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She took a seat in Reverend Mother’s office, keeping her smile in place and taking out her notebook and pen.
‘Child, you can put those away. There is nothing more I can tell you.’
‘Perhaps...’ Beatrice held firm. ‘But I remember that Alicia had gold earrings pinned to her baby suit.Segni di ricooscimento. Signs of recognition. I have read that should a mother return she can identify her child that way.’
‘Beatrice, I have told you. For you there was nothing.’
‘There must have been something,’ she replied. ‘A page of the bible...?’ She had been told her mother was presumed to have been a tourist, attending the festival that came to Trebordi each year—especially given that Beatrice was so blonde. ‘Perhaps a trinket from the festival.’
‘Beatrice, if there was anything I would have told you.’
‘A nappy?’ she asked, tears stinging her eyes, embarrassed at the thought that she had been left uncovered and naked. Discarded. ‘Something?’
‘This doesn’t help anyone,’ Reverend Mother scolded. ‘Beatrice, you have had an education most people could only dream of. Let it go.’
‘No,’ Beatrice said. ‘I won’t. I worry for my mother. If something dreadful happened to her, then I want her to know I understand. And if she was young and scared, I want to tell her myself that I know how it feels to be scared and alone. I love her, and so of course I forgive her.’
‘It’s not healthy, Beatrice. I have seen many children devote too much time trying so hard to get to the past that they ruin their future.’
‘Well, I want to know my history. I will stand at the baby door every year, and I will be here each year for Alicia’s birthday too...’ She saw the flush on Reverend Mother’s cheeks, and it was there in that office that Beatrice learned how to be direct. Although she was usually timid, she found out just how tough she could be. ‘Did Alicia even get my letters?’
‘Of course.’
Reverend Mother wouldn’t lie, surely?
Only Beatrice felt sure that she was, and her pale blue eyes narrowed in suspicion as she was repeatedly stonewalled.
It took everything she could summon for her to confront the Reverend Mother. ‘I don’t believe she did.’
‘Please show the respect you were taught.’
‘Reverend Mother, I respectfully ask you, where is my friend?’
Reverend Mother responded with silence.
‘Well, if you won’t tell me, I’m going to ask around the village. I have enough money to stay at the bar.’Barely.‘I might go and visit Signora Schininà.’ She was the woman who ran the brothel. ‘She knows all the gossip, and her son was close to Alicia...’
‘She’s dead.’
‘Well, I’ll just ask someone else, and I’ll keep asking—’
‘Child...’ Reverend Mother interjected. ‘Non destare il cane che dorme.Do not awaken the sleeping dog.’
What sleeping dog?
Why did her very presence seem to cause such unease?
Surely foundlings returned here all the time in search of their history?
‘I’m not leaving Trebordi until I have answers.’ She closed her notebook and put her pen in her bag, sat aloof and defiant even as her heart pounded in her chest. ‘I will go to every shop, knock on every door...’
Reverend Mother stood, clearly flustered. ‘Please wait.’
Beatrice sat for what felt like an age. She waited an hour, perhaps two, for Reverend Mother to return. Eventually she stood up and went to the window, staring not at the ocean but at the playground of the little school she’d attended. Alicia would clamber on top of the climbing frame to wave to her friend Dante as he boarded the bus to the school in the village. They’d been ten! Then her loud companion would round up a group of girls and play complicated games while Beatrice resisted.
Despite the happy promise of her name, she’d been a guarded child, who had loathed playtime and dreaded the bell and the scrape of chairs as the girls raced out. Serious and prim by nature, she had felt too old for games even at five, preferring to sit by the water taps, simply not knowing how to join in.
Alicia, though, had been so bold, confident and sunny. She’d happily peel off her dress to swim in her knickers in the river, and had held hands with boys in the village—well, with one. There’d been no swimming in the river for Beatrice. She would emerge from the bathroom fully dressed each morning and undress in there each night, always so private and shy...
