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It vexed her that she’d been left naked. Exposed.
Beatrice turned as the office door opened—but not to show the round, familiar face of Reverend Mother.
‘Sister Catherine.’ Beatrice gave her a tight smile, assuming she was here to explain the delay, or offer refreshments, perhaps.
‘I have been told you have questions.’ Sister Catherine gestured for her to sit.
‘Many,’ Beatrice said. ‘Were you here when I was found?’
Sister Catherine was a very nondescript woman—not just in looks, but in the bank of Beatrice’s memory. Dark hair peeked from her habit and dark brows arched over brown eyes. She’d been a little mean, but not dreadfully so. More...indifferent. She had taught Latin, and Beatrice had been the star of that class, but on her own merit.
Sister Catherine hadn’t been particularly encouraging. Just... Nothing.
And then Beatrice found out that she was her mother.
‘I was plain, like you,’ she said, ‘and cheerless too.’
Beatrice said nothing, just stared at the features that were, she could now see, a dark version of her own. How had she never seen it? How had her own mother been in plain sight and she hadn’t known?
‘I did have one curiosity, though...’
Nothing dreadful had happened to her. It had been nothing but a curiosity she’d wished to satisfy before committing to the church.
‘I used to help my mother clean the cottages where the tourists stayed. He was a widower. He had been married for thirty years and he missed his wife dreadfully. He was here from Germany for a quiet vacation.’
‘So he wasn’t here for the festival?’
‘No!’ Sister Catherine scorned the very thought. ‘He was a historian—and he liked to live in the past too. He said I reminded him of his late wife when she was young.’
‘He took advantage?’
‘No, I was twenty-five and he was handsome indeed.’
Beatrice’s past was being given to her rather like a history lesson—with little emotion, just a small summing-up. Two weeks of sin and then she’d repented.
‘I was a novice when I realised I was with child, and...’
‘Scared?’
It would seem not.
‘Beatrice, I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and I knew that you would be taken care of...’
‘Did Reverend Mother know?’
‘Of course not,’ she said rather harshly, and it was that part that shrivelled Beatrice’s heart.
Reverend Mother noticedeverything. Nothing got past her. And yet Sister Catherine’s pregnancy somehow had. Beatrice’s very birth somehow had. Clearly she had not done anything to alert Reverend Mother.
‘It was when you turned ten, or around then, that Reverend Mother called me in here. She said the similarities were striking and could no longer be ignored. In truth, I couldn’t see it. We are both petite, but you are so blonde...’
How could she not have seen it? For now Beatrice felt as if she were looking in a mirror. Or at one of those apps that aged you, but not much...just a little. It showed her what she’d look like with dark hair and dark eyes...
She searched for a memory of them both—a stolen moment, an extra treat, a bedtime story... Finally she found one—only it wasn’t endearing.
One day the bell had gone for the dreaded playtime and she’d pleaded to stay in and read quietly.
‘Andate a giocare fuori.’Sister Catherine hadn’t even looked up.
