The Daughters of Foxcote Manor Read online

  But it’s Hera who reluctantly wiggles them from her tightly stretched shorts pocket and hands them over with a small grunt of resentment.

  Rita kicks herself for not noticing the matches were missing. But Foxcote, like the forest itself, is still so unfamiliar, a place where potential disaster lurks in the most mundane guises. The cellar floor is littered with the rusty jaws of metal animal traps. Axes. A machete. There’s a collection of old shotguns in a cabinet (unlocked, no key she can locate). She’s even found a small handgun in a biscuit tin. When she’d asked Marge about this, she’d simply shrugged and muttered something about having a gun herself, as if keeping lethal weapons hidden among the Garibaldi biscuits was perfectly normal.

  Rita slides the matchbox onto the top shelf of the Welsh dresser, among the chipped creamware, out of reach. She checks on the Savoy cabbage, destined for supper, bathing in cold salted water in the Belfast sink, approvingly notes the drowned slugs rising to the surface, and picks up a jug of lemon squash. “Here, Teddy. Be Mother,” she adds unthinkingly.

  Teddy carries it to the wooden kitchen table, leaving a trail of sticky splodges on the terra-cotta-tiled floor.

  “Sit down, Hera,” says Rita, wondering why she’s still standing there, slightly sheepishly. “What is it?”

  “I picked these. For Mother.” Hera bends down and takes a small bunch of lilac-blue flowers from her knapsack, fanning them carefully on the table. She looks up, less sure of herself. “Do you think she’ll like them?”

  Something about the uncertainty and need in Hera’s pale eyes loosens feelings in Rita. She suddenly remembers her own acute insecurities and loneliness at a similar age, a funny age really, too old for the comfort of doll’s houses yet too young to have any control over your own life. Both dreading and yearning impending womanhood. Still in desperate need of mothering. “Oh, Hera. How could she not? Let me put them in some water.” She arranges the flowers in a jam jar.

  “But I haven’t got Mummy flowers,” blurts Teddy, who is sitting on a stool now, breathing hard, his soft dark hair curling over his sun-faded yellow T-shirt. “It’s not fair if Hera gets to give her flowers and not me,” he says.

  Rita puts a sandwich on his plate and, leaning over him, cuts off the crusts. “It’s not a competition, Teddy,” she says gently. Although it strikes her that while they may be close rambling about outside, in the house the siblings are like forest plants, competing for their mother’s warmth and light.

  “I thought of it first,” says Hera, staking her claim.

  “No, you picked them in sneaky secret.” Teddy goes to kick her shin under the table but misses, his leg too short. He slides a slice of cheese out of his sandwich and licks off the piccalilli instead. A moment passes. Rita wonders how she might cheer him up, and is about to suggest digging out the Meccano set when Teddy says, “Mummy needs flowers because Mummy’s unwell again?”

  “She’s . . .” It’s much harder to lie to Teddy than to Marge. “. . . feeling a bit under the weather.” She gives him a reassuring squeeze of the shoulder.

  “That’s code, Teddy,” Hera says unhelpfully, reaching across to swipe his crusts. “You know what for.” She glances at Rita, and, with a mouthful of bread, protests, “I’m not going to lie to him!”

  Teddy’s bottom lip puckers and he reddens with the strain of not blubbing like a baby in front of his sister. “But I want Mummy to get better.”

  “She will in time, Teddy.”

  Teddy looks at her blankly. Rita remembers she had no concept of time as a child, either. Good things happened in a flash. Boring things went on forever. And time didn’t solve anything, like grown-ups promised. It just made you older.

  “Come here, you.” Rita pulls Teddy onto her lap and hugs him tight. He smells of pickle, soil, and damp wool.

  I love these kids, she thinks, with a physical force, like a sharp kick in the stomach, that takes her aback. She quickly checks herself. In a year or two, Teddy will be sent away to board, like his father was (Walter had once told her dryly he’d hated every minute of it), and she’ll be forgotten by all of them, just a large hazy figure at the edges of family photographs. She knows this is the nanny’s lot, the loving of someone else’s children followed by the unacknowledged grief when the job ends. But she also knows that none of her charges have meant nearly as much to her as Teddy and Hera. And she’ll never forget the exact weight and feel of Teddy on her lap, the way he molds and settles into her contours. Or the day, when Jeannie was locked up at The Lawns, Teddy turned to her and said, “Will you be my mummy now?” and she’d longed to say yes.

