Darling Girls, page 3
Jessica looked at her sisters, who were flopped across various pieces of her furniture. Jessica had no idea how they could flop under the circumstances. Jessica never flopped. Jessica stood. Usually while tidying or cleaning or filing paperwork. Doing. Even when she was home alone, she sat upright, her feet on the floor or maybe tucked neatly underneath her. A few years back, Norah told Jessica that she always needed a nap after spending time with her because her energy was so exhausting. Evidently it was true, because a few weeks ago Norah had actually taken a nap mid-visit, which frankly was a little rich, as the purpose of the visit was for Jessica to do Norah’s taxes (though, admittedly, Jessica preferred to work alone).
‘Jess?’ Alicia said, sitting up. Her hair was pulled up in a bun and her face was ringed with staticky ginger curls. ‘Who do you think it is?’
‘How should I know?’ Jessica snapped. ‘Wild Meadows is an old farmhouse. These bones might have been buried there for a hundred years for all we know. It could be anyone!’
‘Okay,’ Alicia said, hands up like she was soothing a skittish horse. ‘Calm down.’
Jessica laughed. Calm down? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt calm. Panic was her constant state of being, as familiar to her as breathing. She imagined that even as a newborn she’d awoken each day with her heart in her throat, asking, What will today be like? Will I forget something, or say the wrong thing? How can I make everyone happy? What if I can’t?
Despite her inner panic, a glance in the mirror above the mantel told her she looked utterly unflustered. Her muted make-up was flawless, her black hair was glossy and smooth, there wasn’t a hint of colour in her cheeks. Her white shift dress looked as fresh as when she’d put it on that morning. Of course it did. Alicia once joked that Jessica’s linen shirts were too afraid to wrinkle. Quite right, Jessica had thought. They wouldn’t dare.
As Jessica dragged in a breath, she was reminded suddenly of an episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast she’d listened to recently. It was about how to deal with panic. Apparently panic felt quite a lot like excitement, and if you told yourself you were excited you could trick your feelings. She decided to try it now.
I’m excited that bones were found buried under Wild Meadows. Woohoo.
Great. Now she was a psychopath.
‘The detective wants us to go to Port Agatha,’ Norah said, distracting her. ‘Tomorrow.’
Her tone was neutral, almost indifferent, but there were little giveaways that she was unsettled. The repetitive bounce of her right leg. The thumbnail she’d chewed down to the quick.
‘Tomorrow?’ Jessica exclaimed. ‘We can’t just drop everything and go to Port Agatha.’
‘It’s a police investigation, Jess,’ Alicia said. ‘I don’t think we have a lot of choice. Besides, it’s Saturday tomorrow.’
‘Of course we have a choice!’ Jessica felt heat creeping up her neck. ‘We’re not under arrest. We don’t have to go there just because they asked us to.’
Alicia, as usual, remained calm. ‘I’m just saying we might want to consider it. After all, we haven’t done anything wrong. And if we refuse to go, how will it look?’
Jessica felt dangerously close to tears. This wasn’t how she’d planned to spend the evening. She hated changing her plans; hated surprises and calls out of the blue, even when it was good news. And there was nothing good about this. This was her worst nightmare.
‘I just . . . I just don’t think I can go back there.’
A long moment of silence passed, broken only by the jangle of Phil’s keys in the door. From where she stood, Jessica heard him toss his keys, miss the bowl, and then chase after them as they skittered across the marble floor of the foyer.
‘Hey, Phil,’ Alicia and Norah said in unison when he appeared in the living room a moment later in his Victoria Golf Club polo shirt. Phil had worked as a greenskeeper at the club for the past ten years, and he’d likely continue to do it for the next twenty. Jessica found herself irritated by this lack of ambition, even as she envied his contentment. And if there was one thing Phil radiated, it was contentment.
‘Hey.’ He grinned. ‘I thought that was your car parked across the entire driveway, Norah.’
He said it cheerfully, and Norah confirmed that it was indeed her car, equally cheerfully. She did not suggest moving it, nor did Phil ask her to. He is so chill, everyone always said. ‘Chill Phil’.
