The Last Lost Girl

by Maria Hoey

  “We had to keep her,” said Gayle. “She was Lilly’s child. What else could we do?” It was not a question but a flat statement of fact.

  “Lilly’s child and you kept that from me,” said Jacqueline, “Everyone knew it and I didn’t.”

  “Everyone didn’t know it,” said Gayle. “Only the people who were there that night.”

  “What about Alison?” said Jacqueline. “Does she know it?”

  Gayle shook her head. “How could we tell her? We couldn’t, not without telling her everything and we couldn’t do that. You must see that. Alison knows nothing – as far as she’s concerned she’s ours.” The expression in her eyes darkened to what Jacqueline recognised as defiance. “She is ours.”

  “So how exactly did you make that work?” Jacqueline returned to her chair. She was surprised to discover an almost academic interest in the answer. “Isn’t that sort of thing against the law or something?”

  “I’ll tell you how we made it work,” Eddie said. “We broke the law and committed fraud and we lied and we kept on lying. That’s how we made it work.”

  “We registered Alison as a home birth,” said Gayle. “You have forty-two days to do that. And you know, technically that wasn’t a lie, because Alison had actually been born in our house, so technically –”

  “So technically you only lied about who her parents were,” said Jacqueline. Even to her own ears she sounded bitter and Gayle flinched visibly.

  “There was nothing else we could do,” she said. “Except hand her over to the authorities, and we were never going to do that. Right from the beginning there was no doubt in our minds that we were going to do whatever it took to keep her. But even then we could never relax. I kept expecting a knock on the door. I kept expecting that someone would find out we’d falsified the records, or that Mam would say something to someone or that Luca would turn up. Of course, he didn’t even know about the baby but Ned Early did – and in any case he could have come looking for Lilly. Poor Luca, I used to feel so guilty about him. I knew he didn’t even know about the baby and Lilly did say they’d been fighting like cats and dogs the last two years or so. But still …”

  “Luca got married in June 1985,” said Jacqueline. “I guess he gave up searching for her a lot sooner than I did.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Gayle. “I know you must feel angry and hurt and –”

  “Is that how I sound?” said Jacqueline. “Because I have no idea how I feel. But at least one thing makes sense now: just why it was all so odd about Alison.”

  “We had to make up that story about there being complications with the pregnancy,” said Gayle. “I knew you thought there was something weird going on.”

  “I thought it was because of Eddie,” said Jacqueline. “That you were afraid to let Mam and Dad know you were having a baby with him.” She looked at Eddie. “It wasn’t about you at all, it was never about you.”

  Eddie shook his head. “It was a bit,” he said, “at first. Frank was never going to be happy about Gayle and me. And after what happened, after we did what we had to do that night, he could hardly bear to look at me. To be honest, I felt much the same way. And Stella, well …” He looked at Gayle mournfully.

  “And with Alison it was so difficult,” said Gayle. “That first time I brought her home, no wonder you picked up on the atmosphere, Jacqueline. She was Lilly’s child, all they had of her and they loved her. Dad needed to see her, he wanted her in the house, he wanted to see more of her. But it was too much for Mam. I don’t think she could ever see Alison without being reminded of what she had done – not that she was ever likely to forget.”

  “That’s why she left Dad and went to live up the road with Florence,” said Jacqueline. “She couldn’t stay in the house where she’d killed Lilly.”

  “It was an accident.” Gayle’s expression was suddenly mulish. “I will never believe it was anything but a terrible accident. And it would never have happened if I hadn’t let myself be bullied by Lilly into turning up on the doorstep like that without any warning. And I can tell you this much, Dad never blamed Mam, not really. But you’re right, Jacqueline, Mam always blamed herself. No matter how much I tried to make her see that what happened was an accident, the result of a moment of anger, she never could let herself off the hook. She said it was because of the anger that she blamed herself. She hadn’t meant to kill Lilly, of course she hadn’t, but she had wanted to hurt her, that was what she told me. She said that the moment she realised Lilly had been with Eddie and me all that time, had had the baby with us and spent Christmas, it made her feel so angry she could hardly breathe. Those months when Lilly was with us and didn’t bother to let her and Dad know she was back and safe – Mam said it was those months more than all the years that had gone before that made her snap. It was the selfishness, she said, the thoughtlessness. She had wanted to shake Lilly, to slap her, and that was why she’d jumped up and started fussing with the flowers. That was why she could never forgive herself for that spur of the moment action with the vase on the stairs, because it had already been in her heart to strike Lilly. And that was why she wanted to turn herself in to the police and would have, if it hadn’t been for Dad – and there was Alison of course. To stop her confessing he had to keep on reminding her of what that would do to Alison, what would happen to her if the truth ever came out. He said they might even have taken her away from us, and that Mam owed it to Lilly to make sure that would never happen. And so, Mam saw that and she kept quiet – not for herself but for Lilly and for Alison. But it ate at her from the inside.”

