‘Can you put some warm water in that?’ Patricia asked, handing him a plastic basin. Edward got to his feet and left the room.
Elizabeth lay on her back impatiently cycling an imaginary bike. Her face was raspberry-red and her cries were becoming more insistent. Patricia could hear the tap running across the landing.
‘I hope I’m doing this right,’ she said, almost to herself.
‘Looks good to me,’ Edward commented, coming back in with the basin.
‘There is some difference between how you fold them. I think for girls you put the pins on the side.’
When Patricia peeled the old nappy off, she and Edward both recoiled in horror from the smell. It was shocking that something so toxic had come out of such a sweet little creature. They laughed and for a moment Patricia was lost in her task, making sure her tiny charge was clean and comfortable. Edward was watching her and the baby, and a contented grin had spread across his face. Catching sight of his expression, Patricia scolded him.
‘Don’t think this is working. Your mother’s loony plan is not going to work. I’m caring for this little one only because I have to. She needs somebody, but I must go, Edward. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You need to speak to your mother. You have to talk sense into her. Will you do that for me, Edward? Will you?’
He just nodded his head slowly.
Elizabeth, with her fresh nappy, was back in her knitted dress and booties and gurgling happily. Patricia picked her up and held her out to Edward, who took her gingerly and held her in the crook of his arm. There was something about seeing a father holding his daughter that seemed so perfect. The baby had grabbed hold of one of his fingers and Edward was swinging her arm from side to side.
‘You’re a lucky man.’
Edward didn’t look up from his daughter. ‘I don’t feel it.’
‘That little girl has lost her mother. She has been through so much. I need to leave soon, Edward. Soon.’
The baby turned her tiny head towards Patricia, then smiled and seemed to wave.
NOW
A bank of fog sat plump and solid out at sea, obscuring the horizon. Elizabeth was sitting on the low stone wall in front of Castle House worrying about haemorrhoids. She could hear her mother’s voice. ‘Don’t sit on that cold stone, you’ll give yourself piles.’ Growing up it had seemed to Elizabeth that her mother believed the world was out to get her. ‘Don’t leave the house with that wet hair.’ ‘It’s not an hour since your lunch, you can’t swim yet.’ ‘Stop leaning against the storage heater, you’ll curl your spine.’ She had rolled her eyes and silently mocked her stupid mother for spending her life in a constant state of worry and fear. Now here she was outside this house with its blank windows and sagging gutters, wondering what had happened to her mother here. Why had she fled, leaving her husband behind? She knew so much more about her past than she had a few days before, but the mystery as to what had actually gone on in this house forty-four years ago seemed deeper than ever.
After leaving old Mrs Lynch’s house she felt completely disorientated, almost sick. The seismic shift in everything she had always believed to be true had hit her with such unexpected force. She sat in her car and allowed it to almost drive itself back to her birthplace. At least that much was the truth.
The kettle had been reboiled and more tea made before Elizabeth had managed to get her shuddering sobs under control. Handfuls of paper towels turned to pulp by her tears and snot sat on the table in front of her. Mrs Lynch couldn’t stop apologising, as if somehow it was her decision to rewrite history.
The two women had held hands and slowly more of her history had been revealed. Her mother, the woman who had given birth to her, had been called Mary. Everyone had been delighted when Edward had found her after living alone with his mother and the memory of his dead brother for so long. When news emerged of the pregnancy people were happier still. The dark past of Castle House was over, and the Foleys could look to a future filled with new life.
Mrs Lynch had recalled everything she could about the night Mary had died. The sound of an ambulance waking half the parish and the next morning people piecing together where it must have been going. Everyone was braced for bad news and, like dark clouds delivering rain, it came. She told Elizabeth about the funeral. Teddy holding the tiny baby, her, she was that baby, and his mother, Mrs Foley, leaning on his other arm, hardly able to walk, she was so broken by grief. People had offered help, delivered food, called up to the house, but everyone had been sent away.