The Other Daughter (ARC)

by Shalini Boland

  Jenny passes me a tissue and I use it to dab my tears and blow my nose. We continue walking, our soft-soled shoes barely making a sound on the concrete path.

  ‘Do you feel at all like Rachel today?’ Jenny asks. ‘Because you sound like you have the real situation quite clear in your mind. You sound like you know who you are.’

  ‘I do feel clearer today. I know I’m not Rachel. I miss her, but I know I’m not her. If that even makes sense.’

  ‘Why do you think you feel so clear about your identity today? Is there something you can pinpoint? A reason why?’

  One of the groundsmen emerges from a large wooden shed with a selection of tools. ‘Hey, Jenny.’

  ‘Hello, Fred,’ she replies. I notice her cheeks are a little flushed.

  After we pass him, I give her a nudge. ‘Are you and he…?’

  ‘What? No.’

  ‘But you’d like to?’

  Her face and neck flood with colour.

  ‘You would! You should ask him out.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. Anyway, we’re not here to talk about me.’

  ‘No, but it’s nice for a few minutes to think about something else other than my wreck of a life.’ My voice catches and I bite my lip.

  ‘Look, Catriona. You can heal from this. I’ve seen people go on to lead productive lives after extreme trauma, but you have to let us in to allow us to help you. You’re doing really well today. Just keep it up.’

  Her words comfort me, but they also make me realise that a ‘productive life’ is probably code for making the best of things. The reality is that my life has gone to shit. ‘It’s nice of you to say that, Jenny, but I committed a terrible crime. I’ll be in here for years. I’m not sure how “productive” my life can be in prison, or in hospital. Not that I deserve anything else.’

  ‘It’s early days, Catriona. Just take it one day at a time. You’re already able to remember your real identity. That’s a huge step.’

  ‘Even if it’s not all the time.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s early days. You had a trauma and you invented a situation that would help you to deal with that trauma.’

  ‘I know. It was weird. In my head, Holly Faisal somehow became mixed up with the memory of my daughter Grace. Thinking that she’d been abducted was easier to handle than the truth that she’d drowned. Because that way, it felt like it wasn’t my fault, and there was always the chance that one day’ – my throat constricts and it takes me a moment to continue – ‘that one day she’d come back.’ Talking about Grace like this makes my heart hurt. The pain in my chest is crushing, and I have to stop walking again. Take another moment to catch my breath.

  ‘There’s a bench up ahead,’ Jenny says. ‘Do you want to sit?’

  I nod and we veer across the short, springy grass to sit on the bench, which faces a neat flower bed. I feel like an elderly person, resting here like this.

  ‘Do you have any other thoughts about why you used Rachel’s name, and why you used the name Jess for her daughter Holly?’ Jenny asks.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I twist my fingers in my lap. ‘I don’t think it was a conscious thing. I found stuff online about Holly’s family and discovered that Rachel’s husband Andrew moved to Spain to be with another woman. He left her alone with her youngest daughter, Jessica. I guess, in a weird way, I empathised with her because I was also alone with a young daughter.

  ‘Before I left London and moved to Wareham, it felt like a logical step to change our names for a fresh start. I can’t remember making the decision for me to become Rachel, and for Grace, sorry Holly, to become Jessica. On some level I must have realised their surname was too distinctive, that it might have been recognised. So I altered it slightly from Faisal to Farnborough. From the moment we moved into our new flat, we became Rachel and Jess Farnborough. Just a single mum and her daughter making a new start alone. It felt natural.

  ‘Once I made the change, it was easier to slip into the role I’d cast for myself than to dwell on my real past. It felt less stressful somehow. As Rachel, I was the victim rather than the perpetrator, which was easier to live with. People tend to feel sorry for the victims.’

  ‘You didn’t tell anyone about being a victim until you confided in Matt last year,’ Jenny observes.

  ‘I know. I couldn’t bring myself to speak about it. I only met Matt a couple of weeks after moving to Wareham, and I didn’t want to talk about my past – not the real version or the imagined version. So I skirted over it all.’ My fingertips trace over the rough grain of the bench. It could do with sanding down.

  ‘How are things with Matt now?’

  An image of Matt inserts itself into my brain and I want to sob for the loss of him. For how much I’ve hurt him. ‘He won’t bring Jess or Charlie to see me. He won’t tell me what’s happened to her. I don’t even know if she’s been told her true identity, or whether she’s been reunited with her birth parents. I feel so bad for him – having to deal with all that by himself.’

  ‘He’ll have help – social services and the like.’

  ‘But still. It must be hellish. Jess is his daughter too. Maybe not biologically, but where it matters…’ I’m crying again. How can one person cry so many tears? I lost my Grace, and now I’ve lost Jess and Charlie too. Three of my babies that I’ll never be able to care for again. Okay, I know Jess was never truly mine, but she still feels like mine. I cuddled her, kissed her, bathed her, laughed with her. I know her. And whatever happens from now on, I believe I was a good mother to her. We had a beautiful relationship.

