Finding Lucy

by Diana Finley

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  My voice sounded feeble, as if on a faulty telephone line.

  Fiona and my friends turned to look at me. Hans Augenblick peered down at our row, frowning, as though not only my voice but even my image was too faint to make out clearly.

  ‘M … my ticket is number 199,’ I repeated shakily.

  The process of selecting a second volunteer via the number board continued. Cassie clutched my hand.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she whispered.

  Fiona was leaning forwards and looking at me. Her face looked anxious.

  ‘Lucy, you don’t have to do it. Don’t go up on stage if you don’t want to. They can choose someone else.’

  Did I want to? Did I not want to? I had no idea. All I felt was shock and uncertainty.

  The second person selected by the number board was a kind-looking grandmother. She got up straight away and started making her way up the steps at the side of the stage. She waved cheerily at her family in the stalls. Hans stepped towards her and then peered down at the audience.

  ‘Welcome, madam, welcome,’ he said. ‘Now, where is my young girl? Where is number 199? Will you come up and join me, my dear?’

  ‘Come on, pet,’ said the grandmother loudly. ‘Come on up here with me, clever lass. ’E won’t bite, will you, Hans? It’s just a bit of fun.’

  The audience laughed. I could feel many eyes on me. Laura gave me a thumbs-up sign. I squeezed Cassie’s hand and released it. I stood up and steadied myself for a moment. Somehow my legs propelled me onto the stage before I could hesitate further.

  Hans grasped both my hands and held on to them. He asked my name and age. He spoke quietly and reassuringly. He asked me to sit in the reclining leather chair. I would go first, he said. There was nothing to worry about. The older lady was asked to sit at one side until it was her turn.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Now we have two very helpful people here. Lucy, who is nearly fifteen, just on the verge of becoming an adult, and Margaret, who is a little more than fifteen! So we will ask them about different periods of their lives.’

  ‘First, Lucy, let us think about when you were just a little girl, a very young child. Not a baby, but perhaps two or three years old.’

  Immediately my heart began to pound. I could scarcely breathe. How should I think about being such a small child? I couldn’t possibly remember that time … and they were all watching me, waiting to hear.

  Hans stood close beside me as I reclined helplessly in the chair. Sweat was gathering in the small of my back. My temples throbbed. Maybe I should get up, I thought. Maybe I should go back to my seat? Hans now loomed over me, like a great black crow. I remember some soothing words from him. I remember him stroking my hand, and then passing his cool hand gently across my eyes and forehead.

  After that I remember nothing more until opening my eyes and seeing Hans gazing intensely at my face, as if looking for answers to a question I hadn’t heard. I appeared to be lying limply on the floor. What was I doing there? Hans smiled and patted my hand. His face was bending close to me. He appeared to be in a strange haze, as if a sudden mist had descended. He smiled and exhaled.

  ‘Lucy, you are here with us again. Well done, dear girl. You are fine now.’

  “Fine now”? Had I not been fine before? Had something gone wrong?

  There was silence from the audience. It was as if the world had suddenly stood still. I felt somehow absent, as if I had been transported into a different universe or a different time zone. Some time must have passed since he asked me to think about when I was a little girl, but I wasn’t a part of that time. It had happened without me.

  Hans drew gently on my hand to indicate he wanted me to stand, but my legs felt as weak and wobbly as a newborn fawn’s. ‘Try to stand, Lucy,’ he said softly. ‘I will help you.’ With Hans’s help I struggled to my feet. Sweat now trickled down my spine in a cold rivulet. He supported me with a firm hand holding my arm, and led me towards the chair at the side of the stage, where Margaret sat. We changed places.

  Hans turned his attention to her. I assumed he had finished with me, but had no idea what had occurred. I felt horribly exposed, vulnerable. Had I made a fool of myself? At a distance, I heard the drone of Margaret’s voice responding to Hans, but I couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying. My head felt as if it was held in a tight vice. Waves of nausea rose and receded.

