33 Women: A gripping new thriller about the power of women, and the lengths they will go to when pushed...

by Isabel Ashdown

  ‘And you and Vanessa? Were you in love too?’ Pip asks.

  Seed’s eyes glisten as she gazes back at the three women assembled before her, and Celine suspects that she has, for most of her life, lived with great regrets. ‘I loved her,’ Seed replies, with feeling. ‘After Susan, I’d never dared to hope I might find a true friend again, and then I did, in Vanessa. But I promise you, it was only ever friendship. She meant so much to me and I miss her every day …’ Her words trail off with the pain of remembering. She reaches beneath the neckline of her vest and removes a pendant, unhooking it over her head and passing it to Celine with care.

  ‘The evil eye?’ Celine murmurs, turning the blue glass nugget over in her hands, recalling Georgie’s description of the gift she’d sent from Greece. ‘This was Vanessa’s?’

  ‘I was only looking after it for her,’ Seed replies. ‘It’s yours now.’

  For a moment there’s nothing but the sound of the fire, and it is as though Seed has forgotten they’re there altogether, so lost is she in her memories. Faint voices trail in through the French doors and the four women turn in that direction, seeing the back lawn lit up by the lights of a vehicle turning at the front gate.

  ‘That’ll be DI Aston,’ Una says calmly, and Seed nods, rising to her full height, acceptance in her expression.

  But when the women step out on to the back path it’s not a police car they see, but the community truck, engine idling at the front gate, bright headlamps flooding the driveway. There is a woman already at the wheel, and, as Celine squints to make out if there’s anyone else inside, Bramble appears at the rear passenger door, helping a small person into their seat.

  ‘The girls!’ Pip screams. ‘She’s taking the girls!’

  She breaks into a run, with Una and Celine following close behind, but it is Seed who takes the lead, sprinting like an athlete over grass and gravel, with that idling truck in her sights.

  ‘No!’ she cries into the night, gaining on them fast. ‘No, Bramble!’

  Bramble is at the entrance now, struggling to release the lock, and when the gate springs open the driver accelerates at speed – stopping only at the bone-smashing sound of crumpling metal, as Seed’s body is thrown to the path.

  ‘Mummy! Where are you going?’

  This furious shout comes from Olive, not in the truck as they had feared, but standing at the side of the house, hand in hand with little Beebee, a baffled look on her sleepy face. The passenger gazing out from the back of the truck is not a child, but an old woman.

  Fern.

  As the flashing blue glow of approaching squad cars lights up the woodland path, Celine knows it’s finally all over.

  42. CELINE

  Two weeks later, Arundel

  Sitting on the riverside bench behind Delilah’s Arundel home, Celine gazes out over the shimmering water and feels at peace for the first time in weeks.

  The champagne is slipping down easily; it’s an expensive bottle, carefully selected this morning from Mum’s cellar. Celine will only have one glass, so Pip shares the last of it with Una, and together they raise a toast to Delilah, the perpetually absent mother. After the coroner had officially released her body, the cremation and small service had gone ahead today as planned, finally drawing a line under that phase in the Murphy women’s lives. Now it’s just them, and Celine feels that perhaps these people are all she really needs in her life. A little way along the river path, Olive and Beebee are occupied poking sticks into the bulrushes, giggling at the ducklings that bob and scoot across the water’s surface, and once again Celine is struck by her love for them, these curious little girls with so much living ahead.

  ‘I always said those tablets would finish Delilah off,’ Pip says, giving the girls a wave. ‘She used to knock ’em back like sweets. She was bound to get the dose wrong some day or other.’

  ‘Don’t be too harsh on her,’ Una replies, patting Pip’s leg. ‘Your mum wasn’t an easy woman, but she had her own demons to deal with. I’m afraid she got used to leaning on the pills to help her through.’

  Celine smiles sadly. ‘So, tell us again, Una. When Vanessa called to stay with Mum that last time, she wasn’t here?’

