‘Mother? What are you not telling me?’
Rose bit her lip and stared at the ceiling before dropping her gaze to Lottie. ‘I told you to leave it be,’ she whispered, and then her voice rose. ‘How many times did I tell you to stop asking questions? But no, you had to prove you could solve the problems of the world while unravelling our family history. This is not a fairy tale, Lottie. There’s no happy ending. Our world has real live people in it, not cartoon characters. The dead are gone. They’re not here to explain their actions. But you cannot leave it alone!’
Lottie recoiled at the vehemence in her mother’s voice. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The truth. Do you want to hear it? Because this is your only chance.’
Closing her eyes, Lottie blinked away tears. Did she want to know the truth? Yes. Could she handle it? Strong Lottie could, but a wounded animal, like she was now, probably couldn’t. But she had to know.
‘I want to hear it.’
‘You won’t like it. Final warning.’
Lottie flung back the covers and sat on the side of the bed, ignoring the shaft of pain.
‘For Christ’s sake, Mother, this isn’t some game-show quiz. Spit out the truth. I’m ready. No matter what you have to say, I think I have it figured out already.’
Leaning against the wall, Rose said, ‘I don’t think you have. That’s the problem. But you need to remember one thing. This is all your father’s fault. Not yours, not mine.’ She paused.
Lottie waited.
‘He was a bastard. Your father. On the take. You were correct there. And do you know why? Because, and you know I don’t use bad language, but I will now, because he fucked a desperately demented girl. Got her pregnant and came crying on my shoulder, apologising, asking what he could do and how it would affect his career. The selfish man. Never once did he think of that young damaged woman and how he had abused her.’
‘I… I don’t think I need to know any more.’ Lottie looked around her room wildly. Where were her pills? She needed something. A drink. Anything.
‘Yes you do. You wanted answers, and by God, I will have my say.’
Silence. She hadn’t even the coordination left in her body to count the seconds that were passing.
‘Your father knew Tessa Ball through court cases. Approached her to see what could be done. No abortions allowed. No access to even a back-street abortion. So they came up with a plan. When I think of it now, I want to be sick.’
‘What plan?’ Lottie whispered.
‘Once the baby was born, Peter would take the child as his own. He only had to convince me to go along with this madness. He painted it up; dressed it in fine clothing, his story. How we would be doing young Carrie a service. She wouldn’t be able to raise the child. She was a drug addict and an alcoholic. She’d spent half her life in a mental asylum, for God’s sake. He pleaded. The baby was his flesh and blood, after all. The clown.’
Lottie noticed tears spilling down Rose’s cheeks. Had her mother totally gone over the edge? But no, she looked saner than she had in months.
‘How could you take this child in? You had Eddie, you had me…’
‘That’s the whole point, Lottie. Don’t you get it? Come on, Detective Inspector Parker. We didn’t have you. I couldn’t have children after Eddie was born. Complications at birth. I was left sterile. That’s why there was a seven-year gap after Eddie.’
‘I don’t understand…’
‘You were Peter’s child, but you weren’t mine.’ Rose convulsed in sobs. ‘But I loved you. Love you.’
‘No!’ Lottie shot up from the bed, the ache in her back screeching objections along with her voice. ‘You’re not serious. You can’t be. No! That cannot be true.’ She rounded on her mother, gripping her shoulders. Looked into her flooded eyes.
‘You called me Charlotte after Charlotte Bront?. You told me that. Didn’t you? I’m yours and Dad’s. Please don’t tell me otherwise.’
‘I’m sorry, but it’s true. You are the daughter of my Peter and the Carrie King woman. Tessa Ball forged the birth certificate through her contacts at the registry office.’
Lottie dropped to her knees at the feet of the woman she had called mother for over forty years. But Rose wasn’t her real mother. Her biological mother was a woman who’d been locked up in an insane asylum and left there to die.
She shook her head repeatedly. This couldn’t be true. No. Dementia, that was what it was. She would get Annabelle to run checks on Rose’s brain. There were tests… special tests they could do…
Rose continued. ‘Tessa had this hanging over your father’s head like a giant sledgehammer, threatening to let it drop if he didn’t get involved later on when she tried to cover up her own brother’s involvement with Carrie. She took Marian as her child. Keeping a wealthy family happy, she was. No shame displayed for all the neighbours to see.’
‘They were babies,’ Lottie cried. A cold chill traversed her shoulders, slipped down her spine and back up again, coming to an icy resting place in the nape of her neck.
‘You know what I mean. These people were gentry, or at least they thought they were. Covered up all they could, but then there were the twins. How were they going to hide twins?’
‘How? Sign them into the asylum with their mother?’ Lottie scoffed.
‘No. The Belfields had a daughter, Alexis. She was a few years younger than Carrie and she agreed to take the twins. She fostered them, probably illegally, as she was young and unmarried, and poor Carrie was hauled off to the asylum once more. But this time she didn’t stay quiet. Threatened to go public, so I heard.’
‘But how would a supposedly insane woman be believed?’
‘I don’t think Kitty could take the risk. She enlisted Tessa, who forced Peter to help. Carrie was signed out and given the cottage by the Belfields, with the proviso that she get herself clean and then she could have the twins back. All was grand until she started taking drugs and drinking again. Then came the night she almost burned them all to death.’
‘So Alexis took the twins again?’
‘No. Apparently Alexis was heading to America to start up a business venture. She agreed to take one child. The other, Bernie, was incarcerated with Carrie in St Declan’s. I think initially she was put in while the family decided what to do about her. But they just left her there. With her mother.’ Rose sighed, long and deep. ‘I thought they’d both died in there. But I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?’
Lottie was speechless. She didn’t want to believe her mother, but then hadn’t most of it been in Moroney’s report anyway?
‘How could you do it? Agree to take me in? How could you live with Dad after what he did?’
‘It was hard. I did the right thing in the long run. Look how you turned out. Good upbringing wins out in the end.’
‘I can see that we are both victims in this pathetic play, and you know what? I pity you, Mother. Or whoever you are. I pity you for the choices you made.’ Lottie leaned against the bed, wishing she was strong enough to run out of the door, down the stairs and out to the street, where she could howl like a wild animal at the night sky. ‘Dad’s suicide… had you anything to do with it?’
‘How could you think that? I had nothing to do with it. Anyway, he was the one who had the affair, not me. He had to live with that sin. Remember, Lottie, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors. We all thought Annabelle had a perfect marriage, and see what her husband was doing to her.’