The Girl Who Came Back

by Susan Lewis

  “What the hell!” Kian cried, thumping the steering wheel.

  Blinking back tears of frustration, Jules looked away as he reached for her hand. She felt angry with him, even though it wasn’t his fault.

  “We might still make it,” he said lamely.

  After months of indecision and then waiting for an appointment, these hold-ups were already making their next attempt at IVF feel doomed, as though someone up there was trying to stop Jules from putting herself through it again.

  Taking out his new mobile phone, Kian called the clinic to warn them they’d be late. As he listened to the reply he turned to Jules. “That’s great,” he responded, raising his eyebrows. “Yep, we can do that. Thanks very much. We’ll definitely be there.” Ringing off he said, “They’ve had a cancellation next Monday, so they’re going to slot us in at eleven.”

  Jules’s head fell back against the seat. It wasn’t only relief pushing tears to her eyes, but the fear of her own hope as the terrible waiting continued.

  Half an hour later, having collected their mothers from a yoga class, Kian dropped his girls outside the Mermaid while he went to park the car.

  “Oh, look, a lovely log fire,” Aileen cried, going to warm her hands in front of the lively flames. “Marsha, come and sit yourself here in the armchair and get yourself warm.”

  “I’m all right,” Marsha insisted. “It’s you we want to be taking care of. You’re not properly over your cold yet.”

  “Ach, me, I’m as fit as a fiddle and never better. Me oh my, is that you over there, our Danny? What are you doing here at this hour? It’s not even the middle of the day yet. Shouldn’t you be running that club of yours?”

  “It doesn’t open until five on Tuesdays,” Danny said with a grin, strolling over from the bar with a pint of best in one hand and a half-smoked cigarette in the other. “It’s good to see you, Auntie Aileen, so it is. And Marsha. Out doing the ladies-who-lunch thing, are we? Got some shopping lined up for after?”

  “Now there’s a good idea, Marsha,” Aileen declared. “We should go and spoil ourselves this afternoon, why not? Now don’t be blowing that smoke in me face, Danny. And it’s time you gave up those filthy things.”

  “It’s what keeps me going,” he informed her, stifling a cough. “So, can I get you two gorgeous girls a drink? Pint of Guinness, Auntie Aileen? Put some hair on your chest?”

  “Oh, you’re funny you are,” she retorted. “I’ll have me usual lager shandy, and I expect Marsha’ll have the same.”

  “I will,” Marsha confirmed. “And how’s your lovely wife, Danny? I don’t think I’ve seen her since Christmas.”

  “Cheryl? She’s all right, but with the baby due in a couple of weeks, she’s feeling too heavy to go out much. Kian, my man!” he cried as his cousin came through the door. “Just the person. I’ve got myself some tickets you’re going to want, and they won’t cost you a penny more than I paid for them myself.”

  “Which means they’ll be double,” Jules muttered to Misty, making her laugh.

  “That couple’s in the family room again,” Misty told her, moving toward the pumps to start serving some newcomers.

  Jules frowned.

  “You know, the posh ones I told you about last week, with the spoiled brat of a little girl. Apparently she wanted to play devil among the tailors again. The way she’s going at it it’ll be in pieces before she’s finished.”

  Since Jules considered the game one of the pub’s prized possessions, she wandered through to the family room to find the couple sitting incongruously at a table close to the unlit fire, and the child standing at a table flinging the ball on a string at the tiny wooden skittles. Being so young, probably no more than three, it was unlikely she could cause much damage, although she seemed fairly intent on it considering the oomph she was putting behind her throws.

  “Hi,” Jules said chattily. “If you like, I’ll get someone to come in and light the fire.”

  “Oh, no, no,” the woman hastily answered, “we don’t want—”

  “That would be welcome,” the man interrupted, turning in his chair to look at Jules in a way that immediately irked her. There was such a condescending air about him that she’d have liked nothing more than to turn on her heel and leave him in the cold.

