Across the lawns, a few women were finishing work, but no one took much notice of me, old Bramble, off to fetch logs for the fire. When I reached the shed, instead of opening the door to enter, I made my way down the side and pressed my ear against the sun-warmed wood to listen in.
To my horror, I could hear Seed weeping, her voice murmuring low, the words unintelligible.
‘Don’t cry,’ Robyn was pleading. ‘Seed, don’t cry, please.’
There was the sound of movement, melancholy feet against the wood-chipped floor.
‘I’m sorry, Robyn, I’m so sorry,’ I heard Seed say. ‘It’s wrong of me to want you to stay – but I do!’
‘But my family has to come first.’ Robyn’s voice trembled with emotion. ‘This could be a second chance for me and Archie. He needs me. My daughter needs me.’
‘I need you,’ Seed said, and I’d never heard her so desperate. ‘You can’t just start something like this and then turn your back on it! You haven’t found what you came looking for yet – you can’t just give up and walk away. You even went through with the marking ceremony! That must have meant something?’
I felt a sharp prick of guilt. Seed had begged us to allow Robyn to be marked early, and, while my every instinct had cried out against it, we had given in, and permitted it. I tattooed that girl with my own hand. I should have known better; I should have stood my ground.
‘They’re just tattoos, Seed. It’s not a big deal. I don’t really know what you want from me – I didn’t promise you anything.’ Robyn’s tone grew stronger. ‘I came to find out more about my mother, and I’m grateful for everything you’ve been able to tell me about her. But now, well, there’s nothing more here for me.’
Her mother? Who was Robyn’s mother?
‘But I’m here, Robyn,’ Seed whispered. ‘I’m …’
Oh, lord, where had we gone so wrong, I thought as I stifled a sob of my own, that Seed should feel so desperate and alone? That I never noticed, never helped her through.
‘I’m sorry,’ Robyn replied flatly. They both fell silent, and I held my breath, my heart racing, fearing they would catch me eavesdropping. ‘I had no idea you’d react so strongly when I told you I was leaving. Is it, I mean – you know I don’t like women in that way, don’t you?’
‘That’s not what I want!’ Seed cried out as though in some great pain. ‘How could you say that? That was never what I wanted!’
‘Then what do you want?’
All grew still, as Robyn, and I, waited for Seed’s answer.
‘I just want you in my life, Robyn. Not like a lover. Like a daughter.’
As the door to the wood store creaked open, I pressed myself flat against the wooden panels, praying I might evade detection.
‘I’m sorry, Seed,’ Robyn said as she stepped out on to the path. ‘This is just too weird for me. I can’t be your daughter.’
Now, the morning bell rings out, and I usher Seed up to her office before the first sisters descend the stairs.
‘The women can have breakfast without us today,’ I say, closing the door behind me.
Seed sinks on to her sofa, her eyes puffy through worry and lack of sleep.
‘Are you going to let the outsiders back in?’ I ask her, pulling out the seat to her desk, our usual roles reversed.
As I await her answer, my eyes drift to the old combination safe in the far corner, where each of the Founding Sisters’ Last Will letters lie, along with the cash takings from the market stall and a small stack of legal documents and deeds. ‘We might be able to delay them,’ I suggest as an idea starts to take form.
‘How?’ Seed’s expression shifts, more alert now. ‘Una said if we don’t let them return, the police are certain to come. And God knows what they’ll do if they get access – who they’ll send – what they’ll find!’
‘I’m sure that’s true. And this might not work, but it could buy us some time.’
‘Time for what?’ she asks.
‘Time with Fern,’ I say carefully. ‘With each other.’
Seed follows the direction of my gaze, comprehension in her knitted brows. She nods her agreement, and I rise, crossing the room to open the safe.
Anything’s worth a go, I tell myself, when you’ve got nothing left to lose.
22. CELINE
Present day
Celine and Una arrive home from meeting Dave Aston at The Eagle, and there is mail waiting for them.
Celine pulls the envelope free of the letterbox and finds the note inside is crumpled, a torn strip of A4 paper, looking as though it has been carried about in someone’s back pocket for a week, its message written out in careful pale grey letters:
YOU BITCHES STAY OUT OF OUR BUSINESS.
