All at once, Celine’s fight is extinguished. ‘Oh, Seed,’ she says, as so much of the puzzle – so much of what’s been troubling her – slots into place. ‘It really is time you told us the truth, Bramble or no Bramble. You need to tell us everything.’
37. BRAMBLE
Present day, Two Cross Farm
Beebee is still sleeping, and without complaint little Olive clambers back into bed beside her, drifting straight off again as I pack their belongings.
The light from the corridor streaks in over the wooden boards, and I move around the room quietly, feeling sick at the thought of what Seed is saying to those women in there, of how much she’s giving away. The two angels sleep on, still too young to understand the complications of the adult world, and I envy them this short moment of innocence in their lifetime. Sitting gently on the edge of the bed, I note how roundly inexpressive children’s faces are in slumber, as though sleep has the power to erase any concerns they may carry in their waking hours. I wonder how long it will be before they’re immune to the protection of their youth; how long before their parents’ damaged relationship takes its toll, or they fall prey to some sick man’s version of love and family. They’re safer here, surely, in the company of women who will only care for and nurture them.
Where the toddler is fair like her mother, little Olive resembles her aunts. With her dark curls and fine arching brows, she’s just like that woman, Celine, who stands in our living room now, making accusations and threats; and she’s like Vanessa too, Seed’s beloved friend whom we lost all those years ago. Seed’s voice drifts along the corridor, and I know she is setting our secrets free, unleashing them with God knows what outcome. I let my memories roam around the half-lit corners of the bedroom, for it was here Vanessa slept on the night that man broke in and stole her away, almost a year since she’d first joined us and helped to bring our Seed back to life.
Within a month or two of Vanessa’s arrival, she and Seed, still six years yet from being made custodian, had developed a friendship so deep and strong, you might imagine they had known each other their entire lives. There was something about that girl, something so open and refreshing and funny and true, and when Seed persuaded Fern to let Vanessa have the ground-floor bedroom next to hers they became inseparable, often breaking the bedtime curfew to sit up late laughing and chatting into the night. I’d never had a friendship like it myself, and I, like my fellow Founding Sisters, was happy to turn a blind eye to such small rule-breaks in the face of Seed’s happiness. It was not only Seed whose spirit was revived by Vanessa, but the rest of us too. Yes, we had got the old Seed back, but Vanessa was a joy in her own right, happy and grateful to be here, so hard-working and generous that her application for the marking ceremony was unanimously accepted after six months, so certain were we all that she was here to stay. It seemed she cared not one jot about Seed’s scars or differences, and for a while life was good again.
As I grow older and more cynical, it seems to me that the way of the world is that all good things must die. Because, less than a year after Seed’s fortunes had taken a positive turn, that man – that devil – came into our lives, on a still, cool night in March. In my solitary upstairs bedroom – I had not yet moved to the ground floor – I woke from a deep sleep, to the jarring sound of a man’s voice downstairs, of heavy boots rampaging through the hallway, as he threw open doors and roared Vanessa’s name. Breathlessly, I dressed, before rushing on to the landing in my slippers, where Kathy and Regine were busy urging the other women to return to their dorms. Our community was under attack, and from this monster’s cries it was clear that Vanessa was his target.
‘What about Fern?’ Regine whispered as we started down the stairs. ‘Her room is down there too. Kathy and I will go to her; you check on Seed and Vanessa.’
Downstairs in the milky moonlit corridor, all was at once still and quiet. Behind me, with a fierce snap of her fingers, Kathy directed two or three gawping women to retreat back up to their rooms, and within seconds the hallway was clear again.
‘Shouldn’t we call the police?’ I whispered as we reached the bottom step, my heart hammering against my ribcage, cold sweat prickling at the back of my neck.
‘Absolutely not!’ came Fern’s hissed reply as she stepped out of the shadows to join us, a large kitchen knife in her hand.
The man’s voice had ceased less than a minute earlier, and now we stood in the darkness, four Founding Sisters, tuning in to the sounds of the house, waiting to make our move. Our silent attention was fixed on the closed door of the far bedroom – Seed’s room – and we began to approach on soft feet, Fern at the front, her knife poised ready to strike. Vanessa’s door, the next one along, stood open, the room empty.
