The Winter Children (41 page)

They don’t but Donnie has his knife. Alice says, ‘Take off some of my hair and put it with the baby.’

‘Are you sure?’ Julia asks.

‘Yes. Please.’ She allows Julia to lift one of her long fair tresses and saw slowly through it with the knife blade until the hank comes away in her hand.

Julia places it on top of the little body, curling it round into a golden circle. ‘Yes,’ she says pensively. ‘That’s right. That’s enough.’ She drops her gaze
to the floor and feels this is the moment for a ritual of some kind, though she can’t think of anything except the Lord’s Prayer, so she begins solemnly. ‘Our Father, Who art in
Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name . . .’

Donnie joins in and they say the prayer together while Alice listens.

When it is finished, Donnie says softly, ‘That was very nice.’ He bends down and puts the lid over the dead child. Julia bites her lip as he disappears from view, her vision blurring
with tears. ‘Don’t worry,’ Donnie says gently when he sees her cry. ‘I’ll take care of him. He’ll be safe with me.’ He looks over at Alice. ‘Do you
reckon she’s strong enough to move now?’

Alice shifts under her blanket. ‘I’m strong enough,’ she says with determination. ‘You can take me back now.’

‘Come on then,’ Donnie says. He stares at Julia. ‘Time to go.’

They all go together back to the east wing of the house. Dan has got the children up from their nap and dressed them, but they are groggy and grumpy, so he puts them into the double buggy and
gives each one a beaker of milk. They sit, subdued, as they are pushed back the way they went that morning.

‘It’s a strange discovery,’ Mr Ellis says as they stride along the gravel paths. ‘Very unexpected. I’m not entirely sure what’s done in such cases but
we’ll wait for the authorities to tell us.’

‘Do you mean you’ve had to call a halt to the work?’ asks Francesca.

‘That’s about the size of it.’ Mr Ellis gives her an apologetic look. ‘I hope it won’t be a long delay.’ As he leads them into the old pool room, he says,
‘One of my men discovered this when he started pulling the tiles up off the floor of the pool. It was very close to the surface. Either it wasn’t buried deep, or it has floated up over
the years. It’s all just in bits now, anyway.’ He turns to Dan. ‘Best leave the kids outside, I think. Rob here will keep an eye on them if they’re safe in their pushchair.’ He nods at one of the younger workmen loitering nearby.

‘All right,’ Dan says. ‘Just for a minute.’

They go inside the huge chamber, their steps echoing against the tiled surface. The hole in the ground is clearly a swimming pool now that all the debris from the bottom has been moved. The
tiles on its base have been broken up and lifted in the centre, revealing a dirt hole, but it’s otherwise empty, tools abandoned on the grubby floor.

‘Over here,’ says Mr Ellis. ‘I’m afraid you’d better prepare yourselves for a bit of unpleasantness.’

He leads them to where there is a small pile of what looks like rubbish: some rotted bits of wood and remnants of fabric. Francesca peers down at the pile, trying to make out what she is seeing.
Then she notices a coil of long brittle strings. ‘Hair?’ she says.

‘That’s right.’ Mr Ellis nods. ‘But that’s not all. Can you see?’

Dan is beside her, staring down. ‘Bones,’ he says in a wondering tone. ‘It’s a skeleton.’

At once Francesca sees what he is looking at. The bits of whitish stuff resolve into something recognisable and she realises that he is right – it’s a tiny skeleton, a skull, crushed
on one side, among the remains of the bones. ‘A baby,’ she whispers.

‘I’m afraid so.’ Mr Ellis sighs. ‘Dead for some time. Decades, I’d say.’

‘What a sad thing,’ Francesca says, a strange emotion curling inside her.

Dan points at the skull. ‘Look – do you think it was murdered? The skull is broken at the side.’

‘Could be.’ Mr Ellis crouches down beside the debris. ‘But look at this. It’s been carefully buried. The wood seems to have been a coffin of some sort. Then there’s
the hair. You don’t put all that kind of stuff in with a murdered baby; you try and get rid of it as simply as possible. No, I reckon it was hidden in here.’ He looks about. ‘It
must be at least fifty years ago, if the style of this building is anything to go by. This was a girls’ school then, wasn’t it? No. It’s no murder. There’s a sad story here.
Some poor kid’s had a child she loved, and put her hair in with it. God only knows how it came to be buried under the pool, or what happened to the girl. There’s a mystery there and the
only thing we can know for sure is that it’s a sorry tale.’ He stands up. ‘I’ll have to call the police, though, Mrs Huxtable. I’m sure you understand that
it’s unavoidable.’

