慍an I have some water??she asks.
He doesn抰 reply but, a few minutes later, a bottle of water is pushed through the slot. She drinks greedily then forces herself to stop. She doesn抰 know how long it will have to last.
慞lease,?she says. 慦hy are you doing this??
慖t抯 for the best,?he says. 慪ou抮e not happy. You抳e never been happy.?
慙et me out,?she says. Trying to make her voice sound authoritative and not pathetic.
慣here抯 no way out. The only escape is to make your own exit. Take the narrow gate.?
She抯 silent then and, just when she thinks he抯 gone, something else comes through the grille. A pack of pills. She can抰 see what type they are but, when she fingers them in their foil packet, the shape is oddly comforting, like peas in a pod.
The only escape is to make your own exit.
Ruth looks around her sitting room, so comforting, so familiar. The tatty sofa where Kate is now stretched out eating an apple. The bookshelves, two-deep now, with genres and authors jumbled together. The wooden staircase leading to the upstairs rooms. The broken lightshade. The chewed suffragette cushions. Is it possible that, some time in 1963, Ruth抯 mother once visited this house with a baby in her arms? That she handed the baby over to kind foster mother, Dot, and departed, taking one last photograph to remind herself of her daughter? Dawn 1963. And is it possible that Zoe, with whom Ruth did feel an immediate bond, is actually her sister?
Ruth has always wanted a sister. It was something she used to say to Simon when they argued. 慖 wish I had a sister instead of a stupid brother!?Had Ruth抯 mother overheard? What had she thought? What had she thought when Ruth announced that she was going to have a baby without a husband in the picture? Ruth remembers when she told her parents, walking in the grounds of Severndroog Castle on Shooter抯 Hill. 慦hat do you mean, you抮e pregnant,?Jean had said, 憏ou抮e not even married.?慪ou don抰 need to be married to have a baby,?Ruth had replied. But Jean had obviously felt that you did. Or maybe others had thought it for her. She抎 once told Ruth that her father had been strict but Ruth, remembering a mild elderly man, had dismissed this. But what if her grandfather had been a domestic tyrant, ordering his daughter to give up her illegitimate child? He wouldn抰 have been the first to do so.
慜h, Mum,?says Ruth, aloud.
慦hat??says Kate from the sofa.
慛othing.?
Not for the first time, Ruth wishes that her mother was still alive. She wishes that she could ask her if this was where it all started: her disapproval of Ruth抯 life, her rigid Christianity, her hatred of Norfolk and this cottage in particular. Ruth remembers visiting her mother in hospital after her first stroke and having the distinct impression that Jean wanted to tell her something. But they had ended up talking about Kate, as usual. And Jean had adored the child whom Arthur, now a doting granddad, had once described as 慳 bastard grandchild? Ruth supposes that this represents closure of some kind.
Does Ruth抯 father know? She thinks not, remembering his genuine confusion over the Dawn photograph. Arthur and Jean met and married in 1964, Simon was born in 1966, Ruth in 1968. Ruth imagines that her mother simply left her past behind her. Something that her daughter, as an archaeologist, could have told her is almost impossible to achieve.
This explains, of course, why Zoe Hilton, n閑 Dawn Stainton, came to rent the house next door. She must have known that this was where she spent the first year of her life. Did she also know that Ruth was her half-sister? You抮e allowed to trace your birth parents, aren抰 you, when you reach eighteen? Zoe had acquired a photograph of Jean from somewhere. It wouldn抰 have been hard to trace the line from Jean to Ruth. Ruth tries to remember what Zoe told her about her early life. Only that she抎 married her teenage boyfriend, now white-haired but still cool, and that she thought they抎 still be together if they抎 had children. Her parents were both dead and her mother had been a keen gardener. Nothing about being adopted or the reasons for her child-free state. Jean would have been proud of Zoe, thinks Ruth. Nurse was top of her list of respectable professions. Archaeologist was near the bottom.