‘Where is she?’ Kathy asked, terror in her voice, her hand grasping for mine. ‘Where is Vanessa?’
With a bellow, that man came bursting out of Seed’s room, dragging Vanessa screaming by her hair, at first unaware of our presence. At a glance we could see Seed lying on the wooden boards of her bedroom, her face a bloody pulp, but she was moving, attempting to get up.
Our leader, Fern, still strong and fearless at fifty-nine, rushed at the man, plunging the knife hard towards his shoulder blade, but he’d seen her, and he dodged sufficiently to only suffer a grazing wound. With his one free arm he knocked the knife from Fern’s hand, swiping her jaw with a fierce backhand and sending her reeling. As we rushed to her aid, he – Jem Falmer, we would later learn – hoisted Vanessa to her feet and shook her like a rag doll, punctuating his words.
‘Bitches,’ he spat. ‘Come near me again and I’ll kill you. I fucking swear I will.’ When it was clear we weren’t moving, he dragged Vanessa, half dazed, out towards the living room and the French doors beyond, her bare feet scraping over the boards as she fought with the little strength she had left. ‘Think you can just leave me, do you, Ness?’ he snarled into her hair as he wrestled her out through the doors. ‘Think you can make a mug out of me?’
As Fern retrieved the knife, Kathy helped Seed to her feet, and Regine hurried back along the corridor to see off another cluster of women who’d started tiptoeing down the stairs.
‘Get back to your rooms!’ she instructed in a tone not to be argued with. ‘We have this covered! Away, all of you!’
From my position, I could see through the glass at the back of the house, to where Falmer was now hauling Vanessa across the starlit lawn. Helplessly I turned to look at Seed, her cropped head uncovered, her absence of daytime attire rendering her exposed, vulnerable. Like a woman emerging from a trance, her blood-streaked vision cleared and her expression altered, and with a war cry she raced past us, intent on pursuing Vanessa’s attacker. Without hesitation we followed, all of us terrified of what Seed might do to protect her friend, and of the harm she might come to.
At the far end of the gardens, by the greenhouse, Falmer had Vanessa pinned to the damp grass, his stocky grip hard on her neck as he landed blow after blow on her pale, slack face.
‘Didn’t you get my message, bitches?’ he roared, turning his head in our direction. ‘I told you to stay out of our business.’
Across the lawn Seed sprinted, her nightshirt billowing, thin, muscular arms pumping with fury, as she launched herself at that crouching man. With a thud, the pair tumbled clear of the girl, Falmer’s attentions now firmly on Seed.
Regine was at the back door, standing guard, ensuring the scene was witnessed by none other than the Founding Sisters, while Kathy knelt beside Vanessa, turning her on her side, attempting to get her breathing again. I, God help me, stood useless, too paralysed to act, softly murmuring what could only be described as a prayer. I scanned the area for Fern, who seemed to have vanished into nowhere.
Falmer was now standing over Seed, who lay in a crumpled heap on the grass, the sharp angles of her ribs protruding unguarded beneath her thin white nightgown.
‘What the hell are you?’ Falmer sneered as he took in her appearance fully. Dispass
ionately, he kicked her hard in the side, like a child testing a dead animal for life, and turned to us in disgust. ‘What sick kind of place is this?’
To my shock, Vanessa was now sitting up, both of her eyes swollen shut, her head turned blindly towards the sound of Falmer’s voice. ‘Seed?’ she called out, and then, again, in panic, ‘Seed! Jem, if you’ve hurt her—’ she started to say, and that was all it took. With a roar, Falmer was upon her again, pummelling her face, punctuating his vile words with his fists, squeezing the last drops of life from her throat.
And that was when Fern reappeared, our wise guardian, stealthily striding across the dewy grass with the garden spade held against her shoulder like a rifle. As Seed staggered to her feet, the atmosphere shifted from terror to inevitability. Even Falmer felt it, I think, because for a fraction of a second he paused, tilting his jaw a little, sensing the change. But it didn’t save him, because our sister, that leader of women, swung the spade high in the night air, and brought it down hard, felling the beast with a single solid strike to the side of his head. The man dropped from his prey in a wounded slump, and our sister stood square, breathing raggedly, knuckles gripped white around the spade handle, distraught eyes on Vanessa.