  ‘Apparently not. According to Harry Glass, he was working on the garden the day your sister called at the house, saying she’d arranged with your mum to visit for a few nights. But when Harry explained that Delilah was away with her boyfriend in Italy Vanessa got quite upset. She told him to forget it, and headed straight off to Two Cross Farm, where she was due a few days later.’

  ‘And the link between Harry Glass and Jem Falmer turned out to be meaningless after all?’ Pip says.

  ‘Yep, pure coincidence,’ Una replies. ‘Both men were local, and they’d attended the same school, but they were never friends, and Harry hadn’t seen or heard of Jem since they’d left.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences?’ Celine smiles.

  Una laughs. ‘Well, we can all get it wrong from time to time, can’t we?’

  For a while Celine sits quietly, her mind travelling the short distance along this very path, to Two Cross Farm. She thinks of the police digging up the compost mounds beside the greenhouse, of the bodies buried there not five years apart: that of Jem Falmer, and of Kathy Hawks, the community doctor, who the forensic team confirmed died of heart failure. And she thinks of Fern, their original leader and the artist behind those magnificent photographs that adorn the walls of Two Cross Farm. She’d seen the self-portrait of Fern among them, taken back in 1976, when she was a strong young American with a bold gaze; with a look that suggested she could take on the world and win.

  Only two days ago, Dave Aston had called to tell them the news that seventy-four-year-old Fern had been taken directly to hospital after the events of that final night, critically ill with pneumonia, and that she had passed away in her sleep. Celine is glad that she will escape trial for the killing of Jem Falmer; in fact, she wishes she’d lived just a little longer so that she might shake her by the hand. Whoever Fern Bellamy was, Celine is certain her original vision for her women’s community came from a place of goodness.

  ‘Do you think Alex will face charges?’ Celine asks Una now. ‘Is there a case to bring?’

  Alex. It’s the name Seed has chosen since deciding to reshape his world as a man, now that he’s free of the constraints of his old life at Two Cross Farm. In choosing his own name, he wanted something simple, ungendered, unconnected to his past life and the person he used to be.

  ‘Honestly, I couldn’t say,’ Una replies. ‘The circumstances of his birth are still tying the authorities in knots: he doesn’t legally exist, never having been registered as being born, and his role in the various crimes within the walls of Two Cross Farm was as a witness at worst. Dave Aston says he’s never come across a case like it in all his years of policing – and I can say the same.’

  Pip sighs. ‘Dave says that Bramble and Regine are giving nothing away either. Apparently their versions of events have been synchronised down to the tiniest of details – you know they were allowed to return home to Two Cross Farm after just a day of questioning? You’d think they’d be charging them for concealing bodies – Jem’s and that Kathy woman, their doctor – at the very least.’

  ‘They had letters,’ Una replies. ‘A sort of final will filed by every one of the Founding Sisters, except Susan, giving instructions to be followed in the event of their deaths. Apparently, Kathy asked to be buried there, which, while not legal, might serve to get them off the hook to some extent. They’re both claiming ignorance of pretty much everything else.’

  ‘Where do you think they were planning to go that night, when they tried to escape in the truck?’ Celine asks.

  ‘I don’t think they had a plan,’ Una replies. ‘I think they just realised everything was about to come crashing down around them – and I think they wanted to protect Fern from the repercussions of that fall-out. Poor old thing; she didn’t have a clue what was going
on at the end.’

  Rising from the bench, Celine signals to her nieces with outstretched arms and they run to her, wrapping themselves around her waist with customary enthusiasm.

  ‘Are you going?’ Olive asks, her face creasing crossly.

  ‘Only for a while. Don’t forget, we’ll have all the time in the world when you come down to stay with me in Bournemouth next week.’

  Olive nods earnestly. ‘It’s going to be fun, isn’t it, Mummy?’

  Pip smiles. ‘It’s going to be so much fun, girls. But Auntie Ceecee had better watch out, hadn’t she? Because if we like it too much we might not want to leave.’

  Celine disentangles herself from Olive and Beebee and picks up her coat and car keys, hugging Pip and Una in turn. ‘I’ll see you back at the house in a few hours,’ she says, and leaves them looking out over the river. As she reaches the back gate to Belle France, Una calls after her.

