Yes, My Darling Daughter

by Margaret Leroy

  The manager comes, a young, gangly man with pitted skin and an appalled look.

  “Madam, is everything all right?” he asks me.

  “No, not really. Look, we’ll just go,” I tell him.

  I leave my basket of shopping, pull Sylvie down the aisle and out onto the pavement. The manager watches us helplessly; everyone is watching us. My body feels thin, brittle, as though I could easily break. Sylvie goes on screaming.

  I drag her through the door of the flat and into the living room.

  I’m shouting at her.

  “Sylvie, stop it, stop it.” My voice is high, harsh. I know this is pointless, but I can’t help it.

  She screams louder.

  I want to scream back at her. I feel such rage that I can’t get through, can’t reach her, that she behaves as though I don’t exist. I have to make her notice me. The rage surges through me, blinds me. I hit her hard, in the face. My hand makes a loud sound.

  At once she stops screaming. It’s like the sound is torn off. The skin is red where I hit her. She puts her hand to the sore place. She turns to me, her pupils like pinpricks. I see such hate in her face. She opens her mouth and screams again.

  I go into the kitchen and slam the door behind me.

  I sit at the kitchen table. I rub my hand across my face, and my hand is wet and I realize I am weeping. All the rage has left me. I feel weak, tired, bitterly ashamed. I can hear the sound in my head of my hand on her face, and it horrifies me. There are words in my head, over and over. I can’t do this, I can’t, I can’t do it . . . The words go around inside me. I can’t do this . . . I let myself cry for a long time.

  Eventually I wipe my face on my sleeve. I feel light-headed, detached now, drained of feeling. I just sit for a while at my table, staring out the window, which looks out over the alley and across to the next block of flats. There are Dumpsters, and a telephone wire that stretches across the alley, and a sliver of sky with white clouds scudding across it. A bird has landed on the wire, a ragged sparrow that clings on tight as the wire swings about in the wind. I watch the bird for a moment. It’s so tiny, fragile, all knocked about, buffeted by the gusts of wind, and I feel a little afraid for it, afraid the wind will blow it off, as though just for a moment I’m forgetting it can fly.

  In the living room behind me, Sylvie is still screaming. I open the drawer of the dresser and take out Adam Winters’s card.

  He answers at once.

  “Adam Winters.” His brisk work voice.

  “Adam. It’s Grace. You know, Grace Reynolds.”

  “Grace.” He sounds surprised. “How are you? How’s it all going?” I take a deep breath.

  “Not good, really. Sylvie’s left nursery now. And today she’s just screaming and screaming . . .”

  “I rather gathered that.” The way he says it, dryly, makes me feel that perhaps this isn’t the end of the world, a child crying.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” I tell him. “I want to make an appointment. I want to see you again.”

  “Okay.” He sounds pleased. “Where are you? Are you at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “I could come round now. Would that suit you?”

  “You mean here? To my place?”

  “Yes. It’s no problem,” he says.

  It’s suddenly all moving so fast. But I have made my decision.

  “Okay,” I tell him.

  “It’s Highfields, isn’t it? Give me half an hour.”

  I go back into the living room. Sylvie is still crying, but more quietly. I kneel beside her and hold her. Her body feels loose and floppy now. In spite of all the crying, her skin is cold to the touch.

  “I’m sorry I hit you,” I say. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  I rock her gently and stroke her back and feel her breathing slow.

  “You feel so cold,” I tell her.

  I carry her into the bedroom and tuck her up in bed and give her Big Ted and a picture book that has her favorite rhymes—“Little Bo Peep,” and “Hey Diddle Diddle,” and “Mother, may I go out to swim? Yes, my darling daughter . . .”

  “You can stay here till you feel better,” I say. “You can just stay in bed for a bit and look at some books.”

  She opens the book mechanically, scarcely glancing at it.

  The picture of Coldharbour is stuck to the side of her wardrobe. It has a ragged look where she takes it down to slip it under her pillow. It’s hanging crookedly, and the corners are torn. I get more Blu-Tack and stick it up straight. She watches me; her eyes are shadowed and vast.

