The Lost Child

by Emily Gunnis

  The above statement was made in the presence of Detective Inspector Gibbs.

  ‘We’ll be closing in ten minutes, just to let you know.’ Iris startled as the woman from the desk appeared.

  She took a photo of her mother’s statement, then moved on, just as her phone buzzed again. Mum Mob. How are you getting on?

  Iris tapped out her reply: Okay, managed to get hold of the name of the midwife who was looking after Jessie. My boss is getting her address so I can try and talk to her asap. Will keep you posted.

  Iris watched the dots as her mother composed her reply, then: Okay thank you Iris.

  Iris looked up at the clock. Eight minutes to closing.

  WEST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL

  Greenways Psychiatric Hospital

  Chichester

  West Sussex

  22nd November 1960

  Re: Jacob Robert Waterhouse (deceased). Aged 53 years.

  Mr Jacob Waterhouse was first admitted to the Battle Neurosis ward here at Greenways in January 1947 when he was employed at Northcote Manor as head groundsman. He was under our care for a period of five years, during which he was given insulin therapy, electro-convulsive therapy and a number of occupational therapies, including art therapy, which he found to be beneficial.

  Jacob Waterhouse was sectioned originally suffering with acute states of neurotic disturbances or Battle Fatigue, aka Exhaustion, and he had to be heavily dosed with lithium carbonate. Electro-convulsive therapy proved to mechanically lift Mr Waterhouse’s depression, and after a year he was able to leave the locked ward and spent the rest of his stay on the open ward, during which time he was able to go for a half a day or a single day excursion before returning to the safety of the ward. In his final year he would return home for weekends, a week or two on leave before his formal discharge. His wife, Harriet Waterhouse, had a young daughter at home so we wanted to be sure that she would have community support for her husband before he was fully discharged.

  Upon returning home, Mr Waterhouse appeared to be coping well at first, but over time his symptoms returned. Mrs Waterhouse had confided in me during a consultation with her at Greenways that she was finding it increasingly hard to cope with his escalating moods and violent outbursts. At his consultation in June of this year, I found Mr Waterhouse to be suffering from acute depression which had at some point made him want to attempt suicide. During his stay at Greenways he attempted to take his own life and he intimated in fits of depression that life was not worth living.

  I have seen the opinions of the medical practitioners who examined the deceased after death at St Dunstan’s Hospital, and I would agree with their verdict that the death of Jacob Waterhouse was caused by a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound to his right temple.

  Signed

  Dr Philip Hunter

  Iris took a photo of Dr Hunter’s letter and, with no time to digest, turned to the next page.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Harvey

  4:30 p.m. Wednesday, 19 November

  Harvey pulled up next to the police car in the Wittering Bay car park and looked down at the framed photograph of Liz and Jessie lying on the seat next to him.

  With their blonde hair, beaming smiles and sun-kissed cheeks, they could have been mother and daughter. It had been two long, painful years since losing Liz, and it occurred to him now, staring at the photograph of his daughter’s beautiful face, that in all that time that beaming, contented smile of Jessie’s had never resurfaced.

  He had known she was suffering, known she wasn’t herself, but he had been so immersed in his own pain he’d been unable to take hers on board too. He had convinced himself he was there for her, that because she and Adam had a baby on the way she was moving on – coping.

  But she wasn’t, and he knew in his gut that she was doing too much. Her job was highly pressured and she hadn’t let up at all since she fell pregnant. She was still getting up before six every day for the hour-and-a-half commute up to London, still going to evening events. He’d expressed his concern a couple times, knowing Liz would have been horrified, but on his visits to their flat Jessie always assured him she was fine.

  ‘If there’s anything you need me to do,’ he’d offered. ‘Any odd jobs, or maybe painting the baby’s room. I’d love to help. I know my decorating won’t be up to your standard but babysitting might be my forte – I’ll introduce her to Farmers’ Weekly.’ He’d sit on their pristine cream sofa in their beautifully decorated flat, being stared at by six-foot photographs of Masai warriors and Peruvian coffee farmers. He always felt slightly out of place, his muck boots banished to the communal hallway, his muddy jeans leaving flakes of mud on the pale grey rug beneath his feet.

