The Daughters of Foxcote Manor Read online

  She unfolds the paper, trying to keep her expression neutral. Inside: leaves? Leaves. Each one named in pencil on a parcel label, tied with string to the stem: silver birch, oak, holly, beech, elm . . .

  “A forest map, if you like.” His chest has flushed pink under his undone checked-shirt collar. She has the urge to cool it with the flat palm of her hand. “Once you know your trees, you got your street signposts,” he adds.

  She doesn’t know what to say. How long has it taken him, collecting the different leaves, labeling them like that? Why would he bother?

  “For teaching the kids,” he says, popping something inside her like a bubble.

  Of course! How awkward it would have been if the leaves were for her. Still, she knows she’ll lay them out on her bedroom floor later, when everyone’s gone to bed. She’ll study their colors and shapes, and whisper their names under her breath until they’re imprinted on her brain. “Thank you. Perfect, eh, Teddy?”

  Teddy nods and grins.

  Hera takes one and turns it by the stem, unimpressed. “Well, Big Rita’s made a forest in miniature,” she says proudly. “Under glass.”

  “Really?” He looks at her with intense curiosity. There’s a smile in his voice.

  “A few ferns in a little glass case, that’s all.” She wishes Hera would shut up. She feels baldly exposed. “A terrarium.”

  Rita worries this reveals something odd about her. Self-conscious under the directness of his gaze, she folds the leaves back into the paper, puts the parcel on a shelf and turns to the stove. She spikes a fork into a boiling potato to see if it’s soft enough to mash: it bounces, hard as a stone, and pings against the side of the pan; less of an eternity has passed than she thought.

  “There’s a dance tonight. Would you like to come? With me, I mean.”

  The fork slides from her grip into the bubbling pan. The heat from the stove has transferred to her face and is chemically reacting with the razor rash on her leg. She’s on fire. “I’m working. Sorry.”

  The silence is heavy and wet, and smells of potato starch. Hera plucks out an eyelash with her fingers and examines it.

  “Teddy, why don’t you see Robbie out?” Rita says stiffly.

  A moment later, Teddy returns, looking pleased with himself. He pulls two wooden dining chairs together and bridges across them with his upturned body, hands on one, feet on the other.

  Hera circuits the kitchen, grazing. She picks at the charred rump of Marge’s fruit loaf and skewers a sultana, then pops it into her mouth.

  “You have to go dancing, Big Rita,” says Teddy, upside down.

  “Don’t be a goose.” She removes a colander from a hook on the wall.

  “I told Robbie you secretly do want to go.” A dungaree strap unclasps itself, the buckle landing on the floor with a clink. He starts to sag in the middle.

  “For goodness sake, Teddy!”

  “But you can dress up!” he protests. Hera giggles through a mouthful of cake.

  “I’m not here to gad about. Stop that. You’ll hurt yourself, Teddy. Hera, leave the fruit loaf.”

  Teddy lands in a heap on the floor.

  Rita lowers the copper colander to his head. “You, on the other hand, can wear this.”

  Teddy pulls it down, his eyes glinting through the holes. “I’m a cabbage.”

  “You said it,” says Hera.

  * * *

  “I say, who was at the door?” Jeannie’s voice swims toward them.

  Teddy’s eyes widen and glitter through the colander holes. Hera’s mouth opens. Rita whips around. And there, unbelievably, is Jeannie, chalk-faced, wearing a glassy smile and a pearl-white silk dressing gown, edged with marabou feathers. She leans against the doorway, trembling like a moth.

  Rita is shocked by her appearance, the porridge-gray skin, the dry, frizzed hair. Jeannie used to have fat dark curls that shone like watered silk. Eyes like jewels. Today she looks like she’s been rubbed out.

  “Mummy!” Teddy charges at her, still wearing the colander. She hugs him with fumbling urgency and laughs. The colander falls off and clatters across the floor.

  “So who was it?” Jeannie asks more insistently. Her eyes are glassy.

  “Robbie. Robbie Rigby.” Rita enjoys the roll of Rs.

  Something in Jeannie’s face dims. “Oh.” She tenderly combs Teddy’s hair with her fingers. “Any letters for me?”