  In my more lucid moments, like today, I feel such deep shame for how I must have messed up Jess’s life. I wonder how she’ll ever manage to recover from the truth. She doesn’t know Rachel and Andrew Faisal. She has no idea who they are, what they’re like. They’re her parents and yet they’re strangers to her. And how will Matt explain everything to my little Charlie? Will my children ever want to see me again? I wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t. Then I realise I’m still thinking of Jess as mine. But she isn’t. She’s Holly Faisal. And I am not her mother.

  My tissue is thin and soggy now; I do my best to mop up my tears again. ‘I don’t blame him, you know.’

  ‘Matt?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t blame him. He did the right thing, telling the police about me. He’s a good man. The best.’ I picture his distraught expression when the police came to the house and arrested me. He was crying so hard. I’d never seen him lose it like that before. Other than when Charlie was born, but that was just a few emotional, happy tears. This time it was different. These were tears for a broken heart. A broken life.

  I didn’t understand what was going on. I thought the police were arresting me for breaking into the Morrises’ flat, or perhaps for following Bella home. I still believed the Morrises had stolen my daughter. I thought the police had got it all wrong. But it wasn’t that at all.

  Matt discovered the truth about me when Robin contacted him after our last session. Robin was worried about client confidentiality, but he feared for Bella’s safety. And because Matt was his friend, he thought he should make him aware of the possible danger that I might pose to Bella. Robin didn’t believe I was mentally stable. It turns out he was right.

  Then the Morrises’ old neighbour Melanie rang Kate after I’d knocked on her door asking questions. Kate had grown fearful that I was going to expose the fact that Bella was adopted, and that Shaun had been in prison, so she called Matt to ask what was going on. To ask him to make me stop digging into their lives. After he explained my (fake) history to them – that I’d had a child who was abducted – the Morrises were more understanding. But my recent behaviour had set off further alarm bells in Matt’s head.

  He was really shaken up by it all. After Kate and Shaun left, Matt began searching online for stories relating to a missing child named Holly Farnborough. He wanted to verify my story. All he found was a story almost identical to the one I’d told him, apart from a few vital differences �
� the year didn’t match, and the surname didn’t match, but more crucially, the photograph and footage of Rachel was not of me. And the child who went missing did not have green eyes. She did, however, bear an uncanny resemblance to Jess.

  Matt put the pieces together and was horrified to realise there was a possibility that Jess was indeed the abducted child. Of course, he was still hoping it wasn’t true. He said he was praying for the evidence to be circumstantial. But he knew he had no choice but to tell the police what he thought he might have discovered. Once they confirmed that it was all indeed true, Matt was devastated. He told me he had loved me but couldn’t forgive what I’d done. He said he loved Jess like she was his own, but in the end, he knew that Jess’s real parents deserved to know what had happened to their daughter. They deserved to be reunited. To have some happiness back in their lives.

  Although it cuts me up to lose Jess, who I truly believed was my daughter, I do agree with Matt. If Rachel Faisal can experience the joy of holding her child in her arms, then I should be happy for her. After all, I’ve been living my life as Rachel for the past seven years, going through her anguish. Living with the devastation of a missing child. So who knows more about how she must feel than me?

  I lurch to my feet with an overwhelming desire to be back inside my small room.

  ‘You ready to go back in?’ Jenny asks with a concerned smile.

  I nod and start walking, faster this time, suddenly yearning to lie on my bed and count my ceiling tiles again. When I’ve finished counting them, I’ll probably have to count them once more, just to make sure the number’s right.

  There’s another reason why I’m so desperate to get back to my room. Because something else has started up in my mind. A new thought. The germ of a possibility…

  Maybe one day in the future – when I’ve served my time and the doctors believe I’m well enough to rejoin society – I’ll eventually get out of here. And when I do, perhaps I’ll get one last shot at happiness. All I’ll have to do is to persuade Matt that Charlie needs his mum. That my son is better with me than without me.

  It won’t be easy to win Matt around – not after everything that’s happened – but at least I’ll have time to work on him. To make him see that I know what I did was wrong. That I’ve been ill but I’m getting better. The loss of Jess is brutal, and not something we could ever completely get over. But a new start for the three of us could be the best thing for our ultimate happiness. The perfect way to heal. Because I know that deep down Matt still loves me. So it would make perfect sense for us to be a family once more.

  That’s all I’ve ever wanted. And after everything I’ve been through, I’m determined to get my happily ever after. Whatever it takes…

  Epilogue

  Dear Diary,

  My name is Rachel Danes. I was once Rachel Faisal, but I’ve been divorced for six years so I reverted to my maiden name. The woman from social services – Kerry – told me that writing a diary might help me to make sense of what’s happened. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but at this point in time, I’m willing to try.

  My life this past seven years has gone from being a nightmare to being non-existent. An echo of a life. Like no one can hear me properly and I can’t connect with reality. I get up in the morning to take my daughter Jess to school, I go to work as an admin assistant at the big insurance firm down the road. I come home, make dinner, try to keep the place tidy, but my heart isn’t in it. My heart isn’t in anything.

  If it weren’t for Jess, I would be dead. Sounds brutal, but it’s the truth.