  ‘I know you’re there for us, Dad. It’s very kind of you, but we’re fine. Do you want to see the nursery? It’s not finished yet, but you wouldn’t believe all the stuff we’ve had to get for such a tiny person!’

  He had followed her into the small spare bedroom, now painted in a seagrass green with Peter Rabbit transfers on the wall. A white crib which had yet to be assembled was propped up against the wall and a rocking chair sat in the corner, still in bubble wrap. There was baby paraphernalia everywhere: a baby bath, breastfeeding pillows, boxes of nappies and neatly folded piles of babygros.

  ‘Why don’t you let me put the cot together? I promise I won’t bodge it.’

  She had laughed. ‘It’s okay, Dad. Adam will do it, there’s plenty of time. It’s getting there, though, don’t you think?’ She pulled out a drawer and began putting the baby clothes in it.

  It was going to be beautiful, thought Harvey, like everything Jessie touched.

  ‘Right, Dad, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get some work done for an interview tomorrow.’

  ‘But it’s past ten. You need to get to bed, don’t you?’ he said, looking at his watch.

  ‘It’s just an hour or so. I need to do some research, otherwise it’s going to be a car crash.’

  He had hesitated, knowing what he was going to say would fall on deaf ears, ‘Obviously, I’d hate it, but wouldn’t it be easier if you lived in London, sweetheart?’

  ‘Adam likes being near the sea. He hates London, he’d suffocate,’ Jessie had said, and Harvey smiled politely, holding his tongue, as he always did when it came to Adam. Why they needed to live where was best for Adam when he was always swanning off to far-flung places, leaving her to deal with a crippling commute alone, was a mystery to him.

  ‘I know, darling, but you’re about to have a baby, and if you’re going back to work, that’s going to be really tough. You’ll be exhausted.’

  ‘Dad, it’s fine. We’ve talked about it. I’ll drop the baby off at nursery on the way to the station and he’ll collect her.’ Jessie smiled at her father, shaking her head.

  ‘But what about when he’s away with work?’ Harvey tried to keep the concern out of his voice.

  ‘We might get a childminder. Dad, please don’t worry. Adam’s very good with babies. You should see him with his sister’s kid – he’ll probably be better at it all than me.’

  Harvey stopped himself from saying any more as an image flashed into his mind of Adam doing his hair at the mirror while the baby screamed at his feet.

  Adam. Even the mention of his name made him bristle. Their relationship had moved so fast. He and Jessie had met just a year after Liz’s death and six months later Jessie was pregnant and she had moved into his flat. Harvey was wracked with worry that they hadn’t built the foundations to weather the storms of having a child, but Jessie seemed to have rose-tinted glasses permanently on around him, whereas Harvey’s bullshit detector always went onto high alert whenever Adam walked into the room. He could picture him now, packing up his camera gear, reading his photography magazines in a nice quiet aeroplane, leaving Jessie, sleep-deprived, to deal with a screaming baby and a full-time job.

  Indeed he had tried to like him, really tried, for Jessie’s sake, but it was clear very early on that Adam’s f
avourite subject was Adam, and he didn’t seem to look at Jessie in the way her other boyfriends had. Jessie had always had such kind boyfriends in the past, sweet lads who were in love with her, most of whom she had dumped and left broken-hearted. Adam was different, a model turned photographer, and appeared to be far more in love with himself than he was with Jessie. And, it seemed to Harvey, he had slowly and carefully moulded their lives so that everything was set up in his favour while Jessie made all the sacrifices and did all the running around.

  Over time, he found being with them and witnessing the imbalance in their relationship uncomfortable, then unbearable, and before long, despite being desperately worried about his grieving daughter, he had found himself making excuses not to see them.

  And now, because he had put his grief and his feelings towards Adam before being there for Jessie, she hadn’t turned to him.

