‘Are you feeling OK now, dear?’ Mrs Dyce bent towards her, felt her brow. ‘You fainted. I think it was the heat. Are you ready for a nice cup of tea?’
Roxy said nothing. A feeling of utter hopelessness was closing in on her, like an icy fog. Her eyes followed Mrs Dyce as she walked to the door.
‘This is our Anne Marie,’ Mrs Dyce said. ‘She’ll be sharing this room with you.’
It seemed to Roxy that her voice faded to an echo, as if she was moving far into a deep dark cave. As Mrs Dyce opened the door, Mr Dyce was dancing about outside impatiently. ‘Is she OK? Can I see her?’
‘Now, now, dear.’ Mrs Dyce patted her husband’s hand. ‘Calm down. She’s fine. She just needs some rest and some hot tea. I’m about to organise that.’ She looked back at Roxy and smiled. ‘Come along, now. Let’s leave Rosemary with Anne Marie. Let them get acquainted.’
The door closed quietly and they were alone – Roxy, and the smiling girl who was Anne Marie. Roxy’s eyes moved around the room. It was bright and freshly painted, white walls and buttercup-yellow curtains fluttering at the window. The beds had white throws over them, and the lamps had buttercup shades that matched the curtains. The smell of freesias filled the room from the vases of flowers that stood on the window sills and the dressing table. It was a nice room, comforting. Roxy blinked and looked at Anne Marie. She was older than Roxy, but not much. Seventeen perhaps, eighteen at the most. Her hair was thick and black and cut short. She was a little plump, but Roxy thought that was just because of the baby. She was probably too skinny before.
Anne Marie was watching her just as closely. ‘You must be scared,’ Anne Marie said. Her accent was soft and Irish. She didn’t wait for Roxy’s answer. ‘I was scared too when I first came here. Didn’t know what to expect. Thought they,’ she nodded to the door as if the Dyces were still standing there, ‘“had ulterior motives”.’ She sketched inverted commas with her fingers and giggled. ‘Well, I’ve been here three months and nothing could be further from the truth. With the Dyces, what you see is what you get. They are just lovely people. A bit on the daft side.’ She made a face and Roxy found herself smiling back at her. ‘Let’s face it, they must be more than a bit daft to finance all this. But their hearts are in the right place. They really do want to help us.’
Roxy leaned up on her elbows, and with the effort she realised how weak she felt. ‘But why? What’s in it for them?’
Anne Marie came and sat on the bed beside her. ‘Do you know, I think we’ve all grown so cynical we don’t think decent people, honourable people exist any more. But they do, and they’re called the Dyces.’
Roxy sat up. She was beginning to feel better. No more dark phantoms in front of her eyes, only an intense hunger. ‘How did you get here?’ she asked.
‘Came over from Ireland,’ Anne Marie said. ‘Planned to have an …’ She hesitated, as if she couldn’t even bring herself to utter the word. ‘Planned to have an abortion over here.’ For the first time her smile slipped and she looked almost sad. ‘Couldn’t go through with it. The Dyces found me, took me here. They would have stood by me whatever decision I might have made, they said. But I want my baby now. So much.’ She breathed in deeply as if she was sending her life-giving air straight down to that baby. ‘The Dyces have been so kind to me.’
‘But how did they find you?’ There couldn’t be another Doreen, could there?
‘It was a nurse at the hospital where I went to have the …’ Again she couldn’t say it. ‘Anyway, she saw how upset I was and she put me in touch with the Dyces. Mrs Dyce is a midwife too, you know. So we’re well looked after here.’ She waved her hands about as if they had talked enough about her. ‘Now. What’s your name?’ She didn’t give Roxy a chance to answer. ‘I know it isn’t Rosemary. You might as well tell me your real name. It won’t matter here.’
So she did. Glad to admit her name at last. Her name was the only thing she had left of her past.
‘Roxy,’ Anne Marie repeated. ‘I like that. And you’re from Scotland. Don’t tell me where, it doesn’t matter.’ She grinned. ‘Oh, we’re very cosmopolitan here. Girls from all over the world, would you believe? We’re lucky to get in here, let me tell you. Mostly, the girls they help are like illegal immigrants, or girls who are on a work permit from countries like … Romania, or Albania. And now that they’re pregnant – they can’t work.’ She began to laugh. ‘It’s like the United blinkin’ Nations in here.’