Beneath the stars, we five gathered around that poor, darling girl on the damp lawn, but we knew that our sister’s brave action had come just seconds too late. Vanessa was already dead.
Along the hall, the low thrum of voices continues, and desperately I try to work out what to do next; how to help Seed. It’s only a matter of time before those women join the dots, and then it will be too late to do anything other than give ourselves up. I think of old Fern sleeping in the room next door, as oblivious to the drama as these two sleeping babes at my side. I think of Fern and Regine, and Seed, and me, the four remaining Founding Sisters, and I think of everything we have achieved in the past forty-four years, and everything we have concealed, and celebrated, and lied about, and overcome. When the police find out the truth about Robyn, we will lose it all. Not just our lives here at Two Cross Farm, but our liberty. How would we fare in prison, Regine at her age; me at mine? Would they really send an eighty-four-year-old away? The thought of my darling Seed incarcerated alongside the worst of all mankind makes me lightheaded with fear, and I think I would do anything rather than see her face that unjust punishment. There is so much I am unsure of, and so much to fear. But one thing I am certain of is that our secrets are about to be uncovered – all of them – and I urgently need to act.
I lean over the bed and kiss my sleeping girls on the tops of their heads. ‘You wait here, little ones,’ I whisper, careful not to wake them as I tuck their blanket beneath their chins. ‘I’ll be back to check on you in a little while.’
38. CELINE
Present day
Seed trails off, the pain of retelling this tragic story etched on her face.
‘She died here? Vanessa died here?’ Celine finds her fingers are laced with Pip’s, as both sisters silently weep for their lost sibling.
‘We tried everything to get her breathing again,’ Seed says, softly, ‘but she was gone. There was nothing we could do for her.’
‘You could have called an ambulance. You could have called the police,’ Una says, leaning across from her seat beside the fire. She touches Seed’s knee with a light hand. ‘Why didn’t you call the police straight away?’
‘We – Fern wouldn’t hear of it. We had so much to lose, if the police had started looking into everything else – if they’d learnt about Susan and the child – about me. We might have lost the trust of our women altogether. It could have meant the end of the community, the end of Two Cross Farm. Where would all those women in need go then? We couldn’t do that to them. We had to stand strong.’ She glances around the room, her gaze resting momentarily on the wall of black and white photographs. Rising, she crosses the room and reaches for one particular portrait, hung high; one which Celine recognises instantly as Vanessa. Seed unhooks it from the wall and passes it to Celine and Pip. It captures everything of their beloved sister, the spark in her expression caught as though the photograph contains her very essence.
‘So you just dumped her, at Brighton pier?’ Pip whispers.
‘No. That wasn’t how it was. We were devastated; I was devastated. You have to believe me. Vanessa was my closest friend, my dearest sister.’
‘She was our sister,’ Pip corrects her, but her tone lacks any punch.
‘I know,’ Seed replies, bowing her head. ‘Fern was all for giving her a burial here, before the other women woke and discovered what had happened, but Vanessa had told me all about you two, and I fought Fern. I refused to go along with it. So, we compromised, and we took Vanessa to Brighton in the dead of night, leaving her at the pier where she’d be quickly found. I swear, it was to spare you, her real sisters, the pain of not knowing where she’d gone.’
Celine recognises the truth of Seed’s words; not knowing where Vanessa had been all these years would surely have caused them so much more agony than the certainty that she was dead.
‘And Jem Falmer?’ Una asks. ‘Where did he go?’
Seed glances towards the French doors and the darkness beyond. ‘The blow to his head killed him. He’s buried in the garden.’
There’s a pause, while Celine follows the direction of Seed’s eyes, coming to rest on the two large compost mounds they’d passed earlier. ‘But that’s not possible, Seed,’ Celine says. ‘He sent us a note to warn us off, just this week. He’s right here in Arundel!’
