By now, stories were filtering out of Romania about cash being offered for children by overseas couples desperate to adopt. One German family had been on the brink of securing their legal adoption of a little boy from the same orphanage as Ellie, when someone else swept in with the money and the child disappeared overnight. The authorities were under pressure to curb such abuses and while every process Harriet and Colin had followed was above board, they started to fear that it wouldn’t be completed before international adoption from Romania was outlawed completely. But that fear was confounded, and, within a day of the final stamp appearing on a piece of British paperwork, they had leapt on a flight to Bucharest and brought Ellie to her new home.
After months of delays, Ellie’s first three weeks in Britain passed quickly. Harriet had taken time off work, as much as she was allowed, and had secured the written agreement of her editor that she would cover predominantly domestic stories at least for the next year. Everyone who knew about Harriet’s situation had been compassionate, her employers included. They’d all seen the news reports, after all. Colin meanwhile had handed in his notice, but planned to contribute all he could to the family income by tutoring maths in the evenings. These were sacrifices, of course, but under the circumstances, hardly felt worthy of the term.
Given the environment in which Ellie had so far grown up, both Harriet and Colin had prepared themselves for the worst kind of difficulties. But her transition was nothing like they’d imagined. There would be plenty of times in the coming year when they would marvel at the apparent ease with which she’d settled, at how eager she was to fit in. Despite the barriers of language and culture she was, fundamentally, the sweetest girl, a delight to everyone who encountered her.
It was a time of endless discovery for Ellie. Harriet would watch and remember every revelation: the look on her face the first time she tasted jelly and ice cream, closing her eyes as if to intensify the pleasure. The way she would sink into bed and stroke the duvet against her cheek, having never felt anything so warm and soft. She discovered music in the form of Colin’s CD collection, which she’d spend hours rifling through like a puppy eager to play with everything in its path. Motown became her music of choice and anyone entering the house for weeks over that first autumn would be bombarded by a series of toe-tappers from the Temptations or Stevie Wonder.
Contrary to all the warnings about low IQ and developmental delays, the pace at which Ellie learnt English vindicated Colin’s view that their daughter was a very bright girl indeed. He read to her every night, starting with picture books for younger children, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit, before progressing to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Worst Witch A Bear Called Paddington was her favourite and she’d home in on the part where Mrs Brown said: ‘In London, everyone is different, and that means anyone can fit in.’
She made friends quickly and parties followed, then sleepovers, from which Harriet would collect her the next morning and be told by parents how good she was, how polite, how lovely. The thing everyone loved most was hearing Ellie laugh. She seemed to need only to look at Colin for him to set her off by pulling a funny face; these tickled her so much that she would release loud, hysterical peals, which rendered anyone nearby helpless to resist joining in.
‘It’s as if the poor love had never laughed before in her life,’ Colin’s mother had said.
Harriet would cling to these memories, but could never claim that every minute was like that.
The first time she tried to persuade Ellie into the bath, the little girl refused, backing away until her spine pressed against the wall and shaking her head violently, convinced that this was it: the thing that finally proved this new place was too good to be true. Having spent her entire life being washed with freezing water in the orphanage, it took months before she was fully confident that the shower at Chalk View would be warm, that it wasn’t some trick that would leave her bones rattling from cold for hours afterwards. The hoarding went on for months too. Biscuits and other food items were constantly going missing from the cupboards and later found under pillows or in wardrobes.
Then there was the issue of Tabitha. On the plane from Bucharest, neither Harriet nor Colin had any idea of the drama that had happened only a few weeks earlier with Ellie’s friend. They assumed that she was exactly where they’d been told she’d be: with a family in Bologna.
But even before Ellie could speak English, they’d realised that something hadn’t worked out – and for many months afterwards, Tabitha would crop up in every other conversation. It would be the name she’d whisper before bedtime and cry out in her dreams. Ellie was obsessed and Colin worried that she’d never settle until they could reassure her in some way.
