The Girl Who Came Back

by Susan Lewis

  What if she was jealous and worried, and afraid that the baby would become more important than her? It was crazy to think that way, but maybe believing in Ruby’s goodness meant she had to accept that there could be another side to her as well.

  She didn’t speak out loud; she said the words silently in her mind, certain that on some level Ruby could hear. “Ruby, this is Daisy. I hope you’re going to love her, because it would mean the world to me if you do.”

  Naturally there was no reply, but she sensed no change in the atmosphere, no withdrawal or coming forward, so maybe Ruby was just watching, as fascinated by a newborn as any twelve-year-old girl might naturally be.

  Responding to a knock on the door, Jules called out for the proud grandmothers to come in. She’d known they would follow and she was glad that they had. Daisy was as special to them as she was to her parents. She was the baby they’d longed for too, and was, for them, living proof that God really did answer prayers.

  No sooner were they in the room than the phone started to ring.

  “It could be Em,” her mother declared as Aileen took the baby. “I called before Aileen and I left to let her know you were on your way home.”

  “Oh, she’s a little darling, so she is,” Aileen crooned as Jules reached for the phone.

  “Jules! Oh my God! It’s so wonderful,” Em gushed down the line. “Your mum rang yesterday to tell me you were in labor, and now you have a beautiful baby girl. Daisy. I just love her name. I can’t wait to meet her. I promise, if school hadn’t already started I’d be on the first plane out, but I’ll definitely be there for half-term. How are you? Was it grueling? How many stitches?”

  Laughing, Jules lay gingerly down on the bed, loving the way Aileen passed Daisy to Marsha so she could hold her too. She had never felt so much elation and tiredness in her life, or such a powerful sense of belonging to another human being, tiny as Daisy might be.

  An hour or more passed as she and the grandmothers gossiped and laughed with Em on the phone, passing the baby between them to be fed or burped or simply admired. Daisy took it all without complaint, sometimes gazing at them curiously, or yawning, or waving a little fist in the air.

  When Kian escaped the celebrations to come and join them, the baby settled comfortably into her daddy’s arms, and within minutes they were both fast asleep.

  “We’ll leave you to get some rest too,” her mother whispered, running a hand over Jules’s hair. “Don’t worry about anything, we’ve got it all under control.”

  With her eyes already half closed Jules said, “Why would I worry when I have you to do it for me?”

  Marsha smiled and turned to Aileen, who was gazing at her son and granddaughter in something close to awe. It was a truly special moment for them all. Their son and daughter had finally been blessed by the Almighty with the beautiful baby they so desired and deserved.

  As the door closed behind the grandmothers Jules forced herself up to close a window, hoping to block out some of the noise downstairs. It helped, a little, but since she wanted to fall asleep to the sound of the celebrations, she left the others open and turned back to the bed.

  On the way she stopped at the exquisite, hand-carved crib that Kian’s second cousin’s wife, Terry, had found in an antiques shop somewhere in Devon, and had spent the last few months lovingly restoring. When she’d brought it to the pub, just over a week ago, Jules had immediately fallen in love with it. It was impossible not to.

  She ran a hand along the smooth sandy oak, and touched the lace bows that Terry had tied to the rails. Ruthie and Connor had given Terry the cream silk coverlet to put inside the crib, along with a mobile of small white fluffy animals that was currently curled up in one corner waiting to take its rightful place. As Jules went to reach for it her hand came to a stop. Ruby’s dainty little boot was nestled in among it, looking for all it was worth as though it belonged there.

  Jules frowned curiously. She hadn’t noticed it when she’d come into the room, but then again, she hadn’t looked very closely. And anyway, it must have already been there, because it couldn’t possibly have turned up since. Now what she was wondering was why it was there. Could this be Ruby’s way of offering Daisy a gift, since it was all she had to give?

  It seemed the most likely answer, and because it felt so typical of Ruby to do something a little whimsical yet kind, even funny in its way, she decided that she had read the gesture correctly.

