‘Pretty screwed-up,’ Una agrees. ‘But, baby, they’re not all bad, you do know that, don’t you? There are plenty of good men in the world. I should know, I’ve worked with some of the best. Look at Dave Aston.’
‘Oh, God, why didn’t I see it?’ Celine ploughs on, barely acknowledging Una’s words. ‘I never had a good feeling about Stefan, right from the outset, and I ignored it – kept my nose out for a quiet life. Just like I did with Ness and that bastard Falmer. It was the same there – I knew things weren’t right, and I let her persuade me she was fine, that she was safe. I was too busy building my tiny little empire to get in the car and go and see for myself. I was meant to protect them, wasn’t I, Una? That was the one job I had to do. And I failed.’
Una slaps the table and pours herself another drink. ‘Stop it, Celine! Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You did everything for those girls when your mother left – everything. You were eighteen, for Christ’s sake, trying to keep two teenage siblings on track as well as yourself. And you did an amazing job. You were their sister, not their mother. I only wish I’d been able to help you more.’
‘You did plenty to help, Una,’ Celine replies firmly. ‘You did plenty.’
For a moment they sit there like that, letting the years wash over them.
‘What d’you make of today, then?’ Celine says, steering the conversation back. ‘There’s something about Seed, isn’t there? She kind of freaks me out, but at the same time there’s something really – I dunno – almost hypnotic about her.’
Una smiles tiredly. ‘You like her, don’t you?’
‘What d’you mean, “like”?’ Celine feels her cheeks flushing hot.
‘That you like her. I saw the way you were around her; the way she responded to you.’
Celine laughs now, loud and embarrassed. ‘Una! I’m into men, not women.’
Una shrugs, takes her drained glass to the sink and rinses it out.
‘What about you, then?’ Celine asks, by way of retaliation. ‘You’re what, late fifties? I know you’ve got plenty of male friends, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with a man – you know, a boyfriend.’
‘That’s because I do prefer women,’ Una replies without hesitation. She shrugs again.
Celine is stumped. She had no idea, even after all these years. Of course, it makes perfect sense; but how could she not have realised? Is she so self-absorbed that she doesn’t take notice of all these people she’s meant to love?
‘Don’t look so shocked,’ Una says, trudging past and kissing the top of her head.
‘I – I’m not,’ Celine replies, and she’s really not, it’s just that right now she’s consumed by self-loathing and there’s no room for anything else. Her entire world is shifting and nothing is what it used to be.
‘I’m off,’ Una says with a sozzled smile. ‘You should get to bed too, Ceecee. Don’t wanna hangover on your birthday, do you?’ She heads upstairs, cursing as she stumbles on the bottom step, and once again Celine is left alone with her thoughts.
Against her better judgment, she ventures to the living room and the drinks cabinet, pouring a vodka and tonic, remembering it as the tipple Gordon had enjoyed in the summer months, sitting out in the courtyard sun trap in River Terrace, shaded beneath his straw fedora. Which one was Johnnie? Was he the banker or the art dealer? Either, it didn’t matter really. Celine recalls that for a while Pip had fantasised that he might be her father, come to reclaim his rightful place in the bosom of their family, but her hopes were dashed when he, like so many others, moved on. Johnnie was OK, but still, a flash-in-the-pan, a temporary bedfellow to absorb the light of Delilah’s attentions for a month or a year.
Celine slumps on to the sofa, feet up, resting her laptop on her stomach as she fires it up. The first alert she sees is from the undertaker, asking if the family have had news from the coroner yet. With everything that’s been going on, she’d almost forgotten the reason they’re here in the first place, and the fact that Delilah is dead, permanently – that she isn’t coming back. Ever. Swiftly, Celine types out a reply. Sorry, no news. I’ll follow up with you early next week.She presses send. Can it really be only a fortnight since her mother died? Less since Celine arrived here and set out on this bewildering trail with Una? She reaches for her tumbler, spilling vodka down her front as she stupidly tries to drink from it in this horizontal position. She knows she’s too wired to sleep if she goes to bed now, so instead she opens up a fresh Word document and starts to list all the facts they’ve gathered on these three cases so far.
Facts:
3 dead women
25-year span: 1995 / 2005 / 2020
ALL connected to Two Cross Farm
ALL dead near the water
ALL with two-cross tattoos
Susan Green: Arundel / suicide? (case notes still missing)
Vanessa Murphy: Brighton / beaten and strangled
Robyn Siegle: Arundel / broken neck, fingerprint bruising
Suspects:
Jem Falmer (missing since 2005)
Seed (or any of the women at Two Cross Farm)
Archie Chowdhury – ruled out by police
Harry the gardener?
Who else?
Questions:
Was Susan involved with a man i.e. another potential suspect?
When did Seed arrive at Two Cross Farm i.e. did she know Vanessa or Susan Green?
Who inked those tattoos? The same tattooist, or not?
Was Robyn having a romantic relationship with Seed?
What are those Two Cross women hiding? Why so secretive?