She was making Roxy laugh, this Anne Marie. She could see that and she just carried on with her blethering. ‘Mrs Dyce says, here we’re all one, citizens of the world, all with one problem: our little babies. And that’s where she helps.’ She pinched at Roxy’s cheeks. ‘You’re looking better already. We’ve landed lucky here, Roxy. So let’s make the most of it. And you know, after the baby if you want to go home, you can. Mrs Dyce will make sure of it. She’ll arrange that too, if you want it. But what would you want to go home for? Look at this place.’ Anne Marie waved round the room proudly, showing it off. ‘I lived in a dump back home. Why would I want to go back there?’
But Roxy hadn’t. She was thinking of her own bedroom, hers and Jennifer’s, with the music centre and the computer and the TV, and her cuddly toys and her posters. Not as tidy as this, but much … much more cosy.
She couldn’t think about that. Couldn’t bear it.
‘When’s your baby due?’ she asked Anne Marie.
Anne Marie patted her bump. ‘In just three months’ time. And that’s the other lovely thing about the Dyces. If you want to keep your baby, they’ll help you do that. Get you organised with accommodation, set up all the benefits you’re due. But if you want to get it adopted, they help you do that too. And then you know the baby is going to a decent family.’
‘It all sounds too good to be true, Anne Marie.’ And it was. Roxy was too cynical to believe all this. It was heaven.
Anne Marie flashed her a smile. ‘Aren’t you the hard one? Well, I’ll give you a week here, and you’ll believe it all right. Roxy, it is too good, but it’s still true.’
It was hard not to smile back at Anne Marie, to take everything she said as the truth. ‘What about you, Anne Marie, are you going to keep your baby?’
There was no hesitation in Anne Marie’s answer. ‘Keep my baby? Definitely. I’m so looking forward to it, Roxy.’ She stroked her bump affectionately. ‘This is the first time in my life that I’m going to have someone who loves just me.’
Chapter Eight
Mrs Dyce brought the tea in on a tray. On it were two mugs and a jug of milk and a bowl of sugar. ‘Getting to know our Anne Marie? That’s good.’ She laid the tray down on the table between the beds. ‘I’m going to have to leave you two girls. I’ve got so much to do. Anne Marie will bring you down to lunch.’ She adjusted a picture on the wall. Roxy had seen one like it before: a girl in a bar, staring out at them, her reflection behind her. Then Mrs Dyce smiled at them both and left. Roxy didn’t say a word until the two girls were alone again.
‘How can they afford to do this?’ She was looking around at the fresh paint, the bright furniture. She bounced on the bed. ‘Good mattresses. How? Come on, they’ve got to have an angle.’
Anne Marie shrugged and poured milk into her tea. ‘She’s very rich, I think. Or maybe he’s the one with the money. I don’t know. They haven’t got any children of their own. So this is how they spend their money. Are you complaining?’ Anne Marie suddenly sounded annoyed. Her face creased in a frown. ‘I don’t care how they afford it. They can go out robbing banks at the weekend for all I care. I just thank God, His holy mother and all the saints, that they can afford it.’
Her face broke into a smile again. As if it wasn’t used to frowning. Smiling came as natural to Anne Marie as the moon at night.
‘Won’t your parents be looking for you, Anne Marie?’ Wouldn’t they miss that smile, Roxy wondered, in their house every day?
‘They won’t care tuppence, Roxy. Take my word f
or that. I’ll never go back there. Especially after he’s born.’ She patted her bump.
‘Or she?’ Roxy said. ‘It could be a girl.’
Anne Marie shook her head. ‘No, I know it’s a boy. I had a scan and they told me. Aidan, I’m going to call him. It’s a good name, isn’t it, Roxy?’
‘It’s a lovely name, Anne Marie.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘They take you to the hospital to have your baby?’
‘They don’t have to. We have everything we need here at the house. There’s a delivery room too, in one of the wings.’ She waved a hand vaguely in another direction. ‘A doctor comes once a week to check us out, and we have our own resident nurse too. That’s Mrs Dyce. Oh, fair play to them, Roxy. They look after us awful well.’
Too well, Roxy was thinking. Too good to be true. She was too afraid to relax in case this was some awful charade and suddenly the walls would tumble down, and there would be no yellow curtains, no beautiful grounds. There would only be her and Anne Marie caught in a dark menacing lie.
