‘You were up early,’ Roxy said to her. Roxy herself had gone back to bed after being sick.
‘Since Aidan came into my life,’ Anne Marie patted her stomach, ‘he will not let me have a lie-in.’
Roxy sat beside her. ‘I wish I knew where we were,’ she said.
Anne Marie shrugged. ‘South of England somewhere. Does it matter?’
‘Aren’t you curious?’
‘Not particularly,’ she answered.
‘Won’t they tell us if we ask?’
Anne Marie began to laugh. ‘Questions, questions, questions, Roxy. Can’t you just enjoy the fact you’re safe?’
Anne Marie had been here for weeks, Roxy thought, and nothing had happened to her. Care and attention were all she had received. TLC, tender loving care, she called it. So why should Roxy herself not trust all this?
‘So what’s on the cards for today?’
‘After breakfast we’ll go and look at the rota, see what chores we’ve been allocated.’ Suddenly, Anne Marie was laughing again. She had a nice laugh, like the warble of a bird. ‘You should see your face, Roxy. Shock! Horror! Don’t worry, they’re not going to send us down the mines to dig coal. We’re only expected to do a bit of light cleaning, washing, ironing, that sort of thing.’
She made Roxy laugh. And she remembered too what had been bothering her last night. ‘By the way, there don’t seem to be any babies here. Why is that?’
‘You know, the very same thing occurred to me when I first came here. I asked Mrs Dyce, and she said that what used to happen after the girls had their babies was that they would keep them here till it was time for them to move on. But that got really distressing for the girls who had decided to have their babies adopted. So now, once you have your baby, you’re both whisked away to another house, where all the mothers and babies go.’
Roxy thought about that. ‘They have another place?’ She knew she sounded incredulous.
‘Yes, another place. I think it’s really wonderful of the Dyces, not wanting to distress any of us. They’re wonderful people.’
Too good to be true. The words leapt into her mind unbidden.
It seemed that Anne Marie could read her mind. ‘Too good to be true? Is that what you’re thinking? Have you never heard of Mother Teresa? She did the very same thing out in India, and they said she was too good to be true – but she was true, Roxy, and never anyone deserved to be made a saint more … apart from the Dyces, of course.’
Then she gave Roxy a gentle push and they were laughing again. Still laughing when Mrs Dyce came round the side of the house dressed in gardening clothes and behind her, head down and looking surly, was the odd-job man Roxy had seen when she arrived. Stevens. He looked even scruffier today, in a wrinkled shirt and a battered felt hat.
Mrs Dyce stopped to talk to them. ‘How did you sleep, Roxy? Well, I hope. I’ll want to have a little chat with you later today. Just filling you in on things here, though I’m sure our Anne Marie’s done all that already.’
‘Our Anne Marie,’ she always called her. There seemed to be a genuine fondness for the Irish girl, Roxy thought.
‘She’s been great,’ Roxy said truthfully.
Mrs Dyce touched Anne Marie’s cheek. ‘I’m going to miss her.’
Anne Marie patted her bump. ‘Still got a while to go yet, Mrs Dyce.’
Mrs Dyce beckoned the odd-job man with her finger. ‘Come along, Stevens. I’ll show you where I want you to put my rhubarb.’
The girls had to stifle their giggles when she said that, but Mrs Dyce didn’t seem to notice. She moved off and Stevens walked after her. But as he passed Roxy he lifted his eyes to look at her. And what he saw seemed to cloud his face with anger. She felt herself drawing back from him. He stopped for a second, staring at her, then he shook his head disapprovingly. He seemed to have to drag his eyes away from her face and she was glad when he moved off and disappeared into the shrubbery with Mrs Dyce.
‘He gives me the creeps,’ Roxy said.
‘He gives us all the creeps. Have you noticed his fingers?’
Roxy hadn’t.
‘They’re like chubby little maggots. They look as if they have a life of their own, as if he’d pulled them up out of the soil and if they touched you they’d eat you up.’
She wiggled her fingers at Roxy, who fell back in a pretend swoon on the bench. ‘I’ll keep back from him and his maggoty fingers.’
