks afterwards, the frozen garden had been an open wound tended by white-boiler-suited specialists, but nothing else was found. Soon, the fresh green turf Tom and Howard laid will look as though it has always been here.
There have been times over the last few months when she couldn’t bear the thought of visiting 6 Moss Lane again, let alone living there.
First, when the forensic team arrived with their excavators and, hot on their heels, the plague of journalists and social media trolls. Then came the ghouls who flew their drones over day and night; rubberneckers gawking over the fence from Mosswood and endless well-meaning strangers, leaving flowers and teddy bears at the end of the drive. Mary and her daughter, ignored in life, went viral in death.
But the initial fascination eventually tailed off. Her mum, Roger and Howard cleared the flowers away and Diane and Asha washed the teddies to donate to St Michael’s. The TV crews packed up and other sad stories now fill the pages of the papers.
And here they are. They moved back in a few days ago and already, the house feels like home.
Mary will never completely go away, Ellie understands that. One day, Trinity will come home from school, innocent ears ringing with playground gossip and Ellie will have to tell her what happened at 6 Moss Lane. She hopes Trinity will understand why they stayed. Not just about the financial commitment or the fact they would lose so much if they sold up (although this has obviously played a part). But because they owe it to Mary Brennan and her daughter to let go of the past and make this house a happy home.
Her phone buzzes on the bedside table. It’s a message from Jess:
Hope it goes well. Give me a call when you get back and we’ll do something fun x
She replies with a love heart and thumbs-up, thankful for Jess’s steady friendship.
Footsteps climb the stairs. Her mum peers around the door.
‘Do you want me to make some sandwiches for the journey?’
Ellie rummages through the top drawer. ‘No, it’s OK. We’ll have to stop at the services to change the baby anyway, so we can get something there.’
‘Give me a shout if you need any help packing,’ Carol says before lowering her voice to a whisper as she enters the nursery. ‘I’ll take Trinity’s bag down. She’s still fast asleep.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’
Her mum has always taken the shocking news in her stride. When Tom and Ellie immediately moved back in with Howard, Carol booked into a nearby hotel – and she hadn’t left. Roger joined her soon afterwards and now they are renting a flat in the village. Just for the time being.
Ellie can’t help but think about those first few days now, as she folds pyjamas and puts them into the suitcase.
After the police excavated the rose bed and took the tiny bundle away, they contacted Catherine Wilson, the Canadian cousin, who provided the DNA sample that proved ‘in all probability’ that this was Mary’s baby. The coroner’s report had made for difficult reading: the bones were that of a new-born girl and the cause of death was ‘probably asphyxiation’.
Almost equally hard to read was the speculation in the papers. Norah, however, had written surprisingly sensitive pieces for several national papers. After piecing the evidence together – the forensics, interviews with Mary’s classmates and her father’s colleagues – she’d concluded the most likely scenario was that inste
ad of arranging a secret adoption, William Brennan had smothered his granddaughter and buried her in the garden, leaving his daughter too traumatised to speak. Unable to live with the guilt, he’d taken his own life at Moss Pond.
Catherine Wilson had helped to slot the final pieces of the puzzle together. She remembered her mother – Bill Brennan’s estranged sister – burning a letter she’d received after her brother’s death. A suicide note of sorts, in which he alluded to an act of anger and intolerable guilt.
When the police finally released the tiny skeleton, Catherine flew over from Canada to organise the simple funeral. The vicar of St Michael’s delivered a moving service and the police kept reporters away. The small group of mourners comprised Ellie and Tom, Carol, Roger and Howard. Diane and Asha and Jack Cohen from number three as well as Tanya and the investigating officers from Tom’s work.
Poor Rita died shortly before the funeral, and Ellie has not seen the woman in black since the day she met Norah in the playground. The day she told Dr Monk the truth about Mia’s death. After her months of therapy, Ellie can see the connection clearly now.
‘We need to get going soon,’ Tom calls up the stairs. ‘Twenty minutes at the latest.’
‘Nearly ready,’ she says.
In the end, Tom’s big case at work ended in the arrest of almost a dozen people. Despite the success, and his good working relationship with Tanya, he has put in for a transfer to a different unit.
Trinity stirs in the nursery, whimpers, then settles back down. Ellie watches her eyeballs move behind her closed lids. What do babies dream about?
She thinks about three women and their three daughters: Mary, Mia and Ellie, their lives forever intertwined.
Tomorrow would have been Mia’s birthday, and they are travelling to Surrey for a celebration at the farmhouse. Danny and Josie will be there with their kids, as well as family and a couple of old school friends. David and Anita invite Ellie every year, but this is the first time she has accepted. The last time she visited was for Mia’s funeral.
She crams socks and pants into the gaps at the side of the case and zips it up. Some nights, when she is on the edge of sleep, she finds herself in the attic flat listening to Mia call her name. Other times, she is gouging mud from the rose bed under the silent gaze of Mary Brennan.