Now, for example, he looked so happy to see them all. And it was actual happiness, rather than the forced, polite kind. Jessica often tried to mimic his joyful demeanour, ever since a marriage counselling session a few years ago when he’d commented, ‘You just never seem happy to see me. I’d love it if you looked at me how you look at your sisters. If you cared about me the same way.’
She’d felt awful when he said that. Particularly as she usually was happy to see him. She enjoyed his lanky, lingering presence in the house, his thoughtful commentary about whatever he’d listened to on the radio on the way home. She enjoyed caring for him – cooking his favourite meals, booking golf or surfing weekends, only buying one hundred per cent cotton sheets, because any other kind made him itch. But the relationship could never compete with what she had with her sisters. Nothing could. They might not have been related by blood, but their time together in foster care had made them closer than biology ever could.
‘It’s a sister thing,’ Jessica had said, glancing at their female therapist for solidarity. ‘No one loves their husband as much as their sisters, am I right?’
The therapist clearly didn’t have any sisters, because she’d stabbed Jessica in the back. ‘I wouldn’t say no one – but it’s interesting that you would think so.’
They’d discontinued therapy shortly after that because Jessica was too busy helping Alicia move house and dealing with Norah’s anger-management problems to attend appointments.
‘There’s lasagna in the oven,’ Jessica said to Phil. ‘You go ahead – I’m not eating.’
‘You didn’t need to cook for me,’ he said.
They went through this dance every time: Phil pretending he knew how to cook, Jessica pretending she wouldn’t have an anxiety attack if Phil started messing about in her kitchen. Their kitchen.
‘I’m happy to do it,’ Jessica said. ‘But, Phil, would you mind giving us a minute? We’re dealing with some family stuff.’
‘Cool,’ he said, and he wandered towards the kitchen without another word. Chill Phil.
‘Thank you!’ she called after him, smiling extra hard.
‘We need to go to Port Agatha,’ Alicia said when he was gone, her tone more decisive now. ‘If we leave in the morning, we’ll be there by lunchtime and can be home by tomorrow night. It’s only a day. We can do this.’
‘We’ll be together,’ Norah added.
Jessica stared at her sisters. They’d gone mad.
‘If we go to Port Agatha, they’re going to pore over every detail of our childhood and analyse every moment we remember from Wild Meadows!’ Jessica cried. ‘Have you forgotten what happened last time we did that?’
‘They didn’t believe us,’ Alicia admitted.
‘They thought we were batshit crazy,’ Norah added.
‘Exactly. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t want to go running back there after one vague phone call.’
Jessica sat down in an attempt to create an air of finality. As far as she was concerned, the matter was settled. There was no need to go to Port Agatha. The discovery of the bones was tragic, but nothing to do with them. They couldn’t shed any light on them, even if they wanted to.
‘But what if we weren’t crazy?’ Alicia said quietly.
She and Norah were no longer flopped. They sat upright, spines straight, their eyes wide like the vulnerable little girls they’d once been.
‘Alicia,’ Jessica warned, but it was too late. Pandora’s box was open. Maybe it had been open from the moment the detective called.
‘If we weren’t crazy,’ Norah was saying, almost to herself, ‘it explains why human bones were found under Wild Meadows.’
This was exactly what Jessica was afraid of.
5
JESSICA
BEFORE
Jessica only had a handful of memories of life before she came to Wild Meadows. According to her social worker, she’d lived in a tiny studio apartment that was perched above the shop where her mother – a Chinese immigrant – worked as a seamstress. When Jessica sent her mind back to that time, she could unearth only a few small details – the smell of noodles cooking in the microwave; the sound of her mother’s slippers scuffing on the kitchen floor; the women standing on chairs while her mother hemmed their skirts and trousers. As for her father, she always associated him with the smell of cigarettes and the prickle of his stubble when he kissed her cheek, but she might easily have invented those things. There was no information about him in the social worker’s file.
She did distinctly remember the day her mother died. She’d been at day care. When the police officer came into the room, Jessica had thought it was going to be like the firefighter’s visit they’d had the week prior. But the police officer spoke only to the teacher, who immediately looked at Jessica.
