Chapter 1
Beatrice looked down at the notebook on the open seat-back table.
She had always loved stationery; as a little girl, she’d had a huge collection of sparkly notebooks, sheets of stickers and erasers in every shape, colour and scent.
Every birthday had brought a new pencil case, set of luminous markers or notecards with matching envelopes.
Later, she’d begun to accumulate a collection of sketchpads, sticks of charcoal and enticing, plump tubes of oil paints.
Her current notebook was bound in scarlet leather with her name embossed on the front in silver foil, a present from her mother for her twenty-first birthday, and she had hoarded its pages so that now, over a year later, it was still only half full.
On the open page in front of her was just one word, which she had noted down in the teal-coloured ink she currently favoured in her Montblanc fountain pen before leaving home.
Clonmara.
She craned her neck to look past the woman on her right, who was engrossed in a book and apparently indifferent to the excitement of flying.
Her flight from Philadelphia to Dublin had been a night-time one, and Beatrice had hoped that now, on the journey from Dublin to London, she would be able to see the world from above, stretched beneath her like one of her mother’s handmade patchwork quilts.
She’d imagined drawing it – the blocks of fields, arcs of rivers and sprawls of cities – even if all she had to hand was her fountain pen and notebook.
But through the window she could see only grey cloud.
She turned back to the page. Clonmara. That was all she’d had to go on.
Over the years, the word had acquired a kind of mystique – she’d pored over it in atlases, tracing the route from Dublin out into the surrounding countryside, looked it up on Wikipedia, even attempted an unsatisfactory watercolour landscape based on a photograph she’d found on Flickr.
It had all felt impossibly distant, the words she’d read describing a small village surrounded by farmland, forty miles outside Dublin and twenty from an industrial area that apparently specialised in the manufacture of wool and linen cloth, seeming to have little connection to reality.
Now she had seen it for herself, and come away disappointed.
But Beatrice wasn’t one to give up. She had persuaded her parents to pay for her flight from Philadelphia to Dublin without disclosing the true reason for her trip – although they must surely have guessed.
Eventually, their objections overcome, they’d agreed, encouraging her to see the city where she’d been born and explore Trinity College, where her dad had worked all those years ago.
She hadn’t mentioned Clonmara to them.
The first time she’d said the name out loud had been to the receptionist in her Dublin hotel, the morning after her arrival.
‘Sure, you’ll need to get the bus there,’ he told her, noting down where it would depart from and what time it left, then smiling the way men always smiled at Beatrice before adding, ‘Mind you don’t miss it. There’s not another until tomorrow.’
‘Thank you. I’ll leave in fifteen minutes, then.’
She took a seat in a brocade armchair and flipped through the glossy tourist brochures on the varnished table next to it, glancing around at the other occupants of the lobby with idle curiosity.
At a table by the window, sipping a cup of tea, Beatrice noticed a woman on her own.
She was middle-aged, dressed in navy trousers, a cream polyester blouse and black shoes with a low heel.
She looked uncomfortable in this upscale hotel lobby – like she had never been in a place like this before, except perhaps to work as a waitress or housekeeper.
When her teaspoon clinked against her saucer she looked around anxiously, as if she’d committed some faux pas.
Then the woman’s eyes lit on the door, her face suddenly alight with hope.
Beatrice watched as a couple walked into the lobby from the street: a bearded man in chinos and a jumper, a think manila folder tucked under his arm, and a slim young woman in jeans and a trench coat.
She was unmistakably related to the older woman – they had the same slight figure, the same curly almost-black hair, the same brilliant blue eyes.
Her daughter? Perhaps the young man was her fiancé, meeting his mother-in-law-to-be for the first time? But fiancés didn’t carry folders bulging with documents to meet prospective mothers-in-law.
As Beatrice watched, the older woman stood, almost knocking over an occasional table in her eagerness.
She turned towards the door and took a step forward, her arms outstretched, then let them fall awkwardly by her side.
The younger woman had no such hesitation.
She hurried over, reaching out, smiling radiantly, and took her mother’s hands – of course she was her mother, who else could she be? – in hers.
‘Well, I don’t need to introduce you two,’ the man said, smiling. ‘But that’s my job. Mary, Bronagh.’
Introduce? Beatrice’s curiosity shifted from idle to intense. She stood up and walked casually to the door, pausing with her back to the group and pretending to admire a flower arrangement as she listened.
‘We’d never have recognised each other otherwise,’ the younger woman – Bronagh – laughed. ‘Would we, Ma-Mary?’
‘Sure it’s like looking at myself in the mirror,’ Mary marvelled. ‘Or like myself twenty years ago. I knew you’d be beautiful, but not…’
Mary’s voice trailed off, and Beatrice glanced over her shoulder to see her fishing a tissue out of her sleeve at the exact moment Bronagh fished one out of hers.
‘I’ll leave this with you, ladies’ – the man handed over the folder to Bronagh; Mary was vigorously blowing her nose – ‘and let you get acquainted. Please feel free to get in touch with me or any of my colleagues if there’s anything at all we can do.’