Francesca hears him but it’s as though his voice is very far away, and she has gone somewhere removed from everything around her. All she is aware of is the little skeleton, surrounded
by all the marks of a mother’s love and grief. A little child, lost at birth. The thought of it is filling her head with confusion and a kind of buzzing sound and a horrible realisation that
she is full of a nameless sorrow, pushed down and repressed for years and years. Like the coffin under the pool, it’s coming to the surface, moving remorselessly upwards to break free from
the carefully cemented layer of tiles that is holding it in.

‘Mrs Huxtable? Is that all right?’

‘Francesca?’ It’s Dan’s voice. His hand on her arm. ‘Are you all right? What is it?’

It’s all so muffled and strange. She closes her eyes to stop herself swaying, her breath coming in short hard pants, confusion roaring through her. If only they would be quiet and let
her understand what is happening to her. A seismic feeling rumbles in her depths.

Dan’s voice sounds from far away. ‘Francesca, you’d better sit down. Come this way, let’s find you a seat.’

She feels him start to push her and it is the last straw. Her eyes fly open. ‘No!’ she screams. ‘No!’ She turns and gives him a mighty shove and he stumbles away from her
with an expression of surprise on his face. ‘Don’t you dare touch me! Don’t you dare! After everything you’ve done!’ Her voice is shrill, a true scream. ‘Oh my
God. I can’t bear it!’ She turns and starts to run out of the building, out onto the site. The workman she saw earlier is standing by Bea and Stan’s pushchair, chatting merrily
to them and showing them a spirit level. He looks up as she dashes past but she has no thought to explain herself.

I need to get away. I have to get away from here.

She runs blindly through the gardens, not knowing where she is going. The grief inside is almost too much for her and she is crying as she goes, great heart-wrenching sobs that burst from her.
It is a relief to let it out. She wants to turn her face to the sky and scream with all her might, fall to her knees and beat the earth, because of all the bloody sadness that everyone must
suffer.

She runs and runs, and when she stops, she is back at the cottage, in the garden, surrounded by all the normality of life there. Washing flaps in the breeze. Toys are scattered by the back door. Olivia’s gardening things lie on the path where she
was weeding yesterday. This is the antidote to the sadness, isn’t it? The small pleasures of existence, the patterns of the garden, the seasons. Life going on despite the tragedies and the
suffering, and people coming through it after all.

But have I come through it? Am I all right?

She kneels on the ground, crying, tears running down her face, streams of water and mucous all over.
I’m not all right. I haven’t been all right for ages.

The knowledge bursts in on her like a firework exploding in her head. Suddenly she understands. It only makes the tears flow faster and a moaning sound spring from somewhere inside.

‘Francesca, what’s wrong?’ Dan is beside her, his arms around her. She collapses into him, letting him take the weight of her grief, and cries against him, allowing it to spill
out at last.

They are inside, back at the kitchen table. She is calmer now. The workman pushed the twins back to the house and they are in front of the television, happy with their cartoons and building
bricks.

Dan has made her a cup of tea, which cools in front of her. Actually she would like whiskey but there’s no point in that right now. It would only make things more confused, with the state
she is in.

‘You remember, don’t you?’ she says to Dan, her voice flat. ‘I don’t mean the night of the ball. We both remember that. I mean the other thing. You know how we left
the ball. You said we would be together.’

Dan sits across the table from her, gazing at the pale polka dots of the oilcloth. He seems to have come through some important process by means of Francesca’s grief. It appears that, at
last, he is able to admit what happened between them all that time ago. He nods. ‘I know. I did say that.’ He looks up at her. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I knew it was a
mistake. I didn’t really mean it. But your tears, the way you said you loved me . . . it all moved me. I thought, just for an instant, that we could make it work, because I did love you, in a
way. Just not in the right way. I tried, though. I did try.’

