OVER THE YEARS, since our time in Yorkshire, Agatha and I have managed to steal a private moment or two, when our paths crossed – accidentally, in London, or at a family function. The funeral of Archie’s mother, for example. Teddy’s wedding. Times the blending of families past and present could not be avoided.
She and I agreed that although we’d spent not even a week in the Timeless Manor, in the dead of winter – bare branches and foggy windows – we remembered the house in every season. We could see the glorious canopy, dripping with moss and green, arching over the drive. The lawn where we played tennis soft with recent rain, so our feet left divots in the earth as we played. Birds making a racket when we woke, sun arriving too early and pouring through the curtains. The fields that rolled behind the house carpeted with dahlias, lily of the valley and primula. We remember Teddy running through the flowers, picking the brightest ones, hem of her skirt stained with mud and grass, though truly she was never there at all.
‘To call it amnesia never quite feels like a lie,’ she once told me. ‘Because it all still seems a marvellous dream. The kind you create to take the place of something terrible.’
We should steal away together, I suggested at least once. We should go back.
Agatha admitted she’d thought of finding the owner and buying the house. But she never did, and neither of us returned there, not together or apart. The house lived on only as a place we visited in conversation and memory, no more visible to the outside world than we had been, inhabiting it, undetected.
Sometimes at night I have a marvellous dream of my own: a party. The manor’s not dusty or spare of furnishings, but bright and fully appointed. Genevieve, and my little Rosie, and my sister Louisa’s children, and even Colleen’s: they sit in the upstairs hallway peering down through the banisters long after they were sent to bed. Finbarr is there, and Chilton, and my parents. Fiona and her son, the raspberry birthmark faded. Bess and Donny and Ronan – plus the three girls they’d go on to have. All three of my sisters. The Mahoneys and Uncle Jack and Aunt Rosie. Seamus, grown to a man, laughing as though he never knew a moment’s sickness. Alby, black and white fur gleaming, a perfect gentleman, exactly at Finbarr’s side. Sparkling lights, and trays of brimming champagne flutes, and the most cheerful music – not scratchy from an old Victrola, but a live orchestra. It’s the happiest moment in the world. It’s everything I’ve ever wished for, finally bestowed.
The four of us slept most of the day before adjourning again to the great room, settling with food and wine before a crackling fire. We’d exhausted the supply of fresh food, and Finbarr hadn’t ventured out, so it was back to tins of tongue and kippers, laid out on a large linen tablecloth going yellow at the edges.
Once wine had been poured, Finbarr said to me: ‘It’s time to come out with it, Nan. They think you’ve done murder.’
People can seem especially beautiful by firelight. Agatha sat cross-legged, looking like a lady explorer in her man’s clothes, hair vivid and tumbled, cheeks rosy. Chilton looked younger than I supposed he had in years, lying on his side, downright insouciant. Finbarr reached out and clasped my hand. I kissed his cheek.
‘Do they?’ is all I said.
Agatha held out a plate to me but I waved it away, not a bit hungry. ‘Would you like to hear a story,’ I said, ‘about a time I could have done murder?’
It was a good night for ghost stories. Some wind outside. Nothing but the firelight. The four of us, close and safe and strangely delighted. I told them about my escape from the convent, and my hands around Sister Mary Clare’s throat.
‘And that was Mrs Marston,’ Chilton said.
I didn’t agree, but told them another ghost story, about a priest and a pregnant girl. Iron bars, plus laws of God and man, imprisoned us all inside a rambling stone convent. The priest had licence to do what he would. Inside the convent there was forgiveness for his sins, but not those of the girls he abused.
I didn’t provide every piece of the story. Not Kitty and Carmichael (Chilton, as it turned out, was no Hercule Poirot – he had forgotten all about hearing their Irish accents), or Bess’s real name, or where she lived.
‘I’ve never done murder,’ I said. ‘I’ve only made my own justice.’
From upstairs a door creaked on its hinges, the wind rattling it open. Agatha’s eyes moved to the ceiling, alert to anything that could indicate her discovery. I didn’t want her thinking about that. I wanted her to realize and admit. When she had taken that baby into her home she’d accepted something stolen.
‘Tell the truth,’ I said to her.
‘Yes,’ Finbarr urged. ‘Tell her. Put an end to it once and for all.’
The joy had snapped out of the room. Agatha said, ‘I thought you knew without a doubt. Both of you.’
‘I do know,’ I said. ‘But I want to hear you say it. I’ve confessed. Now it’s your turn.’
‘Very well, then. It’s all true.’
Finbarr got to his feet. He rolled up his sleeves, almost as if he would hit her. Chilton tensed and sat up, ready to stand between them.
‘Which,’ Finbarr said. ‘Which part is true?’
‘Nan’s part.’
‘That’s not right,’ Finbarr said. ‘You know it’s not.’
‘I’m sorry, Finbarr. But that’s what I’ve got to say. Nan’s right. I couldn’t have a baby of my own so Archie got one for me. And I didn’t know, I didn’t think. The cruelty of it was lost on me. I’m sorry.’
‘Nan,’ Finbarr said to me. ‘Don’t listen to that. She’s said just the opposite to me all along. I don’t know why she’s changing her story now.’ He fell to his knees and gathered up Agatha’s hands. Looked at her with his melting, convincing eyes. Convincing for just the right reason. Not because he was scheming, or had any ulterior motive. But because he was true to his core in every word he ever spoke.
‘I’m sorry, Finbarr,’ Agatha said. ‘I truly am.’
He let go of her hands and stood. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing this. I’ll never know.’
But I knew. Everybody stared at me. Perhaps I was beautiful in the firelight, too.
It could be Agatha admitted Teddy was mine because she didn’t want Archie anymore, and knew her pronouncement would make me go back to him. Or else she knew it was inevitable, that her marriage was over, and now she’d ensured that no matter what happened next, I’d always look out for her daughter as if she were my own. Perhaps she felt terrible for all I’d been through, and wanted to let me believe Teddy was mine, because my real child was lost to me forever, and with this kind lie she could return her to me, if only in deception.
Or perhaps the solution was simpler. Occam’s razor. Perhaps she told me Teddy was Genevieve for one reason and one reason only:
Because it was the truth.