The Lost Child

by Ann Troup

  Brodie looked at her as if she had suddenly sprouted two heads. ‘You’re kidding right? Honestly Elaine, you’re such a goodie-two-shoes.’

  Elaine felt herself bristle at this critique. ‘I just believe in showing people a little respect and giving them the benefit of the doubt. Alex seems pleasant enough to me, he’s just had a very different upbringing from most people. It’s bound to make him see things differently. I suppose the people around here see him as over-privileged and dislike him for it. It’s hardly a fair assessment in my opinion.’

  Brodie shook her head in disbelief. ‘You’re too nice Elaine, you want to wise up and get a bit street smart. Most people are selfish pigs.’

  There were times when Elaine wanted to get hold of Brodie and flush the kidulthood out of her and make her start all over again. No child of fifteen should think like that, or be so cynical about the world. No one should be so disaffected before they had even begun. ‘Well I’d rather be nice than horrible and miserable, it leads to a better night’s sleep in the end. Are you going to help me wash up or what?’

  ‘Only if I can wash, I hate drying up.’ Brodie said, slipping back into her teenage self as if her sceptical twin self didn’t exist

  The visit ended on a better note than it had started and as Elaine stood in the doorway, watching Brodie walk back to Hallow’s cottage, she wondered why the girl’s happiness was so important to her. The thought came as she was leaning against the shelf where until that morning Jean’s ashes had rested. A gritty residue transferred itself to her sleeve, unnoticed, as she turned to shut the door.

  Brodie had brushed past the shelf too and carried a few grains of Jean back to Hallow’s Cottage on the shoulder of her hoodie.

  Esther had looked up, hopeful and expectant as the door had opened but resumed her brooding scowl once she realised that it was the interloper, and not her beloved boy. She eyed the girl as Miriam fussed over her, ‘What’s all this you’ve got on your clothes?’ and watched as her sister tutted and patted at the girl with an affection Esther found hard to fathom. The little black clad cuckoo was nothing but an inconvenience, had Esther still had her voice she would have used it to make sure the child had gone elsewhere. She wasn’t wanted here and Esther let her know it every time their eyes met.

  She might not have her voice, or the use of her limbs, but she still had her wits. Not that anyone else seemed to realise it, even the doctor spoke to her as if she were deaf, or stupid, or both. What had she ever done to deserve this? Caged inside a useless body in nature’s version of death row. She had been a good woman, a forthright woman, a moral being with a clear picture of right and wrong. Why had God failed her like this? If only Alex would come…

  Esther had discovered that the small comfort of her state was the ability to revisit the past in lucid detail. It was if she could, at will, step back across the years and into the life she had once had. If she pictured Alex as the small, golden haired boy he had once been the image became so real to her that it felt as if she could reach out and touch him again. The child had been her life’s joy, a gift from God sent to redeem her spirit and give her purpose. A parentless angel, in need of the love that only Esther could give. Ada didn’t know how to love him; if the child had leaped up and bit her in the neck she wouldn’t have known what to do. But that was Ada all over, she never had known what to do about anything, and as for that gormless fool Albert…well, the less said about him the better. She, Esther, had protected the boy from both of them, willing him not to inherit their feckless, insipid ways. She had always felt some bitterness towards the inequity of life. That she, Esther, had been born to poverty and want, and that they, those fools, born to wealth and privilege was a travesty. Had God proclaimed a joke? From necessity she had served them, waited on them, subordinated herself to them, loathed them and needed them in equal measure. Never noticed, never thanked, taken for granted and made invisible by their superiority until God had seen fit to make her value clear and send the boy. When God gives with one hand, he takes with the other, and Alex had to lose his parents to gain Esther. That Alicia, Alex’s mother, and her husband, Max, were killed in order for Esther to gain was a simple balancing of the scales of justice as far as Esther was concerned. She had given her youth to the family and had been paid a pittance for it. Max and Alicia had given their son to her and paid with their lives. She had not planted the IRA bomb that killed his parents, and she had not prayed for their demise. She had worn black, and mourned with the family. She had covered the mirrors and silenced the clocks. She had served tea at their funeral and laid flowers on their graves. She had loved their son. In Esther’s mind the score was even. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for the boy. Nothing.