‘He certainly couldn’t keep his eyes off you,’ Anne Marie said.
‘Yeah, why was he looking at me like that, as if he hated me?’
‘Probably because you’re so young, Roxy, and you look it. We’ve never had anyone as young as you here before. He probably thinks you’re a bad lot.’
In the afternoon Mrs Dyce came to get Roxy for their ‘little chat’. She led her into the living room to a couple of shabby chairs in a corner. Roxy had expected to go into their office, through the door marked PRIVATE. She had only seen that door open once. Had only time to see a cluttered desk, a swivel chair and a filing cabinet, before the door was pushed closed.
‘Their private apartments,’ Anne Marie had told her that morning. ‘Sure they have to have somewhere private they can go to if they want to get away from all of us.’
That door also led to the delivery room, where the girls were taken to have their babies, she had explained.
‘Can I see the delivery room?’ Roxy asked Mrs Dyce as they sat down.
‘Time enough for you to see it when you’re going to have your baby, Roxy,’ Mrs Dyce said softly, but her tone cut off any more questions about it. Roxy. Now it seemed her name was no secret to anyone, thanks to Anne Marie.
‘Now, you’re going to need more clothes as you get bigger. We have plenty for you to choose from. Anne Marie will show you where they’re kept. We’ve got wardrobes full of maternity trousers and skirts and dresses. You’re bound to find something to fit you.’
Second-hand clothes. At home she would have died of embarrassment if her mother had tried to get her to wear anyone else’s cast-offs.
‘We don’t have a lot of rules and regulations here, Roxy. But there are certain …’ Mrs Dyce hesitated, searching for the right word, ‘guidelines we would like you to abide by. For instance, we would prefer it if you stayed within the grounds. There’s nothing nearby, it’s all farmland, and you could easily get lost.’
Roxy thought about that. ‘You mean, we can’t get outside at all? Not even for a run in the car?’
Mrs Dyce smiled. ‘I think you’ll find there are plenty of grounds for you to wander in, and in your condition you won’t be able to wander far anyway.’
So far and no further, Roxy was thinking.
‘Where exactly are we anyway?’ Roxy asked.
Mrs Dyce smiled again ‘You don’t really need to know that, Roxy. If you decide to go home … and you’re free to go whenever you choose, it’s safer for the other girls if you can’t tell exactly where you’ve been. You can understand that, can’t you?’
Roxy nodded, but she still wasn’t satisfied.
‘You’ll learn as you go along, Roxy, that everything we do here is for your own good, and the good of the baby.’
Roxy’s chores for the day, if they could be called that, were to tidy the living room, and give it a dust and a vacuum. As she worked alone in the living room, the house seemed unnaturally quiet. She could hear some girls laughing upstairs, hear their voices carry into the still, hot air outside. Roxy switched on the television. Perhaps, she thought, there might be some news of her disappearance, though she could hardly bear to think how she would feel if she saw her distraught mother on the screen at some kind of news conference.
Nothing happened.
She pressed every button on the remote control, then did the same thing on the television itself, but no picture appeared. There was only a screen full of snow.
Babs wandered in from upstairs, fanning herself with a tea towel.
‘Babs, the television is
n’t working.’
‘No, it won’t,’ Babs said casually. ‘It only works for videos and DVDs. You can’t get any programmes on it.’
‘Can’t they get any reception here?’
‘They think that if we heard any news it would only worry us. You know, maybe seeing bombs going off or murders “might harm the little babies”.’ Babs did a fair impersonation of Mrs Dyce’s husky voice. ‘“And we can’t have the little darlings coming to any harm, can we?”’ It didn’t seem to bother Babs. ‘Who wants to hear the news anyway? Doom and Death, that’s all there is. I suppose it’s sensible when you think about it. As long as we’ve got plenty of videos, and lots of CDs, I couldn’t care less.’
A little ‘guideline’ Mrs Dyce had forgotten to mention.
Yet perhaps it was sensible. Everything they did was thoughtful, for the good of the girls, and their babies.
So why did she still feel that somewhere, deep inside her, a warning bell was ringing?