  And then, last week, a miracle happened. It didn’t start off as a miracle – I had a visit from the police and from social services. Just the sight of them in their uniforms and suits with their air of officialness brought it all rushing back. The horror of losing my baby. The pointed fingers. The blame. The collapse of my marriage. Here they were again. To cause more chaos and upset.

  And then I thought maybe they’d come to tell me they’d found Holly’s body. That I would finally be able to lay her to rest and have some closure. A kind of peace, if you like. But that wasn’t it at all.

  It was something else. Something I never believed could ever happen. They asked if they could come in, and of course I had to say yes. So they came in and sat on the sofa in my sad little flat and I sat opposite them on one of the dining-room chairs. And they told me the thing they’d come to tell me:

  Holly is alive.

  They had to repeat themselves several times because I couldn’t accept what they were saying. I thought I was in bed, asleep. Dreaming. Because what they were saying was the thing that I never thought I would ever hear. I’d fantasised about it, of course I had. But that was all in my mind; not in real life.

  Holly is alive!

  Even writing the words fills me with joy and gives me proper goosebumps. Not only is she alive. But she’s happy and healthy and has never been harmed physically or emotionally – so they say. She’s a well-adjusted ten-year-old girl who goes to school and has friends and a family. A family.

  Only they’re not her family, are they…

  Kerry, the woman from social services, told me that I’d fainted after they told me she was alive, but one of the officers rushed over and caught me before I slid off the chair and hit the floor. When I came around, we were still in my lounge and they’d sat me on the sofa and made me a cup of sweet tea. I said I didn’t want tea, I wanted to see my daughter. I stood up, but I was all woozy, so I had to sit back down again.

  All those years of imagining the worst. Each day going to hell and back. Wanting to end it all. But somehow keeping a tiny spark of hope burning. Hope that mocked and denied me every day. Until now.

  But even now, after the best news imaginable, Kerry told me that the situation is not straightforward. That Holly doesn’t know who she really is. She thinks her name is Jess! How weird is that? They named her Jess – same as my youngest.

  Holly believes her parents are this other couple called Matthew and Rachel. Rachel, same as me! Only Kerry explained that the woman who took her was mentally disturbed and Rachel is not her real name. Kerry reassured me that Jess hadn’t been harmed and wasn’t in any danger, only that this woman ‘Rachel’ thought she was me! I don’t quite get it, to be honest. All I know is that I want to see my daughter. I have to see her.

  Surprise, surprise, bloody Andy doesn’t want to know. He went quiet on the phone when I told him his eldest daughter was alive. I know he was choked up. I could tell by his silence. But then he cleared his throat and said that it was probably best if he didn’t get involved. That his family needed him in Spain. ‘Probably best!’ What an absolute bastard. Well, at least I know where he stands. Which is abso-bloody-lutely nowhere, as usual.

  Anyway, enough about my loser ex-husband. I kicked up a huge fuss after the authorities said I couldn’t see Holly straight away. I mean, who do they think they are? They can’t just tell me she’s alive and then say, ‘Oh and by the way, you can’t see her.’ She’s my daughter!

  After I had a chance for it all to sink in, I got on the phone to social services and went down to their offices, and then to the police station. I threatened to sue and to go to the papers. I haven’t felt so alive in years. It’s like someone’s lit a fire under me. I feel like I could do anything.

  Finally, after an emergency court hearing yesterday, the authorities have agreed that I can see her. I can actually see my daughter! The only thing is, I can’t tell her who I am. Not yet. I have to pretend I’m a relation – an aunt. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to stop myself from crying all over her. From hugging my baby and kissing her and swinging her around in my arms. How will I manage to keep myself together? I can barely do it now. I’m crying all over my diary. Smudging the ink.

  But after having another long chat with Kerry, I do understand that this is what’s best for Holly, not what’s best for me. I have to hide my anger about what happened. I have to be calm and laid-back about it all
. And I have to call her Jess, because apparently that’s her name now. She’s been through a rough time, thinking her fake mum has had a breakdown. Kerry told me the woman – her fake mum, the woman who stole her from me – has been arrested and sectioned. Good job, because if she wasn’t locked up I’d probably have killed her.

  My poor Holly. It tears me up inside thinking what she must be going through. They haven’t explained to her yet that this woman isn’t her real mother. They have to take things slowly. Which is why I have to start off being her aunt.

  But whatever she calls me – aunt, friend, mum – I’m here for her now. I may not be able to tell her who I am straight away. I may have to be patient. It could take weeks, or months, maybe even years to reconnect with her properly. But it doesn’t matter. Because my baby is alive.

  She’s alive.

  And now… so am I.

  If you were gripped by The Other Daughter, you’ll love The Perfect Family – the utterly addictive psychological thriller by Shalini Boland with a heart-stopping twist. Available now!

  The Perfect Family

  ‘Mummy, she’s gone…’

  * * *

  Gemma Ballantine is getting ready for work one morning when her eldest child comes running down the stairs, saying the words every mother dreads.

  * * *

  The front door is open. And her six-year-old daughter has disappeared. Frantic with fear, Gemma starts a nail-biting search for her little girl.