‘Yes, I’m fine. Just the tiniest bit light-headed. I believe I’ll go upstairs and rest.’
As I crested the stairs I heard them – Honoria and Teddy, one dark and stern voice, one small and light. I walked through the hall of what was now my own home and went into the nursery, nobody here anymore to scold me for intruding. Honoria would be heading back to London. ‘I’m happy to take care of her myself,’ I’d said to Archie, when he asked me how we’d manage. ‘In fact, I’d like to.’
And I would take care of her myself, many times, in the years that followed. I would rush to her when she woke up crying from a terrible dream. I would hold her hand, my arm round her shoulders, when the doctor put stitches in her wounded knee. When she married during the Second World War, a small and hasty ceremony without even Archie in attendance, Agatha made sure to send a telegram so that I could be there, too.
There on the windowsill stood the dog Finbarr had carved for her. Sonny. I picked it up. I could hear Teddy walking quickly and purposefully down the hall. Whoever coined the phrase ‘the patter of little feet’ might be the most brilliant person in history. How the sound filled the house, the music of a child living inside it. I drew in a breath, determined that my eyes would not be full of tears when I turned towards her.
‘Nan,’ Teddy said, coming through the door of the nursery to find me with the whittled dog still in my hands. ‘I was looking for you.’
I returned Sonny to the windowsill and kneeled, putting one hand on either side of Teddy’s face, bright blue eyes staring back at me. Then I gathered her up in my arms, almost believing her hair – grown darker since I’d seen her last – smelled of the Irish Sea.
‘I was looking for you, too.’
Finbarr returned to Ballycotton, where he received word of my marriage to Archie. I sent him a letter with the news, along with a lock of Teddy’s hair. In a few years he would marry an Irish girl. It pained me to think of it and at the same time, how I did wish him happiness. How I loved him enough to wish him all the dogs, all the books, all the everything, we had planned for ourselves. He fathered three sons, and I can imagine how much he loved and enjoyed them before he died young, from a slow-burning cancer in his lungs, one last gift from the mustard gas.
The rage that lingers, when one thinks of war.
But forget all that. As readers, our minds do reach towards the longed-for conclusions, despite what we know to be true. Pretend there is no Second World War come to bombard England again, what no one should have to endure once in a lifetime, let alone twice. This story belongs to me. I hold no allegiance to history, which has never done me a single favour. Still, I can’t end my own story with Finbarr, even in my imagination, because any ending with him is an ending away from our child.
But Agatha’s story – I can end that however I like.
Let’s pause another moment and go back in time. One month after leaving the Bellefort Hotel with her husband and returning to Styles, Agatha charged Honoria with packing a bag for Teddy. After placing a letter to Archie on the table in the front hall, she went through the morning’s post and found a small package sent by, of all people, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. She opened it to find a pair of lovely leather gloves that she’d never seen before in her life, which made his note, So glad to hear you are safely at home. Allow me to return these to their rightful owner, all the more perplexing. Still, she couldn’t refuse a gift from him of all people, and it was chilly out, so she pulled them onto her hands.
Before she left, she made sure to gather the small staff at Styles and announced to them clearly: ‘I’m going to Ashfield. I’m taking Teddy with me. If anybody doubts my whereabouts, please send them round to Torquay. If I’m not at the house, I’ll be walking by the shore.’
Agatha loaded Teddy and her dog into her dear old Morris Cowley and off she drove, passing all chalk pits and bodies of water without incident. The Silent Pool shimmered, reflecting the cold blue sky as if nobody had ever been pulled, lifeless, from its silty depths. She drove past the length of stream where Annabelle Oliver had been found and pressed a hand to her chest, a kind of salute, a sad but grateful thanks.