The Vanishing (38 page)

She was about twelve feet away from her. Sara could see her clearly. She was tall, with white hair, completely white, and a thin, drawn face. It didn’t look like there was an ounce of fat on her. She looked as though she might be in her fifties, though Sara knew she had to be younger than that. The first impression was of someone severe, but then she stooped to the little girl and said something to her, smiling. The smile transformed her, a glint of something warmer inside. The little girl seemed to take to her at once. They walked back to the cubicle hand in hand, the mother following. The doctor hadn’t looked at Sara at all.

The door closed and Sara let herself breathe. It was as though she were suspended in time. She wasn’t feeling anything. Her heart was banging against her chest, her face flushed and burning, her scalp prickling. But she wasn’t feeling anything. Or rather it was like there was a massive hole in the centre of her chest. She stood up and walked to the door of the cubicle. She read the name on the plate there, to be sure – Dr Rachel Gower. That was her. Her child had been called Lauren Gower. Sara turned away and walked out.

She went to the main hospital lobby, ignoring Danny, the second bodyguard, who had been out in the corridor, walking past Katarina, the new PA, who was waiting down there for her. She sat in a seat there and took the letter out again. She read it.

My love, my sweetest little love. My Sara. You are going to hate me when you read this, you are going to think that I must have hated you, but you must never believe that. I have loved you, as my own, with all my heart, from the first moment you came into my care. I have loved you completely, as a mother should, as only a mother can. I truly believe that.

You cast everything that existed in my life before you into shadow, lit my life with your beauty and joy. I cannot stress to you enough that this is true, that all this is true. You are the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me, maybe the only truly pure thing that has ever entered my miserable life.

Because it has been miserable. All the Wellbecks are miserable people. That you are not like that, not like me, that you have, already, such a generous heart, cannot have had much to do with me. But I have at least tried not to crush your spirit, to let it grow, and breathe. If everything had worked out you might have proved the salvation of my entire family. No one would know the secret. Maybe it can still be like that, but now – if you are reading this – that will be up to you. It will be your choice. That is the only thing I can do for you now.

Because if you are reading this then I am dead. Last month they diagnosed a form of cancer that they have warned me will be passed on to you. They say you will die of it too, because you are my daughter, my flesh and blood. So I write you this letter now so that you will not have that shadow hanging over you, and the only way to do that is to tell you the whole truth. I should tell you it now, while I am alive, face to face. I know. But I am too much of a coward for that. I cannot. I could not bear to see your face sour and your gaze turn to hatred. So here is this letter, instead. Sorry.

I could not have babies. Not because of this latest illness, but because of some other genetic malformation seeded into the Wellbeck line. Nothing good ever came from my family. You should know that. I hardly knew my parents. Your ‘grandparents’. You never knew them at all. You missed nothing. What they gave me was faulty genes. And money. Maybe nature is trying to kill us off, in her own way. She will succeed, because they tell me I will die of this cancer, sooner or later, and already I cannot have children of my own. Frederick – a man I married when he still had some spirit – knows this. It would make him leave me, sue for divorce, if he had any honesty. But he only ever wanted the money from me, I think. I can hardly bear to look at him now. He has his purposes, but you must be a little wary of him. He will resent you. And he is not your father. Remember that. He has had little concern for you because he cannot step beyond himself sufficiently to know how beautiful you are. It does not matter whose blood you have. It does not matter.

He is not your father and I am not your natural mother, though I have tried my best to fill that role as the only thing worthy of my life. I hope I have made you feel loved and wanted. There has been a lie involved, yes, but it was all for a purpose. It makes me bitter to think of it, bitter to the point of tears. I wish it could have been otherwise, but you could never have come from me, and that’s that. It was something money could not buy.

Anybody could know that you were not mine simply by looking at you, by watching you. That nobody has commented says something brutal about all of them. Trust yourself, Sara. Trust your own heart. Don’t listen to any of the people who are there because of the money. Which is nearly everyone you know. The money alone will never bring you anything but misery and loneliness.

