The Lost Child

by Emily Gunnis

  The old woman began to cough, deep, rumbling, hacking coughs. Her shoulders heaved as the phlegm in her lungs tried to fight its way up and out of her. Slowly, she looked around the room and her emerald-green eyes fixed on him. She pulled off her mask and the oxygen coming from it hissed like a snake set for battle.

  ‘Hello, Harvey,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you come and sit here?’ suggested DC Galt, pulling up a chair next to the bed. The words were gentle but her tone was assertive.

  Slowly Harvey inched across the room.

  ‘I’m sorry about your daughter,’ the woman said, coughing again. Harvey waited, expecting another bout of uncontrollable hacking – but it didn’t come.

  ‘Thank you. I’m not sure how I can help you,’ said Harvey, but he already knew his words were a lie. Her green eyes didn’t leave him: eyes he recognized, eyes he knew.

  ‘I think you knew my daughter, Rebecca.’ The woman spoke painfully slowly, as if every word took the effort of climbing a mountain. ‘She lived at Seaview Cottage, as a child.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harvey. ‘I knew Rebecca, but she was Harriet and Jacob Waterhouse’s daughter.’

  Cecilia’s eyes sparkled with tears. Every breath now was a struggle. ‘She’s my daughter. Harriet stole her from me.’

  Harvey shook his head, ‘That can’t be true – Harriet could never do that, the woman was a saint, she practically raised me after my mother died.’ He looked at the clock, imagining Jessie and her baby in the dunes, freezing, alone. He needed to go to them, he needed to leave. His feet were tapping under his chair, he couldn’t be here. He needed to go.

  ‘I’m sorry you and Rebecca aren’t together any more. You loved her very much. I saw you together, that day she visited you at Greenways. The day her parents were killed.’

  As the weight of Cecilia’s words hit, it all stopped: his determination to get away from her, his racing thoughts of Jessie and baby Elizabeth, the beach, the cold, the ticking clock. ‘What did you say?’ Harvey said, his complete attention on the elderly lady now.

  She looked at him. ‘I saw you that day, with my baby.’

  The day Rebecca had visited him there came back to him in flashes. They were leaving Seaview, she’d said, she had come to say goodbye. He had walked her to the gate, past Ward B, the locked ward.

  ‘Why were you at Greenways?’ Harvey said slowly.

  Cecilia took several slow breaths before carrying on. ‘They locked me up for drowning my baby.’ She closed her eyes and paused before she continued. ‘Jacob raped me, during the time he and Harriet worked at Northcote, and I fell pregnant with Rebecca. We were a scandal my husband wanted to get rid of. And Harriet helped him make it happen.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong. I don’t know why you would do this and I’m sorry you’re suffering, but you’re lying, Harriet would never steal another woman’s child.’

  An image of Harriet in the farmyard came to Harvey’s mind. The woman who had devotedly looked after their home. Fed all the farm workers, taken care of him and Rebecca, played with him, made him clothes, fed him and loved him, unconditionally.

  He stood up, the scrape of his chair on the floor echoing loudly.

  ‘You were the reason I found my way to Harriet and Jacob the night they died.’ Harvey stopped. She paused for a moment, gathering her breath. ‘Seeing Rebecca gave me the courage to escape. It had been a long time since I’d last tried to take my own life, so I wasn’t on the supervised ward at night.’ Cecilia started to cough. Harvey stood over her, waiting for her to continue. ‘I stole a key from a junior nurse to get out of the ward. I knew that as long as I was back by dawn they would never know I had gone.’

  Harvey’s mind raced. ‘It was you at the door that night. You started the argument between Harriet and Jacob.’

  Cecilia nodded. ‘Jacob didn’t know that Harriet wasn’t Rebecca’s mother. I tried to calm him down, but there was nothing I could do. He wanted to kill her.’ Cecilia’s voice started to tremble and tears trailed down her pale cheeks. ‘I just wanted to see my little girl.’

  Harvey’s heart ached. For this woman, for Harriet, for Rebecca. But mostly for Jessie, for the pain this woman lying on her deathbed in front of him now had unwittingly inflicted on his little girl by causing her mother so much trauma all those years ago.

  ‘What do you mean there was nothing you could do, why didn’t you run and get help?’ Harvey felt his eyes sting with tears.