That’s all. An offensive order, no signature, and a threat of … what?
‘Put it down on the sideboard,’ Una barks, jumping straight to action as she drops her rucksack on the hallway floor. ‘Fingerprints, Celine! Put it down!’
Celine does as Una instructs, and steps away from it, as though it might contaminate her. ‘Seed?’ she asks, frowning at Una. ‘Do you think she’s capable of something like this?’
Una stares at the note, already getting her phone out to call Dave Aston. ‘It doesn’t feel like her style, does it? But “our business”? We’re talking about more than one person, clearly, and the only business we’ve been poking our noses into is theirs.’
Celine sighs heavily. ‘God, Una, I really thought they were going to invite us back in, you know? It doesn’t look very likely, if this is anything to go by.’
‘It doesn’t,’ Una agrees, pressing the dial button.
Seconds later and Dave Aston is on speakerphone, having pulled over at the roadside to take the call. ‘Did you both touch it?’ he asks.
‘No, just Celine,’ Una replies. ‘If I were you, Dave, I’d be getting handwriting samples from anyone you’re vaguely suspicious of in either of the cases. You’ve got Seed’s fingerprints already, haven’t you – from her voluntary statement?’
‘Yep, we’ve got them. What about the other women there, Una? Anyone else you think we should be looking at?’
‘Well, Bramble is very tight with Seed. I’d certainly be wanting to rule her out too.’
‘It could be a man,’ Celine suggests. ‘The language – it feels like a man, doesn’t it? You bitches.’
‘Don’t women use that phrase too?’ Dave asks.
‘Not so much,’ Celine replies, pulling at her lower lip. ‘Either way, I can’t imagine either Seed or Bramble talking like that, let alone writing it.’ She hesitates for a moment, recalling Georgie’s words from their meeting in the restaurant last week, when she talked about her experience with Jem Falmer all those years ago. What were his words? You dyke bitches. ‘If you have access to some of Jem Falmer’s handwriting, Dave, I think it would be worth checking. From what Georgie told me, it’s exactly the kind of language he’d use.’
‘OK. Listen, I’ll swing back your way and pick up the note now, then I’ll see what we’ve got on Falmer. If there’s nothing on file, I’ll pay his family a visit in Littlehampton first thing – see if they’ve hung on to anything with his handwriting on. Well done, Una, good call. See you shortly.’
Exhausted, Una and Celine take a pot of tea out on to the veranda, dissecting all that they’ve learned today while they wait for Dave to arrive. When Seed’s name lights up the phone screen on the table between them, Una puts down her mug without a word, and calmly presses the speaker button.
‘Hello?’
‘Una Powell?’ Seed asks, and Celine notes how smooth and resonant her voice is, how controlled. She could be a newsreader.
‘Speaking. Is this Seed?’
‘I’ve given your request a lot of thought,’ she says by way of an answer. ‘And I put it to a show of hands over supper last night. The women voted twenty-seven for and three against your return visit.’
Una is expected to respond here, but she lets the silenc
e hang, and Celine marvels at her self-control, not jumping in to fill the gap like she would herself.
‘We’d like to invite you back,’ Seed explains. ‘But there are conditions.’
‘I’m listening,’ Una replies.
‘You hand in your phones at the door.’
‘Of course.’
‘You stay with us overnight – perhaps for two nights, if all goes well.’
‘Not a problem,’ Una says, gesturing to Celine for confirmation.
‘And you come with open hearts and open minds.’
Another pause.
‘That’s it?’ Una says.
‘That’s it.’
Celine finds she can’t sit still, and she’s up, pacing the decking, trying to contemplate all the questions they’ll need to ask once they’re back inside Two Cross Farm.
‘When do you want us?’ Una asks.
‘Tomorrow morning,’ Seed replies, and it’s not a question, it’s a non-negotiable statement. ‘Nine a.m., like before.’ She hangs up.
Celine and Una stare at each other, their shock turning to excitement.
‘Did that really just happen?’ Celine asks, her palm pressed to her forehead.