I would be ashamed of what I have done, if it were possible to feel shame about anything that touches on you. But it’s not. I can’t regret what I did. I’m sorry. I can only feel grateful that I have had ten years with you. Maybe there will be more. Everything is so very uncertain right now. So I write this letter and entrust its transmission to Felice. What else can I do? I’m not expressing myself very clearly, I know. But it will have to do.

First, they brought me a little girl I had never seen before. From Russia. She was an orphan, they said – they didn’t even know who her parents were. So they said. I called her Elizabeth, after me, because we didn’t know her real name. I had asked Arisha to find me someone who would need me, and she did. I don’t know now whether she told me the truth, though. She went to Russia to do it with Maxim Sidurov, a cruel man, who could easily steal a child and feel nothing. Maybe that was what they did. Maybe there is a mother somewhere in Russia who mourns that baby.

I shouldn’t have called her after me. That was bad luck. The poor baby died of a flu, an ordinary flu. She was in my arms less than three weeks. She had black curls and blue eyes. I asked them to find a dark-haired girl with blue eyes – to be as much like me as possible – and they did. But she was torn from me. There was nothing I could do. This was on Ile des Singes Noirs, the island you already love so much, though I can, as you know, no longer stand to be there. The baby is buried there, under the steps up to the house. That is something I wish I could fix, and now leave to you. I’m sorry. She should have a marked grave at least, my little Elizabeth. This will all sound brutal and inhuman to you. I realise that.

When she died I thought I would never be able to look at another child again. I was devastated. But only four days later I met you. You were in a crèche in my London clinic. Your mother, your real mother, was a doctor there. Her name is Rachel Gower. Your father was a doctor also – Roger Gower – though I have never met him. I did meet your mother. I felt only an intense jealousy. She had you. I didn’t. I had just lost my little baby. I was under a black cloud, grieving. I didn’t want to go anywhere near children. But the visit had been organised many months previously. So I tried to muddle my way through it. I looked at all the children and all I wanted to do was cry. And in the midst of all that, there you were, reaching out to me. I knew that you should be mine from the first moment I held you, which was there, in that crèche. I looked at you and the blackness started to lift away from me. It will all sound monstrous to you. But I cannot hide it, the truth is what it is. I don’t make any excuses for my nature or circumstances. I found you, or you found me – shouting out to me with your little blue eyes – they were blue then – in a room full of children. You couldn’t speak much, but you were so beautiful, already so perfect. I felt resentment then, towards Rachel Gower, but now I see that she has made you what you are. Of the good things that shine out of you I had no part. You are all hers. I wish there was some way I could help her now. I don’t regret taking you, but I wish there was some way I could help her. She was very young then. I thought she would get over you. An absurd, selfish thought. I thought she would simply have another ‘you’. Because that’s what normal women can do. But I know she hasn’t done that. I know her life has been blighted by what I did, while my life has been charged with an impossible happiness.

But there’s not much of it left now. So perhaps that’s some kind of justice. You are free to do what you wish, of course. You can meet her. I don’t know whether you will want that. But whatever you want, you at least know that all the curses that have lived in my blood do not live in yours. You can live your life without all that hanging over you. That’s all I seek to achieve with this letter. The love I have for you is like something that could burst my heart. Today I sat with you in the reading room and I felt truly content. We were there for three hours, reading
Jane Eyre
, just you and I. Perhaps you remember the moment? Perhaps not. I needed nothing else. It’s enough to have had that time with you. So don’t feel sorry for me.

Try to forget me, perhaps.

A last kiss from me. A last apology. Then this is done.

Liz

John stood at the kitchen table in Rachel’s house and tried to keep still. He was so exhausted he could hardly see straight. He needed to sit down, rest, relax, give his heart an adrenalin break. More than anything, he needed to sleep. But he was charged with nervous, excited energy. If he closed his eyes he could see lights jumping behind his eyelids. He felt stretched like a wire, ready to snap. When he spoke everything came out in a rush. Sleep had been impossible for several nights. So much happening. He had hardly seen Rachel. But now it was here. It was here. It was happening.