  Cecilia’s eyes fixed on Harvey. ‘I tried, I knew Seaview Farm was close, I ran through the rain across the cornfield and hammered on the front door, but there were no lights on, no one came. And as I ran back I heard the gunshot.’

  Harvey hung his head, ‘So you ran away and left Rebecca all alone?’ he said quietly.

  ‘No, I ran back, but when I got to the window I saw her.’ Cecilia paused. ‘She was crouched over Harriet’s body and she was screaming. It was the first time I’d seen my little girl in thirteen years. And I had caused that pain. My baby, my child, who I’m supposed to protect.’ Cecilia was crying again now. ‘They’d told me so many times that I’d drowned her, it was like seeing a ghost. She was so beautiful.’ Rosie leaned forward and wiped Cecilia’s tears away. ‘Then I heard the police sirens and I panicked. I hadn’t set foot outside Greenways for thirteen years and I was terrified of what they would do to me if they found out.’

  Cecilia started to cough again, her chest gurgling and wheezing as she gasped for breath. Rosie leaned her forward and rubbed her back until it slowly subsided.

  ‘I know I can’t ever expect her to forgive me,’ Cecilia said. ‘I just want to tell her that I’m sorry.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Harriet

  July 1952

  Harriet Waterhouse sat on the bus to Greenways Psychiatric Hospital clinging tightly to her daughter’s hand. Occasionally, Rebecca looked up at her and smiled broadly, her green eyes sparkling, her long, fair hair pulled back from her porcelain skin with a cream ribbon.

  The middle-aged woman in the seat next to them smiled as they got on. ‘What a beautiful child,’ she commented, staring at Rebecca, as people often did. Harriet smiled self-consciously. She always knew what people were thinking: how can such a plain woman have produced such a beauty? At only five years of age, Rebecca was the image of her mother, with her piercing green eyes, heart-shaped face and bee-stung lips. She moved with the same grace and spoke with a smile on her lips, as if everything she discovered filled her with wonder and joy. Standing behind Rebecca in front of the mirror, doing her hair, as she’d done Cecilia’s, listening to her contented chatter, it was like going back in time. Harriet looked lifeless in comparison; her pale skin flat, her mousy hair lank, her grey eyes sullen. Rebecca shone, as Cecilia had done, and Harriet would forever be in their shadow.

  The bus conductor announced the stop and Harriet swallowed down the butterflies in her stomach. She stood up and Rebecca followed. Stepping on to the pavement, Harriet looked up at the red-brick building behind the wrought-iron gates, then down at Rebecca. Every part of her was screaming to run, that crossing the threshold to Greenways with Rebecca was a mistake she would never be able to undo. But Jacob was her father. She had known that their time would run out, that one day the past would catch up with them and she would have to answer questions about her little girl. But it had still been a shock when that moment suddenly came, in the form of Miss Clara and Miss Ethel as they walked into a tourist shop in Wittering Bay earlier that summer.

  8th June 1952

  Dear Diary

  I had always known the past would catch up with us, that we couldn’t hide away forever. As with all the most crucial moments in one’s life, it so nearly didn’t happen. We had just paid for our ice creams in Barney’s and as Rebecca and I were walking out, Miss Clara and Miss Ethel walked in. I saw them before they saw me and tried to pass them quickly, but I knew they had seen us and, my heart thudding loudly in my ears, Miss Clara called out my name.


  I smiled politely, my mind racing. ‘How are you, Harriet?’ they said, looking at Rebecca whose entire focus was on her ice cream. My mind scrambled. If I’d wanted no one to find us, I should have moved further away. But we had no money and nowhere to go. Mr Roberts taking us in at Seaview Farm was a small miracle, and one I felt Cecilia had a hand in. I sensed her spirit at Seaview. Though I knew she was gone, it seemed fitting to raise her child in the place she loved more than any other. I felt tied to it, bonded, unable to leave. But in that moment, looking down at my little girl, with Miss Clara and Miss Ethel’s eyes boring into her, I wished I had run far away with baby Rebecca that day and never come back.

  ‘A little girl, how lovely,’ said Miss Clara. ‘What a beautiful child,’ said Miss Ethel. They spoke almost over one another. They had witnessed two of my miscarriages, and called the doctor for the latter as it had been so dreadful. They had shown me great kindness and I didn’t want to lie to them.