Yet when Harriet’s friend Andrei made enquiries with the orphanage the message was far from reassuring. The police had not picked her up. She had not returned. As far as they knew, none of the authorities had any idea where she was. None of this was unusual, nor especially surprising. It was just another child who had slipped off the radar in a time of chaos and change. She had to be somewhere, naturally – but she might as well have disappeared off the face of the earth.
Then there was the day Andrei and his wife Gabriella came to dinner. Harriet and Colin had enjoyed the couple’s hospitality on two occasions during visits to Romania while the adoption was going through. Wanting to return the favour when the Rucarenus were next in London, she invited them over to sample her Beef Wellington.
They’d had a genial evening full of shared jokes and the odd political discussion, until the conversation turned to the recent ban on overseas adoptions from Romania, which had been driven by irregularities and corruption.
‘Yours has been a success story,’ Andrei had told Harriet and Colin. ‘Nobody could ever suggest otherwise. But the same cannot be said for everyone. The focus now has to be trying to support vulnerable families so that children from orphanages can be reunited with their loved ones – as well as reducing the number of youngsters entering the system in the first place. In cases where they can’t return home, the aim is to build new families by fostering in-country adoption. You do understand, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ she said quietly. And she absolutely did, as strange and unsettling as it was to recognise that.
In the run-up to the adoption, neither she nor Colin had doubted that bringing Ellie to the UK was the right thing to do. How could it not be when they’d been driven by pure love and a desire to help a child who otherwise would have faced a bleak future?
And yet, during the course of the conversation with Andrei that night, a view formed that existed in parallel to her own actions: that the future of Romania’s children couldn’t be in overseas adoption. It had to lie within the country itself.
‘Does it make me a hypocrite to say I agree with you?’ she asked Andrei. ‘Yet, at the same time I wouldn’t change a thing.’
‘Of course not,’ he replied. ‘You two did something magnificent for Ellie. Nothing is ever going to change that. But the solution we need to work on cannot involve simply removing children from the country. The real victory would be to keep our children safe and happy within Romania.’
By now, Ellie was used to Harriet and Colin’s dinner parties. She enjoyed creeping downstairs in her pyjamas, persuading the grown-ups to watch a dance routine, or let her throw the dice in Trivial Pursuit. Now, she appeared at the door, smiling hopefully as Colin beckoned her in.
‘Hello, trouble,’ he grinned, as Harriet enveloped her in a hug. ‘You should be fast asleep by now, but come and say hello. Andrei, you remember Ellie. Gabriella, this is our daughter.’
‘Hello again, Ellie! How wonderful to see you!’ Andrei exclaimed. He hadn’t seen her since she’d moved to the UK. He turned to his wife and, in the light of her minimal English, translated Colin’s words. He spoke a language that Ellie hadn’t heard spoken in a mother tongue for quite some time.
Her reaction was as quick and devastating as cardiac shock
. Her cheeks blanched and her frame seemed to freeze. And at some point in the conversation that followed between the Romanian couple, everyone in the room became aware that something was wrong.
‘Is everything all right, darling?’ Harriet asked.
Panic showed in the whites of Ellie’s eyes. Colin took her hand and Andrei realised that the source of the problem was him.
‘I… I was just introducing Ellie to Gabriella,’ he explained, before turning to the little girl and adding hopefully: ‘I’m sorry if I gave you a fright. My wife doesn’t speak English yet, not like you. I hear you’re a star student.’
Ellie wouldn’t speak and in the absence of an explanation, Gabriella turned to her husband to seek one.
‘Ce se întâmpla˘?’ she asked, perplexed. What’s going on?
Ellie fled from the room and raced up the stairs, until she was hammering on the door of Mrs Heathcote’s bedroom, demanding to be let in. Harriet went after her, but Colin’s mother insisted she’d handle it and gently shooed her away, telling her she should go and enjoy the rest of her evening. But nobody could by then. They passed two hours of polite chat and disappointing cheesecake, before the Rucarenus left amidst a blizzard of apologies and promises to keep in touch.