  “She doesn’t want to see us, does she, Big Rita?” Teddy’s voice is still clotted with bravely fought tears. “She’s too ill.”

  Rita knows he’s thinking about The Lawns, his mother vanishing again. She can’t bear it. “Follow me. Both of you. Upstairs.”

  Rita doesn’t knock in case Jeannie asks them to go away. Hera and Teddy shuffle in behind her, hanging back, unsure of their welcome. Or which mother they might find today.

  Rita places a tray on the bed—milk, sandwiches, a cold toasted tea cake—then sweeps open the curtains, making a circus big top of dust motes rotate in the center of the room. She starts to talk softly, filling the stale silence. There are barn owls in the eaves and a really noisy resident woodpecker in the garden, and Teddy’s spotted lizards in the log pile. Rita chatters over her shoulder, tugging open the stiff window so the sweet smell of leaves and earth pours into the room. In the distance, sheep drift through the woodland, like clouds. She pushes back the ivy, and bees whirl up in excitement. Rita flaps them away, safely into the sky.

  Jeannie slowly emerges from the burrow of bedding. Despite sleeping all the time, she looks shattered. Her eyes are vague and torpid, the skin underneath desiccated and blue-tinged. Rita spots the small bag of the dead baby’s things poking out from under her pillow, and her heart sinks.

  “Mummy!” Teddy launches himself onto the bed. Jeannie’s fingers twirl in his hair, and she bends down to him, smiling weakly, indulgently. “Why, hello, my little soldier.”

  Rita beckons Hera, who hovers in the doorway. Holding aloft the little jam jar of wild flowers, already starting to wilt, Hera perches gingerly on the side of the bed, not daring to edge into the intimacy of its center. Rita shoots a smile. Jeannie hasn’t noticed the flowers yet. She will.

  Jeannie cups a yawn in her hand. “Any more phone calls, Rita?” Rita shakes her head. Jeannie’s face falls. Notice the flowers, thinks Rita. Notice Hera.

  “I . . . I brought you something, Mother.” Hera rests the jam jar on the tray and watches her mother carefully, sideways from under her jagged fringe.

  “Hera went out into the forest and picked them this morning.” Rita wills Jeannie to admire them. “Just for you, Jeannie.”

  “They’re so beautiful,” Jeannie says, with an ache in her voice, like their beauty hurts her. Rita smiles as Jeannie reaches out and touches a flower. But it immediately shatters over the sheet, the petals like scattered Parma violets. “Oh,” says Jeannie. “Oh.”

  Rita winces. They stare in stunned silence at the bald broken flower, then at the fat tears rolling silently down Jeannie’s cheeks, splashing onto the snowy sheet.

  “It always goes wrong when I try to make you happy,” says Hera.

  12

  Sylvie

  I shake the pregnancy-test stick again. No, like the other two, it’s not changing its mind. The line is solid and laser blue. Sitting at the kitchen table, staring at it in woozy disbelief, I become aware of a strange crackling energy in my body, as if the test’s confirmation has connected a dangerous circuit buried inside me with a violent, ugly jolt.

  “Shit,” I mumble under my breath, through my clamped hand, and glance out at the balcony where Annie’s pacing, our cordless phone pressed to her ear. Her face is puffed from crying. I can just hear her
saying, “I don’t know . . .” Elliot. It must be him on the line. And whatever he’s saying, I don’t like it. “No. I . . . I can’t promise . . . sorry,” Annie says.

  A savage heat sweeps through me. I leap up and thread through the balcony door, opening my hand for the phone. To my relief, she hands it to me without protest and vanishes back into the apartment. A moment later, I hear her bedroom door slam.

  The phone in my shaking hand is hot. A grenade. And I realize I’m probably not the kind of mother—reassuring, liberal, and practical—I’d always imagined I’d be in such a situation. Because I want to murder the boy. Shake my fists at the summer sky. Why my daughter?

