Stolen Child (34 page)

Hi Isobel,

My name is Jessica Kelly. I’m Carla Kelly’s niece. I Googled your name and found your website. It’s so cool. I just wanted to say Hi and to tell you how stunned and thrilled and excited and happy we are that you have been found.

When I was small, you were my imaginary friend. My parents never wanted to talk about you in case it would upset me but bit by bit I found out about my stolen cousin. I had a hidey-hole in my back garden that no one knew about. It’s where I escaped from my brothers (your cousins)…oh my God!!…you don’t want to know anything about them! I’d take down my tea-set and dolls and my xylophone. I invited my aunt in one day. She looked so sad until I told her about my secret friend. It helped her, knowing I didn’t believe you were dead. I stopped having you as my imaginary friend when I was about eight but I never stopped hoping I’d meet you some day.

You must be feeling really frightened by all that has happened to you. My main reason for emailing you is to
reassure you that my aunt and uncle are really nice people. He used to love my aunt madly and I think he still does but he has another wife and they have two children so I guess it’s not on. He’s a cop. Funny, isn’t it, that he couldn’t find the person he most wanted to find in all the world?

Every year on your birthday, I visited the Angels’ plot in Glasnevin Cemetery with my family. But my aunt never went there on that day because she had her own belief. She went there other times and said it was to honour the memory of a child with no name. She never stopped believing she would find you and now she has.

I can’t wait to meet you in person and welcome you into our family. Don’t tell my aunt I contacted you. She wants to give you space…and so do I. You don’t have to respond to this email but it would be nice to hear from you and maybe be each other’s friends on Facebook.

Love from your cousin,

Jessica.

Joy stands beneath the shower and switches it to cold. At first she yelps, then grits her teeth as her body slowly adjusts to the jets. This is a power shower, icy needles on the back of her neck. She wants to be numb. That way she has control. The sensation is almost unbearable, then
utterly
unbearable, and she is forced from the shower to shiver in this strange bathroom in this strange house in this strange city in this strange situation, which is so ridiculous she needs to stand back once again under the flailing jets.

Five days have passed since she was kidnapped. These strangers, those impostors who have broken up her family and caused an incredible miscarriage of justice, have decided she will be in foster care until she is willing to meet her
so-called parents. To pretend to be Isobel Gardner. It’s too ridiculous for words.

Most of the time she stays in her room and emails her friends. They are fascinated by her story. She’s a celeb in Maoltrán.
Woo hoo…
send in the paparazzi. She bangs furiously on the keys and tells Lucinda to stop writing drivel about how she always wanted to belong to someone beautiful like a famous supermodel. Danny Breen also emails. He’s in Trinity now and will call and see her soon. They can go for a drive in his Boxster. Anywhere she wants to go?

Rockrose,
Joy emails back.
Bring me home.

Patricia says it’s out of the question. She had hoped Joy could stay nearer her home but both of her so-called parents are anxious to be near her. Joy doesn’t care where she stays as long as this crazy situation is sorted out. Her father (no way will she call him Mr Dowling, as Patricia does) is allowed to see her once a week but always in the presence of Patricia.

The woman knocks on the door.

‘Everything all right, Joy?’ Her cheery question has an anxious undertone. Katie is her name and she must be used to disturbed young people wreaking havoc on her bathroom. Some of the tiles are cracked and there is a dent in the door, as if it has been kicked violently and often.

‘Yes.’ Joy can hardly speak. Her teeth chatter and the cold water wins. She switches off the shower and dries herself, drags her clothes back on. Katie and her husband Philip look after young people with what Katie calls ‘issues’. Joy does not have issues. She is the victim of a grave miscarriage of justice. Those are her
father’s
words. She clings to them, recites them to everyone who calls to see her. And many people have called, most of them in tears of shock and outrage over this appallingly grave miscarriage of
justice, which, claims Miriam, will result in heads rolling and lawsuits and compensation claims for millions.

Her grandfather and Tessa were her first visitors. Her grandfather looked stooped and walked with a cane. When he sat down, he placed his hands on the cane handle but he was still unable to stop them trembling. They wanted to look after her until her father is tried and proved innocent. But they are not allowed because, officially, until it is proved otherwise, she is not related to them. Her grandfather had snuffled so much that Joy handed him a box of tissues and ordered him to stop pretending he wasn’t crying. He kept saying it was all his fault and going on about a baby boy until Tessa said he was upsetting everyone.