  —

  Returning to the present, Jules stopped the car and looked around. She was in a street she knew well but hadn’t visited in several years, and she couldn’t think what had brought her here now. Hadn’t she been on her way to the care home to visit her mother and drop off some of the paperwork she’d promised to have ready by today?

  She glanced at her watch and, seeing the time, sent a quick text to Maurice Rich, the care home’s manager, assuring him she’d be there before five.

  As she put her phone away her gaze wandered to the house where Kian had grown up, a compact two-up, two-down in the middle of a pebble-dash terrace. Aileen had always kept it shiny and clean: “a Bright jewel in a necklace of worn stones” was the way Em had once described it. It was as dreary and neglected as the other houses now, with dull, skewed curtains, a boarded-up pane in the front door, and peeling paint on the window frames. Aileen’s sister, Bridget, still lived in one of the semis opposite, but there was no sign of her today, nor of her eldest son, Danny.

  He’d done time, had Danny, an eighteen-month stretch for assault and two years for actual bodily harm. He wasn’t the only member of the family who’d been inside, and there was a good chance one or two more distant cousins were still there. They had a reputation for fighting hard; no one wanted to be on the wrong side of them. However, if you were one of them, family or not, they’d do anything for you, and top of their list was Kian. They’d walk through fire for him, cut off their right arms, sell their grannies into white slavery—basically anything anyone asked of them, just as long as it was for Kian.

  To most of the Bright clan Kian was a god, and made even more so for never becoming involved in his cousins’ shadier schemes. Jules didn’t doubt that he often knew about them, might even have helped connect them with a fence or a bent cop who could further them, but he was always careful to remain on the right side of the law himself. He was a good man, everyone knew that, and no one ever tried to change him. It was as though they all needed him to be as straight and loyal as he was, a kind of priest without actually being one, as well as a madcap, fun-loving bloke who could stop fights before they began and get behind a worthy project in a way that often made all the difference.

  Daisy coming along hadn’t changed him; he’d just seemed to become even more of what he already was. He was devoted to her in a way that made everyone smile, while Jules would roll her eyes and wonder what their little minx of a toddler would get her beloved daddy to do next. She was like him in so many ways—not only to look at, with her bouncy blond curls and captivating violet-blue eyes, but in how sweet-natured and patient she was, how she loved to meet new people, and how outraged she became if she sensed an injustice, a lie, or someone being mean just for the sake of it.

  “Daddy? Have you been naughty again?” she’d whisper to Kian if Jules raised her voice to him.

  “I think so,” he’d whisper back.

  Daisy’s big eyes would come to Jules. “Daddy doesn’t mean to be naughty,” she’d explain. “He was just born that way.”

  How could you not love her and laugh?

  “Mummy? Can I make my bedroom like somewhere mermaids live? Because I think I’m a mermaid.”

  Holding back her smile, Jules had said, “Why do you think you’re a mermaid?”

  “Because that’s what our house is called, and Uncle Danny said I swim like a mermaid. Is Uncle Danny coming to my birthday next week?”

  “I think everyone’s coming, sweetheart.”

  “I’ll be three, and the week after that Granny Ail
een will be twenty-three.”

  Laughing, Jules said, “Is that what she told you?”

  Daisy giggled, twirled, and crashed into a chair, where she found her Polaroid camera. She ran off downstairs to take yet more photos of Misty and the staff. Even at such a tender age Daisy loved nothing more than to take photos or videos of her friends and family to show to the grannies every time they came over.

  It was funny, the little scenarios that drifted randomly in from the past for no particular reason, apart from to remind and cause smiles and heartache.

  When Daisy had started playgroup it had amused Kian and Jules no end to hear of how little time it had taken her to set about tackling the bullies. “She kills them with kindness,” the group leader told them, “and they just don’t know what to do with it, apart from make her a friend.” Apparently she was afraid of no one, would always speak up for someone too shy to do it for themselves, was quick to take new children under her wing, and wasn’t backward in clocking someone round the ear if she felt they deserved it. She was generous to a fault, giving away her toys, her sweets, even the favorite teddy she’d had since birth. She’d cried over that, confiding to Jules that she wished she could have him back, but she didn’t think it was fair to ask when Dean Foggarty didn’t have a teddy at all.