  I take a breath. “Hello?” Do. Not. Freak. “This is Sylvie, Annie’s mum speaking.”

  “Helen Latham.” A posh voice. Slightly shrill. “Elliot’s mother.”

  For a moment I can’t speak at all. I see the hatch opening on the boat opposite. Everything slows.

  “I’d like to finish my conversation with your daughter,” Helen says crisply, undaunted. “Can you put her back on the line, please?”

  “Better that you talk to me,” I say, collecting myself, squaring up to her. “My daughter’s too upset right now.”

  “Oh, Elliot’s distraught,” Helen says quickly, with an edge.

  “I’d rather you didn’t speak to my daughter directly.” It’s taking an enormous effort to be polite. The boatman sits on his deck and starts strumming his guitar. A Radiohead riff.

  “Look, Vicky . . .”

  “Sylvie.” The heron, statuesque, watches me from the bank. The spores of green light the canal throws up seem to mix with the guitar notes. And everything is swaying. I feel dizzy. Jesus, my life is a disaster. It’s unspooling. I need my mother back.

  Helen clears her throat. “I want this matter sorted out as soon as possible.”

  “She’s not had any time to process it,” I say after a beat, trying to contain myself. Matter?

  “Is money a problem?”

  “What? No.” So Helen’s one of those wealthy London women used to buying her way out of problems. Anger starts to rumble through me, dark and unfocused, its meaning murky but its power abdominally felt. I grip the cool metal balustrade with one hand, squeeze it.

  “Can I remind you that an innocent young man’s future is at stake?”

  “Not that innocent.” My voice trembles.

  “Elliot’s only twenty-one. He’s trying to make his way in the world. If Annie was imagining . . . well, to put it nicely, he’s in no position to be a father.”

  “Annie’s eighteen and has a Cambridge offer.”

  “Cambridge?” Satisfyingly, she can’t hide her surprise. “Well,” she says, making a minor mental adjustment, “we’re on the same page then, aren’t we? I’ll call back after the weekend. When she’s booked her appointment.”

  There’s a click and the line goes dead. Damn it. “Bitch!” I shout, more loudly than intended. I screw up my eyes and cover them with my sticky palms.

  “You all right up there?”

  I remove my hands and there’s the man on his deck, leaning over his guitar, looking up at me. My body floods with heat. “I . . . No. Yes, of course,” I call back, then flee into the apartment.

  “Annie?” The bathroom door is closed. I talk through it. “Elliot’s mother should never have phoned. Whatever she said, ignore it. Hey, you okay in there? Can I come in, sweetie?” Annie doesn’t answer. I push open the door. The bathroom is empty. The pregnancy-test boxes are scattered around the sink. My heart skips a beat. I run to Annie’s bedroom, clock the rummaged mess on her bed, the trail of underwear from the chest of drawers, and feel it, like a drop in altitude, a rush of blood. Annie’s gone.

  13

  Rita

  Four forty-five A.M. Rita’s mind is busy as a hive. The iron bed wobbles precariously as she sits up and reaches for her dressing gown, which in the dim light looks like a person hanging from the back of her door. There’s no point lying in bed any longer, trying and failing to fall back to sleep, thinking about Jeannie, the children, and the perils of that forest pressed up against the garden wall. And, as Walter might tersely point out, she’s not paid to think. Her job is to keep them all safe. And to do that, she needs to map this place. Get a grip on it. Master it. Since she’s got this rare hour to herself, now would be the perfect time.

  Downstairs, the house creaks and murmurs, like an elderly lady settling into a chair. She tiptoes across the kitchen’s chilly tiles, swiping a biscuit from the side, and opens the back door. The sky is still bloody in the east, as if aglow from a distant forest fire.

  Pushing this unsettling association from her mind, she tugs on the men’s boots that Marge took from the woodshed—a good fit, annoyingly—and tightens the cord on her dressing gown, its pressure on her waist reassuring.

  The broken paving of the garden path rocks under her feet. The trees click with birdsong. Near the gate, she pauses at the swell of a huge hydrangea, glowing fish-belly white in its late summer flush, and glances back at the house. The tiny ferns growing in the mortar wave at her, like babies’ hands. Foxcote looks cozy and safe from here. Beyond the wall, not really. She lifts the gate’s latch, then freezes.

