The Foundling’s Daughter

by Ann Bennett

  Dad stands with his hands on his hips and looks around admiringly.

  ‘This is all so elegant. Look at the workmanship in those window frames. Wonderful floor tiles too,’ he says. ‘You know you could really make something of this. You could knock out that back wall and incorporate it into the kitchen. It would make a huge, light room, and it opens straight out onto the garden.’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ says Sarah.’ I’d have to raise the floor up to the level of the kitchen, though.’

  They stroll into the overgrown garden and her father walks across the grass towards the garden wall.

  ‘Where are you going, Dad?’

  ‘I just wanted to have a quick peep over at where the orphanage was. Just curious.’

  Sarah joins him and they peer over the wall and straight into the back garden of one of the modern houses on the neighbouring estate. There’s a climbing frame and slide on a neat lawn. A sandy-coloured terrier runs towards them yapping, and they draw back.

  ‘It’s amazing to think that enormous building was once right there,’ says Dad. ‘Just where that garden wall is. In fact that wall might even be the end wall of the orphanage itself… Do you remember when we stopped and looked around it that time Sarah?’

  ‘Of course I do. I’ll never forget it,’ she says smiling.

  ‘You know, if I ever did that journey on my own I would always stop in front of the old place and have a walk around.’

  ‘Really, Dad?’

  ‘I don’t know what I was looking for. Mad really.’

  ‘Not mad at all. It’s quite natural.’

  ‘Trying to find some sort of connection to the past I suppose,’ he muses.

  They are back in the courtyard again now. ‘Shall we go back inside and make the tea?’ Sarah asks, anxious not to tire him.

  ‘Why don’t we take a look in the coach house first? Do you have the keys?’

  ‘Yes, they’re here in my pocket. Are you sure you’re up to it?’

  ‘Of course. I want to see it all.’

  ‘I haven’t been in there myself yet either, Dad. There are a couple of stables behind there too.’

  She takes out the great bunch of keys and finds the one labelled ‘Garage’. The key is rusty and the lock stiff, but she persists, and is soon pushing back the rickety wooden doors. They step inside. Sunlight filters in from a dusty window, but there’s nothing to see here, only oil stains on the brick floor and a few rusting paint cans in one corner.

  ‘Why don’t we take a look in the room above while we’re here?’ says Dad.

  ‘I’m not sure I have the key for that…’ Sarah examines the bunch of keys. Each of them is labelled with a coloured plastic fob, except one. That has an old-fashioned leather key-ring attached to a handwritten label. She peers at it and recognises the elaborate handwriting that she’d first seen on on her dad’s birth certificate: ‘Bolt-Hole. Strictly Private’.

  ‘Got it? Come on then.’

  Feeling strangely reluctant, Sarah follows her father back outside and up the crumbling steps at the side of the building. Weeds are growing in the cracks where the cement has worn away between the bricks. The door at the top, with its peeling black paint is stiff like the door to the coach house below. As she struggles with the lock, Sarah gets the feeling that it hasn’t been opened for decades. But it finally yields, and as they step inside a shower of powdery dust falls on them from the top of the door.

  ‘I don’t think they’ve bothered to clean at all in here,’ says Dad, dusting down his jacket.

  Sarah stares around her. Bird droppings and black dirt cover the floorboards. Cobwebs hang in shrouds from the filthy ceiling, which in one corner has come away from the wall. Beneath that there’s a huge streak of green mould where rainwater has leaked through.

  ‘God, it’s filthy,’ she says, but it isn’t the dirt that troubles her as much as the remnants of the past. On one wall a metal bedframe stands rusting and sagging. Beside it, a chipped enamel bucket. Beneath the leaking ceiling is a chaise-longue, its springs protruding, sawdust and stuffing spilling out of the upholstery. It’s so blemished and filthy that it’s impossible to guess the original colour. In one corner is a wooden washstand with a marble top, a cracked jug and bowl. Under the window stands a small writing table, a cup and saucer on it, as if the occupant has just left.

