If only he’d come for me just a little later, when I was at least able to pretend to be my old self. By the following spring, I was working a few afternoons at Buttons and Bits. Megs was already training as a nurse. Louisa, still home but already engaged, was taking a secretarial course. At our kitchen table she taught me the shorthand and typing that would one day lead to my job at the British Rubber Company. By that summer, I could walk through the world and present a face that didn’t look entirely broken, or constantly searching.
I was, though. Constantly searching. Did I ever stop? No. Did I ever plan to stop – did I ever think there would come a time, or a moment, when I’d admit defeat and the impossibility of my quest? Of course not.
Four years after my return to England, quite by chance, I found her. Unmistakable. I was visiting my sister Megs at her new home in Torquay, where she worked as a nurse.
Megs took a day off and we went for a walk on the beach. A little girl ran towards us with the peripatetic zigzag of small children. At first I thought the child was on her own but as my eyes searched through the sunlight I saw two women a long way behind her, so distant I could barely make out their forms. When the little girl found Megs and me in her way, instead of running around us, she threw her arms around my legs.
‘Oh,’ I said, looking down into a pair of bright blue eyes. She had a high forehead and shiny dark hair cascading backwards as she looked up at me. Sweet, pointed little chin. I knew her in an instant. And she knew me, too. I know she did.
‘Nan,’ Megs said sharply, as I stooped to gather the little girl in my arms. ‘You can’t just pick up other people’s children.’
The little girl didn’t agree. She returned my embrace as if she remembered the last time her mother had held her. Her real mother.
‘Teddy,’ one of the women called out. ‘Look here, Teddy, we must head back to Ashfield.’
The child’s consciousness returned to her present-day life. She squirmed out of my arms and ran back to the women, who turned and walked off in the other direction. I grabbed Megs’s arm to steady myself.
‘There, there,’ Megs said. ‘You’ll have one of your own one day, Nan, you will.’
‘I already have one of my own,’ is what I said out loud. Inwardly I said Ashfield, again and again in my mind, memorizing it without a doubt, and vowing to discover all there was to know about the people who lived there.
Was she beautiful?
Yes. More beautiful than you can imagine.
The day Finbarr finally came to fetch me, I sent him away, returning the money he’d sent me against his protestations. We had barely talked an hour before he trudged off, out of sight, heavy with the added sorrow I’d given him.
‘You’ll always know where I am,’ Finbarr said before he left, tears streaming down his face. ‘I’ll never live anywhere without sending you word. You’ll change your mind one day. I know you will.’
A mother bat can find her pup in a cave full of thousands, even without eyes that see. When your child has been stolen you measure her age by the days that pass. You look into the faces of other children, to make sure. You do this so many times you know with your whole being, you haven’t made a mistake when at last you find her.
Sometimes I wonder if Agatha learned it from me. About the worst violence you can do to a person. What you might be driven to in its aftermath. The wars that can be started, the justice that must be served. All for the sake of avenging a child.
Part Three
16 September 1926
Dearest Finbarr,
I hope this letter finds you well after all these years. My goodness, I hope it finds you at all, and that you will be happy to hear from me. I must admit that even after all that’s happened, even though I haven’t answered your letters, whenever I see your name on an envelope (whenever I see the words, ‘Love, Finbarr’ written across the bottom of a page), my heart somersaults backwards up to the sky.
And so I must tell you what I’d promised myself I wouldn’t, which I take a risk in doing. I have found our baby, our girl, our darling Genevieve. I have seen her and even held her in my arms. She is happy and healthy and living with ‘parents’ at a house called ‘Styles’ in Sunningdale, Berkshire. If you could only see her! She has your eyes, Finbarr. She’s smart and brave and beautiful. She loves dogs and books. In that way at least one of our wishes has come true.
The people who have her are named Archibald and Agatha Christie. And here is the difficult part. Archie Christie plans to leave his wife and marry me. Did I engineer this? Did I plan it? Yes. To you alone I confess that I did. For the only reason that could excuse me. To be a part of my own child’s life.
If I received such a letter from you, if you told me you were about to marry, it would cause me great sorrow but I would thank you for telling me yourself. I hope you understand this is all I can do. It’s too late to take her away from the only family she’s known. At least this way I can be her stepmother. At least I can land my eyes upon her, and embrace her, and call her by her real name when she’s asleep.
I don’t love Archie. But I can’t afford to hate him despite his role in all that happened. He’s my only road back to Genevieve. So I do what must be done. And Finbarr: nothing could be like us, could it? My heart belongs, as ever, to you.
Love,
Nan
The Disappearance
Day Eight
Saturday, 11 December 1926
FINBARR CAUGHT AGATHA at the top of the stairs on the first floor, his hand on her elbow, urgent but gentle. The house was dark, just after midnight. She and Chilton had missed their dinner. She’d only wanted to gather some tins of food to sustain them.
‘Agatha,’ Finbarr said, his hoarse voice full of urgency. ‘Please don’t say you’ve decided not to help me after all?’
She looked at him, his face barely visible in the flicker of the candle she held, but strikingly earnest. She thought, What a fool Nan is. Any woman with her wits about her would run away with him the moment he asked. The conviction with which she thought this, while Chilton sat waiting for her upstairs, could almost make her sympathize with Archie, the twin desires, the divided loyalty.
‘All it would take is one word from you,’ Finbarr said. ‘Tell her. That your daughter is your daughter. That she’s not Genevieve.’