  ‘Say hello to Alex for me, will you? Tell him I hope he’s on the mend.’

  Celine simply gives a thumbs-up and heads towards her camper van.

  43. CELINE

  Present day, West Sussex

  Alex is sitting in the upright armchair of his private room at St Richard’s Hospital, dressed in a flamboyant Paisley dressing gown and eating from his lap tray, his attention transfixed by the wall-mounted television.

  One leg, encased in plaster, is propped up on a plastic footstool, a single signature scrawled along its shaft: Celine’s scrawl. For a few moments she remains in the corridor, just out of view, watching through the glass window and taking in the difference in Alex, not just in his appearance but in the expression lines of his face. This is only the second visit she’s made since the night of the revelations, but, in the short time that has passed, she’s witnessed the transformation in him. He’s smiling at something on the television, and it occurs to Celine that this stay in hospital may well be providing him with some of his first direct experiences of cultural media in his forty-three-year-old life. As Celine enters the room, Alex looks up and smiles, immediately reaching for the remote control and switching the box off, graciously accepting the flowers and chocolates she’s brought with her.

  ‘I didn’t know what to get you—’ Celine starts to say, but Alex drops the gifts on the bed and extends his hand to draw her near.

  ‘It was your mother’s funeral today,’ he says softly, as Celine perches on the side of the mattress. ‘How was it? How did Pip cope – and you for that matter? These things are so difficult, especially when relationships are other than straightforward.’

  Celine sighs, again experiencing that strange sensation that Seed – or rather, Alex – knows her intimately. ‘It was fairly weird,’ she admits. ‘We all cried – well, not Olive and Beebee, of course – but the rest of us, me, Pip and Una, were in floods. Until this horrible moment when the automatic curtain around the coffin got stuck, making this awful grinding noise, and we got a fit of the giggles. The vicar didn’t know where to look; it was terrible, really. Thank God there wasn’t much of an audience. Delilah would have been mortified.’

  Alex covers his smile and pats her hand, and his silence is good-humoured and well-placed.

  ‘So, how about you?’ Celine asks, shifting the conversation. ‘It’s been a fortnight since your accident, but I’m guessing you’ve still got a lot of things to work out? I don’t just mean your injuries. I mean, you must have a lot of things to resolve. Have any of the sisters been to visit you?’

  He shakes his head. ‘I wrote and told Bramble not to. With the police, and the ongoing investigation – well, I don’t want to make things worse for them. My lawyer said it’s best if we distance ourselves for the time being, until everything is settled, because we’re still not sure if the police plan to charge me with conspiring to pervert the course of justice.’ He retrieves a counselling information leaflet from his bedside table, and hands it to Celine. ‘They’ve assigned a social worker to me, you know? Off the record, she’s advised me to answer “no comment” on all counts, whether it’s an official interview or not.’

  ‘Sounds like good advice to me,’ Celine replies. She reaches into her rucksack and pulls out a charity shop bag, handing it to Alex. ‘And how’s the leg? I managed to pick up a couple of pairs of jeans while I was in town – I thought you might want something a little bit less, um, tunicky for when you get out of here.’

  Alex unwraps the jeans and holds them up, a pleased smile forming on his face. ‘They’re perfect,’ he says, eyes filling with tears. ‘You’re a true friend, Celine.’

  Celine feels her face flushing, and she knows she is pleased to hear Alex’s words, that she wants them to be friends – that she doesn’t want this to end here. ‘How are you feeling, since the news about Fern, Alex? You must be deeply upset to lose her; you’d known her since you were tiny.’

  A single tear spills over and trails down Alex’s face. ‘I’m fine, really. I just wish I could be there for my fellow sisters, to comfort them in it. Bramble and Regine in particular.’ He hesitates a moment, before asking, ‘Celine, do you know how the police worked out the truth about me in the end? Do you know what tipped them off?’

  She nods. ‘It was a former sister from Two Cross Farm, a woman called Sandy. Do you remember that name?’

  Alex appears to think for a moment. ‘Vaguely, though we had so many women pass through our doors over the years.’