  Sarah takes a couple of steps into the room. There’s a sudden fluttering of feathers from the gap in the roof and a clump of dirt falls down from there. At the same time a tiny mouse jumps out of the cup on the table and scuttles along the wainscot, disappearing through the floorboards. Sarah lets out a stifled scream.

  ‘Let’s get out of here, Dad,’ she says, then she sees his face. ‘Don’t laugh! You know I hate mice.’

  ‘They’re more afraid of you, you know. You seem very jumpy, Sarah.’

  ‘I just didn’t expect this place to be like this. They were meant to have cleared everything out. I think I’ll call them and complain.’

  ‘Is it really worth it? Like we said before, they’re probably annoyed with us, and with Miss Burroughs too that they didn’t manage to flog the place to those developers. They probably want to put you to some trouble. Don’t worry about it, Sarah. It would only take one trip to the tip to get rid of all this.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  She glances out of the window. The bonnet of a lorry is edging through the double gates and into the courtyard.

  ‘Let’s go down, shall we? The furniture has arrived. We can grab that cup of tea while they’re unloading. I could do with a cigarette as well.’

  Fourteen

  Sarah

  Sarah awakes at first light to winter sunshine streaming in through the bay window opposite her bed. For a few seconds she’s in a confused fog, wondering where she is. Gradually through the fog emerges the half-memory of unsettling dreams that disturbed her sleep and made her wake sweating in the dead of night. It had taken her a long time to go back to sleep. Each creak of the boards, each stirring of breeze in the cedar trees outside the window had made her sit up, her scalp tingling, her ears straining for the sound of footsteps on the stairs, a voice in the corridor.

  When eventually sleep did come again, the dream returned as if she’d never awoken; a shadowy figure paced around downstairs, walking through each room in turn, moving nearer all the time, up the stairs along the corridor and finally into Sarah’s room. She lay paralysed on the bed, unable to move or to speak. The figure leaned over her bed and stretched out an icy finger to move a lock of hair out of her eyes. She tried to sit up but the figure pushed her back. She sensed its great strength.

  But now, in the morning sunlight everything looks different. She laughs to herself, remembering how terrified she’d been in the night. She glances at her watch. Seven o’clock. There are no curtains at the window so the light of dawn must have woken her.

  She gets out of bed, pulls on her dressing gown and walks along the bare boards to the bathroom at the end of the corridor. The huge cast-iron bath tub is rusty and stained. She sighs, knowing she’ll have to make the most of it. The exertions of yesterday, humping boxes into the house, unpacking, moving the furniture into place, have left her bones aching and her body grimy. Not to mention the sweating in the night. She turns on the tap and after a few minutes of empty gurgling, a trickle of water emerges reluctantly from the hot tap. The ancient gas heater above the bath woofs into life, blue flames flickering through the window in the front.

  She finds a sponge and sluices a couple of dead flies out of the bath. While it fills she goes back to the bedroom and decides to put a few things away. It’s likely to be a long wait. She opens the top drawer of the small chest that Alex sent from Primrose Hill. She looks down in surprise at what’s in there. A white envelope addressed to her in Alex’s handwriting.

  She rips it open. It’s a card with a sketch of a tumbledown cottage on the front. Inside he has scrawled a few words.

  To my deare
st Sarah. Welcome to your new home and good luck with your renovations. Watch out for spiders!

  She smiles in spite of herself, recalling her fear of any recess in the old house they had done up together, terrified that spiders might be hiding in them. How well he knows her! Her heart strings twist momentarily, but then she pulls herself up, reminding herself how she’d felt when she’d heard the girl’s voice on the answerphone.

  ‘What am I doing?’ she says out loud.

  She shoves the card back into the envelope and pushes it to the back of the drawer.