She conjures up an image of Seed, revisiting the warm sensation of that woman’s hands on hers, as she held her back at the gate this morning. Seed had spoken of Celine’s sense of loss as though it were a badge of honour, as though only those who have experienced pain have really felt at all. Is that what’s behind her rule forbidding children in their community? Is she – are they – warped enough to believe a woman is of greater value if she has experienced some profound level of loss or pain? Fury rises in Celine as she thinks of the way Seed dismisses the fact that so many have abandoned children to be there. And then she thinks about the confusing way Seed makes her feel when she’s in her presence, and wonders whether, if she had had children of her own, she could ever have been persuaded to leave them behind.
Seen. She realises that’s what the feeling is. Seed makes her feel seen. Perhaps, if Seed pressed her to it, Celine could be convinced to leave her babies behind; maybe she is just as weak as her mother, destined to let others down. This is why she’s never settled with a partner, why she knows she’ll never have children. She’s safeguarding herself, and them, against behaviour of the same kind. Against loss.
She staggers back to the drinks cabinet and pours another glassful, returning to the sofa and laptop, where she stares, hazy-eyed, at her list of facts. Susan. Vanessa. Robyn. With so many parallels, they feel intrinsically linked, and at the same time so far apart, each woman originating from different times and places altogether. What are she and Una, not to mention the police, missing? She Googles Robyn Siegle and catches up on all the recent news reports, coming across a BBC television interview from yesterday, confirming that Archie Chowdhury has been released without charge. There follows an impassioned plea from Robyn’s father in America, a well-dressed fifty-something academic with floppy blond-grey hair, who prays that the British police will do everything in their power to find Robyn’s killer. As he speaks, the camera pans to a three-year-old playing in a garden, and Robyn’s dad talks of his love for his daughter, and how he will now continue to raise his granddaughter as Robyn would have wished. Celine rights herself on the sofa, balancing the laptop on the coffee table to better focus. They know now that Robyn had been in the UK for a year before she was killed, so that little girl would have been without her mother from the earliest age. She imagines Olive and Beebee sleeping upstairs, the warm, dependent scent of them still on her skin. What dro
ve Robyn Siegle to walk out on her daughter? Was she running from something, or simply following her own selfish desires – just to be at Two Cross Farm? She knows from personal experience that such women exist in the world, women who will walk away from their children at the slightest diversion. Women like Delilah.
All at once, Celine is seething, head swimming as she tops up her glass again, swearing steadily to herself. As she passes the dining table she snatches up that photograph of Delilah at the castle, the one they found in the attic. What was she, Celine, doing while Delilah stood there posing for that picture, drink in hand? Celine was with her sisters: three teenage girls, left behind in Kingston, with a generous bank account set up to cover their needs, but not a clue where their mother was, and falling to pieces.
What the hell is wrong with all these women? Unable to work out what to do with her drunken rage, she fires off a text to Una, asleep upstairs.
Robyn’s just another selfish mother. Left her child behind in USA to start a new life.
When there’s no reply she sends another:
Why should we help someone like her?
She drops her head back and drains her drink in one, realising too late that she’s failed to add the tonic, that it’s neat. It burns as it goes down, and, as her limbs grow heavier still, a message pings loudly on to her phone, forcing her drooping eyelids open:
Una: Celine, Robyn is dead. We’re not doing it for her.
Celine: Then who?
Una: For the family. For her parents – her child.
Celine’s argument is at once deflated. Una is right, of course. It’s never really about the person who’s gone, is it? What was it Delilah used to say, when talking about her various failed relationships? It’s better to be a leaver than a left-behind. Wow, that woman had a nerve. Always the leaver, never the left. But still, as for Robyn’s family, why should it be down to Celine and Una to help? They didn’t even know her. There was no one there to help Celine and her sisters when they needed it, was there? When Delilah left her to raise a heartbroken fourteen-year-old and an angry sixteen-year-old – when Celine herself wasn’t yet out of her teens? And look at the shit job she made of that. Bashing her shin against a dining chair as she zigzags across the parquet floor, she pours the last of the vodka into her tumbler, feeling simultaneously self-righteous and disgusted at her wallowing self-pity. She throws the drink back and texts Una one last time:
You still awake? I’m going back to Bournemouth in the morning. I’ve had enough.
When no reply comes from Una, Celine switches off her phone and passes out on the sofa.
27. BRAMBLE
Present day, Two Cross Farm
I watch Regine from the rear corner of the house, as she rounds up the few women who have straggled on to the lawn to gawp at the gathered press mob.
‘Everyone inside!’ she yells, beckoning fiercely towards Thistle, who has abandoned her hosepipe and is turning off the tap at the wall. Several photographers are retreating from the gates, half-drenched, still brazenly stopping every few feet to turn and snap in our direction. ‘I’m calling the police!’ Regine adds with hoarse intensity. ‘This is private property!’
She’s the last through the French doors, stepping in backwards as she scans the hedge at the rear, watchful as an owl. I lock the doors behind her and secure the drapes. When she turns to see so many sisters standing around, anxious, excited in some cases, her face shifts from confusion to anger.
‘What the hell are you all doing in here? Breakfast, all of you! Now!’