  “We’ll stay for lunch if we may,” he told her. “My daughter enjoyed the jacket potato she had before. It’s partly why we came back. She’s also taken rather a shine to your little table game, as you can see.”

  Jules watched the child hurling the tiny ball with all her might, as though some deep-seated anger was making her want to destroy the harmless, deftly carved little skittles.

  Apparently unaware she was being spoken about, or simply not caring, the girl carried on flinging the ball.

  “Hello,” Jules said gently. “And what’s your name?”

  The child simply ignored her.

  “Amelia,” her mother admonished.

  The father put up a hand to silence his wife. “Amelia, the lady’s talking to you.”

  The child turned to look up at Jules, and her eyes, round, direct and coldly assessing, almost caused Jules to blink. She’d never seen someone so young with such an adult expression, or with such translucent skin that she might never have seen the sun.

  Jules made herself smile.

  The girl didn’t smile back.

  “Do you like the game?” Jules asked, going toward her. When was the last time someone had brushed this child’s hair? It was so tangled it must have been a while, though she could easily imagine the kind of tantrum the girl might throw if someone tried.

  The girl’s fist was tightening around the ball, as though she was afraid Jules might be about to take it away.

  It didn’t matter that the pull on the string was making the narrow pole bend; being metal, it was unlikely to break.

  “We’ve tried to find something similar,” the father announced, “but I’m afraid this is the one she’s set her heart on.”

  Jules looked at him.

  “I’d like to buy it,” he explained, as if Jules was becoming tiresome.

  “Well,” Jules began, “I’m afraid it’s not for sale.”

  “Oh, but I’m sure it must be,” he protested. “A little old thing like that. I can’t imagine anyone else plays with it.”

  Sensing that he wasn’t used to taking no for an answer, Jules said, “It’s been at the pub for a very long time, possibly over a hundred years, so we feel that it belongs here.”

  His laugh was more of a scoff, but before he could speak his wife said something that Jules didn’t catch. Whatever he muttered through his teeth in reply Jules couldn’t make out either, but there was no mistaking the way the woman seemed to shrink back inside herself.

  The man was clearly a bully who had little regard for women, including his own wife. However, he wasn’t going to get away with anything here, especially not the game. “I’ll have someone come and take your order,” Jules informed him shortly, and turned on her heel.

  “Excuse me,” he barked, “we haven’t finished here. I said I want to buy the game.”

  Jules turned around. “And I said it wasn’t for sale.”

  “For heaven’s sake, look at her. You can see how much she loves it. Would you really begrudge a small child something so…so…worthless?”

  “I’m sure you’ll be able to find another.”

  “I want this one,” the girl informed her. “It’s mine.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Jules replied gently.

  The girl flung the ball with all her might. It spun round the table, missing the skittles, and ended up with the string wrapped tightly around the pole.

  “I really don’t see what the problem is,” the man declared, getting to his feet. He was far taller than Jules had expected, certainly over six feet, and there was a menace to his manner that made her wonder if he was actually going to try to take the game by force.

  “Anton, please,” the woman begged.r />
  Ignoring her, he continued forward.

  The child suddenly screamed and they all turned round.

  “It hit me, it hit me!” she wailed, clutching her head.

  Her father scooped her up as Jules looked at the game. The child must have spun the ball again, although how she’d managed it when the string was still wrapped around the pole was impossible to say.

  “It’s all right,” the father told her, making it sound more of a fact than an attempt at comfort.

  “I hate it! It hurt me,” the girl sobbed. “Naughty game.”

  The mother was on her feet too, trying to take the child.

  “No!” the child growled, and turning her face into her father’s shoulder, she clung to him and wailed loudly.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman mumbled, not quite meeting Jules’s eyes. “I—”

  “What the hell are you apologizing for?” her husband snapped. “We haven’t done anything wrong,” and as though neither Jules, his wife, nor even the game existed, he stalked out of the room, taking his sobbing daughter with him.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman whispered again, and before Jules could respond she went scurrying after her husband.