She nods. ‘I know you did.’

The heady days that followed the ball come back to her. They passed in an ecstatic blur of being with Dan, but secretly. They agreed that no one must know of the great change that had taken
place between them. So during the brief time before term ended and everyone went their separate ways, they hid away, in Dan’s room, or by riding out of town on bicycles to have lazy picnics
in a shady meadow. They made love often.

But Francesca felt something was missing. There was a strange lack, as though Dan wasn’t entirely there. He was acting a part, somehow – doing it very well, but still playing a role.
When they went to bed, it was intense and vigorous, but as if Dan had the teeth-clenched determination to see the act through. There was a sort of tenderness afterwards, when they lay with their fingers laced together and their limbs entwined, but she sensed he was rallying himself to do what was expected and his tenderness was partly born of relief that it was over.
She was afraid that he was slipping away from her. She had this chance, this golden moment when she was living her dearest dream and he was her heart’s companion, and she could feel it
disappearing no matter how hard she tried to hold on to it.

‘I don’t want to lose you,’ she said to him, filled with yearning.

‘You won’t,’ he said with a smile.

She wanted so badly to believe him. But she knew deep down that he was lying.

‘When will we tell the others?’ she asked. She tried to convince herself of a future where she and Dan and Jimmy and Claire were a pair of couples, venturing out into their lives
beyond Cambridge together. They would all have fun and go travelling, then there would be marriage and children, and family holidays on windswept beaches, with kids running and playing on the
sand while they laid out picnics and laughed. Why shouldn’t it happen?

But every day, she felt him slip further away.

The end of term split them up. He went home to his parents and then off on a holiday to Greece with his family, and she went down to London to work for a contact her supervisor had given
her, to earn money before she started at law school in September. She thought she might look for a flat for her and Dan to live in. He would come to London too, in due course, he said. He’d get some temporary work while he looked for his proper job.

When he returned from his holiday, he phoned her. She had sent letters to his home to await his return, full of chat and the expectation that they would soon be together, telling him her new
address and all the ways he could reach her. She had missed him so much. Time had dragged without him, with only her dreams and fantasies to fill the void of his absence. By now, she was already
familiar with the rush-hour tides, the heat of the Underground and the slapping of her sandalled feet on the pavement of Tottenham Court Road as she trudged to her job.

‘I need to see you,’ he said.

‘That’s good.’ She sat in the hallway of the flat she was staying in, another favour from a contact of her tutor who was away in America. ‘I want to see you too.
I’ve missed you.’

An infinitesimal pause. ‘I’ve missed you too. I’m coming to London tomorrow. Shall I meet you after work?’

‘Yes, please!’ She was excited at the thought, hungry for the sight of him, the feel of his body and the taste of his mouth. ‘You can stay here.’

‘Okay. Tell me the address of your work. I’ll meet you afterwards.’

The next day passed in a fever of anticipation. At lunchtime she went out and spent some money on a new top that she hoped he would like. When the day was over at last, she hurried to the
ladies to put on make-up and smarten her hair. In the mirror her reflection was anxious despite her smile, and she wondered what she was afraid of. He was waiting downstairs, handsome as ever in shorts, a T-shirt and some flip-flops, and she felt overdressed in her work clothes and the new smart top. He was cheerful but muted and she
overcompensated, chattering away as she held his hand. She felt proud as they walked along the streets together, obviously girlfriend and boyfriend. Other girls eyed Dan as they went by, and she
felt the thrill of possession.

They found a restaurant, took a table and looked at the menus. When their orders were taken and glasses of wine sat in front of them, she looked across at Dan and her heart turned over. She
loved him so much, every inch of him. He made her happy. And yet the expression in his dark blue eyes was chilling her to the core.

‘Cheska,’ he said softly, the same way he had after they first had sex in the garden that night. ‘I’ve got to talk to you.’

She tried to divert him, babbling away
about her work, but he wouldn’t be distracted.

‘Cheska.’ He took her hand over the table. ‘Please. Let me say it.’

She was still. ‘No, Dan,’ she said, her voice quavering. ‘Don’t, please don’t say it. Please. Not tonight. Let’s have dinner and go back to my place. You can say it tomorrow.’