After they had left, she rang her grandmother (the idea that Miriam is not her grandmother is equally ludicrous) and asked her to bring the photo album when she visited the following day. Miriam told her it was in police custody but she would bring anything else Joy wanted. And that is precisely nothing. Joy does not want any of her possessions, except her laptop. Her grandmother has booked into a nearby guesthouse and won’t leave Dublin until Joy is with her. Her ‘creative drive’ is kaput, she says. Joey can run the studio until their lives are back to normal again. But there is something about her voice that worries Joy. It’s subdued, not furious and yelling the way it was when the social workers marched Joy into the car. Sometimes they don’t talk much. They just sit, holding hands, like they’re storing up memories to hold forever.

When Phyllis Lyons had visited it was okay to cry and be rocked in her arms, because Phyllis was the bearer of the truth, a witness to Joy’s existence. The woman who drove her tractor through the flood and helped Joy’s mother give birth. All that was true, Phyllis had agreed. It had been an awful flood
right enough. One of the worst. And she had almost, but not quite, drawn Joy’s head into the light. That part, she said, had already been done by Joy’s mother. But, she added when Joy had begun to cry again, that only happened a second or so before her arrival because, not to put too fine a point on it, there was blood on the sheets and all over Joy. To be honest, admitted Phyllis, she was there so quickly it hardly made any difference, which was why she never
actually
corrected anyone who believed she was present throughout. She had spoken so breathlessly it had been difficult to follow what she was saying. Joy wondered if the guards had the same difficulty when they interrogated her in the Garda station. Phyllis burst into tears when she came to the bit about the interrogation. It was the first time she had ever been inside the station, except to get passports or driving licences signed.

Katie believes anger is good. Change is a journey and anger is the first obstacle to be overcome. It sounds like something Miriam would say. But there will be no anger journey, except for the journey back to Rockrose. Every day Joy expects it to happen. There’s a view of the Dublin Mountains from her bedroom window. Most of the time they’re covered in a blue haze and today she can see snow on the summits. Once this grave miscarriage of justice is sorted out, Joy will be gone from this house so fast there’ll be roadrunner dust on her heels.

The media are crawling all over Maoltrán. Lucinda says the locals are giving interviews about Joy’s family and how nice and ordinary they are, especially her mother, who was always the first to say yes when asked to volunteer for community work. But Joy does not read this information in the papers. Instead, she reads about home-schooling and the isolation of Rockrose, and how her mother once assaulted Joey. A sick journalist called Alyssa Faye writes about the psychological
state of Joy’s mind and makes her sound like a feral child. The tabloids are having a field day.
Weekend Flair
photoshops her face and transposes it on top of Carla Kelly’s body. One of her catwalk shots. The clothes she wears are diaphanous and flowing, and she seems to be carried on a gale force wind that sweeps her long blonde hair from her face and moulds the clothes to her legs and breasts. She might as well be naked. Stark naked, and it looks so real that Joy feels as if the same wind is sweeping away another layer of her identity.

After crying so much that her throat feels like the inside of a glue pot, she hits the
www.FindIsobelGardner.com
site on her laptop. She has resisted the temptation since arriving in Dublin. It’s like entering enemy territory but she can’t take her eyes off the baby photograph. Isobel Gardner’s eyes are closed and her tiny mouth pursed like a raspberry. The rest of her resembles a caterpillar inside a pink cocoon. Joy looks at Carla Kelly and Robert Gardner. Her heart does not dovetail in recognition of her long-lost parents. All she feels is sadness that their hopes, still alive after all those years, must be dashed, and dashed-quickly before she’s drawn into their tragedy.

Joey emails every day, often twice. He came to see her as soon as she arrived in Dublin with the social workers. He held her so tight she thought she’d faint from lack of air. He’d been crying. She had never seen him cry, even that time her mother hit him. He had held Joy in the way she’d always imagined, like she was something tender and precious, instead of a sister who needed a bear hug. But she wanted that bear hug now. She wanted him cuffing the side of her head and teasing her and getting mad at her because she was acting off the wall and sending him stupid emails. Half of her is half of him, and he said, ‘Yes…yes…of course that’s true,’ but his gaze kept sliding away, as if meeting her eyes would expose him to a terrible truth.

