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.’
‘One word! I could offer ten thousand words and she’d never believe me. I could show her a birth certificate and she’d say it was forged. Don’t you see she’s been convinced of this for years now? To accept any evidence to the contrary would be to lose her child all over again.’
Did Finbarr stop in that moment, or any moment, and consider whether he believed Agatha’s denials that Teddy and Genevieve were the same person? That when Agatha said her child, she also meant his child? I doubt he did. It would have been too contrary to his primary goal. I had already told him Teddy’s birthday was the same as Genevieve’s. That Archie’s mother came from County Cork, so he’d have known the perfect place to collect a baby to pass off as his own.
The nuns wouldn’t give a baby to Protestants, Finbarr had said.
Archie’s mother is a Catholic. And please don’t ever think to tell me what nuns wouldn’t do.
That face. Finbarr had kneeled in front of Teddy when he’d given her the whittled dog. His own eyes, looking back at him. How could he not have seen it?
A person does adhere to the mission at hand. We believe what furthers our own cause. I don’t blame Finbarr for this. What was stolen from me was stolen from him, too, even more completely, so that he never understood what he had to fight for. He thought he only had to fight for me.
‘That’s why you’ve got to convince her,’ he said to Agatha. ‘You haven’t even tried.’
Agatha looked away, off into the dark distance. Frustratingly silent.
‘Tell her, then, how it’s hurting you,’ he said. ‘To lose your husband.’ I never heard Finbarr say Archie’s name, not once. ‘Nan’s not cruel. Tell her you can’t live without him.’
‘But I think perhaps I can live without him. You can live without her, too.’