The Daughters of Foxcote Manor Read online

  But Rita wouldn’t desert her terrarium, would she? Or leave without making her bed first. Also, she doesn’t have anywhere to go. No family. No home. This is one of the best things about her. I pull open her desk drawer to check that she’s not taken the photos of her dead parents and feel a bounce inside when I see them, smiling like they’re going to live forever. There’s a notebook too. I pick it up and flick through. “Sunday: Jeannie still feeling under the weather. Ate three rounds of Marmite toast.” An entry for every day we’ve been here. Why is she taking notes on Mother like she’s a patient?

  I shut the drawer, worried: is Mother sicker than I thought? I go to check on her. Her bedroom is dark, and a bit stale, like night breath. But at least in sleep Mother doesn’t look like someone who’d start sobbing just because a wild flower shattered.

  I sit quietly on the chair beside her bed, grateful she’s here, her room only three doorknobs down from mine. At least Daddy’s not around to cart her back to The Lawns. No Don, either. I managed to swipe his letter from the doormat yesterday before anyone noticed, recognizing his bold loopy handwriting from postcards he’s sent over the years. I fed it, unopened, into the campfire I made in the woods. The envelope corner caught in the embers and made the most perfect leap of vein-blue flame.

  I watch Mother and try to remember what she was like before she lost his baby and herself. It’s difficult. Like trying to remember someone who moved away ages ago. But I do know that when I left for school in the morning, I always looked forward to coming home. I didn’t dread it as I have this last year. And if Mother was in a different room, she was still tangibly around, a presence, bustling and busy, light on her feet. Now the more I’m around her, the more I miss her. She makes a different noise walking up the stairs.

  Everyone was drawn to her then. They didn’t cross the street to avoid her. If she was on the front steps clipping the wisteria for a vase, a neighbor would pop up, wanting to chat, peering over her shoulder into our hallway, hoping to work their way inside for a good poke about and a slice of my mother’s famous toffee flan, which smiled inside your mouth. If that failed, they’d take the back route: I knew I was invited to other girls’ houses just so their mothers could meet mine. Maybe get a seat at one of my parents’ famous dinner parties.

  I loved those, the laughter and chatter and chink of glasses, the orange noses of cigarettes moving about the dark garden. It was my job to stab the foil-covered grapefruit halves with skewers of cheddar cheese cubes and pineapple chunks and to take guests’ coats as they came in. After that, I’d settle on the staircase, forehead pressed against the banisters, and enjoy seeing things I wasn’t meant to see. Snooty Mrs. Pickering crying, facing the wall, dabbing her mascara, then gliding back into the party, cocktail in hand, smiling like she was having the best evening of her life. The woman from the big house on Regent’s Park, switching my mother’s seating placements so she was put next to Don at dinner. I’d tell Mother all this the next day and she’d erupt with laughter, cracking the greenish clay of the Avon face mask she liked to use the morning after a party. “No secrets, Hera,” I remember her saying with a wink. “You can tell me anything.” And I’d puff up with happiness. Like it was us against the world.

  And then it changed. After the baby, I couldn’t tell her anything. Nothing that mattered, anyway. I didn’t want to make her sadness worse. Daddy said we had to pretend the baby hadn’t happened, that this was the kindest thing.

  Looking down at Mother now, her forehead crinkly, her elbows sharp points, I’m not sure he was right. Also there’s a corner of a yellow cot blanket poking out from under her pillow, making me wonder if she sleeps with it every night, like Teddy sleeps with Koala. Although waking her up and asking, “Do you think about the baby all the time too?” still feels like a very bad idea, I find myself talking quietly, under my breath, confiding how much I miss my baby sister. How I looked down from my bedroom window that night into the bundle in the midwife’s arms but still can’t remember what I saw: my brain fogged up like a cold winter window, all the images scrubbed out.

  At this, Mother sighs and turns onto her side. I have to fight the urge to scramble into bed and spoon against her, like I used to as a little girl.