They told Jessica her mother had been very sad, and then she died. Jessica didn’t know you could die from being sad. She remembered being very careful not to cry about her mother in case she died too. To distract herself from her pain, she focused on practical matters. Jessica didn’t have any aunts or uncles, and no one knew anything about her mother’s parents.
‘Who will look after me?’
‘Where will I live?’
‘What will I do for money?’
Jessica hadn’t known about the foster system back then, of course. She pictured herself living out of a cardboard box on the street. She was already wondering if she’d be allowed to go back to her home to get some cushions and blankets when the social worker, Scott, told her the ‘good news’. He’d found a place for Jessica to go – wasn’t that lucky?
Jessica’s instinct was to agree. Yes. That was very lucky.
‘She’s a single woman who doesn’t have any children of her own. She lives on a country estate called Wild Meadows with horses and a swimming pool!’
Her social worker’s eyes popped, like Jessica had won a prize. Jessica remembered conjuring up a smile. She didn’t want to disappoint him. And she didn’t want to be sad, in case she died.
When she arrived at Wild Meadows later that day, Jessica smiled again – and not just because she didn’t want to disappoint Scott. The house looked like something out of a storybook. A classic white weatherboard farmhouse with shutters and a wide porch, overlooking the pastures and stables, complete with a huge swimming pool. Still, despite its grandeur, she felt a pang of longing for her mother and the cosy little apartment they had shared.
‘I’m going to live here?’ she said.
‘Lucky, eh?’ Scott said, using that word again.
It prompted Jessica to reframe it in her mind. In the past, she’d thought being lucky was an unequivocally good thing. But there was another side to it, she realised. If you were lucky, it implied that your good fortune hadn’t been earned. You couldn’t question it, or take it for granted. You had to be grateful. Because what had been given to you could just as easily be taken away.
The woman standing on the porch looked like a fairy princess. She had wavy golden hair, blue eyes and wore a white dress covered in tiny blue flowers. Her feet were bare and she smelled of flowers.
‘Darling girl,’ she said, squatting down. ‘My name is Miss Fairchild.’
To Jessica’s surprise, the woman wrapped her arms around her. It was the first time someone had hugged Jessica since her mother died. It brought tears to her eyes. When she pulled back, the woman saw her tears. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I miss my mummy.’
‘I know, poppet,’ Miss Fairchild said, kissing each of Jessica’s eyelids. Her voice was as sweet as honey. ‘But I promise I’m going to make everything better.’
‘You are?’
Jessica felt an agonising burst of optimism. No one – not the daycare teacher, the police officer or the social worker – had said that to her. Maybe this woman could make everything better? Maybe she could bring her mother back and make everything okay again?
Miss Fairchild beamed. ‘I’m going to make you forget all about your mummy,’ she said. ‘Wait and see. Before long, you’ll forget she ever existed.’
Miss Fairchild blasted into Jessica’s world with everything a four-year-old girl needed. Love, security, devotion. Grand gestures, like allowing her to paint her room pink with purple stripes, and small gestures, like leaving tiny letters in envelopes from the tooth fairy. It was hard not to be swept up in it. Jessica didn’t try. After all, she was lucky.
She didn’t let Miss Fairchild out of her sight. If Miss Fairchild was raking the leaves, Jessica was too. If Miss Fairchild was running errands or cleaning the house or going to the bathroom, Jessica was by her side. Miss Fairchild used to joke that the only time they were apart was when Jessica was sleeping, but even that wasn’t true, because most nights Jessica crept across the hall into Miss Fairchild’s room, climbed into her bed and snuggled up close to her.
Miss Fairchild didn’t seem to mind Jessica’s clinginess. If anything, she encouraged it. She even dressed them alike. ‘So we look like mother and daughter,’ she explained, even though the dresses were the only similarity between them. Miss Fairchild’s hair was as golden and curly as Jessica’s was dark and pin-straight; her eyes were as blue as Jessica’s were brown.