  “I’ll bring you some milk,” I tell her.

  “I’m hungry,” she says.

  “Okay. I’ll bring you a biscuit too.”

  I stare at the picture for a moment—the bright sea, the fishing boats. It could be the other side of the world, a place unguessably far.

  31

  THERE’S THE SOUND of a car pulling up by the flats. I go to open the door.

  “Grace.”

  He’s wearing an ancient leather jacket. He must have been rushing, he’s breathing rather hard.

  “I hope it was okay, me ringing like that, but I felt completely desperate,” I tell him. “I really didn’t know what else to do.”

  His eyes are on my face, and he has his crooked smile.

  “I’m not sure that’s entirely flattering,” he tells me.

  I find I am smiling in spite of myself.

  I make him coffee. We sit at my dining table; he seems too tall for my chairs. It’s strange to see him sitting here, surrounded by my things. It’s all so feminine, my flat—the calico curtains, the scent of lilies.

  He sips his coffee.

  “So tell me what’s been happening.”

  “Sylvie’s in bed,” I tell him. “She went berserk in Kwik Save, and I hit her. I’m so ashamed of myself.”

  “Don’t be,” he says. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I think you’re incredibly patient.”

  “I’ve tried so hard, and nothing works,” I tell him.

  “Yes, I know that,” he says.

  Out of nowhere, I feel a little rush of happiness—that he’s here to share this.

  “I’d love to know what you made of her,” I tell him. “I’ve never asked you properly.”

  He smiles. “I’m a skeptic, remember?”

  “You refuse to come to conclusions.”

  He nods. “But putting it all together—the way she is, the things she says—I’d love to find out more. The question is how best to go about it.”

  “When she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer your questions?” I say.

  He nods. “With an older child, you might use hypnosis, try to regress them,” he says.

  “To take them back into the memory?”

  “Yes. Though I’m not very keen on that, to be honest. And of course it’s never conclusive. It doesn’t really prove anything, whatever they say in the trance.”

  “It isn’t science?”

  “Exactly.”

  He sits there quietly for a moment. His face is so close I can see the bright flecks in his eyes.

  “You know what I want to do,” he says.

  My pulse skitters off. “Yes.”

  “There’s only one way to investigate a case like Sylvie’s,” he says.

  I nod slightly.

  He puts out his hand toward me in a brief, truncated gesture. My skin prickles, expecting his touch.

  “Grace. Would you and Sylvie come to Ireland with me?”

  I don’t say anything. My heart pounds.

  “It’s not a difficult journey,” he says. “We could fly from Heathrow to Shannon and hire a car. Coldharbour’s quite a small village, but there are bed-and-breakfast places . . .”

  “You’ve looked it up?” I’m unnerved.

  “Of course.”

  “But—how could I possibly do that? I mean, just for starters, I couldn’t afford the fare.”

&nb
sp; He looks immediately hopeful when I say that.

  “No problem. I could pay for you both. I have a research grant for investigating cases. I might then ask your permission to write it up in a journal. You’d get to see what I’d written, of course.”

  “But what about Simon, your boss? Wouldn’t he be angry with you? If he thinks that what you do isn’t really science at all?”

  “Probably. But Simon can stuff it,” says Adam.

  I’m staring down into my coffee. Doubts worm into my mind. I can hear Karen’s voice in my head, all her warnings and admonitions.

  “But—what if Sylvie got more upset—you know, more caught up in these things? I couldn’t bear that. I’d feel so guilty.”

  “Yes, there’s a risk,” he tells me. “So think about it carefully. I’m not denying that it’s something I’d love to pursue. But it’s up to you—and what you feel is right for Sylvie.”

  We sit there quietly for a moment. Outside, the wind is rummaging in the alleyway, banging the lids of the Dumpsters. The sound is too loud, as though it’s here in the room.

  I sip my coffee, feel the kick as it slides into my veins.