  “You don’t have a teddy?” Jules said to Dean, adoring the sweet little face that was tilted worriedly up to hers.

  He shook his head and turned his big gray eyes to Daisy as she said, “His mum and dad don’t allow toys or anything like that, and he can’t have sleepovers either, but they will allow him to come here, so I said he could. Do you think he could live with us, Mum?”

  Smiling, Jules dropped to their height as she said, “I’m sure he’d rather live with his mummy and daddy, but you’re always welcome here, Dean. All Daisy’s friends are.”

  “She’s got lots of friends,” Dean told her earnestly. “Stephie’s her best friend, and I’m the next.”

  “That’s right,” Daisy confirmed, nodding her blond head.

  “Yes, I’m definitely the first,” impish Stephie piped up, all bright red hair and chaotic freckles.

  “So what are you three up to this afternoon?” Jules asked, going to pour them all a juice.

  “We’re going to do a play on the beach,” Daisy shouted triumphantly, “and Millie, Georgie, Mary-Jane, and Max are coming too. Can they all stay for tea, please? We’d like fish fingers and chips, or beans on toast.”

  “Would you now? And should it be served here at the table, or down on the beach?”

  Daisy burst out laughing, and Jules didn’t ask why. It was simply Daisy’s way to laugh when she was happy, and generally everyone laughed along with her.

  It turned out to be true that Dean hadn’t had a teddy before Daisy gave him hers, and he didn’t have much of a life either, as far as Jules and Kian could make out. His parents were members of a devout religious sect, some kind of brethren who’d moved into the Southwell area of Kesterly, and who didn’t want much, if anything, to do with anyone outside their exclusive enclave. However, for reasons known only to them (Jules thought Dean’s mother was behind it), they seemed to approve of Daisy and never tried to get in the way of their delightful little son’s eagerness to spend time at Hope Cove. Indeed, once he started coming on a regular basis, he all but burst from his shell on arrival, making everyone laugh with his terrible jokes and useless magic tricks, and enchanting them with his gift for inventing stories, mostly featuring three children called Daisy, Stephie, and Dean. It could make Jules feel desperately sad to think of the way he had to shut himself down each time he went home; she could see it happening when she drove him, as though he was carefully detaching himself from Hope Cove to slip quietly and unobtrusively into the darkly religious world at Southwell, where Jules didn’t imagine there was much laughter or fun.

  However, as time went on, his parents, to everyone’s surprise and Dean’s delight, began coming to the shows that he, Daisy, and Stephie had started putting on at least once a month in the function room at the Mermaid, or, weather permitting, on the beach. Though Gavin, Dean’s dad, usually looked disapproving throughout, he never uttered a negative word about anything, or disagreed when it was claimed that his son must have it in his genes to entertain.

  “His great-great-grandfather on Gavin’s side was one-half of a vaudeville act,” Dean’s mother confided to Jules.

  So there was no doubt this was who Dean, with his love of slapstick and great comic timing, took after, while Stephie’s talents for writing plays and acting were all her own, her modest parents insisted, and Daisy’s remarkable ability to organize, photograph, direct video, and get the very best out of her little troupe of players was just another way, claimed her father, of proving that she was all things Bright and beautiful.

  “What you could say about her,” Kian would proudly comment, “is that she’s extremely good at bossing people around, especially me.”

  He had indeed been a devoted slave to the Hope Cove Performing Arts Society, as they’d later very grandly called themselves. They’d been twelve or thirteen by then, with hundreds of shows behind them and a reputation that had long ago broken out of Kesterly to work its way all over the West Country and even beyond. However, for most of their younger years they hadn’t had a name at all, just an unstoppable enthusiasm for putting on singing competitions, Christmas pantomimes, stand-up comedy routines, dance-a-thons, all kinds of sporting events, specially choreographed ballets (with the help of Daisy’s ballet teacher), even poetry readings by Melissa Harding, who wrote rhyming couplets that were more hilarious for not being funny, or even particularly comprehensible, than they were for any natural gift in that field.