  After a while, I heard laughter and clapping. Hans was helping me out of my chair. He held my arm on one side and Margaret’s on the other, as if we three were actors taking a bow after a performance – which perhaps we were. The audience was applauding and whooping. Hans steered us gently towards the steps down from the stage.

  ‘Go and sit back down, Lucy. I’ll come and have a word with your mother shortly,’ Hans Augenblick muttered softly to me as I began to descend. Cassie was waiting at the bottom to help me. I staggered down the steps towards her, clutching the rail.

  My mother? I thought. He must think Fiona is my mother. Why would he need to talk to her? I must have done something terribly wrong on the stage. What on earth had I done? What had I said?

  Her arm around my waist, Cassie helped me back to our seats, her eyes on my face. I was panting rapidly, yet not enough air seemed to reach my lungs. Megan and Laura were looking at me in a puzzled way. Fiona regarded me searchingly and with concern.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I whispered.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Cassie. ‘Nothing’s wrong. You haven’t done anything wrong.’

  So why did Hans Augenblick call Fiona backstage for a private discussion while we girls waited in the foyer?

  * * *

  Everyone was quiet going home in the car. Fiona dropped Megan and Laura off at their homes and then drove Cassie and me back to her house. She made us some hot chocolate and gave us a plate of biscuits to take upstairs. She said she would telephone Mummy to come and collect me in half an hour.

  In the quiet of her bedroom, Cassie told me what had happened. Downstairs, Fiona must have told Mummy.

  Chapter Thirty

  Alison

  The hypnosis incident upset me terribly, totally – more than I can say. It was exactly the sort of scenario I had feared most. Why, why, why had I agreed to let Lucy go to that ridiculous show? I felt so furious with myself for allowing it. I didn’t blame Fiona – well, not completely. At least she had been there to support Lucy, and I suppose she had been open in sharing her observations with me. She wasn’t to know the true significance of what had happened. Or was she?

  I started to wonder how much Lucy had shared with Cassie, and with Fiona. There was a time – until recently, in fact – when Lucy had told me everything, but lately I wasn’t so sure. She had become more secretive. Was she sharing her life and her thoughts with others, rather than me, her mother? At the very least, Fiona must have been aware of how unsettling the whole episode had been for Lucy.

  Of course, I didn’t blame Lucy. She was the completely innocent party. I did deeply, deeply regret Lucy’s participation, though. If only she had had the sense not to go on stage. If only I had been there, I would have discouraged – no, prevented – Lucy from stepping onto the stage, submitting herself to such a farce, like a lamb to the slaughter. But she must have found herself in a very difficult position, poor child. Perhaps she couldn’t have been expected to refuse to go on stage herself, in the heat of the moment, even though she had clearly been very frightened. So my thoughts went backwards and forwards, like flotsam washed to and fro in shallow waves on the beach.

  After putting together all the accounts from Lucy, Fiona, Cassie and the other two girls, I felt I had a reasonable understanding of what had actually happened – and the picture that emerged was not reassuring. Having singled Lucy out with his sinister number game, that dreadful Augenblick man had promptly put her into some sort of hypnotic state – a trance – which she was quite unable to resist, even if she had known how to try. He had then asked her to think herself
back into her early childhood self.

  ‘Imagine you are a very little girl, Lucy – just two or three years old perhaps – can you do that, Lucy? Maybe you are playing. Perhaps you have a teddy bear or a nice dolly to play with?’

  I could just imagine his vile, soothing tone. Apparently, Lucy had immediately regressed into her two-year-old self. She spoke in a high, uncertain, infantile voice, with a strong regional accent. There she was on the stage, exposed for all to see (and hear!) in the undeveloped, embryonic state in which I had found her all those years before.

  ‘It wasn’t exactly a local accent,’ Fiona had told me. ‘I don’t think it was Geordie. Mind you, I’m not very good at distinguishing accents. But no, I think it was more like Midlands or Yorkshire, but I can’t be sure. It was really uncanny how she put it on – that little baby voice combined with the odd accent.’