  Instead, it seemed possible that she’d followed in the footsteps of the past and come to Wittering Bay, where she and Liz had spent every summer since she was a baby. Were she and baby Elizabeth out here in the dunes surrounding him as it started to get dark? On the beach? He felt sick at the thought of Jessie and her baby taking a bus out to this bitterly cold beach after the trauma of the birth. She had barely been able to walk. An image came to him of Liz and Jessie in summers past, running towards the sea, holding hands, laughing. And Jessie now, standing at the edge of the sea, holding her baby, feeling utterly alone and desperate.

  As dusk set in, Harvey looked over at the plain-clothes policeman standing on the doorstep of Seaview Farm and let out a heavy sigh. The small Georgian farmhouse that five generations of his family had grown up in looked exactly as it had in his childhood; the wisteria snaking around the windows, the black wrought iron light hanging over the front door. He could envisage his younger self walking through the front door, his cheeks burning from a day in the fields, his father in a whisky-induced slumber by the crackling fire.

  It had taken everything he had to try and hang on to the farm, not to let the night Rebecca’s parents were killed change the course of his entire life, but in the end it had.

  The police knew that it hadn’t been him at Seaview Cottage that night, but the rumours of an affair between Harriet and his father persisted. And his father, guilty at the part he may have played in Harriet’s death – that Jacob may have noticed how much he loved her, even though nothing had ever happened between them – had drank himself into an early grave.

  Harvey had tried to keep going, but crippling death duties and supermarkets’ stranglehold on the market cutting into his profit margins meant there came a point where he could no longer keep his head above water. After weeks of clearing decades’ worth of paperwork, photographs, furniture and keepsakes, he and Liz had handed over the keys to Seaview.

  Harvey slammed the car door shut. As the light faded he walked towards the sound of the crashing surf. The frozen sea air whipped angrily around him as he made his way to the beach. However much he tried to move on from Seaview, the past wouldn’t let him go and, now, forty years after he had handed over the keys, Seaview Farm was back in his life.

  The tide was out and he made his way down the boardwalk and across the waterlogged sand, to the water’s edge, and stared out at the grey sea. As the darkness descended, the wind skidding off the surface of the November sea told him the sea was fierce. Had Jessie been there that day? Had she walked into the sea with baby Elizabeth? Were they hiding in the dunes somewhere behind him?

  ‘Jessica! Jessica!!’ He chanted her name over and over. Knowing it was no use, knowing there was nothing he could do. He felt exhausted, as if his legs could barely hold him up, and the freezing sea rushed towards him, seeping into his shoes and up his legs. He started to cry, great, wracking sobs. Begging his wife to help him find Jessie, pleading for Liz to take care of Jessica’s baby.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there, but when he lifted his head again it was dark. A flashlight caught his eye. Turning, he saw the light moving along the coastal path hugging the cliff edge to Seaview Cottage. When the beam reached the cottage, there was a moment before the lights at Seaview Cottage turned on and he watched two people step over the threshold. Harvey stood, staring up at the cottage on the cliff edge, watching the two people move from room to room, looking for Jessie as the night wind stung his cheeks until they went numb.

  As he stood looking up at Seaview Cottage, he could picture that fateful night playing out like one of the flip picture books he had as a child. In each window a different scene. Rebecca upstairs in bed, the storm at her window, the fight in the living room, the gunfire, Rebecca bent over her mother’s bloodied body, the police hammering on the door. And the visitor, who Rebecca always insisted was real. Had it been her imagination? Or a reality?

  That night had taken hold of his life then and had never let go.

  As the lights in the different rooms at Seaview Cottage turned on during the search for Jessie and the baby, Harvey’s phone began to ring, dragging him back to the present.

  ‘Mr Roberts? It’s DC Gale.’

  ‘What is it? Have you found Jessie?’

  ‘No, but there’s a woman at St Dunstan’s Hospital in Chichester we think you should talk to.’ DC Gale’s voice was faint; the mobile phone reception was terrible.

  ‘Who is she? Does she know where Jessie is?’

  ‘No, but she is looking for her daughter.’

  ‘I don’t understand, what are you talking about? Her daughter? Who is she? I’m going to have to call you back.’

