CHAPTER ONE #2
‘Lottie, on the other hand,’ Sadie continued, ‘preferred a more masculine sort of style, although her features and her mannerisms were entirely feminine. She loved baggy trousers and men’s shirts. She’d even go to balls dressed in a tuxedo at times.’
‘She wasn’t gay,’ Anna insisted. ‘She really liked men, didn’t she? I mean, it says so in these pages, and she was always messing with the blokes around the yacht club here on the island.’
With a wry sort of smile, Sadie said, ‘Mia used to accuse her of liking men a bit too much, and Lottie would accuse her of being jealous, or frigid, or tell her to loosen up and get a dildo.’ She laughed and Cristy did too, as much at the unexpectedness of it as the comedy.
‘Not that Mia didn’t have her share of “admirers”,’ Sadie continued.
‘I mean, she was married once. I never knew him, and they never really talked about him, or about anyone Lottie was involved with. She used to keep her affairs, or flings, or whatever we want to call them, to when she travelled.’
‘So are your aunts from the island?’ Cristy asked.
‘No. They’re from London originally.’
Anna said, ‘We think the house mentioned in those pages is somewhere their grandparents took them a few times when they were young.’
Cristy frowned curiously. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because my aunts used to talk about it. They told me about going to Somerset as children when their parents were in more exotic places. They described it as an adventure, somewhere different, more rustic with no rules and lots of freedom. Lottie told me once, years later, that on a whim they got someone to find it for them, and they rented it for a while. She joked that they weren’t as much into the rusticity or bad weather then, so they didn’t stay as long as they’d intended. ’
Seeing how the girl’s mind was working, Cristy said, ‘So what exactly did they tell you about your parents, and how you came to live with them?’
Sadie took a breath and clutched her hands together as she said, ‘They told me that my father, their brother, and my mother, were killed in a car crash when I was two years old, and that’s when they became my legal guardians.’
‘And are they? Your legal guardians?’
‘I haven’t found any documents to support it, but I guess it’s academic now, considering my age.’
Conceding the point, Cristy said, ‘But you know that they never had a brother?’
‘Not that I can find any record of.’
‘Do you have a birth certificate?’
Sadie swallowed as she nodded. ‘It says I was born on the fourteenth of May 1998 and that my father’s name was Martin Winters.’
She will be two years old on May 14th.
‘What about your mother?’ Cristy asked.
‘She is down as Vanessa Winters, née Jameson. I’ve tried, but I can’t find any trace of them – at least not as a couple with a daughter who’d be my age.’
‘And when you discovered your aunts didn’t have a brother, what did you do?’
‘Nothing – then. I didn’t know how to bring it up without it seeming as though I was being mistrustful, and spying on them.’
‘But you must have asked about your parents before that, while you were growing up?’
‘Yes, of course, and they’d tell me lovely stories of how much they’d adored me and how proud they’d be of me if they could see how well I was doing. They even had photographs of me as a baby, and of them, but I’m not sure now how real any of it was.’
Cristy sat with that for a moment until Anna said, ‘We’re actually pretty certain her aunts stole her. You’ll understand what we mean when you see what else Sadie found in Lottie’s desk.’
Cristy looked at Sadie, a prompt for her to explain.
‘It was during the pandemic that I first started to go through Lottie’s things,’ Sadie began.
‘There’s so much, honestly, I knew it was going to take forever, and Mia kept telling me it could wait …
I realized she didn’t want to help in any way, and I didn’t mind, I understood it would be a lot more painful for her than it might be for me. ’
‘But she was OK with you doing it?’ Cristy prompted.
Sadie nodded. ‘I guess so. I mean, she never tried to stop me, so I just got on with it. Not every day, you understand, not even every week, but then, quite recently, I opened one of the hundreds of box files prepared to find more bank statements, or postcards of places Lottie had been, brochures, various knick-knacks, she kept everything … But in this particular box there were two large brown envelopes. The first turned out to contain photographs that I recognized right away. They were the ones I mentioned just now that used to be dotted around the house when I was growing up. Me – or a child who was supposed to be me – as a baby either with my “parents”, or alone. A couple of my “parents” on their wedding day, my christening, that sort of thing. What I never noticed when I was younger, but I did when I studied them more closely recently, was that there are no early photos of me with my aunts, or of them with my parents.’
‘Have you asked your aunt Mia about that?’
‘Not yet. I guess I’ll have to at some point, but the last time I brought up the subject of my parents …
Actually, it was before Lottie died, and I’m afraid it didn’t go well.
I’d eventually plucked up the courage to ask about their brother and Mia got angry, saying I should leave things alone and stop bothering them with memories they’d rather not revisit.
Lottie was pretty angry too. She asked if I was unhappy, and if so I didn’t have a right to be.
She said, “Haven’t we given you everything?
” and they had, of course, I could never deny that. ’
Thinking how spiteful that sounded, Cristy said, ‘You mentioned two envelopes just now.’
Sadie nodded. ‘The other one contained the pages you’ve just read.
You can see they’re a printout, but I can’t search Lottie’s computers to see if there’s more because, after Lottie died, Mia had them returned to factory settings and shipped off to various schools in Africa.
She said it’s what Lottie would have wanted. ’
‘Didn’t she make back-ups of Lottie’s files?’ Cristy asked.
‘I don’t think so, or not that I’ve found so far. They could be in Mia’s office, of course, but I don’t have any reason to go poking around in there.’
‘And what about these pages? Have you shown them to your aunt?’
‘Not yet. I wanted to find out first if I’m just being fanciful or paranoid …’
‘We want to know what you think,’ Anna said for her.
Regarding them both, Cristy said carefully, ‘You understand, Sadie, I’m sure, that if this does turn out to be fact rather than fiction your aunt could be in a lot of trouble.’
Sadie looked horribly pained. ‘I do, but honestly, if you knew what it was like to have no idea who you really are, to have no real sense of belonging … I’m sorry if that sounds selfish, but I don’t know if I can carry on not knowing any more.
And as for my aunt, I promise you, it won’t be anything she can’t handle.
She’ll just throw money at it, the way she does with everything. ’
Thinking that no amount of money could buy off a case of child abduction, Cristy’s eyes moved to Anna as she said, hotly, ‘What matters is that Sadie should know who she really is.’
Cristy looked at Sadie again. ‘Have you done a DNA test to find out if you’re related to your aunts in any way?’ she asked.
Sadie swallowed. ‘Yes, I have, and no, I’m not.’
In spite of having expected the answer, Cristy couldn’t help feeling the girl’s bewilderment and sadness. How on earth must it feel to find out that the space you should be filling in the world is empty?
Anna said, ‘You never know, Sadie’s real parents could be out there somewhere, desperate to find her …’
‘If they’re still alive,’ Sadie put in quietly, ‘and I like to think they are.’
As Cristy’s eyes swept her face, she was wondering about the people who’d made this stunningly lovely young woman and what could have happened to tear them all apart.
As privileged a life as Sadie had led, there was clearly a whole other story folded into her genes, running untold through her veins.
She wasn’t the person sitting here today, or she shouldn’t be.
There was someone else inside her who needed to be heard, to be recognized for who she really was.
In the end, she said, ‘What about your aunt? How’s she likely to take it if you do find your real family?’
Sadie shook her head helplessly. ‘I guess a lot depends on who they are and what they say happened to separate us,’ she said.
Silent echoes of the mysterious story seemed to fill the room before Anna said, ‘Please say you’ll help.’