  She wants to do this, pin the forest to her mind, like a butterfly on a board, so that it’s no longer a malign mass outside her window. To shrink its scale until it feels no more threatening than the clumps of plastic trees in Teddy’s Hornby train set. She wonders if that will ever be possible. Standing there, alone, she realizes her fear of it is carved into her bones, the very crook of her pelvis. It goes way beyond Marge’s list or concern about the children.

  While she was growing up, Nan would never talk directly about the car accident that killed Rita’s parents—it’d be like staring into the noon sun—but she’d say woods were places where “bad men” lurked. And “worse.” (Never specified.) She didn’t own a car, never would: “coffins on wheels.” She wanted Rita indoors. Immobile. Safe on the settee.

  What she never said was this: Do you remember, Rita, how your parents, Poppy and Keith, loved the open road and the outdoors, the woods and the mountains, and sleeping under the stars and stirring baked beans in a battered billycan, and the spit and crackle of a campfire?

  But suddenly Rita does remember. A memory dislodges: she’s sitting on the beam of her father’s shoulders, the light beer-colored through the leaves. She’s not sure where they were, or when it was, if it was the weekend of the accident. But she can feel his heft and hold—she has no fear of falling, not with his giant’s hands on her ankles—and she can hear his laughter, booming under a roof of leaves.

  She shuts the gate behind her.

  * * *

  The moon jumps between branches. She disturbs slumbering sheep. She can sense other presences too: a crunching under hoof; the chirring of insects. An unseen owl hoots. The sound hangs in the air, round as a smoke ring.

  She hesitates, then takes the path that curls past the tree stump and the pyramid-stacked log pile—yes, definitely lethal—and decides to loop the house, the route the kids seem to take. She’s soon distracted by a deer. Then at stage left, a fox blazes, carrying a rabbit in its jaws. She stops to admire some moths on a gigantic fallen tree. Toadstools. She bends down, hands on her knees, frowning: are these the dreaded death caps?

  Something else snags her eye. Persil white. Out of place. Curious, she picks it up. A baby’s bootee. Still puffed into the stub of a tiny foot. Recently dropped. It’s an odd thing to find in such dense woodland—no pram would make it here. And it reminds her of the other bootees—ornately laced, never worn—that Jeannie treasures. She hooks it on a low-hanging branch, as she used to stick lost kids’ gloves on London railings.

  She keeps walking. But the path has gone. And it’s dimmer, the trees’ canopies having locked over her head, like umbrellas on a crowded London street. Root
s rise up from the ground and wrap around boulders or dangle from branches. With no warning, a hollow cleaves open beneath her feet, and she grabs at the bracken to halt her fall.

  Recovering herself, she kneels down against the huge trunk of an old oak, folding her dressing gown around her, like wings, and taking out her custard cream. She’s glad the kids can’t see her. How they’d giggle at her lostness. Still. The biscuit helps.

  But there’s something at her back. She cocks her head. A noise. Twigs cracking. Footsteps? She tenses, remembering what Marge said about oddballs and fugitives being attracted to the forest. The weirdo called Fingers. Not daring to twist around, she pushes back against the tree trunk and its tourniquet of thick itchy ivy, and tucks in the sides of her dressing gown, wishing it wasn’t such an unnatural pink. The footsteps stop.

  It’s not her own fast breathing she can hear now. It’s someone else’s. Fear twists with defiance. She hasn’t survived car crashes and house fires and Fred’s saying “No man on earth is going to want you now, Rita,” to meet a sticky end out here. She walks her hand through the scuff of fallen leaves toward a large stick. Another footstep. Her heart slams. Her fingers twitch. She’s ready.

  14

  Hera

  The forest bursts into life outside my cracked window. I don’t need an alarm clock at Foxcote. En route to the bathroom, I see Big Rita’s bedroom door is ajar and peep in. A rumpled bed; a pile of novels on the bedside table, a blouse hanging on the back of the chair. But no Big Rita. Where is she? I think of the French nanny who bolted back to Paris one night, without saying good-bye. The mother’s help did the same. I nibble the skin around my fingernail, ripping it down to the raw bit that tastes like knives.