  She bathes in the few inches of water the boiler has yielded and dresses quickly. There is no central heating; the only heat upstairs comes from a small fan-heater in the bedroom that Dad lent her. As she pulls her hair into a rubber band she crosses to the window and peers out. Through gaps in the tall hedge she can see the row of modern shops opposite. She recognises the woman from the newsagents standing at the door, opening the shop up. She wears a headscarf and is carrying a bundle of newspapers under one arm. As the woman pushes the door open she grinds a cigarette into the pavement with her heel. Sarah begins to crave one herself. She takes a deep breath and checks herself. Not before breakfast; that’s a rule.

  Downstairs in the kitchen she switches on the electric fire – another donation from her father – and while the kettle boils she clears the pile of fish and chip papers into a bin bag. She and Dad had sat at the table and eaten them before she’d driven him home yesterday evening. She coaxes the gas grill into action on the ancient stove and toasts a couple of slices of bread which she eats quickly whilst gulping her tea. Then, reasoning that it is now after breakfast time, she reaches for her handbag.

  ‘Damn.’ She’d smoked the last one on the way home from dropping Dad last night.

  She pulls on her coat, lets herself out of the back door, and hurries down the drive.

  The woman looks up and smiles as she enters the shop.

  ‘Hello, my dear!’ she says, her voice full of warmth and curiosity, ‘I heard that a young lady had bought the house. I thought it might be you. It is you, isn’t it? You did buy it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Sarah smiles.

  ‘Well, I’m jolly glad it’s you and not some bloody builders. I thought Pinsents were buying it. At least that’s what I heard.’

  Sarah decides not to be drawn into discussing the details.

  ‘No, it was me,’ she says simply. She takes a wire basket and collects a few essentials from the shelves; milk, butter, bread, cheese, eggs, bacon. Then she returns to the counter where the woman is busy setting out the morning papers.

  Sarah’s eyes scan the front pages; a story about the royal family; a celebrity marriage is in trouble, a minister resigns, a possible interest rate rise. Then she sees it and her heart stops.

  Top chef Alex Jennings connected to international money laundering operation.

  She stares at the paper, colour draining from her face.

  ‘You alright, my love?’

  The woman is watching her through her false lashes, her eyes all-seeing. Sarah makes an effort to regain her composure. She looks up and smiles brightly.

  ‘Yes quite alright thanks. Could I have twenty Marlboro please? And I’ll take a copy of the Daily Mail too.’

  Someone else comes into the shop and crosses to the fridge.

  ‘Morning, Simon,’ says the woman.

  ‘Hello. Have you got any more eggs, please? We need three dozen.’ The voice is young, boyish. Sarah knows it from somewhere.

  ‘I think so. I’ll check out the back. Let me just serve this lady.’

  ‘No don’t worry,’ says Sarah. ‘I’m not in a hurry.’

  The woman bustles away, and the sound of doors banging comes from the room behind the shop. Sarah glances at the newcomer. It’s the young waiter with the pimply skin from the bistro. She smiles at him, a flush rises on his pale cheeks and he looks away.

  The woman returns and as she rings up the till she says, ‘Did your dad forget to order eggs again, Simon?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ mumbles the boy. ‘And there’s a group of business people in for breakfast.’

  ‘Well tell your dad not to worry. I’ll put it on his tab.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the boy shuffles out of the shop, his head down. The woman smiles at Sarah conspiratorially.

  ‘Nice lad,’ she says. ‘His dad runs the bistro along the road. The place isn’t doing too well, between you and me.’

  ‘I went in there for lunch once. The food was very good.’

  ‘Oh it is. It is, but I do worry about them. It’s been very difficult for the pair of them since poor Rosie went. That’s the boy’s mother, you know,’ she lowers her voice and leans forward to whisper, ‘Passed away a couple of years back.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ says Sarah, fleetingly remembering the owner, how he’d seemed anxious and a little lost. She picks up the paper and cigarettes.

  ‘I could deliver the Mail to your house every day if you like.’

  ‘That’s kind of you. I’ll think about it, but I probably don’t need a delivery,’ Sarah says, ‘I can always pop over to get a paper.’

  ‘What’s your name, my dear?’