  I lean closer, my elbows digging into my knees, watching her, and a nice warm feeling spreads in my chest, like a color. It feels good being honest, more like it used to be, just the two of us, chatting, confiding secrets, and I hear myself telling her about the notebook I found in Big Rita’s room. The moment I’ve said it, I feel bad, like I’ve betrayed Big Rita. Worse, Mother’s breath catches and changes, quivering the lace panel of her nightie. I cover my mouth with my hand, wondering if I’ve said too much. If she’s not as asleep as I thought. But then she starts snoring lightly, like a purr, and I realize she can’t have heard, and it’ll all be fine.

  15

  Sylvie

  The column of holiday traffic inches slowly west in the heat. I drum my fingers impatiently on the steering wheel and glance across at the adjacent lane, at all the family vehicles stuffed with duvets and bags. Frazzled mothers twisting round in their seats trying to placate their kids with rice cakes and electronic devices. They still think that’s the difficult bit.

  When the traffic grinds to a halt, I call Caroline to break the news. At first she thinks Mum’s died. She can’t comprehend what I’m saying. “Slow down, Sylvie, what?” So I repeat it. No, she hasn’t misheard. Pregnant. No, not me! Christ. Annie! An accident, yes, of course, the Elliot boy. A massive cluster fuck. Steve’s in bits. Yesterday Elliot’s awful mother called and said God knows what to Annie. Annie stormed out. None of her friends have seen her. She texted me last night: I’m safe. Just need some space. x. And her cell phone’s been switched off since. I’m going out of my mind.

  “A backlash maybe,” I wonder out loud. Until this summer, Annie’s freedom has been of the risk-assessed sort. Steve’s tracked her location via her phone, following her on his iPad, like one of those sky maps on the back of airplane seats. I’ve searched for the houses of proposed sleepovers on Google Earth, looking for signs of disrepute and fighting dogs. And phoned the mother, just to check. We’ve been overprotective, made her too trusting . . .

  “Is she at Mum’s?” asks Caroline, cutting through the white noise of self-recrimination. “If I were her, I’d go there.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” I say, relieved I’m not going completely mad. “I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  The village is hugged between bulky cliffs. It forces you to wind toward it along a meandering coast road, past the dairy farm, with its dank manure gusts, the pub, then the stone harbor wall from which I’d jump as a teen, whooping, into the jelly-green water. I drive farther down the hill, past the old church, with its fishermen’s graves staring out to sea, then swing into my mother’s drive.

  “Crap.” Annie’s car is not here.

  Once I’m inside, the cottage has never felt emptier. I walk down the hallway, past the watermarked antique maps framed on the walls. The wooden sign Annie made Mum years ago: RITA’S BEACH RETREAT. On the console table, a clutter of family photos and a wooden bowl full of redundant keys. On the floor, the heart tug of my mother’s hooflike old clogs, and Dad’s chunky fishing-rope doorstop, always hazardously placed so you tripped coming back from the pub, tipsy in the dark.

  No sign Annie’s been here.

  But in the kitchen, my spirits soar. There’s a half-drunk mug of tea on the table. Cold. Not moldy. Upstairs, the beds are still made. Could Annie have slept on the sofa? She’s always enjoyed sleeping on sofas, under a blanket, like a puppy. I peer into the living room. Yes, the sofa’s messy, strewn with blankets. She’s been here. I call Steve. There’s a woman’s voice in the background as he picks up, a voice that suddenly goes silent. I don’t care who she is this time. I’m distilled into one thing only, Annie’s mother, like a rapid contraction of a pupil to a
tiny black dot.

  We agree it’s best I stay put rather than risk missing Annie by going out to look for her. After dutifully watering Mum’s wilting potted plants, I’m not sure what to do with myself. My mother’s absence lies heavily on this house. Little things she’s left behind: reading glasses, open on a shelf; library books, now overdue. Time reels back to other summer evenings spent here, mundane enough at the time, now weighted with an almost unbearable poignancy. It’s all so familiar it hurts. The nougat scent of my mother’s bourbon roses outside the kitchen window. The taste of the tap water.