He took a huge breath. His heart was like a massive drum, thumping in his ears. He wanted to burst out laughing, giggle, jump around her kitchen. But at the same time he didn’t want to. Because he was frightened. Frightened of all sorts of things. So he was just standing there, sweating, trying to control the strangest fear he had ever experienced. Rachel knew something was up, of course. She knew he had come here to say something big. She could see what he was like just looking at him. And he had come with Ian Bilsborough, after all, the current SIO for Grenser. Ian had actually come to him with this job, only forty minutes ago, asked him to do it. Ian had looked frightened too. He was waiting out in the hallway. John had told him about what Rachel had said, only last week, about her knowing that Lauren was dead.

The kitchen had a counter cutting across it, and an adjoining space with a big table in it. A breakfast table, perhaps, since she had another room which she called the dining room. He’d never eaten in there with her. Always when he came over they ate here. He wondered what happened in the dining room. Everything was always very neat in there. There was a dresser, he knew, with fancy plates and stuff, and also a photo of Lauren, when she was first born. It was the only photo of Lauren he had ever seen in the house. He put his fist into his mouth and bit down on it.

Rachel was fussing around in the kitchen part, making coffee. She was getting very nervous. He could see the warning signs. He resisted the urge to yell at her.

‘It doesn’t matter, Rachel,’ he said, speaking as carefully as he could. ‘I don’t need coffee. Please. Just come and sit down. Please.’

She kept going, though, washing the coffee pot, head down, caught in a little loop of panic. ‘Who is that man out there?’ she asked, her voice trembling.

‘It’s Ian. I told you. Ian Bilsborough. He’s the SIO now.’

‘The SIO? For Grenser?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why is he waiting out there? I feel like he’s come to arrest me or something.’

‘It’s so we can talk better. Please. Leave that. Sit down.’ He had to have her sitting, in case she passed out.

She dropped the coffee jug, with a bang, into the sink. ‘It’s cracked,’ she said. ‘It’s broken now. See what I’ve done …’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘What’s that in your hand?’ she demanded. ‘You keep fiddling with it.’

She came from behind the counter and walked over to the table. She was breathing unevenly. He felt very worried. He looked down at the sheaf of papers he was holding, among them the DNA results. ‘It’s these I want to talk to you about,’ he said, holding them up.

She sat down, finally. He sat right next to her and leaned on the table. He took another exaggerated breath, but still when he started to talk his voice was all over the place. ‘The thing with Tom,’ he said. ‘What’s been happening. That’s why I haven’t been able to see you. You don’t know the details, but I’ll tell you. This is the very, very short version.’ She put her elbows on the table too. Her arms were shaking. There was a little twitch at the corner of her mouth.

‘This isn’t going to be bad, Rachel,’ he said, very quietly. ‘Believe me.’

She shook her head, like she didn’t understand that. ‘Tell me. Say what you came to say.’

‘Tom got a message from a woman called Sara Eaton …’

‘You told me. Her mother was Elizabeth Wellbeck. I know that.’

‘I told you that. Yes. But Tom went to her and there was a lot of shit happening. A lot of shit. Freddie Eaton tried to kill her. Tom rescued her, in fact. If it hadn’t been for Tom she would be dead, but she’s not dead. She’s alive. She’s a beautiful, living, twenty-three-year-old woman …’

‘Her father tried to kill her? Is that what you said just now? Her own father? Didn’t you tell me Freddie Eaton was her father?’

‘Yes. That’s what I said. But he’s not her father. And Elizabeth Wellbeck was not her mother.’ He pushed the DNA results over to her. She didn’t look at them. She was turning bright red. ‘What is that?’ she asked, rigidly. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s DNA results. They show Freddie Eaton was not her father …’

‘The DNA results for this girl you’re talking about? For Sara Eaton?’

‘Yes.’

‘You compared her DNA and Freddie Eaton’s? That’s the man who was married to Elizabeth Wellbeck?’