Anne Marie’s giggling brought her out of her reverie. ‘Oh, Roxy, I can see already the type you are. Trusting nothing or no one. Just enjoy. Be grateful. You’ll feel better when you meet the rest of the girls at lunchtime. There’s only about a dozen of us. Most of them are foreign, can’t speak a word of English. It makes communication very difficult. There’s a couple of them you should stay well back from, but I’ll keep you right about them. But once you’ve met us all, and got to know us, you’ll see there’s no tricks, no mystery. We’ve just landed lucky.’
The dining room was bustling with activity when they went downstairs. A couple of girls, dark-skinned, quiet girls, were laying tables. Another two were already sitting at their places reading magazines. Three were clattering about in the kitchen. All of them were in different stages of pregnancy. All of them, as far as Roxy could see, much further on in their pregnancy than she was.
‘This is Roxy,’ Anne Marie called out without any warning to Roxy. ‘She’s only just arrived.’
Roxy grabbed her arm. ‘You told them my real name!’
‘Doesn’t matter here, Roxy. No one’s going to send you back if you don’t want to go.’
There was an echo of greetings from the girls, waves from the ones in the kitchen.
‘My! You’re a young one!’ A brash blonde who had been sitting at the table came across to her. Roxy was a bit annoyed by that. It seemed to her that they were all young. None looked older than eighteen, except perhaps this blonde.
Anne Marie put an arm around Roxy’s shoulders. ‘That’s why we have to look out for her. She’s scared. It’s her first day here.’
Roxy resented that. She wasn’t scared. There were other words for what she was feeling – apprehensive, suspicious, wary – but she didn’t say any of this. All she said was, ‘You do your own cooking?’
‘On a rota system.’ Anne Marie led her to a table and pulled out a chair for her. The blonde stood watching her. ‘Three are assigned to making a meal each day, and the next day’s team does the washing up. It’s a good system,’ Anne Marie said, as if it was her idea. ‘A very fair system.’
‘And there’s no getting out of it,’ the blonde snapped. Then she laughed loudly. ‘I should know. I tried everything. Nothing works. Not even the old “I’m having a baby” routine. Unfortunately, everybody’s having a baby in here.’
‘That’s Babs, by the way.’ Then Anne Marie whispered, just loud enough so all the girls could hear, ‘But we call her Boobs. You can see why.’
‘Boobs’ went into a raucous fit of laughter at that, and by the time they were all eating Roxy was laughing too.
‘We have to do the cleaning too,’ Babs told her.
So that was it. Cheap labour. Roxy tried to imagine them all on their knees scrubbing all the rooms in this massive house.
‘Oh, don’t listen to a word she says,’ Anne Marie said. ‘We keep our own rooms clean, make up our own beds, and take our turn of the bathrooms and the kitchen.’
A small voice piped up from the end of the table. ‘Anyway, they don’t use the whole of this house. Only this one small part for us.’ The small voice belonged to a girl who had a big horsey face that didn’t suit that small voice at all. ‘They really do look after us in here, Roxy.’
‘That’s Agnes,’ Anne Marie whispered, softly this time. ‘She’s a bit of a bad ’un, as they say. I’ll be glad when she goes.’
Roxy giggled into her tea. ‘Agnes?’ she whispered back. ‘You’d think she’d have enough problems with a name like that.’
‘Sssh!’ Anne Marie tried to shut her up, but she was giggling too.
‘I mean,’ Roxy went on, ‘bad girls don’t have names like Agnes. Bad girls have names like –’
Anne Marie interrupted her. ‘Like Roxy?’
‘Yeah, like Roxy.’ Roxy laughed so loud Agnes turned to look at her. ‘Are you two going to let us in on the joke?’
Anne Marie didn’t answer her, instead she indicated a dark girl sitting beside Agnes. ‘Have I introduced you to Sula, Roxy? She doesn’t speak very much English. She’s Albanian.’
Roxy nodded to Sula and she nodded back. Sula had the loveliest brown eyes Roxy had ever seen. But Roxy’s eyes were drawn to the tattoo on her arm – a cobra wound round her upper arm as if it was crawling towards her neck. It gave Roxy the creeps.
‘Love her tattoo,’ Roxy said sarcastically.