  ‘Sarah,’ she replies, leaving out the surname for now. The woman holds out a hand with painted red nails. Sarah takes it.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ says the woman ‘I’m Jacqui Tennant. Now if there’s anything you need, you only have to shout. I live in Treehill Close just round the corner, but I’m in here every day. Come rain, come shine. We’re neighbours now. I’ll do anything for me neighbours. You’ll see.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s very kind of you.’

  Sarah starts for the door. She can’t wait to read the article. But then she pauses, a thought occurring to her.

  ‘Well there is something you might be able to help with, actually. I’ll be needing a builder soon. Someone local I hope. I’m planning a few alterations to the house. Nothing too drastic. Just updating and decorating mostly.’

  Jacqui nods knowingly, ‘I’m not surprised, love. I thought you would be. That old place is in a hell of a state isn’t it? Well, you’re in luck. I do happen to know someone. A local chap, Terry. Very good and very trustworthy. It’s an old family firm. Applebys. I’ve got his card in here somewhere.’ She rummages in a drawer under the counter.

  ‘Here you are.’

  Taking the card, Sarah thanks her and leaves the shop hurriedly, anxious to get back to the house and look at the newspaper.

  In the cold kitchen she makes a pot of coffee and sits down at the table with the paper. The article is short and doesn’t give much away:

  Top chef, Alex Jennings, 43, of ‘Taste’ in Primrose Hill, a favourite venue for celebs and A-Listers, is questioned by police regarding financial activities relating to the expansion of his restaurant chain. Our sources say that his name is being linked to Jack Chalmers, 58, of Chalmers Investments and Real Estate (CIRE) who is currently himself being investigated under money laundering legislation and who was charged yesterday. This will be damaging for Jennings who’s been looking to expand his chain and move into new markets at home and abroad. But yesterday Taste remained open and fully booked with customers paying an average of £100 per head for lunch.

  Sarah puts the paper down, her hands shaking. Now she really needs to smoke. She goes out into the courtyard and lights up a cigarette. She thinks of Alex and how he’d pleaded with her to help him convince the police he wasn’t involved. Anger and bitterness has been clouding her mind, but now some time has passed, she’s beginning to soften. She thinks of the card he sent her, about how alone and desperate he’d looked when she visited. She takes another long drag on her cigarette and mulls it over, staring up at the dark windows of the coach house.

  What exactly is it he wants her to do anyway? What could she possibly say to police that they couldn’t find out themselves? She hardly knows anything about his recent business trips, who he’s been with, wh
at he’s been doing. The fact has to be faced, she and Alex have been drifting apart for years. She actually has no idea whether he has anything to do with whatever criminal activities Jack and his associates might have been into.

  Then her mind goes back to the accounts the policeman had shown her, the bolt of shock that had gone through her when she saw those payments to Jemma and her heart hardens again. No, she must be true to her instincts. Alex has dug himself into whatever hole he’s in with Jack and this business, and he will have to get out of it himself.

  She grinds the cigarette end into the step and as she turns to go back inside, she glances up at the coach house. Something seems to move behind the glass. She stops and peers up at the window, her scalp tingling. She remembers the feeling she’d had stepping into that room yesterday, the air of neglect, the strange atmosphere. What could be in there? Should she go up and check? She remembers the mouse and shudders at the thought. Perhaps she’ll be able to face it later.

  Back in the kitchen she calls her father to ask him how he slept. She’d felt a sudden sense of loss as she dropped him home last night. He’d looked very frail as he went inside the house and turned to wave. These past few weeks have brought them closer than they’ve been for years. At least she’s going to be nearby to help him now, but she can hardly bear to think that his days are finite.

  His voice sounds upbeat this morning, though. He assures her that all is well. He’s going to spend the day on his computer doing some more research.

  ‘Do you want me to pop over later? I could come and cook for you.’

  ‘That would be lovely, Sarah darling. But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll have an early night. I expect you’ve got lots to do in the house.’