  ‘Well, she remembered you. DI Aston said she’d read some of those recent news articles, the ones accusing you of being a cult leader, and she came forward to make a statement claiming she’d met you as a child.’

  Alex listens, rapt.

  ‘She claimed there had been some incident with spilled inks in the art studio, which prompted her to strip you out of your dirty clothes, revealing that you weren’t the little girl the Founding Sisters presented you as, but, rather, a boy. Apparently, when this Sandy woman threatened to tell the others, she was forcibly ejected from the community. At first, DI Aston wasn’t sure if Sandy was just some crank – but when a second caller came through just hours later, making similar claims – saying she’d caught sight of you undressing for the shower – Dave couldn’t ignore it.’

  Alex nods, taking it all in. ‘Fern had this rule: banishment is final – the kind of threat Sandy was making wouldn’t have gone down well at all. Fern was fiercely protective of all the women in the community, but especially of me.’

  Celine stares at his face a moment or two, and marvels at the dramatic difference in Alex’s appearance now that he’s free of his scarves and robes, the shroud of Seed having been stripped away. ‘Alex, the police can’t find any record of you. None whatsoever. No birth certificate, no passport, no National Insurance number, no previous address.’

  He stares back at her as though she’s missed some great big piece of the puzzle. ‘Well, they wouldn’t,’ he replies, as though it’s obvious.

  ‘So, when did you first arrive at Two Cross Farm?’ she asks. ‘You said you were brought up there, but I’m confused, I suppose, because I’ve seen the Code of Conduct, and it’s very clear on the rules about children.’

  Alex nods slowly. ‘I arrived in 1977, some months after Two Cross Farm first opened its doors to women in need. Fern had a clear vision that there must be six Founding Sisters, and, of those, the sixth would be an infant – “unsullied by the world”, she said – a future leader of women. I was that sixth sister.’

  ‘That bit I understand,’ Celine replies, ‘but why adopt you – a male – when it was a sister they wanted?’

  Alex blinks back at her. ‘They didn’t adopt me, Celine. I was born at Two Cross Farm.’

  Celine is shocked into silence.

  ‘Celine?’ Alex says. ‘Don’t you see? Fern was my mother. At least, she was the one who gave birth to me. She didn’t know it then, but she was already pregnant at the very first meeting the five ever had – before Two Cross Farm even opened its doors.’

  ‘Did the other siste
rs know this?’

  ‘The Founding Sisters all knew, eventually, and a few of the early residents who came and went at the start. But for the others who came later I was simply already there. They had no cause to suspect I was Fern’s, because it was Bramble and the others who raised me, really.’

  ‘Fern rejected you?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Alex replies, his creased brow showing his struggle to find the right words. ‘But it was one of the Codes: All who dwell here must first shed their limpets. Fern brought me into the world, but she handed me over to the community from the outset. At Two Cross Farm, I was everyone’s child. And no one’s.’

  ‘And your father?’ Celine asks after a pause.

  Alex shakes his head. ‘Not a clue. No one knows, and, from what little Bramble has shared with me, that included Fern. Apparently, he was just some guy she met at her exhibition in London, right before they set up the commune. It was a brief encounter, and she never saw him again.’

  Just like her own story, Celine thinks. A brief encounter; a fleeting collision of bodies and DNA, and here she and Alex are, alive in the world. Exhaustion washes over her, and she flops back against the pillows of the bed, allowing Alex’s fingers to lace gently with hers. They sit like that for long minutes, she laid out on the bed like a woman struck, he upright and dignified in his hospital chair, the quiet between them like some unspoken communion. They’ve both been robbed of so much; they’ve both missed out on great chunks of childhood and normality, and Celine wonders for the very first time if there might possibly be, other than Pip, this one other person who feels the world something like she does.

  ‘You know, when this is all over, Alex, I’d like you to come and visit me in Bournemouth for a while. I mean it. Will you come? Promise me you won’t just leave here and be alone?’

  She feels the increasing pressure of Alex’s hand in hers, and, when she turns her head in his direction to see the peace in his smiling face, she knows his answer is yes.