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Nothing comes to mind as I stare at Rob’s desk. I’m all out of lies. All I know is that I can’t look at him. My mouth falls open and a croak comes out, and I’m praying it’ll turn into intelligible words –I have no idea…Who the hell did this?…I’ve never seen them in my life before…What should we do?…
But words aren’t needed as the front door bursts open and my two daughters tumble into the hallway with Natalia bringing up the rear, carrying Amber’s daypack.
‘Hi, Mum,’ Amber says. ‘Camp was so amazing today. We did the high ropes, and I was the only one brave enough to try the big zip wire.’
‘That’s amazing, darling. Well done, you.’ I hug her back as she winds herself around me, breathing in the excitement of her day.
Belle slopes silently past the study door and heads upstairs.
‘I think she has an upset,’ Natalia whispers to me, her eyes trailing after Belle as she comes up to the spot where I’m glued in the study doorway. ‘Hello, Rob,’ she says, acknowledging him. But it’s me she’s confiding in about Belle.
‘OK, thanks, Natalia.’ I turn and follow her to the kitchen, grateful for the timely escape. Though I know the folder isn’t going to vanish into thin air and I’ll have to face Rob sooner or later. What I want to know is how he got into the safe. The new code I set is something only I would know. My mind whirs, trying to concoct a reason for having the photographs – not to mention the last picture in the folder.
‘Is Belle upset about Jack?’ I ask Natalia as she washes her hands at the sink. I’m careful not to use his real name.
‘Yes, I think that is right,’ she says, opening the fridge and taking out some minced beef, an onion and a tray of mushrooms. ‘I make her bolognese she like. I know what it feel to have boy treat you bad.’
It was her candour and honesty that drew me to Natalia when I interviewed her for the role of au pair. She wasn’t afraid to tell me about the mistakes in her life – and many of them resonated with mine. Everyone has a story, and when you delve deep enough it’s surprising how, more often than not, the root of people’s trauma begins with love. Or, more to the point, the lack of it.
I leave Natalia to prepare dinner for the girls and head upstairs to Belle’s room. I knock, but she doesn’t reply so I open the door a crack. She’s sitting cross-legged on her bed, hunched over her phone with her headphones on. Apart from the size and style of the clothes in the wardrobe, her room isn’t much different from when she was eleven years old. The same Disney Princess wallpaper – I named her after Belle inBeauty and the Beast– and a single bed with its pink voile canopy draping down in whisper-fine folds. Her white dressing table is cluttered with make-up and more beauty products than I ever knew existed, plus hair straighteners and a dryer, brushes and combs and an assortment of cheap jewellery she’s collected over the years.
She looks up when I come in, taking off her headphones, letting them hang round her neck.
‘If you’ve come to give me your mum speech again, then forget it,’ Belle says. I’ve never heard her sound so cold.
‘Natalia said you were upset. I came to see if you’re OK.’
‘I’m fine.’ She stares down at her phone and toys with the knot of the shirt she has tied just above her waist.
‘Have you heard from Jack today?’
‘What’s it to you? You hate him anyway.’
I sit down on the edge of the bed, assuming her angry tone means no, she hasn’t heard from him. It’s clear that her yearning for contact is eating up my daughter. The rot has set in.
‘Is he still away in London?’
Belle nods.
‘I used to live in London,’ I tell her, surprising myself. Now that Rob knows, it’s only a matter of time before Belle does too, and I’d rather she hears it from me. ‘In fact, it’s where you were born.’
Her head whips up and I see the confusion on her face. ‘But I thought I was born here in Bristol.’
There’s never been any reason for Belle to see her birth certificate and, when I registered her birth, I’d only been in this city for a couple of weeks – lost and alone, just the two of us. It was the next train leaving from Paddington that had led me here – I had no plan to go anywhere in particular, except I knew I couldn’t stay in London. Telling the registrar that my daughter was born at home in London was one of the few times I hadn’t lied. Perhaps she took pity on me when I told her how she’d arrived unexpectedly, how I was alone, terrified, that I hadn’t had a chance to get to the hospital. She seemed satisfied and, in the end, uninterested in the lengthy sob story that I’d rehearsed a thousand times in front of the cracked bathroom mirror at the guest house. There was a queue of people in the waiting area for her to get through before closing. When she asked for the father’s name, I told her I didn’t know. That was also the truth.
‘But we left London soon after you were born,’ I admit to Belle. ‘It was no place to raise a child,’ I add, wanting her to know my reasons. And it’s true – if I’d stayed where I was, Belle would have been snatched away from me, perhaps left in a shop doorway or dumped at a police station – or worse. Babies signalled mistakes, loss of earnings, carelessness, and I’d already cost them enough as it was.
She nods, thoughtful for a second. ‘I asked Jack if I could go to London with him,’ Belle says quietly.
‘And?’
‘He said there was no point. That he’d be back soon.’ She looks at me, hoping I’ll be able to provide reassurance, but I can’t. She looks so sad.
I imagine him taking her to the Cloisters, assuming that’s where he still hangs out, and Belle’s face as she goes inside. The prospect of a trip to the capital city would be exciting to her at first. She’s never been before. But then I imagine the shine of the city lights being tarnished by the grim reality of life up the dingy staircase – the reek of sex, alcohol and drugs making her fearful as she stepped further into Darren’s dark world.
Myworld.
I shudder. Thoughts like that have no place in Belle’s bedroom. Her innocent environment must not be tainted by the life I left behind.