‘Dave’s never going to believe this,’ Una replies, already up and heading back towards the house in anticipation of his arrival.
As Celine rises to follow her inside, a text message pings on to her phone, and to her relief it’s Pip, replying at last, after a delay of over twenty-four hours.
Sorry, sis – meant to reply earlier, but got diverted. All fine here, honest. Stop worrying! The girls have a play date tomorrow afternoon with Sid and Iris from down the road, so planning to come back on the train the next day or maybe Saturday. See you then xxx
Celine re-reads the message, unsettled by the Mary Poppins tone of it, all the while telling herself that she’s being paranoid, that there’s nothing to worry about at all. Pip’s fine, her message says as much, and if she’s having a few marital problems with Stefan perhaps it’s best not to add to her plate with news of these recent developments. But what of that threatening letter? Shouldn’t Pip know about that, at the very least, so she can be on her guard? They’ll leave her a note, Celine concludes, warning her not to answer the door if it goes, and explain properly what’s going on when they get back from Two Cross Farm. She taps out a reply:
All good here, sis. Nothing much to report. See you and the girls soon.
She looks out over the blossom-strewn lawn, feeling inexplicably guilty as soft pink petals flutter along the borders to collect in shallow drifts. After a second’s contemplation, she adds: Love you x
The next morning, after surrendering their phones, Celine and Una are put to work in the garden at Two Cross Farm.
Una is paired digging over the compost with a woman called Rita, who barely speaks a word of English, and Celine is put with Thistle, a fifty-two-year-old woman from Birmingham who has been at Two Cross Farm for over five years. Dave Aston has instructed them to focus on finding out more about Robyn – who she shared with, what she was like, whether she spoke with anyone about her plans to get back with her ex-husband – and, more subtly, about those six women from 1976, all of whom are still missing according to police records. Celine knows Una will be seething at having been put with someone who’ll be able to tell her precisely nothing, while she’s been paired with a woman who barely pauses for breath. The problem is, it seems Thistle is only interested in talking about herself. Within an hour, Celine has learned that Thistle lived with an abusive husband for over twenty years, right up to the point at which the last of their three children left home for university. His name was Pete, and he’d beaten her, on a weekly basis, every Sunday night, for two decades.
‘Was that what gave you the strength to leave, seeing the last of your kids flying the nest?’ Celine is dibbing holes in neat rows in one of the raised beds, as Thistle follows behind, dropping seeds in and covering them with soil.
‘Oh, no,’ Thistle replies. ‘Pete had a stroke. Just a few days after we’d dropped Craig at university. It left him paralysed down one side, and I was giving him his tea the first night back from hospital, and he couldn’t even put the fork to his mouth. He was too weak to feed himself.’
She doesn’t look up as she tells this story, just carries on reaching into her tunic pocket with those heavy red hands of hers, pulling out seeds and feeding them into the soil.
‘I just looked at him across the table, and my first thought was, oh, my God, he’ll never thump me again.’
Celine stops dibbing, so that Thistle has no choice but to look up when she runs out of holes to fill. ‘That must have been a relief, after all those years?’
Thistle laughs, betraying her unresolved bitterness, and gestures for Celine to get back to her job. ‘Not really,’ she replies, standing to ease out her back. ‘’Cause my second thought was, ’ow can I love a man like that? He was so weak, I couldn’t stand it. He was no man at all. At any rate, he went and died a couple of months later, thank God. And so I came here.’
Celine has no reply to this. Thistle’s response sounds far from normal, but who is she to judge? She doesn’t know what ‘normal’ is, does she? She certainly doesn’t know what a normal family feels like, having seen a steady stream of her mother’s boyfriends and lovers and stepdads and ‘uncles’ passing through her family home over the years, not one of them lasting for longer than a year or two. She has no idea what it feels like to be in a regular family unit, abusive or otherwise. Her own father was a man Delilah met overnight at a youth hostel in Cork while she was solo travelling around southern Ireland in the early ’80s. ‘He was good-looking,’ Delilah once boasted, ‘but I couldn’t tell you his name, darling – or even his nationality. All I can tell you is, we shared a single bunk that night, made wonderful love together, and you were the delightful result. I was up at the crack of dawn the next morning to catch the Dingle bus, and I never saw him again.’ The last time Celine had asked about him, she’d been so angered by Delilah’s flippant reply that she’d sworn never to bring it up again. ‘You should get tested for AIDS,’ she had said, quite calmly, before slamming the door on her mother’s tipsy whoop of laughter.