‘That child’s feet haven’t touched the ground since she arrived,’ people around town said. Or, worse, ‘You baby her,’ when Miss Fairchild pushed her along the main street in a stroller that she was too big for. Jessica always wanted to tell them to mind their own business. She loved that stroller, loved being held on Miss Fairchild’s hip or sitting in the antique highchair in the kitchen while Miss Fairchild fed her. It made her feel safe. But if Jessica worried that Miss Fairchild might change her behaviour in response to people’s comments, she needn’t have. If anything, it made Miss Fairchild more determined.
‘Darling girl,’ she’d say, ‘I didn’t get to push you or hold you or feed you when you were a baby, so this is our time with each other, and no one is going to take it away from us.’
It was exactly what Jessica needed. She had only had one thing to offer in exchange, and she gave it freely: her utter devotion.
‘A party fit for a princess,’ Miss Fairchild said.
It was Jessica’s fifth birthday and she was dressed in a pink tutu, with pink lipstick and a pink tiara. Miss Fairchild wore a pink sleeveless dress with a drop waist and a ruffled skirt that she’d made on her sewing machine. In the past few months, Jessica had become accustomed to feeling excited whenever she heard whirring in the kitchen.
The party was held in the garden. The porch was filled with pink balloons, the trestle tables were draped in pink tablecloths, and the napkins, the cake, the piñata and the goodie bags were all pink. Pink was Miss Fairchild’s favourite colour – which made it Jessica’s too.
Miss Fairchild had invited all the local kids, most of whom Jessica hadn’t met before. Several of them tried to play with her, but Jessica felt shy, preferring to stay wrapped in the folds of Miss Fairchild’s pink skirt instead. Jessica was grateful for the party, as she was grateful for everything Miss Fairchild did for her. But she preferred it when it was just the two of them, cleaning and organising the house.
At the end of the afternoon, everyone lined up to thank Miss Fairchild for the lovely party.
‘Anything for my darling girl,’ Miss Fairchild told them.
That night, as they lay in bed, Jessica whispered to her, ‘I wish I was really your girl.’
She was unable to look at Miss Fairchild when she said it. As close as they were, as much as Miss Fairchild doted on her, Jessica understood the tenuous nature of their relationship. Miss Fairchild wasn’t her mother. There was no permanent agreement. It troubled Jessica, and she knew it troubled Miss Fairchild.
‘We could pretend,’ Miss Fairchild said. ‘Why don’t you call me Mummy?’
‘Really?’ Jessica cried. Her voice squeaked with emotion.
‘Why not? Mummy. I like the sound of it, don’t you?’
Jessica told her she really liked the sound of it.
‘Say it now.’
‘Mummy.’ Jessica giggled.
‘Sat it again!’
‘Mummy!’
‘Shout it!’
‘Mummy Mummy Mummy!’ Jessica screamed at the top of her lungs.
‘Yes,’ Miss Fairchild said with a nod. ‘I like it. It’s settled, my darling girl.’
Jessica’s heart was so full she thought it might burst.
6
JESSICA
BEFORE
School came as a rude shock to Jessica and Miss Fairchild both.
‘I don’t want to go,’ Jessica said on her first day. Her arms were wrapped around Miss Fairchild’s legs tightly, a pair of handcuffs. ‘I’m not going.’
The classroom felt loud and cluttered and chaotic and made Jessica yearn for home, where she knew how things worked and who was looking after her. Compared to Wild Meadows, school felt barbaric.
‘It’s all right, honey,’ said Miss Ramirez, her prep teacher. She squatted beside Jessica, whose head was buried in Miss Fairchild’s skirt. ‘We’re going to have a lot of fun. And at the end of the day, Mummy will be here to pick you up, okay?’
Jessica looked up at her. Miss Fairchild nodded; her eyes were also full of tears.
‘Maybe I should stay for a bit . . .’ she started, but Miss Ramirez was firm.
‘No. Let’s start as we mean to go on.’
Jessica howled as Miss Fairchild walked away. And, for the next few hours, she stared out the window, hoping to see her mother hurrying back to declare it was all a misunderstanding. It was only when Miss Ramirez asked her to organise the coloured pencils into containers that Jessica turned away from the window. Since she was stuck here, she might as well help.