  She didn’t mention Riddlesfield, of course; how could she? Fiona had carefully taken notes of all she could remember of the exchange between Hans and Lucy that evening, so as to retain as much information as possible. According to Fiona’s account, Lucy had screamed at the top of her voice, a series of words or apparent words, in a baby-like tone: ‘Dolly? Polly? Wy-yan! Wy-yan!? Tacy! Tacy! Lady!? Hair? Tain! Mam?! Mam!? No Mam. Tacy Tacy.’

  She had ended with a piercing shriek and the single cry of ‘MAM!’

  What horrified me even more than the actual utterances, was Fiona’s description of Lucy’s simultaneous action; she had apparently slipped from her chair onto the floor, where she curled herself into a ball with her legs drawn up. She rocked back and forth in this position, pounding the floor with her fists, as if demented.

  After this, it seems Lucy had been sobbing; the sound of her high wailing filling the auditorium. The audience had watched in uncomfortable silence, uncertain whether this was an intended part of the performance. Hans Augenblick – aware of their discomfort – had quickly intervened and brought Lucy back out of her trance. She had clearly been horribly distressed and confused. She had needed Cassie’s help to return to her seat.

  Fiona had been very concerned that Lucy was deeply upset by what she described as her “dream”. Hans Augenblick, also anxious about Lucy’s reaction, had approached Fiona, initially assuming she was Lucy’s mother. He had spoken to her after the performance, while the four girls waited in the foyer. Fiona had explained that Lucy was not her child and she didn’t know all of her background. Perhaps some early memories from Lucy’s infancy had become distorted in her mind, she had suggested to Hans, and been transferred to a dream?

  He had looked dubious. Certainly those words, so clearly scripted by her baby mind, derived from early childhood, he had told her. He was more inclined to think of it as an account of real events, rather than a dream. Fiona explained that Lucy had lost her father as a small child, but she didn’t know the details. Ah, Hans had said, that could well be the root of the problem.

  Later, when talking to Fiona about what had happened, I decided it was best to go along with her description of a “distorted dream”.

  ‘The mind plays funny tricks,’ I told her, ‘especially with vague, long-past memories, and who’s to know how confused she was by losing her daddy? Far too young to understand …’

  ‘Yes, it must have been a dreadfully confusing time for her, especially when she was too young to articulate any of her feelings or experiences. Poor Lucy. Maybe some bereavement counselling would help? Even after all these years?’ said Fiona.

  ‘Mmm, I’m not sure about that. It could just be more upsetting,’ I said.

  I took the same line about memories perhaps distorting into a “dream” in trying to explain the experience to Lucy herself. Thankfully, she did not remember any details of what had occurred that evening, least of all what had been said or had taken place during her “hypnosis”. But this in itself made her feel desperately exposed.

  ‘It felt like I’d done something awful, Mummy,’ she told me. Colour suffused her face and neck.

  ‘It was like I’d taken all my clothes off or something, and stood up there naked on the stage for all to see. I felt terribly embarrassed – but I didn’t know what I had to feel embarrassed about.’

  Of course, I assured Lucy that nothing like that had happened, but I did emphasise to Fiona most strongly that she should not speak to Lucy of exactly what had occurred. It would be too distressing and undermining for a teenage girl to realise she had made something of an exhibition of herself. Also, I said, would Fiona please ask Cassie to remain silent about the incident? I was not totally confident of Cassie’s cooperation, and thought that maybe I should speak to her myself and try to gain her support.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Over the years since Lucy had first become my daughter, I had rarely questioned my actions in taking her away from her home and biological family. Having devised the plan and then acted on it, I was confident that I had done the right thing. Looking at Lucy now, how could anyone doubt that she had benefited from having me as her mother?

  Surely everyone would agree that those inadequate parents didn’t deserve her, neglecting her as they did, leaving her to play alone in the street while they pursued their own pleasures. Any fleeting concerns I might have had centred not on the parents but on Lucy herself – and the possible effect the loss of her original home might have had on her. After all, however unsatisfactory, it was all she had known at that stage.