Celine catches Una’s attention, and they wave at each other across the lawn, before Una gives a little ‘what the hell?’ kind of shrug and turns back to her work. When will they get a chance to ask all their questions, if they’re stuck out in the garden all day long? On their way here, Una had stressed how important it was that they play along with Seed’s plans for the day, to gain her trust before launching in. Of course she’s right, but gardening? As the morning goes on, the heat of the sun grows ever more intense, and Celine starts to feel her patience being sorely tested by Thistle’s endless bragging.
‘I could drive a tractor before I turned ten,’ she says as they get back to work after morning tea. ‘Up at five most mornings too, tending to the beasts and the chooks. Milking, egg-collecting, mucking out – I did it all. Shoulda stuck with that. Shoulda found meself a nice young farmer with a bit of money.’ She rams her garden fork into the soil with a conclusive grunt.
Celine thinks perhaps Thistle is a woman who’s spent so many years keeping her mouth shut, that she’s decided to spend the next forty with it open.
‘I’m a solicitor,’ Celine offers, but Thistle doesn’t bite. ‘I’m taking a few weeks off to sort my mother’s funeral.’
Thistle’s mouth turns down at the corners. ‘Sorry t’hear that,’ she says, without emotion.
‘Hello, Celine.’ As though from nowhere, Seed has appeared, and Celine springs back in surprise. ‘How are you finding things? Is Thistle helping you to settle in?’
‘Yes! Thank you,’ she stammers in reply.
Seed narrows her eyes in that deeply interested way she does, scrutinising Celine. Despite the pale, shiny burn scars which mask her high-boned face, she is handsome, her eyes a deep, intelligent blue. What would she look like in regular clothes
instead of those shapeless tunics, with her hair loose and the lines of her limbs visible? Celine looks away, light-headed in the heat. She sweeps a lock of hair from her brow, tucks it behind her ear.
‘You look hot,’ Seed says, after what feels like an age. She reaches out, tenderly pressing the back of her knuckles to Celine’s cheek.
Celine blushes, aware that her heart is beating faster, afraid that Seed will feel her discomfort through that touch. Something in the moment takes her back to her teen years, and she thinks of Teddy Mackintosh, who used to get on at the next bus stop after theirs. He was impossibly good-looking but shy, yet he would lock eyes with Celine the moment he boarded the bus, silently daring her to look away. It was like a challenge, and the heady memory of it still makes her stomach flip to this day. Every time it happened, Vanessa, sitting bunched up beside her in her matching school uniform, would nudge her in the ribs and whisper, ‘Swoon.’
‘I – huh?’ Celine is entirely thrown. What is wrong with her?
Seed smiles now. ‘I said, you look hot, Celine.’
‘I didn’t choose the best clothes,’ she finally replies. What is it about this woman that makes her so nervy? ‘I think I’ll change at lunchtime.’
‘I’ll look you out a tunic, if you like? Seems silly to dirty your own clothes when we’ve got plenty here. I’ll find something for Una too.’ With that, she turns and heads purposefully back towards the house, her dandelion-yellow tunic swaying.
Over at the greenhouse, it seems Bramble is checking up on Una in the same way. There’s no doubt they’re being closely watched.
When the lunch bell rings at one o’clock, everyone stops, regardless of what they’re doing, and, just as they did for morning tea, they file into the dining room, each taking their predetermined cross at the table, with Seed at the head. Across the table, Una’s partner sits beside her, while Celine has the seat next to Thistle, meaning there’s no escape from the woman, even at mealtimes. Thankfully the food provides a welcome change of subject.
33 Women: A gripping new thriller about the power of women, and the lengths they will go to when pushed... Page 16