‘What did she say?’ Colin whispered to his mother afterwards, as Harriet hovered at the door. Mrs Heathcote was lying propped up by pillows on her candlewick bedspread, the television on low, with Ellie curled into the dip of her arm, fast asleep.
‘It was when she heard the language,’ she whispered back. ‘She thought they were here to take her back.’
Chapter 35
Ellie
Colette opens the door to her office with the air of a latter-day Mary Poppins. Straight-backed and with an efficient smile that gives the impression that she’s here to sort out all this fuss.
‘Good afternoon, Ellie. How are you?’ she asks, as if I last saw her yesterday, not over two years ago.
‘Fine,’ I say automatically, as she closes the door. ‘Apart from being a gibbering wreck, obviously.’
I spent time choosing the right outfit before I left, aiming to look fashionable, but with optimum levels of comfort. Now I’m here, damp rings are visible under each arm of my softspun top and there is blood on my trousers from the hangnail I tore off on the journey. It was every bit as bad as I knew it would be, despite Dad’s efforts to distract me by chatting. When he ran out of steam, he switched on the midday radio show just as the presenter announced, ‘Today we’ll be discussing the House of Lords, pancreatitis and sex shops on the A1.’ He turned it off again.
Colette invites me to sit, which I do, in a chair that is new and more comfortable than the last. She sits opposite me and crosses her legs. She’s wearing glossy brogues, wide-leg trousers and a pale blouse buttoned up to the spot where her clavicles meet. The ensemble has a slightly masculine edge that counterbalances the soft features of her face and the swish of her honey-coloured bob.
‘You certainly don’t look like a gibbering wreck,’ she says. ‘That’s a lovely outfit.’
I lift both arms in the air. ‘The sweat rings set it off a treat, don’t they? They’re a special, exclusive embellishment available to agoraphobics, nervous wrecks and general wet lettuces.’
‘That’s a lot of self-deprecation in one sentence, Ellie.’
‘It feels rather justified at the moment,’ I say.
She opens my file. ‘So…’
‘Did you finish The West Wing?’ I ask.
She looks up. ‘What?’
‘Last time I was here you were making your way through the box set.’
‘Oh. Yes, actually.’ She looks down again.
‘What did you think of the ending?’
She tilts her chin as she looks at me. ‘Ellie, shall we get started?’
‘Okay. Though, I ought to say… about the last time I saw you. Sorry for leaving so abruptly.’
‘It’s quite all right. I went shopping instead.’
My mouth parts.
‘Just kidding.’ She smiles. ‘And I ought to say: well done for coming here. I know how difficult it is. Now why don’t you tell me what’s been happening?’
It’s Guy I tell her about first. How we met. How I have growing feelings for him. And that, while I know how attracted he is to me – he doesn’t even attempt to hide it – I am painfully aware that the thing that is stopping this from evolving into a proper relationship is my agoraphobia.
I feel self-conscious, like a teenager writing to a problem page. So I also tell her about the growth of my Instagram business, the one area of my life that is going well. I don’t want her to think I’m a complete loser. She asks about how my anxiety is currently manifesting and I tell her about the day Gertie ran outside, then Guy attempting to take me to London. And the nightmares.
‘Are they about the orphanage?’
I nod.
‘Can you tell me what happens in them?’
I feel my teeth grind as I regret even mentioning them.
‘Ellie?’
‘They’re predominantly about Tabitha.’
She doesn’t need to look at her notes. ‘Your friend.’
‘Yes. I hadn’t realised I’d told you about her.’
‘Only briefly, same as everything to do with your past. It was very obvious how important she was to you.’ There’s a pause, a held breath as I sense Colette is working out which way to take this conversation. ‘Why don’t you just tell me a little bit about her, Ellie? What was she like?’