He’s back in Maoltrán now, supporting her father. They are doing everything they can to end this grave miscarriage of justice. In the police station, her father’s belt and shoelaces were removed. He was put in a cell and questioned by Gardaí from Dublin who had once searched for Isobel Gardner. They failed to do their job properly and so they concocted this ridiculous story to prove they have succeeded. To prove Joy Dowling is a stolen child. Not kidnapped for ransom, adopted or abandoned on the steps of a church. Stolen. Like a jewel necklace or gold bullion.

Joy burrows under the duvet until she feels warm again. She has phoned Dylan and asked him to visit her. But he hasn’t come yet. She could do with him sorting out her head because sometimes, just sometimes, when she’s really tired and weepy, she wonders what it would be like to meet them, Carla Kelly and Robert Gardner, just so they can see her and know it’s all a sick mistake.

Miriam brought one other thing from Rockrose – Joy’s father’s hairbrush. Joy cut a strand from Joey’s hair. She labelled it, as she labelled her own, and the hairs she drew from her father’s brush. She has researched DNA on the internet. It’s an exact science. Why should she trust the cops? They failed once to find Isobel Gardner. They will not admit to a second failure and have probably deliberately forged the DNA results. It’s up to Joy to establish her own identity.

Before she switches off the light on another wretched day, she sends a final email.

Hi Jessica,

My name is Joy Dowling and I received your email. It was nice of you to contact me but I’m afraid you’ve made a terrible mistake. I’m not Isobel Gardner.

Do you believe in heaven and hell? I don’t, not any
more. Hell exists on earth and you enter it when you look out of your bedroom window one morning and see strangers walking into your house. Hell is having your own solicitor, social worker, foster parents, Family Liaison Officer, psychologist, everyone except your own family around you. Heaven will be the day I return to my proper home.

I’m sorry your aunt and uncle had their hopes raised and dashed again. I’m sorry your imaginary friend wasn’t me. It sounds like you had fun in that hidey-hole.

I looked at your aunt’s site. How did I ever get mixed up in her story? I guess it’s because I look a bit like her and we have the same blood group. But so had my mother. She told me so herself, many times. They’ve obviously fucked up the forensic tests which is disgraceful and my family will be taking an action for compensation. Heads will roll. I don’t plan to meet her or your uncle. It will only complicate this mess even further.

Goodbye,

Joy Dowling.

Where is Carla Kelly? Anticipation Mum Under Cover. Model Mum Missing. Mother of Isobel Unavailable for Comment.

Carla watched the story unfold. The broadsheets and the redtops, all with the same prurient curiosity, demanding to see her tears of joy…joy…Joy…

Her defences held. Her apartment remained her fortress. She dreaded being swept along by the currents of the media, unable to think, to make decisions, to extricate herself from the morass of her own deception. She was protected by the internet but the FindIsobel mailbox was flooded with requests for interviews. She ignored them and Robert also remained under cover; a chameleon man, back in familiar territory.

Her family, after their initial gathering in her apartment, respected her desire for anonymity. Janet rang every day, complaining about the journalists lounging against her garden wall. They were breaking Carla’s father’s heart and Janet was forced to serve them soup and sandwiches, and have her photograph taken every time she put her nose outside her front door.

‘How long will this go on?’ she demanded. ‘Isobel can’t keep refusing to see you.’

Robert said much the same thing. Only four more days left before he returned to his family. He was apologetic, harried. Damian, his eldest son, was booked into hospital to have a tonsillectomy. Carla suspected Sharon had laid his responsibilities on the line. A son with engorged tonsils would have to take priority over a child he had buried many years previously. He spoke with Patricia every day but his daughter remained resolute in her refusal to meet him.

‘And now she’s going to give a press conference,’ Carla complained when she called to Frank’s house on the evening Patricia had relayed this latest information to her. ‘She hasn’t the slightest idea that she’s walking into a snake pit.’

‘I’m sure she’s being well advised.’ Frank placed a dish of vindaloo curry with rice and naan bread in the centre of the table. ‘Sit. Relax. Eat,’ he ordered. ‘We never have time on our own any more.’

‘This is delicious, Frank.’ Carla gulped water and reached for a tissue. He had a heavy hand with spices and her eyes were already watering. ‘I’m not so sure Joy will take advice. She’s headstrong and stubborn—’

‘As you discovered when you went to Clare.’