Chapter Ten
Yet, as one sultry day followed another, that warning bell grew fainter. Roxy found she was enjoying herself. The morning breakfasts were fun, sitting outside in the sun, with Anne Marie, eating cereal, drinking orange juice, watching planes fly overhead.
‘We must be close to an airport,’ she said to Anne Marie one morning as they watched one fly low above them.
‘We’re on a flight path anyway,’ Anne Marie agreed.
‘But which airport?’ Roxy looked at Anne Marie. ‘Don’t you ever wonder exactly where we are?’
But Anne Marie didn’t. ‘You question everything, Roxy. Were you this much trouble at home?’
And she had to admit that she was.
Their chores were never too heavy, just as Anne Marie had told her, and amazingly, even Roxy almost enjoyed them. She had caused mayhem at home, refusing to tidy her and Jennifer’s room, leaving heaps of dirty washing lying on chairs or in corners. Here it was different. She didn’t have her mother’s constant nagging, or her sister shouting her disapproval at her. In fact, here, because she was the youngest, she was treated in a special kind of way. Looked after as if she was the baby of the family.
In these first days she hardly thought of her mother, and when she did it was defiantly. One day she would be able to tell her how well she, Roxy, had done without them. Did she think of her mother crying, worrying over her? Let her cry, she thought. Though half of her was sure her mother wouldn’t shed a tear. Glad to be rid of her and have only Little Miss Perfect left in the house. At times, it almost felt as if she was at boarding school, in one of those novels where the girls packed into each other’s dorms at midnight, telling stories, eating midnight feasts, laughing.
All that was missing at these midnight parties, according to Babs, was alcohol. ‘They could allow us alcopops at least.’
Anne Marie threw a pillow at her. ‘Bad for the baby, stupid!’
And they were never allowed anything that was bad for the baby.
A doctor came every Wednesday. An Austrian, Anne Marie informed her. Roxy would never have been able to tell just from his accent. He could have been anything, from German to Dutch to Russian. To Roxy, he was just a middle-aged man with a fuzz around his chin, as if he was trying to grow a beard and failing miserably.
Anne Marie laughed when she told her that. ‘You’re so funny, Roxy.’
Funny? No one had ever accused her of that before. Anne Marie laughed even louder when she mimicked his thick accent. ‘“Yourrrrr bebe will be a perrrrfect specimen. You will produce many fine bebes.”’
‘Did he actually say that?’ Anne Marie asked through her giggles.
‘He did. I nearly died. So did Mrs Dyce.’ She jumped forward. ‘“Oh, Doctor, for goodness sake. She’s not a battery hen.”’ Roxy’s Mrs Dyce impression only made Anne Marie giggle all the more. ‘I told him I didn’t want to produce this one. I’m not planning producing another for a very long time.’
They both fell back on the bed laughing. ‘Anyway, why can’t they get a proper British doctor?’ Roxy realised that had been bothering her all day.
Anne Marie, of course, had an answer. ‘It can’t be easy for them to get doctors they can trust, Roxy. What they’re doing here for us has to be a secret. Otherwise the police, social workers would be swarming all over the place. You’d have to go home, so you would. They can hardly phone up the village doctor and ask him to make a house call.’
Everything about this place was secret, undercover, and Roxy didn’t like those words. Yet, she did understand the necessity for all this secrecy. Otherwise, where would Anne Marie be, or Agnes or Babs? Or, especially, Roxy herself.
And Sula, who wanted home.
As the day of Sula’s departure drew near she grew more and more excited.
‘We’re going to have a farewell party for her,’ Anne Marie whispered to Roxy one day in the kitchen. It was their turn to make the evening meal – spaghetti Bolognese, crusty bread, salad.
‘When?’ Roxy asked.
‘She leaves on Friday morning, so we’ll have it after dinner on the Thursday.’
Mr Dyce strolled into the kitchen just then. Roxy had seen little of him since her arrival. He was always working in his office. That room marked PRIVATE. A couple of times she had seen him driving away in his Morris Minor. He always had a vague and distant look about him, Roxy thought. He had that look now, smiling, but at no one in particular.