  I have read that young children – for want of anything better – may develop a strong attachment to the most hopeless, even neglectful, of parents. Yet, how much better had Lucy’s experience of care been; loved and cherished by me, over all those years. I had carefully stimulated and developed her through a wide range of experiences; through coaching, visits, games, reading and conversation. I had provided her with total security and appropriate examples and guidance. All this guided by my own experiences, my fond memories of dear Mother and her calm, methodical manner of child rearing.

  By contrast, the birth parents had amply demonstrated their indifference to the welfare of their children. They had several other children besides Lucy (or Stacy, perhaps I should say) – far more than they deserved. I felt certain that they would hardly miss one child – and must have quickly got over the absence of Lucy. Perhaps her abduction had even been a blessed relief to them – one less mouth to feed, one less body to clothe, one less child to consider – if they actually considered any of them!

  My conclusion was that Lucy’s development and state of mind could only have been positively affected by her removal from her original family. Indeed, I believed that after the first year or so, any awareness Lucy may have had of her change in circumstances had receded – both consciously and unconsciously. This belief had only very occasionally been challenged.

  One of the most recent – and certainly the most disturbing – of those rare and isolated occasions had been the hypnosis debacle. Exactly how that wretched charlatan had achieved Lucy’s reaction – for the sake of public entertainment – was unclear to me. What might he have awakened in her impressionable young mind? If he could coax such a response from Lucy apparently so easily, how often might the past emerge again, and in what form? Could it be that my action, in removing her from her original home, had actually contributed to Lucy’s distress and disturbance? Suddenly it felt like a situation that was totally – frighteningly – outside my control.

  It had never been in my nature to discuss personal difficulties with others. Normally I felt perfectly capable of dealing with such matters alone, and in my own way. The thought of “opening” myself up to others, discussing my most intimate concerns, made me feel sick with horror. Yet I had to admit that lately I had found myself lying awake at night, brooding. I longed to sink into the relief of sleep, but rarely achieved it until two or three in the morning – and then only to wake again in the early hours, with cold, clammy fingers of anxiety clutching at my heart.

  I even resorted to over-the-counter sleep remedies,
but these – far from inducing restful sleep – only made me feel as though I had been rendered unconscious by a blow on the head from a large mallet. These pills did ensure I slept a little sooner, it is true, but I woke – still early – my head confused, my body leaden, my mouth a desert.

  Susan, always a determined and loyal friend, had not failed to notice some changes in my appearance and demeanour over recent months.

  ‘I’m worried about you, Alison,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong? Just look at you! Great shadows under your eyes. You must have lost at least half a stone – and you didn’t have it to lose in the first place.’

  ‘Oh … there’s no need to worry – I’m quite all right.’

  ‘No, you are not all right, and you know it. Let’s meet for lunch in the Bonjour Bistro tomorrow and have a proper talk. No excuses this time. I know you don’t generally do “ladies’ lunches” – but I won’t take no for an answer!’

  For once, I was grateful for Susan’s persistence. For all her apparent superficiality, she had remained an affectionate and true friend – undeterred by what she regarded as my reserve and eccentricities.

  Bonjour Bistro was one of Susan’s favourite locations. Unlike me she was untroubled by its ridiculous name. She told me she liked the informality and friendliness of the staff; I found them a little over-familiar. Susan felt its “limited but imaginative menu” recommended Bonjour. I thought it pretentious and over-priced. However, I had developed a taste for wine lately – it seemed to help me relax – and Bonjour did have a good selection of wine available by the glass. It also had comfortable seats, and tables well spaced enough to allow private conversation, without every other diner nearby listening in. So, on the whole, I was content to be there.

  We sat in a corner close to the window overlooking the park. Outside, a blustery wind was lifting last year’s chestnut leaves and wafting them in little circular eddies. The sun filtered through the trees and lit up patches of the grass. Parents watched their young children playing in the little playground beyond the lawn and trees. I remembered bringing Lucy there years ago, when she was small. How simple life seemed at that stage.