  “No post at all. I was wondering if we even got it here, actually.”

  Jeannie glances at Hera, then back at Rita again. “We should.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Rita sees Hera tuck one foot behind the other, looking uncomfortable, and wonders why. “Sorry, Jeannie.”

  “Anyone phoned?” Jeannie’s voice pitches with hope.

  “Someone did ring last night. But it went dead as I picked up.” Rita doesn’t say she pressed the handset buttons down with her fingers, cutting the caller off. Anything to avoid questions from Walter. It only occurred to her afterward that it might have been Don Armstrong, trying his luck again. And she was doubly glad she’d done it.

  “Will you go to the fete tomorrow, Mummy?” Teddy grabs Jeannie’s hand and waggles it, delighted with her. Hera is more wary.

  “Fete?” Jeannie yawns.

  “Marge says the coconuts are all nailed on.” Teddy taps the side of his nose. Hera ruffles his hair.

  Jeannie shoots a look of alarm at Rita. “Marge? Has she been here a lot?”

  “She does like to pop in,” Rita answers diplomatically, trying to shield her.

  “Every day,” Hera needles. “Twice a day.”

  “I’ve explained you’ve been under the weather.” Rita feels uncomfortable repeating the lie in front of the children. “Migraines. Hay fever.”

  “Yes, yes, terrible hay fever.” Jeannie steadies herself on the chunky newel-post. “Gosh, yes.”

  “Take my hand, Mummy.” Teddy tugs her forward carefully, as if his mother were extremely old. “That’s it. Careful.”

  In the kitchen, Jeannie nibbles at a dry salted cracker while the children watch her, fascinated, as if a unicorn has joined them for tea. “What did Robbie want?” Jeannie asks.

  “Oh, nothing really.” Rita plunges her hands into the warm soapy water, searching for the cutlery swimming along the bottom.

  “He invited Big Rita to a dance tonight.” Teddy edges onto his mother’s knee, gingerly, not sure if he’ll break it.

  “Then you must go, Rita,” Jeannie says.

  Her hands still under the water. “Oh. No. Really, Jeannie. I don’t want to.”

  “You mean you don’t dare leave me in charge?” There’s a catch in her voice. “Rita, I want to look after them. I’m their mother, after all. Not you.”

  Rita’s face grows hot. It’s been too easy to forget that these last few days. She’s just the nanny. She’ll always be just the nanny, the cuckoo in the nest. And Jeannie wants some time alone with her children. She wants her out of the way. Natural enough. Emptying the sink, she loops the plug on its chain around the tap, feeling oddly flat.

  “One should never turn down an opportunity to dance, Rita. Don’t worry about us. We’ll have fun.” Jeannie smiles, and Rita can sense how desperately she wants to please her children. “What do you fancy doing this evening, Teddy? Hera? Anything you like?”

  “A bonfire,” says Hera, not missing a beat. Teddy claps his hands.

  17

  Sylvie

  I’m standing on the bones of a long-dead fisherman in the graveyard, frantically scanning the horizon, when I see Annie’s car winding along the coast road. My heart leaps. I pinball away from the church, down the lane, the hill, my feet tripping over each other. She turns and sees me and laughs. She actually laughs. “Mum!”

  I grab her and hug her tight. I’m so primed for another disaster, a bit
of me can’t believe she’s actually alive at all.

  “What are you doing here?” She pulls back, astonished. “You look completely mental. What’s happened?”

  “What’s happened?” I try not to lose it. “Bloody hell, Annie, you left the apartment yesterday without saying good-bye and didn’t say where you were going. Sent me some cryptic text. And your phone isn’t on!”

  “You’re always telling me to turn my phone off. Digital sunset.”

  “Not now! Me and Dad have been climbing the walls.”

  “Sorry.” She winces, grasping the trouble she’s caused.

  Holding Annie by the arms, I search for signs of emotional distress. Yet she appears to be billowing with hormones and youth—and a breezy insouciance quite out of kilter with her situation. “Are you okay?”

  Her eyes gleam with sea light. “I’m fine.”