  Ted Roberts had always assumed Rebecca was mine and I had never thought to correct him. Cecilia was dead – what would be the point? I told him only that my husband had been taken away to the local psychiatric hospital having suffered a nervous breakdown and that I had lost my lady’s-maid position as a consequence. My story was that we had come to Wittering Bay looking for work and I had got off the bus just as the storm came in. But telling my story to Miss Clara and Miss Ethel then, I felt my face burn.

  ‘How old is she?’ they asked, as I clutched Rebecca’s hand a bit tighter and pulled her to me. ‘Five,’ I answered, not wanting to say more. ‘And where are you living now?’ Miss Clara was wearing too much rouge; she reminded me of the wife in the Punch and Judy show we had just watched on the beach. ‘We heard that you were no longer at Northcote but we didn’t know where you’d moved on to,’ said Miss Ethel. ‘Yes, a policeman came to the house looking for you, but we weren’t able to help him.’ Miss Clara spoke over Miss Ethel in a hurried way that made me think they had fretted a lot over the visit.

  ‘A policeman?’ I had whispered the words, trying to subdue the panic in my voice. ‘Yes,’ said Miss Ethel. ‘Apparently, a doctor at Greenways Asylum has been trying to find you. Your husband was admitted to his care.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Clara. ‘He left his number. I think I still have it at home on the mantelpiece.’

  I pictured Miss Clara scribbling the number down and propping it up on the gold-leaf mirror on the mantelpiece I had dusted every day for nearly a decade. Imagined Miss Clara and Miss Ethel coming home after their day on the beach, talking about our meeting all the way home on the train, deciding in the end to call the local policeman to say they had seen me. ‘She was acting rather suspiciously,’ they would say. ‘Not like her at all, and she had a little girl with her. Yes, that’s right. Wittering Bay.’

  ‘So where are you residing now?’ Miss Clara wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead and I watched it drip down the back of her hand.

  ‘Seaview Cottage, just in the bay,’ I said, forcing the words from my mouth. There was no point lying. It was over, we had been found, and if I tried to run it would only arouse suspicion. ‘I’m surprised they went to the trouble of sending a policeman,’ I said, stumbling over my words. ‘I’m sorry he had to trouble you.’

  ‘Well, he said he’d tried Northcote, but that you’d left there in rather a hurry.’ Miss Clara’s eyes were piercing into me, looking for the truth.

  ‘I’ll call Greenways and let them know where I am. It was so lovely to see you,’ I muttered, smiling, and I took Rebecca’s hand and led her from the shop and out into the baking afternoon sun.

  ‘Why are you sad, Mummy?’ It was the morning of their trip to Greenways, and Harriet had been dressing Rebecca, lost in thought about the day ahead.

  ‘You are such a darling girl,’ said Harriet, thinking of Cecilia’s soft-heartedness, something Rebecca had clearly inherited. ‘I’m not sad. I’m thinking about how grown-up you’re getting. You look pretty as a picture, sweetheart,’ she said, kissing Rebeccas’s rosy cheek. She had used the wages she had saved to buy her a smart black woollen coat and new patent shoes especially for the occasion, and as she fastened the shiny brass buttons that morning she explained to the little girl where they were going. ‘Today we are going to meet your daddy,’ she said, smiling as best she could.

  The little girl had been cautious in her response, staring at Harriet for a long time before answering. ‘Why doesn’t he live with us, like Harvey’s daddy?’

  ‘Because he’s been very poorly, so he needed to be in hospital.’

  ‘Did he hurt himself?’ The little girl’s green eyes sparkled as she spoke, though Harriet could sense her apprehension.

  ‘In a way. The war made him very unhappy. He saw lots of his friends getting hurt and it really upset him.’ Harriet pushed two kirby grips either side of the ribbon in Rebecca’s hair.

  ‘Like when I got upset because Harvey cut his hand on the barbed wire?’ Rebecca frowned.

  ‘Just like that. But he’s better now and he wants to come home. Would that be all right with you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rebecca quietly. ‘I like it just the two of us.’

  ‘You’ll like it with Daddy too. He loves you very much and he’s really missed you.’ Harriet clutched the little girl’s hand tight.