  She worried for him all the time. His fast cars, his women, his laissez faire attitude, his politics. His father’s politics had got him killed. He had taken his wife’s name for the cachet it held and used it as a banner to wave atop his opinions. Those opinions had made a man put a bomb under his car and blow his ideals and his wife to smithereens. Now her beloved Alex wanted to follow in Max’s wake. Would they bomb him too? She used to think the world had changed, but now, with the TV bombarding her with bad news, she worried. It was not the Irish that hated now, but heathens who would hug you with a jacket full of dynamite and take you to hell while holding your hand. If Esther had her voice she would plead with her boy and beg him to come with her, back in time, over the bridge of years and into his childhood where she could keep him safe, just like she always had.

  Miriam was fussing again, pulling her back to the fettered and frustrating present with the endless drone of her chatter. Esther didn’t want to leave her reverie and sip tea from the baby cup, or have her chin wiped with a tissue. She didn’t want to eat the salty mush that she couldn’t chew, or endure the scowls of the black clad cuckoo. But she had no choice. She was Miriam’s creature now. Inside, Esther was screaming, ‘leave me be, leave me be, I want to go back’ but all her sister heard were the grunts and groans of a stroke garrotted throat. She mistook the noises for expressions of hunger and silenced them with kindly smiles and spoons full of mashed potato.

  Chapter Seven

  Dan Collier heaved the last of the old kitchen units into the skip that dominated Elaine’s driveway. He breathed a sigh of relief in thanks for the fact that it was a decent, quiet neighbourhood. Which meant that no one else had decided to use the skip to dispose of their own junk. It was always a hazard – nature and neighbours abhorred a vacuum, present them with an empty vessel and they would fill it.

  He paused, hands on his hips, stretched out his aching back and wondered why he hadn’t considered a career that involved sitting at a desk, rather than one that made him feel like he’d run a marathon every day.

  ‘Hard at it?’

  Dan squinted against the sunlight and shaded his eyes with his hand while trying to locate the source of the voice. A woman had paused at the end of the drive, a small dog ambled at her feet sniffing the ground and lifting its leg every now and then to mark its territory. ‘Always am,’ he said. These encounters could often be a good source of future work, so he was always happy to chat.

  ‘I see Elaine’s not home then. Gone on holiday has she?’

  That kind of question made Dan wary, you never knew who you were talking to and as he was responsible for the security of the house in Elaine’s absence he answered carefully. ‘She has been, but she’s due back soon. Don’t worry, we’re always careful to leave everything locked up tight,’ he announced, making it clear that the house was not vulnerable. For good measure he crouched down and made a fuss of the dog, chucking it behind its ears and receiving a series of enthusiastic licks for his trouble.

  The woman seemed pleased by his attention, ‘I’m glad she’s having a break, poor girl. That mother of hers was a trial I’m sure, not that I want to speak ill of the dead or anything, but do you know she wouldn’t let that girl out of her sight?’ she paused as if to check that Dan was interested
in her tale.

  ‘I know she had a bad time of it.’ He knew it was true. He remembered Jean Ellis well and could still recall the sting of her tongue when she had warned him away from her daughter all those years ago. He had liked Elaine then, and he liked her now but hardly knew anything about her these days, except that she was still lonely and still shy. He wanted to know her better and if indulging in neighbourhood gossip was a way to get there then he was game. Why not?

  The woman warmed to her theme, apparently pleased by his response, ‘When my girls were growing up they’d often call for Elaine, see if she wanted to come out to play, come for tea, you know how kids are. They felt sorry for her. Do you know, not once would that bloody woman let her out, not once. I don’t think she gave that girl a minute’s peace from the day she was born, and she’s such a nice girl.’

  Dan nodded to indicate that he shared her indignation, which encouraged her to go on.

  ‘Wouldn’t even let her go away to college, I mean kids have to have their own lives don’t they? My girls both went to university – one’s a lawyer and the other’s in HR, I don’t see them much, but they’ve got to have their own lives haven’t they?’ Dan wasn’t sure whom she was trying to convince. ‘But that Jean, always was a strange one. I said that to my husband the day they moved in. There was something shifty about her. I know people are entitled to keep themselves to themselves, but she took it too far I reckon. I mean, there’s being private and there’s being strange isn’t there?’

  He made a movement with his head, half nod, and half shake. He could agree that people were often strange but was loathe to commit himself to such an opinion.