  You’re not fine, I think, you’re fricking pregnant. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

  “Mum, I’m keeping the baby,” she blurts.

  I turn very slowly. “What?”

  She puts a hand on her flat stomach. “I’m not getting rid of it.”

  “But . . . but . . .” The world tilts, changes, like something picked up and put down again on its side. “You don’t need to make a decision straightaway.”

  “I’ve decided.”

  “What? But . . .” My voice wavers. I barely recognize the girl standing in front of me. She’s never felt less mine, more herself. Scared of pushing her into a corner, I pick my words carefully. “You’ve been very upset about Granny. When death feels close, it’s easy to be drawn toward new beginnings . . . new life.”

  She’s shaking her head.

  “It’s natural for someone your age to want a baby, even subconsciously,” I blather on. “It’s hormones. Humanity ensuring its survival. A . . . a biological trick.”

  Her face flushes scarlet, like it does before she starts to cry. She looks away, biting her lip. “I knew you’d freak.”

  “I’m not freaking.” I am. “Annie, please . . .”

  “I didn’t want to get pregnant, okay? It’s a major disaster. But it’s happened. And I can’t bear the thought of . . . It’s not a moral thing, Mum. But the baby feels real to me. I . . . I didn’t expect it to.” Annie blows out, as if trying to explain exhausts her. “Look, can we just go for a walk along the beach or something? I’d rather talk there. Granny’s house without Granny in it makes me feel weird.”

  The rays of late-evening sun varnish the sand’s hard, rippled ridges. We swing our shoes in our hands. If it weren’t for the snarl-up that our family life has become, this would be a picture-perfect mother-and-daughter moment. And this makes it worse. As I listen to Annie, my eyes swim with tears.

  “I’ve been googling it,” she’s saying earnestly, reinvigorated by bracing sea air. “There are crèche facilities for Cambridge undergraduates now, bursaries and things. I’m not the first, honestly. I can still do it all. Just in a different way. And a year later.”

  Do it all? Her naiveté and courage make me want to sob. My little girl. Not yet finished. “Annie, you’re eighteen.”

  “Nearly nineteen.”

  “You’ve got your life ahead of you. I can’t . . . I can’t tell you how big it is. Motherhood. It’s just huge. It’ll limit your choices, your freedom. And it’s . . . undoable.” I daren’t tell her about the moment she was born when, still waxy from the womb, she lay on my stomach and peered into my eyes, as if to say, So there you are. How it was—still is—the most profound moment of my life. “No one knows. Not before. You think you do. But then it hits you like a heavy goods train.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, Annie, I’ve loved being your mother. Having you transformed my life. I . . .” Appallingly, I start crying, like I’m somehow making it all about me. There are so many forces at work, too many feelings I can barely articulate hissing under the surface of the conversation. And I am culpable. Guilty. If I hadn’t left Steve when I did, she wouldn’t have fled down here for the summer and she wouldn’t have met Elliot with the boy-band-blue eyes.

  “It’ll work out, Mum.”

  This kills me. “I should be the one reassuring you.”

  “But you can’t, can you?” she flares.

  I can smell suppressed anger, muffled and dense, like the slumps of blackening seaweed on the shore. The tide crashes in and we jump back up the sand. “I’m not going to pretend it’s going to be easy, Annie,” I shout, over the rumpus of the water. “I’m not going to lie to you.”

  She snorts. Her jeans are wet. And there’s a quivering drop of sea spray on one of her long red lashes.

  “Annie . . .”

  “So you’re not worrying about what your friends will think?”

  “No!” Although, now she’s mentioned it, I realize it’s hardly going to be a smug granny-to-be Facebook announcement. No midlife freedom signaling for me. I wonder who Annie’s told already, if the word’s out, if the mothers have already started frenziedly texting one another, exchanging horrified faux sympathy, then marching their daughters down to the doctor’s to get hormonal implants. There’s always been an unspoken fear that pregnancy, like suicide or eating disorders, might be catching. Our brilliant golden girls, ready to change the world, not nappies.

  “You’ve always told me to listen to my gut and not to care what other people think.”

  I immediately wish I hadn’t.

  “Granny would understand.” Her voice breaks.