  On top of this, my body pines for Annie on a cellular level, as it did when I’d leave her at nursery and my day was marked in beats until we could be yoked together again. I had work to distract me then. But here each tick of the wall clock is like a peck. My head keeps stumbling into the wrong places: the cells inside Annie’s womb multiplying; the electric pulse of a heart; the curled shrimp of an embryo; tiny fingernails forming, like buds. Stop. Don’t go there. She can’t possibly have the baby.

  I wander restlessly into the sitting room and collapse onto an armchair, head in hands. It’s only when I look up I see it. There on the coffee table, a faded yellow A4 folder. I read the label on the front once, twice, not processing, the shock delayed. Written in my mother’s confident curlicue-heavy hand: Summer 1971. Jesus. Where on earth did Annie find this? I’ve not seen it before.

  The past breathes on the back of my neck. After a while, I risk lifting the folder’s lip. A ruffle of yellowing newspaper pages. As I start to part them with shaky fingers, the doorbell rings. My heart drums double time. I fling down the folder.

  * * *

  Not Annie. He’s over six foot. Wearing baggy skate-boy jeans and a New York baseball cap. He peers hopefully over my shoulder into the hall. “Is Annie in?”

  “No. No, she’s not.” I look at him more sharply, wondering, holding my hair off my face in the salt sting of wind blowing off the sea. “Excuse me, but you’re not . . . ?”

  “Elliot.” He smiles, then blanches, guessing who I am.

  So this is the mysterious Elliot. He’s quite something, athletic and handsome in that scruffy, privileged English way, with eyes of boy-band blue, ringed by thick dark lashes. I can understand how eyes like that could get a girl into trouble.

  I can’t stop staring. I find myself stupidly wondering what their child would look like. “I’m Sylvie. Annie’s mother.”

  “Hi,” he says inadequately. He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple rising and falling, and takes off his baseball cap, revealing floppy dark blond hair.

  “Do you want to come in?” I’m already stepping aside.

  He clearly doesn’t but is too well mannered to say so. In the kitchen, he’s all shoulders and enormous feet, too big for the room. Too young for the mess in which he finds himself. Perspiration beads on his forehead.

  “Would you like something to drink?” The question does nothing to ease the fundamental awkwardness of the situation. “Tea? A glass of water?”

  “I’m good, thank you.” His eyes look trapped and I notice the half-moon smudges of stress shadows beneath them. A muscle twitches on the side of his jaw. Stubble. He hasn’t shaved today. “I should go . . .” he starts to say apologetically.

  “Annie’s been here,” I say hurriedly, riding a fresh wave of anxiety. “But she’s gone out. And her phone’s still off.” Why is Annie even thinking about distant family history when her future is pressing so urgently? I take a breath. “Have you any idea where she might be?”

  “I don’t know. Sorry.” Beneath his private-school bluster, there’s a disarming vulnerability. Sweetness mixed with just the right amount of damage. Annie would have been drawn to that. “She just told me she was heading down to Devon, that’s all. She was, like, pretty abrupt. Didn’t want to talk.”

  “She did? Hang on a minute, let me get the timing straight.” Something about his wary expression makes me wonder if I look slightly unhinged. My mind is racing at a million miles an hour. “You spoke after your mother phoned her, right?”

  “My mother?” It’s his turn to panic. He steps back and crashes into the sideboard, like a clumsy animal banging against the sides of his pen. Plates rattle. “My mother called Annie?” he repeats in disbelief.

  “At the apartment. You didn’t know?” Helen hadn’t asked his permission. Wow. “She upset Annie. A lot. She should have told you.”

  “What . . . what did my mother say?” He winces, bracing.

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  “Man.” He turns toward the door, clutching his phone. I suspect Helen’s about to get an earful.

  “Oh, don’t go yet.” I grab his arm. He glances down at my hand, which I quickly remove, fearing I’m overstepping the mark. “Given the circumstances . . .” He has the decency to blush. I do my best to smile encouragingly. “Annie said you’re from London?”

  He nods. “I just drove down.”

  “I don’t mind if you wait here. Really. I’d like it.” Oh. That came out wrong. He looks terrified, as if I’ve just propositioned him. “I’m sure Annie won’t want to miss you,” I add quickly.

  “Actually . . .” For a heartbreaking moment he looks like he might cry. He bites the inside of his cheek. “She didn’t want to see me. I should be respecting her space.”