The two women thanked him – their voices identical – and he walked past Beatrice with a satisfied smile, raising his hand in a wave then pushing out through the door.
‘Would you—’ Bronagh began, then started again. ‘I mean, would you like another tea here, or shall we go somewhere else?’
Beatrice strained to hear Mary’s voice, lowered to a whisper. ‘I’d just as soon go somewhere else. This place is… it’s…’
‘I know what you mean,’ Bronagh agreed, adding decisively, ‘We’ll be off to Bewley’s then.’
‘Bewley’s.’ Mary blew her nose again, then laughed. ‘Haven’t I waited twenty years to buy my daughter tea and scones at Bewley’s?’
‘Then you shouldn’t have to wait a minute longer.’
Laughing, their faces wreathed in carbon-copy smiles, the two women left the hotel, walking past Beatrice and shoulder to shoulder out into the rain.
Beatrice stood where she was, frozen, the flowers blurring into a kaleidoscope of colour in front of her eyes.
What did I just see?
But she knew: there was no doubt what had happened, no other possible explanation.
Hoisting the strap of her purse more securely over her shoulder, she left the hotel and hurried down the rainy street, heading towards the destination she hoped would hold the key to her own past.
But the door remained firmly closed.
Impatiently, she sat back and took another sip of her British Airways coffee, weak and bitter. At least in London there’d be Starbucks. Starbucks and Big Ben and Madame Tussauds and red buses and Arctic Monkeys gigs.
Her time in Dublin and expedition to Clonmara had, on the surface at least, been a failure.
Her own replaying of the moment she’d witnessed in the hotel lobby hadn’t happened – was no closer to happening than it had been when she had left Philadelphia.
The scant information she’d left home with – the name of the village, the mention of a big house where a family lived, made rich by the textile industry that had flourished there – had barely been augmented at all by the information she had gleaned from a few old men she’d talked to in a Clonmara pub.
Instead, she had a whole load of new questions.
Her hands twisting in her lap with impatience, she glanced towards the window again, but she could still see only grey nothingness.
Along with all the other things waiting for her on the far side of the Irish Sea, she reminded herself, was the need to work, to support herself while she tried to uncover the truth about her past. It wouldn’t be all fun and games – she’d have responsibilities, too.
She thought about the letter, printed off from her email, her mother copied in, folded carefully in her hand luggage along with her passport and boarding card.
She had a job to go to – although not a place to live.
That was for her to arrange.
Beatrice felt herself smiling as she remembered the conversation with her mother a few days before.
‘They’re a lovely family,’ her mom had said, and Beatrice could picture the smile of approval, even though thousands of miles separated them. ‘Two children, four and two, a girl and a boy. Father’s in finance and she works in fashion. And you’ll be able to live in.’
Beatrice’s heart had sunk. This wasn’t quite the freedom and independence she’d imagined. Being a nanny was one thing – being nannied by her employer was something else entirely.
‘But I—’ she began.
‘Now, sweetheart.’ Again, Beatrice could picture her mom’s face, the serious expression that preceded a mild scolding. ‘You’ve not lived away from home before and—’
‘I lived away for four years at college,’ Beatrice pointed out. ‘No one died.’
‘That was different. You were only in Boston and you were living with other girls.’
‘Exactly! Other girls, as opposed to a strange man. Anything could happen. I’ve been on the nannying forums online, Mom. I’ve read the stories.’
‘Beatrice!’ Now there was a hint of alarm in her mother’s voice, and Beatrice wondered if she’d played her trump card too soon. ‘Perhaps it won’t be suitable after all. Maybe you should—’
‘Calm down, Mom. It’ll be fine. I just feel like it might be better if I don’t actually live with the family. I could find a room somewhere nearby – in a youth hostel or something. A YWCA.’
Her mother sighed. ‘Perhaps you’re right. You know your dad and I—’
‘Worry about me. Of course you do,’ Beatrice soothed, sensing victory. ‘But I’m an adult. I can look after myself. You don’t need to worry.’
Her mother laughed. ‘Worrying about you is my job. One day you’ll understand.’
But right now, Beatrice couldn’t imagine ever worrying about anything. What lay ahead of her was an adventure – a literal journey of discovery. The next time she saw her parents, she’d be a completely different person.
Or the same person, but with a completely different identity.
She turned the page of her notebook. Unlike the previous page, which held only one word, this held four. She ran her fingers over them but the ink had long dried and her pen had left no impression on the paper.
Big house in Spittlefields.
Since writing the words, Beatrice had looked online and discovered her misspelling; now, she used her fountain pen to strike through the word and write it carefully again.
Spitalfields.
The wing of the plane dipped and Beatrice’s stomach lurched with fresh excitement. Through the window, she saw a glimpse of bleached blue sky and then, suddenly, the earth below – a margin of sea then stretches of green interspersed with the grey patches of buildings.
It all stretched out like her future – like a promise.