‘Yes.’

He opened a bottle of red wine and poured it into two glasses. Initially his reaction when she had confessed her true reasons for being in Clare had been more muted than Robert’s outburst. But she was aware that his annoyance simmered a little more strongly each time they discussed it.

‘Going there was a bad idea,’ she admitted. ‘I’m so frightened it’s going to drive an even deeper wedge between myself
and Joy when she discovers the truth. And Robert will be going home next week. I’ll be on my own again—’

‘Hardly on your own,’ he protested. ‘You have me.’

‘Of course I do.’ She nodded and pushed her plate aside, leaned her elbows on the table. ‘But I can’t think about our wedding until I’ve sorted out my relationship with Joy.’

‘Of course,’ he replied wryly. ‘First things first.’

‘I wish…how I wish I’d let events take their natural course.’ She knew she was talking too much about Joy. Talking compulsively, incessantly, unable to focus on anything other than the inevitable meeting. ‘Six months, that’s all I had to wait until the truth was uncovered but now…it’s such a mess, Frank. What am I going to do?’

He broke off a chunk of naan bread, dipped it into his curry and continued eating, slowly chewing, digesting her question with the same deliberation.

‘You were different when you returned from Clare,’ he said. ‘Softer, somehow. Like you’d finally let her go. And that was the reason you decided to marry me.’ He ignored the wine and reached for a glass of water.

‘It helped make up my mind, yes.’

‘But you lied about your reasons for being there. You only told me the truth after you’d spoken to Robert.’

‘He needed to be the first to know.’

‘Are you still in love with him?’

‘Of course not. I love you.’

‘Somehow, I don’t think so. Not the way I expected you to love me.’

‘And what way is that, Frank?’ she demanded.

‘Everything’s changed, Carla.’ He ignored her question. ‘What has happened to you and Robert changes the entire balance of our relationship.’

‘Why should it?’

‘You’ve been obsessed with finding your child since I’ve known you. Now you’ve succeeded. Isobel…Joy – whatever you want to call her – will always come first. And Robert will be back in your life again. You’ll have decisions to make, events to attend, a daughter to share. Which begs the question. Where do I fit in?’

‘Is this about
you
or me?’ she asked.

‘It’s about our future,’ he replied. ‘You have your daughter back again. The reason you decided to marry me no longer applies.’

‘Are you cancelling our wedding?’

‘I’m not good with competition…and I can’t compete against flesh and blood.’

‘You’re
jealous
of my daughter?’

‘If you want to put it like that, yes. But I prefer to think I’m letting you off the hook. Sharing space with a teenage tearaway is probably not the best way to begin married life. Don’t tell me the thought hasn’t crossed your own mind.’

‘I’m willing to take that risk.’

‘I take enough risks in my business, Carla. But I don’t extend them to my personal life. For that, I depend on certainties.’ He stood up and began to clear the table. Leftover food disgusted him and had to be removed immediately.

She followed him to the kitchen and watched him scrape the remains of their meal into the bin. The clang of the fork against plates reverberated through her head.

‘Nothing in life is certain, Frank. Even true love doesn’t come with any guarantees.’ She removed her engagement ring and placed it on the windowsill beside him. ‘I’m sorry, Frank,’ she said.

‘I hope everything works out for you, Carla,’ he replied. ‘You deserve to be happy.’

She stared at the ring for the last time; a solitaire in a
simple setting that highlighted the purity of the diamond. Now that it no longer weighed heavily on her finger, she wanted to run light-footed from his kitchen. She should feel some emotion other than relief. They had been together for so long, lapping comfortably against each other’s lives, priding themselves on the easy-going nature of their relationship. She had used him – just as she used her website and the persona of Clare Frazier – as her shield, and had envisaged their future drifting along at the same unruffled pace. A small price to pay for serenity, she had decided when she returned from Maoltrán and accepted his proposal.

But love, she thought, as she opened his front door and stepped into the night, was not easy-going, nor was it undemanding. It burned and bled and scoured the heart. The demands it made had haunted her for fifteen years and, now that an end was in sight, she was in turmoil. No wonder Frank had retreated from such unbridled emotion.

She smiled as she walked towards the canal and the moon, white and full with promise, skidded giddily above the rooftops.