  ‘I went to the funeral, not a soul there that wasn’t a neighbour, and no wake. Everyone came to me after for a cup of tea and we all really felt for that poor girl, all on her own in that house. We all said it was probably a blessing really, Jean going like she did. So, is she going to sell up?’ The woman was peering into the skip, her eyes wide with curiosity.

  ‘Well, after we’re finished I think that’s the intention.’ Dan said.

  ‘Good for her I say, though it will be funny to have new neighbours after all this time. I hope she sells to the right kind of people. It’s a nice neighbourhood. Anyway, we’re thinking of having a bit of work done ourselves, I fancy a conservatory. I might give you a call for a quote.’ She said it as if she was bestowing a great honour on him.

  Dan smiled and reached into his pocket for a business card. It was always worth schmoozing the neighbours when it might be good for business.

  He waved goodbye and walked back into the house, heading for the kitchen where he had just finished ripping out a seventies monstrosity that didn’t even look good in satellite channel re-runs of old sitcoms. If he’d had to assess Jean’s personality based on her taste in décor he would have labelled her as frugal, possibly even tight to the point of meanness.

  It was obvious that she had not been a woman who embraced change, or thought it necessary to spend money where it wasn’t absolutely essential. If it wasn’t broken, she hadn’t fixed it. Perhaps she thought her daughter wasn’t broken either, but it wasn’t what Dan pictured when he thought about Elaine, and he thought about Elaine a lot. She was like half a person, present but not whole. He knew he was attracted to her and he knew he didn’t care about the scar that transected her flesh and which she tried hopelessly to keep covered, to the point where he suspected that she used it as an excuse for avoiding people. What he didn’t know was why he felt the need to pursue someone who so clearly had baggage. Did he really want to take that on? But she’d had baggage when he’d very first met her. He could still picture her as a teenager, all trussed up and awkward in her neat school uniform and sensible shoes. Other girls her age had been blossoming and bandying their burgeoning sexuality about like fairground hawkers. There had been nothing wrong with it, life was life and kids were kids. He hadn’t turned it down where it was offered freely, but he’d rarely wanted to go back for more. Elaine’s control and her conservatism had been perversely attractive to him back then, and he had been surprised to find that it still was.

  With a sigh he picked up a hammer and bolster and started to hack at the patchy plaster, which clung stubbornly to the kitchen wall.

  Bob, his colleague, calling down from the bathroom where he was busy re-laying copper pipe, rudely interrupted his reverie regarding Elaine. ‘Oi, Dan, you’d better come and have a look at this mate.’

  With a weary sigh Dan lay down his tools and made his way upstairs. ‘What’s up now?’ he said, expecting to hear that Bob had discovered yet another ancient, potentially dangerous relic left by the Edwardian builders.

  In the bathroom Bob was kneeling astride a gap in the floorboards. He was holding a piece of cloth in his hands. ‘What do you make of this?’ He held the item up.

  Dan scrutinised the fabric, it looked like it had once been a child’s dress. It might have been white at some point in its history but it was grey and mouldy with age now and had been badly torn by something. ‘Where did you find it?’ He took the garment and examined it more closely.

  ‘Under this board, wedged under the pipe. Look there’s these too.’ Bob reached into the cavity and pulled out a pair of tiny shoes followed by, more distressingly, a pair of tiny knickers, which he handled with a great degree of discomfort. ‘What do you make of it?’

  Dan really didn’t know, but he was pretty suspicious that the dark stain on the dress, which had stiffened the fabric, was probably blood, ‘God knows, but it’s pretty odd.’

  Bob scratched his head and stared at the little shoes. ‘I’ve found some stuff in my time; remember that cat skeleton we turfed up once in that woman’s loft? But I’ve never come across anything like this before.’ He looked at his boss. Dan was still staring at the dress which he held in his work calloused hands like it was a precious piece of silk. ‘What do you reckon, should we report it to someone? I mean, that looks like dried blood doesn’t it?’

  Dan nodded, ‘I dunno, it might be nothing.’

  ‘Who buries nothing under the floorboards Dan? Come on.’

  Dan and Bob had worked together for a long time, they knew each other well; each knew how the other one ticked. ‘What aren’t you telling me mate?’ Dan asked, aware that Bob was angling at something.

  Bob’s face flushed, ‘You know that box of stuff I found in the loft? Go and take a look at it, then tell me what you think.’

  Dan frowned at him, he knew Bob could be a bit of a nosy bugger at times. ‘You went through it didn’t you?’ he accused.