  “What will you do?” said Gayle again.

  Eddie had left them alone and Dot had come in quietly with yet another fresh pot of tea and a plate, this time of cake. Bending down to transfer dishes from the tray to the table, Dot had fixed her gaze with firm intent on Jacqueline.

  “Are you alright?” she said, her voice somehow managing to be both gentle and fierce at the same time.

  And, meeting Dot’s eyes Jacqueline saw in them unadulterated concern and it came to her: she really cares about me. If I asked her to run Gayle and Eddie from the house this minute, she would do it. A small shock of gratitude made her reach out and touch the back of Dot’s hand.

  “I’m okay, Dot, but thank you.”

  Now Jacqueline looked around her. In a thoughtless moment, she had called this place home. She had even admitted to herself that she liked the house, with its shabby but dignified senescence, that it did, in some odd way seem more like home than the house in Donegal. And now it was the place where she had finally heard and had to face the truth. Did that, she wondered, mean it was forever tainted with that tale of violence and secrets and hidden grief? She thought about Dot, endlessly supplying them with unwanted food, about her see-through hair and her sad smiles, her open-ended offer of hospitality and this most recent show of protectiveness.

  “I’ll probably just hang on here a bit,” Jacqueline said to Gayle when Dot left. “I know that’s not what you meant by ‘What will you do?’, but I quite literally mean that I’m not going to do anything.” As Gayle buried her face in her hanky, Jacqueline added, “But I would like to see Alison soon, and her baby. For God’s sake, when are they going to give the child a name? We can’t keep on calling her Alison’s baby for evermore.”

  Gayle looked up. “She wants to call her Lilly. She texted me about it earlier today. It was all her own idea, nobody said anything to her. But I told her I didn’t know how you’d feel about it, and Alison said she would only do it if it was okay with us? What should I tell her, Jacqueline?”

  “Tell her I think it’s a lovely idea,” said Jacqueline.

  “You can tell her yourself,” said Gayle, “when you see her. But, Jacqueline, you won’t … you’d never say anything to Alison, would you? You’d never tell her the truth?”

  Jacqueline looked at the strained, tired face of her sister, the fearful eyes watching her intently.

  “As far as I’m concerned,”
she said, “the truth is that Lilly disappeared in 1976 and I never saw her again.”

  Chapter 54

  Now

  “Where are you, Jacqueline?”

  “I’m in the orchard.”

  “Are you alright? Is it done?”

  “It’s done, the For Sale sign is in the garden. I’m alright, Gayle, don’t worry about me. How are you and how are Roy and Eddie?”

  “Roy is fine, still surgically attached to his phone. And Eddie is great, completely obsessed with his first grandchild.”

  Lilly’s grandchild, thought Jacqueline. “And Alison?”

  “She’s doing great, Jacqueline, she’s wonderful with the baby. I don’t think it’s going to work out with the boyfriend, so she’s on her own.”

  “She’s not on her own,” said Jacqueline. “She has you and Eddie and Roy and me.”

  “Thank you, Jacqueline. I’m not worried about her – she’s a strong girl and she’s always known her own mind. Just like …”

  “Just like you,” said Jacqueline. “And how is – how is Lilly?”

  For a moment there was a silence on the line, then Gayle said, “I know, it’s strange, isn’t it, saying her name without …” Her voice trailed into silence.

  “Without it making you want to weep,” said Jacqueline.

  “Something like that,” said Gayle. “Oh Jacqueline, she’s a peach, Lilly is an absolute peach. You won’t believe how much she’s changed since you saw her.”