Anne Marie was as fond of him as she was of his wife. She ran to him and slipped her arm in his. ‘I’m telling Roxy that we’re having a party for Sula before she goes home.’
‘Yes. Wonderful idea. Is it a secret?’
Anne Marie squeezed his hand. ‘Yes. So no telling.’
He drew his fingers across his mouth as if he was closing a zip and then he winked. ‘Tight shut.’
‘How are you getting her home?’ Roxy’s question took Mr Dyce aback. She could tell by the way his eyes darted towards her. ‘I mean, she hasn’t got a passport or anything.’
He looked at Roxy, still smiling. ‘With great difficulty,’ he said. ‘My, you are the inquisitive one. Always asking questions.’
Roxy would have asked more but Anne Marie interrupted. ‘Sula’s so near her time, Mr Dyce. I wish you could persuade her to stay till after the baby’s born.’
Mr Dyce finally drew his eyes away from Roxy, and even though he was still smiling, why did she feel it was only with his mouth? ‘We tried, Anne Marie, but she just wants to go home.’ He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. ‘What can we do?’
‘The Dyces must know a lot of people,’ Roxy said after he’d gone shuffling out into the garden. ‘People who can get Sula back to Albania without a passport.’
Anne Marie shook her head. ‘Look at you, still the suspicious one. The Dyces would move heaven and hell to help any one of us. Haven’t you realised that yet? Heaven and hell.’
I’m being silly, Roxy told herself later, as she sat eating her spaghetti and listening to the chatter round the table. She’d been here for days and had been shown nothing but kindness. So what if they couldn’t listen to the television, or leave the grounds. Those rules had been put there to protect them. Everyone else accepted that. Why couldn’t she?
She was like a little boat that had been caught in a terrible storm, and had found, by accident, a safe haven. She still couldn’t believe her luck. She would wake up tomorrow and find herself lying in some homeless shelter, hungry and alone.
Why couldn’t she just enjoy what was happening? Why did these suspicions keep pounding in her mind, like waves on a harbour wall?
Chapter Eleven
Sula knew nothing about the party. Her command of English was so poor that the other girls could talk all round her about it and she didn’t pick it up. The foreign girls, in spite of the language barrier, were brought on board to help, blowing up balloons, pinning up banners. They each had a job to do. Babs was in charge of making the punch; non-alcoholic. She complained about that bitterly, addi
ng, ‘I asked that weirdo Stevens to get us some booze and do you know what he said?’
‘He said, “No”?’ giggled Anne Marie.
‘Not just your ordinary “no”. He said, “It is more than my life’s worth.”’ She looked around them all in disbelief. ‘Can you believe this guy? It’s more than his life’s worth? What are they going to do? Kill him? Dismember him, bury him under the rhubarb? Just because he gets us a bottle of sparkling wine?’
They all laughed, and yet the words chilled Roxy. More than his life’s worth? It was a strange thing to say, surely? She would love to have the nerve to talk to this Stevens, even though his appearance – she pictured his maggoty fingers – gave her the creeps.
‘Couldn’t you sneak into the village yourself?’ Roxy asked Babs.
Babs stuck out her belly. ‘With this lump? I couldn’t “sneak” anywhere. Anyway, what village? We’re in the middle of nowhere here.’
‘Doesn’t that bother anybody but me?’ Roxy looked around them. ‘Why can’t we know exactly where this place is?’
Babs only shrugged, but she answered for the rest of them. ‘Couldn’t care less. As long as they feed me, water me and give me a bed, this place can be on the moon for all I care.’ She laughed raucously and punched one of the Asian girls who was trying to blow up a balloon. ‘What about you, Sanja? Bet you don’t care either.’
Sanja only looked at her, the balloon hanging from her lips. She smiled. Some of the other girls turned to look too. It occurred to Roxy that they must feel so alone here. They all spoke different languages, and none of them spoke English. It was as if they each lived in their own little world, not really understanding what was going on.
Anne Marie said, ‘You know why we can’t go into the village, Roxy, so don’t start getting suspicious again. Think about it. If one of us goes into the village and we’re recognised, this whole place, this whole operation would be put in jeopardy.’
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