There are dozens of things I could say about Tabitha. That she was tough and generous and loyal. That her presence was the only bearable thing about the place. But that ultimately she ran away to live a life I can’t even bear to imagine. The heat of tears begins to press behind my eyes.
‘Ellie, I want you to know that nobody is going to try and make you talk about something you don’t want to,’ she says urgently. ‘Last time we saw each other, I felt it would help to explore these aspects of your life. But I don’t ever want us to reach the stage we did last time. If you feel as though it might cause you so much distress that it becomes impossible to carry on, then we just won’t do it. It’s as simple as that. We won’t even go there.’
I become aware that my hangnail is bleeding again. ‘Do you think there are ways of helping me without raking over my past? Without me talking about the orphanage or Tabitha or anything at all to do with that?’
‘Absolutely,’ she says, with an enthusiasm that doesn’t match her expression. ‘CBT is very effective and we can focus on that to get you out of the house. The last thing I’d want to do is scare you off. Then, if in the future you feel you can revisit some exposure therapy, we’ll do so. But slowly. Or possibly even never. The point is, I will be guided entirely by you. There is no pressure.’
I don’t say it out loud, but there absolutely is. I know it. If I don’t get myself sorted out quickly, this thing with Guy won’t last. It already feels fragile enough for me to fear losing him, just like so many others I’ve ever cared about.
Chapter 36
ELLIE HEATHCOTE
I devoted some time to organising the potting shed today and think Marie Kondo is on to something when she says that tidying up can change your life. I’m the worst person for seeing something online and feeling I just have to buy it, hence all the unnecessary clutter that had been stuffed in my little space. So I threw out the bits that didn’t bring me joy (three broken hosepipe adaptors, some rusty pruners and an old propagator). The result is a lovely area in which to sit, have a brew and contemplate my next gardening job. Do any of you have a potting shed? I’d love to know what you get up to in it. Clean answers only please #pottingshed #thisgirldigs #gardensofinstagram #EnglishCountryGardenista #englishcountrygardens #shedsofinstagram #gardener #gardening #garden #gardenlife #flowers #plants #gardens #nature #gardendesign #growyourown #gardeninspiration #instagarden #gardenlove #growyourownfood
My sister’s face appears at t
he door. ‘What the… Why are you sitting in the shed?’
‘I’m relaxing. It’s really nice,’ I reply.
‘Jesus, Ellie. Try a spa break, it’d blow your mind. Why would you sit here when your house is four metres away and has a sofa and well-stocked fridge?’
‘I’m going to get back to work now anyway,’ I say, standing up. ‘You can join in if you like?’
‘You’re okay – I’ve just had a manicure.’
‘When?’
‘2017. Oh, come inside for a cup of tea. I don’t want to hang about out here unless the sun comes out again.’
I follow her inside with Gertie trotting behind, and flick on the kettle.
‘How did the first session with your shrink go?’ she asks.
‘Good,’ I say, though my heart starts flapping like a rolodex every time I think about it. ‘How’s Jakob?’
She sighs dreamily. ‘Absolutely lovely, so something’s bound to go wrong soon.’
Lucy’s new love interest is a documentary film maker from Norway and, at thirty, is older than her. They met in the fancy bread shop she goes to on Saturday mornings, to buy the cinnamon swirls she then spends the afternoon attempting to run off. He seems very keen even though the first text she sent him was an accident and included a link to Ted Bundy’s Wikipedia entry after she’d Googled it while watching the Netflix documentary.
‘How long has he lived in the UK?’ I ask.
‘Eleven years. He moved here for the climate.’
‘Is he a masochist?’ I ask, glancing outside at the clouds.
‘No, an asthmatic. He’s from Tromsø, which is beautiful but way inside the Arctic Circle and the cold was causing flare-ups. His doctor actually advised him to move to Spain.’
‘Lucky for you that he didn’t. So he’s definitely not married?’
The World at My Feet Page 17