  Everyone wanted to be a part of their group, so just about everyone was, since Daisy didn’t have it in her to exclude anyone, even those who meant mischief or had no real talent for anything apart from turning up.

  “My mum says that Daisy is a very special girl,” Dean told Jules one day when she was driving him home, “and I’m lucky to have her as a friend.”

  Jules’s heart contracted as she smiled. “She’s lucky to have you too,” she said, ruffling his thick dark hair and wondering what his life was really like inside the Foggartys’ Victorian-Gothic manse. He never talked about it, whether to complain, to show off, or simply to state something ordinary like “My mum cooks that too” or “My dad likes digging in the garden.” All that Jules and Kian really knew about the Foggartys’ private existence was that their son must be at home on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and all day on Sundays for worship and Bible study.

  Dear, sweet, complicated, kind, and inwardly tormented Dean.

  Jules’s eyes closed as a deep and heavy pain lodged in her heart. She’d loved that boy—and Stephie—as if they were her own.

  Realizing her phone was vibrating, she pulled it from her bag to check who was calling. Since it was a number she didn’t recognize, she let it go to messages and called up her emails.

  Finding one from Joe, she clicked it open.

  I can’t believe they’re letting that evil bitch loose on society again. I feel so mad, so enraged by it that I can’t think about anything else. It’s definitely not going to stop me from coming. I say bring on the opportunity to meet her face-to-face. She’s going to regret everything she did, there are plenty of us who’ll make sure of that. Do you know a date yet?

  Closing down the email, Jules let her head fall back against the headrest. It was both easy and hard to imagine Joe at his college in North Carolina, easy because she knew his strong, handsome face so well, hard because she’d never been to North Carolina and so had no idea what his surroundings were like. Perhaps he wasn’t there now. Perhaps he’d already returned to his family in Chicago. Indeed, when she considered the date, he must have done, so the chances were he’d go to see Em before coming to Europe, and they’d talk about Amelia Quentin and how she was about to disrupt and poison their lives all over again.

>   She wondered where Amelia Quentin was right now, this minute. In the prison, of course, unless she’d already been released, but that couldn’t be the case; Andee would have let her know, and besides, it was likely to make the news. So for the time being she was still being kept away from decent, law-abiding people, was only being allowed to mix with her own type, although Jules was reluctant to tar junkies, shoplifters, delinquents, fraudsters, and forgers with the same brush as someone as inherently evil as Amelia Quentin.

  Realizing the last caller had left a message, she clicked through to voicemail and felt a tight band close around her head as Andee Lawrence said, “Hi, Jules, it’s Andee here. I’ve been thinking a lot about you since I came to the house last week, wondering how you are, hoping you might get in touch. You know where I am if you’d like to talk. No pressure—I just don’t want you to think you have to handle this alone.”

  Andee had been her rock throughout everything, and would be again if Jules allowed it.

  Clicking off the line, she started the engine and drove to the end of the street, where she turned to head back the way she’d come. It was good of Andee to offer her friendship, but she had the support of just about every member of Kian’s family, each of them willing to be there in any way she chose.

  “If you don’t want the bitch around these parts, Jules,” Danny had snarled as soon as he’d learned of the imminent release, “just say the word and I promise it won’t happen.”

  Jules hadn’t asked how Danny could prevent it. He’d have his methods, and as Kian had always said, it was best not to know too much about them.

  By the time she pulled into the Greensleeves Care Home, her phone was ringing again. This time it was Kian’s cousin Terry. She could rarely think about Terry without remembering the beautiful crib they’d eventually auctioned off for charity. Daisy had always kept a photograph of it on a shelf in her room.