  Realizing Misty was standing behind her, Jules said, “Did you see any of that?”

  “Enough,” Misty answered. “A total dickhead if ever I saw one.”

  “And the game fought back,” Jules said with a smile. “It wants to stay here, so it saw the child off.”

  “Yeah, like it’s got a life of its own.” Misty’s cynicism was as playful as the light in her eyes.

  Jules simply shrugged. She wasn’t going to comment one way or another, for she was feeling far too tired and anxious to get into any banter right now about whether or not there was something, or someone, living alongside them at the pub. But she rather thought there was.

  Dear Ruby, where am I now? Jules was wondering as she drove past the shady spur road leading to Hope Cove and the Mermaid, and continued along the coast toward town.

  Misty, who was still running the pub with her Italian husband, Marco, had told her they’d never sensed any sort of otherworldly presence since Jules and Kian had left, and the cream leather boot that Jules had placed on a mantelpiece in the library the day of their departure—yes, they’d had a library by then—had never been moved other than by human hand.

  It was funny, that, because it used to move about all over the place when Kian and Jules were there, turning up between her and Kian’s pillows at night, or alongside Jules’s shoes inside a cupboard as though trying to blend in; it even showed up in the car once, as though it was ready for a day out. For a long time Jules had been convinced Kian was doing it as a tease, despite his denials, but after her mother had found the story of Ruby Gideon in an old newspaper cutting at the Kesterly library she’d actually started to believe that they weren’t alone at the Mermaid.

  Girl Loses Life in Fire, the small headline in a late-nineteenth-century edition of the Kesterly Chronicle (now the Gazette) had read. There were only a few lines below, providing scant detail of how Rose and Robert Gideon, innkeepers of the Mermaid public house, had lost their twelve-year-old daughter, Ruby, in a fire that had broken out in a bedroom, the result of an overturned oil lamp. Of course, there was no way of knowing for certain that the owner of the cream leather boot really had been the Gideons’ daughter, but given its age (according to the antiques dealer) and its size, Jules had decided that the little rascal living alongside them just had to be Ruby.

  She could feel herself warming to Ruby even now as she approached the outskirts of town, remembering the way she used to talk to her at times as though she was actually there.

  “Are you hungry, Ruby? Shall we make ourselves a sandwich?”

  “Was it you who set the alarm off at one o’clock this morning, Ruby?”

  “Ruby, what is your boot doing on top of the cigarette machine? You know you’re too young to smoke.”

  And there had been the sadder times when Ruby’s presence had felt as real as anything she could touch, and in a way had seemed comforting, as if the ghost somehow understood what she was feeling.

  It was crazy but true that she’d hardly been able to wait to tell Ruby when she and Kian had found out they were pregnant. People were saying that by then, “We are pregnant,” as if the man was going to blow up like a balloon and give birth at the end of it all. Jules and Kian had received the news when they’d gone to their rescheduled appointment at the clinic to find out if they were clear to start a new round of fertility treatment.

  “It would appear from these test results, Mr. and Mrs. Bright,” the doctor had announced, eyes still on the file in front of him, “that you’ve beaten medical science to it and achieved a conception all on your own.”

  Jules’s heart caught on the memory. She could see herself, as clear as day, staring at the doctor in disbelief….

  —

  She was dreaming, she had to be. She hadn’t heard him right. Yet he was smiling, and Kian was standing up to shake his hand, as though the doctor had played an actual part when he’d just said he hadn’t….

  Jules was suddenly sobbing so hard that she could barely catch her breath. Relief, elation, shock—so many emotions were coursing through her that she had no clear idea of what any of them were.

  She was carrying a baby.