  Jacqueline thought about the little creature with the crinkled face, impossibly tiny, impossibly pink – about the power she wielded, not just over hearts but the power to separate past from present.

  She said, “I’d like to see her again soon, and Alison too, if that’s okay. I’ll be over again as soon as the house is sold.”

  “Of course it’s okay, I can’t wait,” said Gayle. “Alison will be delighted too – she’s awfully fond of you, Jacqueline. Are you still going back to Sea Holly Villa?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Has it something to do with the bird man?”

  “Magpie?” Jacqueline hesitated. “I don’t know…”

  She glanced over her shoulder to where Magpie was standing waiting for her under the oldest apple tree.

  “Maybe it has something to do with him, if he behaves himself, if he changes some of his ways like he says he will. But maybe it has to do with other people too …”

  For some reason, Jimmy Small – she could never call him Schmalz – and his picnic came into her head, and she thought about the day the taxi had driven her away from Sea Holly Villa. They had stood in the doorway hand in hand, Dot and Jimmy, waving until the car passed beyond the gates. And looking back, Jacqueline had remembered something her mother used to say, when at the end of some day-trip or outing, she, Lilly and Gayle started moaning that they did not want to go home. “Look back and you’ll come back,” she used to say.

  “But what will you do there, Jacqueline?”

  “I have no idea what I’ll do there, Gayle. Try to get on with living, I suppose – one promise at a time.”

  When she hung up, Jacqueline, moving slowly under the trees toward Magpie, thought about her father. She thought about the despair that moved him the day he took up his hatchet and hacked away the branches. She knew in her heart that those trees had no memory of that despair nor of her and Lilly here that last day. She felt nothing but the lingering sadness that would never leave her. She hoped that they were somewhere, her father, her mother and Lilly. And the thought came to her, that if they were anywhere at all, it was probably right here with her now in the orchard. That if they knew anything now they knew everything and, that being the case, surely what needed healing had been healed, what needed forgetting had been forgotten and what needed forgiving had been forgiven.

  The thought brought her peace and, as she reached Magpie, she was smiling.

  Chapter 55

  1976

  Jacqueline is pretending to read, but all the time she is watching Lilly. Closer and closer she comes, until Jacqueline can see her toenails: they are painted and glitter in the sunlight like little bright-pink helmets. Lilly is wearing her new platform sandals – espadrilles, she calls them, not sandals. They have laces that criss-cross Lilly’s brown legs, and the heels are chunky and high as two half-pounds of butter. Her dress is light blue and crinkly and it sways above Jacqueline’s head and, when Lilly stoops, there is the scent of newly washed hair – lemons among the apple trees.

  “Here, take it, you little sneak,” says Lilly, “and you better not tell if you know what’s good for you.”

  Jacqueline reaches up and takes the radio. It is still warm from the place under Lilly’s arm, “I won’t tell,” she says.

  “And don’t you dare break it either.”

  “I won’t break it, I’ll take really good care of it.” Jacqueline slides the silver aerial up as far as it will go.

  “Right, well, make sure you do,” says Lilly. “The coast is clear now so I’m going. Daddy’s gone to work and Mam’s gone to Florence McNally’s.”

  “Where’s Gayle?” asks Jacqueline.

  “How do I know where Gayle is? Now, do you know what you’re supposed to say?”

  Jacqueline closes her eyes and recites like a poem learned by heart, “Lilly had to go baby-sitting and they said they’ll be late.”

  “No, that’s wrong. You have to say that I’m baby-sitting for the Kellys.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Kellys are always late and I often stay over, that’s why, and they haven’t got a phone, so no one can check. Have you not paid attention to anything I told you?”

  “I did, but I forgot. Why can’t I just say that Sexy Sexton called for you?”

  “Because he’s a spiteful creep, that’s why, and he told me the next time he sees Daddy he’s going to tell him we broke up and why. And he’s going to tell Daddy that he didn’t take me to the dance tonight. So make sure you get it right, okay?”

  “Okay,” says Jacqueline. “Keep your hair on.”

  “You better not forget!” says Lilly.

  “I won’t forget,” says Jacqueline.

  She has her head bent over the radio and is busy twirling the silver dials. She is trying to find Radio Caroline and when she looks up again, Lilly has gone.

  Her sister forever lost in her own story, and she has not even watched her go.

  Finis

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