Seed shakes her head, apology in her expression. ‘It was Bramble who put that through your door, Celine. It was part of a note he’d sent us a day or two before that night he broke in, warning us to give Vanessa up – we’d kept it in the safe upstairs all these years, I don’t know why. We hoped your police contacts would be diverted by the handwriting, and it looks as though they were. We thought, if you believed you were under threat – well, we just wanted you to leave us alone.’
And Celine and Una had believed they were under threat; in their hope and desperation, they’d fallen for it completely.
‘Jem’s dead,’ Celine says, more to herself than anyone else, as she tries to suppress her shock. ‘Fern really killed him, Seed?’
But Seed’s attention is lost to the flames again, and there’s no drawing her on the subject of Jem’s death.
Across the room, Una, Pip and Celine gaze at one another in stunned silence. They’ve done it. Finally, they know what happened to Vanessa. It should be enough for Celine, and she knows they should give up while they’re ahead – pack up the girls, get the hell out of here and leave the rest of this to Dave Aston and his team to sort out. But she can’t leave it, and neither, it seems, can Una.
‘OK, so, we know Susan died in childbirth,’ she says as Seed reaches for another log, dropping it on to the fire. ‘But what about her daughter, Robyn Siegle?’
Seed snaps into focus at the mention of Robyn’s name.
‘You know that Robyn was Susan’s daughter?’ she whispers. ‘No one knows about that.’
‘Well, we do,’ Celine replies, her tone more gentle now. ‘We also know she was left as a newborn at the Poor Clares convent – and I’m pretty sure it was you who took her there.’
Seed’s eyes dart briefly to meet hers; an admission.
‘If Jem Falmer was buried in your garden fifteen years ago,’ Celine goes on, ‘he certainly couldn’t have killed Robyn Siegle a fortnight ago. So, who did? Was it Harry Glass? Did Harry Glass murder Robyn?’
Seed’s expression morphs into confusion. ‘I’ve never even heard of Harry Glass.’
39. BRAMBLE
Present day, Two Cross Farm
We can’t stay here now.
As I pass into the hallway I can hear Seed in the living room, pouring all our secrets out, and when I hear Robyn’s name spoken I push on towards the stairs and hurry up to Regine’s bedroom on the first floor.
‘Regine?’ I whisper, enter
ing unannounced, flipping on the light switch as I close the door behind me. She wakes with a start, cursing me noisily and shielding her eyes from the overhead bulb. ‘Regine,’ I repeat. ‘We have to get Fern out of here.’
She drops her arm and gingerly eases her feet to the floor, scowling deeply. ‘Whaddaya mean, “out of here”?’ she asks, wincing, already reaching for her clothes. ‘What’s happenin’?’
‘They’re back. They’re down there – Celine and Una – and they’ve got Seed talking. That girl, Pip, she’s their sister – she’s Celine and Vanessa’s sister.’
‘Jeez,’ Regine whistles, her movements speeding up now.
‘Regine, Seed’s telling them everything! They know how Vanessa died, they know that Falmer is buried in the back garden – and, right now, they’re hearing all about Robyn.’
‘All about Robyn?’ she asks, gravely. She hobbles over to her dresser and runs a brush through her long grey hair, allowing me to take over when her stiff knuckles struggle.
‘All of it. They know Susan was Robyn’s mother; and I’m fairly certain they’re about to find out the rest.’ I fasten a band at the end of Regine’s plait and drop the thick braid over her shoulder.
She turns then, and lays her hands on me, clasping my forearms and steadying me with her sharp, intelligent gaze. ‘You were right to wake me, honey,’ she says, and I’m strangely taken aback by her affectionate tone. ‘Once they know about Robyn, we’re done for. Fern is done for. It’s the end.’
I reach into my apron pocket and draw out the keys to the truck, pressing them into her hand. ‘You go and get Fern,’ I tell her, my fingers already on the door, my words coming fast. ‘I need to fetch a few things from the office – and then I’ll get Seed. We’ll see you out there. Get the engine started.’ I hesitate a moment. ‘Do you think she’ll come?’ I ask.
33 Women: A gripping new thriller about the power of women, and the lengths they will go to when pushed... Page 27