  Right now, this minute, a tiny little speck of life was starting to grow inside her, a speck of life that she and Kian had created, and that would be loved and wanted so much it would surely come right now if only it knew.

  “Oh God,” she gasped, over and over. She’d prayed so hard, had tried everything it was possible to try, and now, without them even realizing, it had happened. Their beautiful little son or daughter was coming to them at last.

  “How—how far along?” she heard Kian asking.

  “About eight to nine weeks,” the doctor replied.

  Out of nowhere Jules was suddenly struck by fear. “Do you think it’ll be all right?” she cried. “I mean, after everything we’ve been through…Is there a chance…?” She was thinking of miscarriages, deformities, complicated births that might leave one or both of them dead.

  “There’s no reason why everything shouldn’t be just fine,” the doctor said, and smiled. “You’re young and in good health.”

  “But even healthy women—”

  “Jules, stop,” Kian came in gently, taking her shaking hands in his own. “You can’t start looking on the black side now. We’ve got what we’ve always wanted, our very own little miracle, and the doctor just said there’s no reason why everything shouldn’t be absolutely fine.”

  —

  It had turned out to be more than fine: no problems at all with the pregnancy, only excitement and trepidation, the like of which neither Jules nor Kian had ever experienced before. It was as though both their families, all their friends, and even the pub’s clientele were pregnant along with them, for it was hard to imagine a single baby stirring so much interest or relief or belief that everything happened in its own time.

  In the end it was on a humid, lazy afternoon in late August that Jules went into labor. Kian instantly leapt into action, and by the time he’d rushed her to the hospital, fraught with nerves and exhilaration, the highly active Kesterly grapevine was already buzzing with the news.

  Jules would never forget the look on Kian’s face when the nurse handed him his tiny scrap of a daughter to hold for the first time. It was a comical blend of alarm, confusion, adoration, and pride. Exhausted though Jules was, the sheer joy of those moments gave her the strength to hold their baby girl too, and even feed her, and the surge of love that rushed in as though to bind the three of them together had felt so powerful and real that she knew right then that nothing could ever break it.

  “Hello, Daisy,” she whispered, gazing down at the flushed, sleepy little face. “You’re a very beautiful little girl.”

  “Daisy,” Kian echoed, staring at the newborn as thou
gh still unable to believe she was there. “Do you like the name? If you’d rather have another, I promise I won’t mind.”

  The baby’s eyes opened briefly, but whether she could see them it was impossible to tell.

  “I think she likes it,” Jules murmured. “Daisy Bright is a lovely name, so why wouldn’t she?”

  “She’s all things Bright and beautiful,” Kian whispered with a sob in his voice. “Oh, Jules, she’s wonderful. Thank you, my darling, thank you so much.”

  “I didn’t do it alone.” Jules smiled at him. “And I think we should have that hymn at her christening.”

  They took Daisy home the following day to a rousing welcome, with balloons and bunting decorating the entire cove right down to the beach. It was hard to imagine what they were going to do with all the gifts, much less how they were going to work out whom each one was from.

  Knowing the party was likely to go on all day, probably through to the wee hours, Jules soon made her excuses and took Daisy upstairs to her and Kian’s bedroom, where they’d set up the crib.

  She didn’t lay her down; she simply went on holding her, feeling her weight, smelling her wonderful baby smell, watching her eyes open and close and her tiny lips pursing and popping. As real and precious as she was, it was still taking time for Jules to believe that this wasn’t all a dream. She and Kian had their very own baby at last. Their lives were going to change in ways they probably couldn’t even imagine, but they were ready for it. Whatever being a parent meant, they were going to do the very best they could and make sure their little girl never wanted for anything.

  Lifting Daisy’s silky cheek to hers, she looked around the room. Of course there was no sign of Ruby, because there never was; it was all about feelings and sensing and somehow knowing she was there. And she was, Jules felt certain of it. It was as though Ruby had been waiting too, and was watching in her own way as the baby came into their home.