  ‘Her name is Cecilia Barton. She’s asking to talk to you about her daughter – Rebecca.’ And with that, the line cut out.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Harriet

  13 January 1947

  Harriet Waterhouse sat on the painfully slow train out to Wittering Bay feeling as if her heart was going to stop at any moment.

  It was only four o’clock in the afternoon but it was already getting dark, and the ice-cold rain was hammering against the train window as the train carriage rocked along.

  Her eyes stung. She was exhausted, having been up all night after Cecilia had become paranoid that Rebecca’s milk was laced with arsenic. It was only when the doctor came to sedate her that Harriet was able to take the baby from her iron grip and feed her.

  There was no hiding Cecilia’s illness any more, and as Cecilia slept, Harriet had spent the entire night in the rocking chair by the fire, holding Rebecca and feeding her with as much milk as she could. Cecilia had screamed the house down as they held her down and plunged the needle into her behind, saying that Charles wanted her and her baby dead because Rebecca wasn’t his. She no longer cared who knew, but Charles – who had stayed well away with his parents in their London townhouse – had been terrified of the scandal getting out.

  The baby and Cecilia asleep, Harriet had crept along the corridor to the room adjacent to the library, where the family GP and Charles’s sisters were sitting by the fire. She held her breath and listened.

  ‘The adoption agency is coming in the morning to take the baby away.’ It was Margaret who spoke, Charles’s elder sister. ‘Charles thinks it best if she is sent to America to be adopted and he wants to ensure there is no paperwork leading back to him. He doesn’t want Rebecca turning up in eighteen years’ time and causing a scandal.’

  ‘And Cecilia?’

  ‘For now, he’s keen to keep her out of the asylum. Don’t ask me why – he’s too soft-hearted, that’s what’s got him into this mess in the first place. It’s the quickest and easiest way for him to get a divorce. But he’s adamant that we try and treat her here first. I think he’s hoping that, once the baby is gone, she will start to get better, and then they can live separate lives but avoid divorce. There’s never been a divorce in this family, and he doesn’t want to upset Mother, and particularly Father, when he’s in poor health. Where’s that brandy got to? These provincial staff really are utterly useless.’

  Harriet had cr
ept back to Cecilia’s bedroom then and lifted the sleeping baby out of her cot. She inhaled her smell, kissed her soft cheeks, talked to her about how sorry she was that she was being sent away to a country she didn’t know, to live with people who were strangers to her, about how much she loved her and would miss her. With tears in her eyes, she had slowly lowered her down and resettled her in her cot.

  And all the time Cecilia slept peacefully – and oblivious – for the first time in weeks.

  Harriet had no clue how long she slept for, but when she woke it was with a start. The fire in Cecilia’s room had gone out and the balcony window was open. She had immediately had the feeling that something was amiss and when she turned her aching neck slowly to look into Rebecca’s cot, it was empty. She had shaken herself awake, and walked into the bathroom, which was as lifeless and cold as the bedroom. She had not known Cecilia to leave the bedroom once since Rebecca had been born, but she pulled a blanket around herself, opened the bedroom door and dashed into the cold stone hallway.

  It was dawn, and the house silent, as she dashed from the library, to Charles’ study, to the drawing room, knowing in her heart she wouldn’t find them. Scared to call out to Cecilia in case she woke anyone before she’d had a chance to think what to do. After fifteen minutes she had run through every downstairs room, and when she reached the back door she pulled on a pair of boots and dashed out into the freezing January dawn just as the cockerels started to crow.

  As she stood, her eyes still foggy from lack of sleep, blinking in the sunlight that had come up over Jacob’s beautifully manicured lawns, she had known for certain that Cecilia and the baby were gone.

  The train jolted to a stop outside a station, bringing Harriet back to the present. She had known immediately where Cecilia had gone. But it had been six painfully long hours before she herself could leave. After discovering they were missing, she had called the police, and as the day ticked by and Cecilia and her baby got further and further away, Harriet had to sit and be interrogated about Cecilia’s whereabouts.