  He’s edging down the hall. He can walk away from the whole situation. Annie can’t.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I can see that” is the kindest thing I can say. He’s sincere at least. Seagulls cackle overhead.

  Outside on the drive, the sunset sends my stress levels soaring. How much daylight have we left? I think of those cliffs, their putty-like crumbling edges, the jagged teeth beneath. Annie slipping like Mum. Should I phone the coast guard? The police? Go looking for her myself? I’ll give her another twenty minutes. No, ten.

  I watch Elliot fold into his vehicle sideways, like men with long legs do. A silver four-by-four. The sort of car wealthy Londoners think is essential in Devon, as if all our roads were dirt donkey tracks.

  “Nice to meet you, Elliot.” Wondering if this may also be the last time I see him, I bend down to the window, hands on my knees, and peer inside: a scuffed paddleboard across the back seat, an empty Pepsi bottle, a battered Lee Child paperback, and a dirty pair of trainers. A small glimpse into the young man with whom my daughter’s spent her summer—someone Mum said Annie was head over heels with not so long ago. Watching his car accelerate gustily into the mackerel sky, kicking up clouds of dust, I can see why Annie fell for him. But I don’t understand why she’s kept him a secret.

  16

  Rita

  Rita prods the potatoes under the boiling water with a wooden spoon. “Anyone getting that?” she shouts to no one in particular. “Someone’s at the door.”

  A moment later, Teddy skids into the kitchen in his socks, arms aeroplaned. “Neeeoooaw . . . It’s Robbie. He wants to see you, Big Rita.”

  “Me?” The blood rushes from her head. Her newly shaved legs burn. “I’m cooking. Tell him . . . I can’t.”

  As if yesterday morning wasn’t humiliating enough. She’s still cringing: she’d leaped at Robbie with a fallen branch and yelled, “Get back, Fingers!” like some sort of banshee. He hadn’t even flinched, just politely inquired as to why she was wearing his boots.

  “I’m used to signposted streets. One tree looks much like another,” she’d explained briskly, shivering. He covered her shoulders with his heavy and slightly whiffy waxed jacket. She’d noticed his big, not very clean carpenter’s hands with flat square fingernails, like windows. Hands out of proportion to his height. He came up to her nose, so she got a bird’s-eye view through the unbuttoned opening of his frayed shirt, the plank of a lean, hard torso, corded with muscle. He caught her looking too. And his speckled mud-brown eyes were the creasy, dancing sort. Laughing
at her.

  He’d refused to take the darn boots back. Said they looked much better on her. She took this to be some sort of weak joke at her expense. Men were always doing this, short men especially. Worse, the joke prompted them both to glance down and witness the legs she’d not shaved since London, pelted with hair, emerging from the boots. A furry leg shouldn’t matter—she’d sworn off men for good—but somehow it did. Somehow it mattered a lot. After that, she’d rushed inside, her dressing gown bristling with thistle burrs, and bumped into Hera, who was emerging from Jeannie’s bedroom, looking extremely shifty.

  It felt like they’d both been in places that they shouldn’t that night.

  “I’ll tell him.” Teddy pirouettes on his heel, arms flung open, ready for takeoff. But it’s too late.

  There he is. Standing by the kitchen door, smiling shyly. Rita stirs the bubbling pan more vigorously. She prays Teddy will not say anything silly. He teased her about the misadventure at breakfast, and Rita told him to shut his cakehole, which wasn’t very Rita-ish at all, and made Hera and Teddy laugh so hard, she feared Teddy was choking.

  “Are you okay, Rita?”

  She sneaks a sidelong glance. He’s smiling—gloating?

  “Without question.” She also notices he’s carrying something in his hand, a wrap of brown paper, like a roll of sliced ham. “I’d have found my own way back, you know.”

  “I brought something.” He walks closer and tries to hand her the parcel. But she has to put down the spoon first and wipe her damp hand on her apron, and both small acts seem exaggerated and clumsy. When their fingertips brush, something in her abdomen tightens. “It’s nothing much,” he says. Hera and Teddy bob closer, impatient for her to open it.