Almost mute with shock, I glance along the hallway and fetch the bell. Only minutes earlier, I’d left Seed in her upstairs office, keeping watch on the front gate and trying to decide what to do next; I wonder if she’ll come down now the trespassers are gone. Standing at the heart of the house, I ring the bell, and in the time it takes for everyone to reach their seats at the dining table Seed has descended the stairs and joined us, her slow, graceful movements studied, careful. In silence, Oregon passes a basket of now hardboiled eggs along the table; Thistle pours tea; Seed takes her place at the head seat, her eyes fixed on the empty spaces where Fern and her carer should be.
‘Sisters,’ she says, finally. ‘This is not the first time our community has come under attack. It is not the first time we have had to face great challenge.’
Around the table, the sisters look relieved to hear her speak.
‘Who here remembers Dr Kathy, one of our six Founding Sisters?’
A dozen or so hands rise.
‘Then you will recall our grief – our panic even – over the loss of that dear sister on the eve of my custodianship, some ten years ago?’
‘We were left without a medic,’ Regine agrees. ‘It was a terrible time.’
Seed glances around, and all eyes are on her. ‘We were heartbroken, but we managed, because Kathy had the foresight to produce a care journal during her time here, detailing her research and natural prescriptions – from which many of you have benefited in the years since.’
There is silence around the room, and I, like many others I suspect, wonder at the purpose of this speech.
‘We have had occasion to eject troublemakers from our land, have we not? Errant sisters.’
Nods all round.
‘We’ve also seen trespassers before today’s breach. Husbands or partners or parents trying to gain access, to take back their unwilling women! Those situations were trying, but we always overcame our attackers, and won out.’ She pauses a moment, taking a deep, steadying breath before continuing. ‘What I am trying to say to you, sisters, is that we have conquered adversity before – far worse than this – and we will conquer it again.’
Raising her arthritic hands high, Regine opens a round of applause, and with a sweeping gesture Seed invites the women to eat.
Making my excuses, I leave the table early and head up to the office window, to check on the press crowd, who are now beginning to show signs of dwindling. Despite Seed’s rallying speech, I feel sick with worry, and as I turn back towards her desk I see the small stack of Last Will envelopes laid out there like an omen. Mine is sealed, as are Regine’s and Fern’s. Of course, Susan never had one – in fact, it was her unexpected passing which prompted us to write them in the first place – and so, only Kathy’s has been opened in the intervening years, on the occasion of her death. But, as I run my fingers over the envelopes, I am alarmed to see Seed has opened her own, and it lies unfolded on the desk, defaced in a zigzag of deeply scored black pen marks, all but obliterating her original words.
As I gaze, shocked, at that demolished letter, the light from the window picks out a single word she has written in block letters across the top of the scrawl: LIES.
My heart almost stops, and I fear for Seed’s sanity; I fear what she might do next.
28. CELINE
Present day
Celine is disorientated when she wakes at midday, having somehow made her way upstairs and into her own bed last night.
She has a faint memory of sitting slumped on the loo, with the door to the landing wide open, vaguely concerned that one of the girls would wake and be alarmed to find her there. As she opens her eyes now, she feels the internal grasp of a cruel hangover, her skin breaking out in a cold, sickly sweat, and her mind flashes up a reminder of what she drank last night.
‘Do we need to get your stomach pumped?’ Una asks, pushing open the door without knocking.
Celine opens her mouth to reply, and the banging pain at her temples intensifies. Her tongue feels stale and dry, and abject paranoia sloshes about at the back of her consciousness as she vaguely recalls texting Una last night.
Briskly, Una throws back the curtains, letting the morning light flood into the room. ‘Come on! Up you get, Celine. I expect you’ll want to get packed and on the road as soon as possible.’
Oh. She’s angry. This is a side of Una that Celine has rarely ever seen; Una doesn’t really do angry.
‘Shit. I was a
dickhead last night, wasn’t I? I’m sorry,’ Celine says, gingerly pulling herself up to a half-sitting position. Good God, her head is screaming in pain.
‘Sorry?’ Una says, standing at the foot of the bed, hands on hips. ‘Do me a favour and save that for your sister? I’ll be just fine if you decide to bail out now. But then again, I’m not the one who needs you, am I?’
Bail out? Una’s throwing Celine’s own words back at her. ‘I’m not bailing out.’
‘Well, what would you call it, then? You said yourself it’s your default setting. Here we are on the brink of finding some real answers about your poor sister Vanessa, and you’re chucking in the towel. Not to mention the fact that you’ve got another sister downstairs who needs all the support she can get right now – and suddenly, you’re off.’ She fixes stern, darkly shadowed eyes on Celine. ‘Sounds a lot like bailing out to me. Oh, and by the way, happy birthday.’
With that, she leaves the room, slamming the door as she goes, sending fresh tremors through Celine’s fragile frame.
‘Fuck it,’ Celine mutters, gently easing her feet to the carpet, leaning on to her knees to cradle her pounding head.
Easing her sweater on over her pyjama top and cowering against the throb of her hangover, she creeps along the hall to the bathroom, where she washes her face before heading downstairs.
33 Women: A gripping new thriller about the power of women, and the lengths they will go to when pushed... Page 20