The clink of ice in glasses and the gentle hum of conversation adds to the surreal atmosphere as Danny and I sidle back into the room in which our relationships are being torn into shreds. Edwin gives us a flat smile, and Joel passes me a glass of iced water as I sink onto the sofa next to him. Joel’s solid presence reminds me that my childhood was real; my childhood wasmine. No matter what Laura tells me, no matter where I came from as a baby, my experiences as a girl called Seraphine living in this yellow-bricked house will still be valid. Won’t they?
Alex is murmuring to Laura in a dazed tone, as if he can’t quite remember why he’s here. “I knew there was something wrong with you when I came back that summer. You looked—different. I knew something wasn’t right.”
“I put on two stone,” Laura says, and there’s something about the brief widening of her eyes that makes me think she’s suppressing exasperation—with herself or with Alex, I can’t tell. “I had to buy new clothes, baggy clothes, stretchy leggings. I told myself it was the long winter indoors, not swimming anymore, all the baking we were doing. It’s hard to explain.” She frowns intensely, absorbed in her thoughts. “It’s like—on one level, I knew. I knew a baby was in there, that it was going to have to come out at some point. But I—” She shakes her head.
“You didn’t know what to do about it?” Alex suggests.
“Not even that, really,” Laura says. “I just—it didn’t seem fair. I know that sounds childish. But it didn’t seem fair, that it had happened...” She waves a hand, composes herself. “I’d taken the pill. It just didn’t seem fair.”
“Did nobody guess? I can’t believe someone didn’t work it out.”
“I didn’t exactly mix with many people that year. Your midwife saw it, I think—the way she looked at me. She thought I might be Ruth at first, when she opened the door to me. But in the village, I was just the Summerbourne nanny—a minor character, not very interesting because I refused to give them the gossip they wanted about the glamorous Mayes family.”
“Dad.” Kiara places a hand on Alex’s arm. “Seraphine and Danny are back.”
Alex blinks at us.
Edwin is still perched next to Laura’s armchair, and he takes her empty glass now and sets it on the coffee table.
“Are you okay to carry on?” he asks her.
Danny makes a low growl in his throat, but I think I’m the only one who hears it, and I squeeze his hand.
Laura settles back in her chair. “Yes,” she says. “I’m nearly done.”
30
Laura
July 1992
AS DOMINIC’S FOOTSTEPSreceded, I hauled myself onto my hands and knees in preparation for a new contraction. I knew I still needed to deliver the placenta. But instead of a final stage of pushing, I felt like I was being dragged backward in time. The strength of the spasms built up again, and again I lost all sense of time and place, until it was over and I was shaking on the bathroom floor.
A second tiny infant lay blue and motionless at my feet.
I leaned against the bath for a while, trying to steady my breathing. Strength flowed back into my limbs as my body finally expelled the placentas. The baby twitched, and I slithered across the wet tiles and hooked my finger into its mouth the way I had seen Dominic do with the first one. There were no towels left, so I peeled my T-shirt off and dried its body as well as I could. A little girl. I held her to my breast while my mind raced ahead. It barely seemed possible that Ruth would accept one illegitimatechild of Dominic’s. There was no chance she would agree to a pretense of triplets.
Could I take her with me? I gazed down at her as she sucked. Back to Mum and Beaky, and a house where appearance was everything and mistakes were not to be tolerated?
It was impossible.
They would never let me live there with a baby. We’d be homeless, without family or support.
It was the shivering that finally made me struggle to my feet, my limbs stiff with cold from the tiled floor. The baby had fallen asleep, and I shuffled to my bedroom and placed her on the middle of my bed, immediately collapsing next to her. I watched her chest rise and fall, her head turn from one side to the other. There was no way out of this. Dominic was going to return and find us, and there could be no happy ending.
Eventually, I decided I couldn’t bear to be found like this, naked and bloodstained. I hauled myself to the shower and crouched under the hot water, gripping the edge of the shower screen as I swiped at bloodstains on my legs, worried I was going to faint. It took me an age to get dressed afterward, my muscles complaining and refusing to cooperate. When my hairbrush clattered to the floor, the baby startled.
I carried her through to the day nursery and found a note from Dominic in the bassinet:
Danny unsettled so am taking him to station with me and Edwin. Everything will be ok.
D
I was still shivering as I fumbled a nappy and clothes onto the baby and settled her in the basket. Standing over her,watching her tiny eyelashes flicker as she dozed, I felt a cold calmness filter down through my thoughts. I would stop the futile task of trying to work out how I could fix this, and instead concentrate on one plan: escape. If I could just stay upright, persuade my unsteady legs to carry me on through the day nursery, past the unwashed dishes on the kitchen table, all the way to where the phone sat on the hall table, I could call for help.
In the hall, no sound came from Ruth and her baby above. Dominic’s car had gone from the drive, and the house was still. I rested my fingertips on the phone, determined to stay on my feet, fearful that if I allowed myself to sit down I might never get up again.
Even if I could think of a lie that would persuade Mum and Beaky to come and get me, it would take too long. I needed to talk to the taxi company, ask them if they had a driver free who could take me all the way to London—immediately. I needed to leave before Dominic got back and found the second baby. But the taxi base was in King’s Lynn; there was virtually no chance they could get here before Dominic did. I needed someone closer. Someone in the village.