  What would Mum do? Embrace it, probably. Move in with Annie if she wanted, offer up her services as a great-granny-cum-nanny. There’s nothing Mum loves more than a baby. The tide hisses back.

  “Where’s Elliot in all this?” I ask carefully.

  Annie stares out at the darkening sea, arms crossed, hair blowing. “Not with me.”

  I wonder if in my efforts to prove I’m okay I’ve made single life look too easy. “We’re not islands, Annie.”

  “My body.”

  “For sure.”

  “His mother said on the phone that Elliot’s already dating someone else.” She looks away, biting back tears. “I’m not under any illusions.”

  “Well, he still called around earlier. To check you were okay.”

  Annie whips around to me, her mouth an O. “You met Elliot?”

  I nod. “He drove all the way down from London. But he wouldn’t wait around. I guess he didn’t want to hang out with me. It was kind of intense. Sorry, I should have told you straightaway.” I try to smile. “You threw me a bit.”

  Her face seems to flicker with millions of tiny shocks.

  The tide is gushing in faster now, the current lassoing my ankles. My toes are numb with cold. “Annie, one other thing . . .” I take a breath. “You left a folder out on the coffee table.” Annie blinks rapidly, her skin paling under her freckles. “Summer, 1971 written on the front?”

  “I . . . I found it, in Granny’s desk.” Her eyes glint defensively. The horizon darkens to a squid-ink line. “Is that not allowed?”

  Distrust starts to curdle around us, like the sea. I kick myself for mentioning the folder. Why didn’t I just pretend I never saw it? Brush the whole thing off? Our family history is barbed and tangled, unwieldy as the mound of fishing line farther up the beach. Certainly not for Annie at this point in her life. She bristles and turns to walk up the marshy beach. “Let’s get back,” I say, running alongside her, burying the conversation. “You need to eat.”

  I register the rumble too late. One moment Annie’s shouting, “There you go again! Let’s never talk about that summer—let’s pretend it never happened . . .” The next a monstrous rogue wave is exploding against our backs, thumping us into the churning salty black.

  18

  Rita

  A couple on a bicycle whiz past, the woman on t
he saddle, her arms around the pedaling man’s waist, her red dress puffed like a sail. They throw the bike against the village-hall wall and, holding hands, run inside. Another woman totters by wearing stiletto heels, green as a Granny Smith.

  A familiar feeling of being in some fundamental way wrong empties over Rita. Why did she think it a good idea to wear her dreary navy A-line skirt and flat brown shoes again? To shove her one flattering blancmange-pink cardigan back into her drawer? She didn’t want to look like she was trying and be silently mocked for failing. Nor did she want to attract attention. But she has a habit of solving one problem by creating another, and she now stands out in her plainness, like a turnip in a flowerbed. She realizes how entrenched she’s become in her job, how far she’s drifted from carefree people of her own age. Robbie, she notices, stealing a quick sidelong glance, has made an effort, even if it does give him the air of a boy dressed by his mother. His shirt’s pressed. His wavy hair is greased and swept to one side, already sprouting loose. “Shall we?” he asks.

  She nods, even though she wants to say, No, thank you very much, we most definitely shall not. They walk inside the village hall, under the flapping Union Jack bunting, into the music and sweat and laughter.

  “Don’t fell her by mistake, eh, Robbie,” calls out a young man in a checked shirt, clutching a sparrowlike girl and blowing cigarette smoke carelessly into her blond hair.

  “Or cut her down to size,” another bellows.

  “Stop it, Alf.” The blond girl laughs. “Just because you’d like another few inches.”

  It’s already worse than she imagined.

  “What can I get you to drink?” Robbie doesn’t defend her or wisecrack back at the blokes. Fred’s butcher’s fists would have been whirring: he relished any invitation to fight. Instead Robbie smiles at her, his eyes searching and receptive, as if they’re collecting information. “They’re just jealous.”

  It takes a moment for her to believe he’s not teasing, that he’s perfectly sincere. “A Babycham. Thank you.” She prefers beer. Earth-brown ale, like her dad used to drink. But girls can’t order beer. Tall girls especially—or they look like brickies.