Anne Marie laughed. ‘I think it’s supposed to ward off evil or something. Blinking awful, isn’t it?’ But still she smiled at Sula.
Ward off evil. Well, so far it hadn’t brought much luck to Sula, Roxy thought, pregnant and alone in a strange land, and she wondered what her story was. Everyone had a story here, she thought.
‘Hello Sula,’ Roxy said.
Sula smiled. ‘I go home.’
Babs turned to Roxy. ‘That’s just about the only English she knows. And she says it all the time. “I go home.” She would drive you potty.’
Sula still smiled. She seemed to know there was no real criticism of her in Babs’s tone. Babs leaned across the table and touched her hand. ‘That’s right, Sula. I go home.’
Sula smiled even wider. Her teeth were off-white and crooked. ‘I go home,’ she repeated.
Anne Marie told Roxy in a soft voice. ‘Sula’s an illegal immigrant. She was brought here to work, but she didn’t fancy the kind of work she had to do, and luckily for her, the Dyces found her – brought her here. But she’s awful homesick. Aren’t you, pet?’ Anne Marie smiled across to Sula, who was watching them intently, knowing they were talking about her. ‘And now all she wants to do is to go back to her mother. Have her baby at home in Albania. And do you know what!’ Anne Marie paused dramatically as if she was daring Roxy to disagree with her. ‘The Dyces arranged that too. They’re sending her back home safely. Don’t ask me how! Those two could perform miracles if you ask me anything. Sula’s going home.’
Going home. Roxy lay in bed that night, watching the moon as it hung in the sky, a full fat moon.
‘No matter where you are in the world,’ her dad used to say, ‘when you look up at the moon, just remember I’ll be looking at the same moon and thinking of you.’ He hadn’t known he wouldn’t be here long enough to look at the moon with her tonight. Was her mother looking at the moon tonight? Or Jennifer? Were they thinking about her? Imagining her in some drug-laden den, sleeping rough, alone and homeless?
She snuggled further under the covers and felt quite smug. Bet they’d never in their wildest dreams think she’d be curled up in a cosy bed, after a full meal, with people looking after her.
Too good to be true. The words were never far from her mind. She pushed them back. Like Anne Marie said, she should just enjoy.
She’d show her mother, and Jennifer. She didn’t need them. She could do it on her own. When she saw them again, if she saw them again, she would be completely independent. Looking after herself, and her baby. Her baby. No, she couldn’t,
wouldn’t think of anything real growing inside her. She pushed the thought of a baby far back in her mind.
She closed her eyes. Tired again, so tired. But she couldn’t sleep. Something was keeping her from sleeping. Some thought.
There was something missing. Something that should be here – and wasn’t.
She had almost drifted off when she realised what it was.
Where were the babies?
Chapter Nine
Roxy was sick again next morning. Sula heard her in the bathroom and came in and knelt beside her, soothing her brow with her cool hands.
‘Better?’ she asked, smiling.
Roxy leaned back against the tiled wall, exhausted. She nodded. ‘When you go home?’ Roxy asked her, saying it as simply as she could. Not sure if she could understand even that.
It took Sula a minute to answer her, as if she was turning the words over in her mind, translating them into her own language. She held out her hands. Roxy’s eyes were drawn again to that tattoo. When Sula moved it was as if the snake moved too, as if was already winding its way ever closer towards her face. It gave her the creeps.
She was almost sick again looking at it. Sula was counting out the days on her fingers.
‘Eight days,’ Roxy said, and held out her fingers in exactly the same gesture. ‘Happy?’ she asked, pointing at Sula. ‘You, happy?’ She beamed her a smile.
Sula’s smile was answer enough. Then, she asked Roxy. ‘You go home?’
Roxy didn’t need to think about it. ‘Never,’ she said, shaking her head. And she meant it.
Everyone pitched in at breakfast, making their own toast and tea, pouring cereal into bowls, drinking orange juice out of cartons. They sat chatting at the table or wandering out through the French windows into the garden. The morning was already warm, hinting at another scorcher of a day. It was only May, but the weather held the promise of a long hot summer. Roxy took her cereal and went outside. She found Anne Marie sitting on a bench, admiring the view over the gardens. To Roxy, it seemed the view went nowhere, only past the lawn to high grass and trees, and beyond … a mystery.
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