  ‘How can he miss me when he’s never met me?’ Rebecca looked up at her with her mother’s questioning look.

  ‘I loved you before I met you,’ Harriet said, before she could stop herself.

  ‘When I was growing in your tummy?’

  Harriet nodded at the little girl. ‘Go and put your shoes on. We don’t want to be late.’

  She had asked Dr Hunter several times about taking Rebecca along on their first meeting. The last time Harriet saw Jacob had been five years ago, when he was being taken away from Northcote by ambulance. The same day, Cecilia had confessed to her that Jacob had raped her, and that Rebecca was his child.

  ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to bring Rebecca?’ she had said to Dr Hunter. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if it was just me?’

  ‘Jacob talks about Rebecca a lot,’ Dr Hunter had said. ‘I think it would lift his spirits to meet her. After all, you are a family now, and he needs to understand what he is coming home to. This isn’t a frightening place for a child. There’s a farm we can show Rebecca round, and we can take her for a walk in the grounds with Jacob while we discuss the future for you all. This is going to have a huge impact on Rebecca and we need to try and give her some idea of what this means. You can’t hide Jacob’s illness from her, so it’s better if she’s encouraged to ask questions and feels included.’

  Now, Harriet and Rebecca climbed through a small door beside the gates. They approached a wooden hut with a man sitting in it reading the paper.

  ‘I’m here to see Dr Hunter about my husband, Jacob Waterhouse.’

  The man called through to reception and pointed her in the direction of the main building.

  The grounds were manicured and fruit trees lined the driveway. Harriet tried not to catch the eye of any of the patients who were wandering around. Rebecca smiled and pointed at the stables. As they reached the imposing building, Harriet saw a sign with arrows pointing to the printing shop, the chapel, shop, bakery, cobbler’s shop – a self-contained village you’d never have to leave, she thought. They walked to the reception.

  ‘Can I help you?’ said a bespectacled young woman behind a glass panel.

  ‘Yes, I’m here to see Dr Hunter. My name is Harriet Waterhouse.’

  ‘You need to go out, turn right and follow your nose along the shingled path. You’ll see a sign for Summersdale Wing. It’s just past the art block.’

  ‘Oh right, he said he’d come and meet us. I’ve never been here before, I don’t know my way around,’ Harriet said nervously.

  ‘It’s easy to find. Dr Hunter has just been held up in meeting, his secretary will meet you.’

  ‘I don’t
want to walk any more, my shoes are rubbing,’ said Rebecca, who was used to running around barefoot on the beach.

  ‘It won’t be far, darling.’

  ‘I’m hungry, will the doctor have any biscuits?’ said Rebecca, stopping and pulling her tights up.

  ‘Darling, please don’t whinge, this is an important day. We need to be happy for Daddy.’

  Harriet started to feel her mood bristle. Rebecca hadn’t slept well, woken in the night by a bad dream, and then hadn’t eaten much breakfast, as Harvey ran around making her laugh. The bus journey had taken much longer than Harriet had anticipated. She had noticed Rebecca nodding off at times on the bus, and had tried to get her to sleep a little but it was too noisy and she had jerked awake every time. It wasn’t a good start and she had relied on Dr Hunter being there to greet them and ease her nerves. A feeling of apprehension started to overwhelm her.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Rebecca. ‘My feet are really hurting, can we sit down?’

  ‘Okay.’ Harriet stopped and looked around. They had been walking for nearly ten minutes along the shingled path they had been directed to, and with no sign of an art block they appeared to be heading out towards some farm buildings.

  The sunny start to the day had clouded over and Rebecca’s mood started to darken with it as they set off again. After ten minutes they seemed to have lost their way.

  Harriet felt a drop of rain, just as a man dragging a trolley of neatly folded linen walked towards them on the path. ’Can you direct me to Dr Hunter’s office please?’ she said, trying not to sound anxious for Rebecca’s sake. ‘Apparently it’s next to the art block.’

  ‘I’m not sure where Dr Hunter’s office is, but the art block is this way, follow me.’ The man hurried off as Harriet looked down at Rebecca who had taken off her shoes and was rubbing her feet.

  Harriet picked up the little girl, and grabbed her shoes in the other hand. She began to walk as briskly as she could, struggling to keep up as the man walked ahead.