  “The trouble is,” I tell him, “I don’t really know where I stand. I mean, sometimes I believe it—believe there’s something in all this. But I keep coming back to that thing she says—I had a cave and a dragon . . . That’s fairy-tale stuff. Just something she saw in a book.”

  “It could be.”

  “Maybe it’s just some game she’s playing, some world she’s making up.” I remember Karen’s words. “A kind of wish fulfillment.”

  “Absolutely,” he tells me. “We could get there and find there’s nothing. Nothing significant in this place, nothing with any meaning for her. That the whole thing’s just a shadow play. It’s your call, Grace. Whether you feel it’s worth exploring. Only you can decide.”

  I think of going to Ireland with him. A little bud of excitement opens out inside me. We couldn’t—could we?

  “Maybe I’ll think about it,” I say. “I mean, I’m not promising anything . . .”

  I expect him to respond to this—animated, surprised, perhaps, pushing his hand through his hair.

  He puts his cup down. He’s serious suddenly, frowning, his clever dark eyes on my face.

  “Grace, I want you to know this.” He’s so solemn, it’s unnerving. “If we did take Sylvie to Coldharbour, we’d be looking for a death—for the story of a death.”

  There’s a chill like a slight cool breath on my skin. Somehow I hadn’t put this together.

  “You mean—we’d be trying to find the person that my daughter used to be . . .” The room seems to shift around me. Something in me recoils from this.

  He nods.

  “There’s more,” he says. “According to the studies I’ve read, the death these children say they’ve suffered is very often a violent one.”

  I feel the cold go through me.

  “You mean—some terrible accident? Murder even?”

  He nods slowly. “Something sudden and shocking.”

  “Why? Why would that be the kind of death that’s remembered? Why not just a peaceful death?” I think of the man whose funeral we went to in the autumn—with the black plumed horses and all the marguerites. “A good death?”

  “It’s like the death is incomplete, the person can’t let go of it. So—a violent, sudden death, with all the wreckage that leaves.”

  Jake’s death is there in the room with us when he says that. I think how it’s something he knows so well, too well—that wreckage. I wonder again whether that’s what draws him to Sylvie’s case. Trying to find a way of living with what happened. Trying to prove that there’s something else, that it doesn’t just end there, with the death, the wreckage.

  “Yes, I understand,” I say.

  “I want you to think about that for a while,” he tells me.

  His look disconcerts me, the intensity of it, stirring something up in me. A charge moves through me, a little jolt of sex. I take my eyes from his face.

  “If you do decide to come,” he says, “I want you to come with open eyes. If Sylvie is remembering something, then the story we uncover won’t—can’t—be a happy one.”

  “No. I understand that.”

  He’s treating me so delicately. I wonder how he sees me—perhaps as rather fragile, labeled HANDLE WITH CARE.

  We sit there for a moment, and neither of us says anything. Wind rattles at my window. There’s a sound of shattering from the streets, the shocking sound of breaking glass. I reach out for my coffee and see the tremor in my hand. When I pick up the cup, the liquid shivers all across its surface.

  “Think about it,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “And talk about it to Sylvie,” he says. “Find out whether she’d like to go. Because there’s no point in any of this if Sylvie isn’t sure. She has to want to go there. Will you do that for me?”

  When Adam has left, I go to Sylvie’s bedroom. There’s a faint wash of color back in her face, and she’s out of bed and playing quietly with her Barbies.

  “Sylvie. That person who just came round—it was Adam, who we went to see. Do you remember Adam?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  I crouch on the floor beside her. I can feel the thud of my heart; it seems to shake my body. I realize that I don’t know how to frame the question, that perhaps I should have planned this.

  “Adam and me, we were talking about the place you like—you know, the place in your picture.”

  Sylvie is suddenly still. Her eyes are fixed on my face, her cool blue gaze like a clear winter sky.

  “We were wondering if we should go and see it,” I say. “You and me and Adam. Go to the place in your picture.”