  Bob shrugged defensively, ‘Well you never know what you’re going to find in these old places. Go and take a look, you’ll see what I mean.’

  Dan gave Bob a look that told him he wasn’t happy, not happy at all. They were in a position of trust in someone’s home and prying through their personal effects was not part of the remit. But the find had piqued his curiosity, and he cared about Elaine. Consciously he decided to break his own rules and meddle in things that didn’t concern him.

  He retrieved the box from the garage and spread the contents on Jean’s highly polished dining table. Most of it was rubbish. Ancient magazines mingled with laughable old knitting patterns, amidst old bills and receipts. As Dan sorted through he was puzzled as to what Bob had found so interesting. He came across an envelope, the brown manila worn soft with age and damp.

  Inside he found a pile of newspaper cuttings, carefully clipped and folded. He unfolded the first, careful not to tear the fragile paper, and found himself looking at the face of a little girl, all smiles and dimples. Underneath the photograph was a headline, which read ‘Missing’. The other cuttings were the same, each one following the story of Mandy Miller, the child the police had never found. Dan picked up the envelope and shook it out to see if there was more. A small, folded document fell out onto the table. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to look at it, and for a few minutes he just stared, his mind reeling. Eventually he pick
ed it up, unfolded it and saw it for what it was, a death certificate. According to the document Elaine Ellis had died at ten days old in 1981.

  Chapter Eight

  Ada Gardiner-Hallow sat down at the kitchen table and contemplated her evening meal. The days when meals had been served in the formal dining room were long gone, as were the staff who had served them. Pavla had prepared the meal, a light summer salad, and had left it, neatly covered in cling-film on the long pine table. Next to it she had left a paper serviette, which was almost as distasteful to Ada as the prospect of the cling-filmed salad.

  Times had changed, and she was trying very hard to change with them. With desultory indifference she prodded at a piece of limp ham and listened to the house. The history of nearly a thousand years creaked and groaned around her as long dead Hallows stalked the halls to remind her of the weight of their presence and her responsibility. Heritage had become a burden. The burden wouldn’t have been so great had those other Hallows not spent their fortunes on constantly remodelling the house, to the point that it had become quite a mongrel. Albert didn’t care, the whole place could fall down around him and as long as his blessed library stayed intact he wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Alex only cared what it might be worth.

  Ada knew that people envied her, they imagined that with a great house, great wealth was always a companion. They imagined that privilege was a desirable element. But privilege meant obligation and obligation meant duty, and duty meant enslavement. That’s how Ada felt, indentured to a position that modernity abhorred and made ridiculous. If she could sell her position to raise funds for Alex she would do so in a heartbeat, but incumbency was a deal made with the devil marked down for posterity between the pages of the Domesday Book.

  Albert had never felt the weight of it and Alex refused to. Albert had never felt the weight of anything except his own flights of fancy. Even as a child he had always seemed to be elsewhere, buried deep in his own thoughts. While Ada had been moulded into a lady in the most pointless ways imaginable (a well-bred lady never gesticulates Adeline! One must be quiet and serene at all times) Albert had been catching butterflies and cataloguing pine cones. While Ada remained quiet and serene Albert had gesticulated unabashedly and without censure, and he still did. There had been a process of delegation in the family, Mother had delegated to Nanny and Nanny had delegated to Ada. Ada had deferred to Albert’s superior gender, and Alicia had simply done as she had pleased. It had pleased her to marry and produce a son, and it had pleased her to die and delegate her motherly duties to Ada, who could not endure another nanny or the regimens such a woman might impose. Alex had been allowed to run wild with only the imposition of a good school or two to curb his freedoms. It was a system that had worked for Albert and had formed him into an affable, if eccentric man. However, Alex had inherited his mother’s peccadilloes and under Ada’s inept but well-meaning care, had planted the seeds of his predilections in youth where they had sprouted and spread like Japanese knotweed. With Esther’s loving care they had flourished. Not that Ada wasn’t grateful to the woman, she would never have coped without her, and indeed owed her a great debt of gratitude. Another duty, signed over to the devil but not held on record, only on trust. She ought to go and see her, do her duty, but it had been a long time since she had been able to sit in a room with Esther Davies and not feel that their roles had been reversed. Ada laughed out loud at the irony and the sound of it rattled wickedly around the cavernous kitchen, to think, the mistress serves the servant!