  “Coldharbour,” she says. Pronouncing it precisely, every sound exact, as though it’s some precious, fragile object she’s placing carefully down.

  “Yes. To Coldharbour.”

  “When, Grace? When are we going?”

  “Well, we haven’t really decided when yet—it was just an idea. Adam wanted to know what you thought. If it was something you might like to do.”

  “Can we see my family? And my house and my fishing boats?”

  “We can see whatever there is to see. But I need to be sure what you want, sweetheart. Would you like to go there? Go to Coldharbour?”

  “Yes,” she tells me.

  “Okay, then. Well, I’ll need to talk to Adam. I’ll tell him what you said to me.”

  “When are we going?” she says again.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart,” I tell her. “I’ll have to talk to Adam about it.”

  I make a grilled cheese sandwich for her lunch. When I go back to her bedroom to tell her the sandwich is cooked, she has her Shaun the Sheep rucksack out on her bed. It’s bulging. I can see Big Ted and her favorite books, and she’s taken some clothes from her wardrobe, some T-shirts and her suede laced boots and her daisy dungarees.

  “You’ve packed,” I say.

  “Yes, Grace. I’m ready.” Slightly impatient with me, as though she thinks I’m being rather dilatory. “Aren’t you ready, Grace?”

  32

  WE CROSS THE edge of the land. If I lean over Sylvie, who has the window seat, I can see the Irish Sea below us—the white fringe of surf that follows the line of the shore, that from up here seems to have no movement, to be as still as something drawn or painted. Sylvie, who has loved everything today—the glamour of the airport, the flight attendants’ bright green suits and hats, even her chicken-and-salad sandwich, once she’d carefully removed each shred of lettuce—has finally fallen asleep.

  The newspaper I bought at the airport lies open, unread, on my lap. I rest back in my seat, very aware of Adam’s arm on the elbow rest between us. I have a sense of astonishment that this is actually happening.

  Adam isn’t reading either.

  “Does your girlfriend . . .” I say. “I mean, I don’t know her name—”
/>   “Tessa. She’s called Tessa.”

  “Does Tessa mind you going away like this?”

  He’s puzzled.

  “No. Why should she?”

  Perhaps it was a stupid thing to say.

  “I just wondered.”

  “It’s not that kind of relationship,” he says.

  I want to ask what he means—what kind of relationship it is.

  We’re over Ireland now. The land slides away beneath us, purple plowed fields, a tangle of woods so dark they have a burnt look, a twisting silver river. Cloud blows past us like smoke.

  “Look,” I say.

  He leans across me, so close I can sense the warmth that comes off his body. We watch for a while, till cloud obscures the ground.

  Sylvie stirs, opens her eyes. She stares around, she has a confused look. She clutches Big Ted to her.

  “Grace,” she says. The word is a question.

  I smooth back her hair.

  “We’re on the plane, sweetheart, remember? We’re going to visit the place in your picture,” I say.

  Sylvie smiles.

  The engine noise cuts out, so it feels that the plane is still, suspended. The pilot announces that we’re starting to descend. White cloud presses in at the window.

  Adam finishes his coffee and folds his table away.

  “I’ll read to Sylvie,” he tells me. “So you can get some rest.”

  I find The Very Hungry Caterpillar in my bag. We change places, so Adam is sitting next to Sylvie. I lean back and stretch my legs out into the aisle.

  He starts to read. His voice is expressive, and he’s utterly unself-conscious, and Sylvie is enchanted. When he gets to the end, she wants it all again. She looks across at the pictures, pressing her fingers into the holes where the caterpillar has eaten through. I close my eyes, drift in and out of consciousness. He’s reciting the lovely long list of food that the caterpillar has eaten, and the thread of his voice unspools through my dreams. “‘One slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie . . .’”

  When we land at Shannon Airport, it’s raining heavily. We eat in a restaurant of unforgiving 1960s concrete, looking out across a slow brown river. Sylvie says her cheesy potatoes taste of sweat.