Page 14 of Darling Girls

‘Do we really have to do this?’ Jessica said, looking up at her. ‘Scott said that the girl is troubled. Violent!’

‘Not everyone has been as lucky as you have, Jessica,’ Miss Fairchild said sharply. ‘It’s time we showed some charity to people less fortunate than we are.’

‘You’re right,’ Jessica said hastily in response to her tone. There was nothing she hated more than Miss Fairchild being unhappy with her. ‘I’m being silly.Of coursewe should help this girl. I’ve been so lucky.’

That must have been the right response, because Miss Fairchild stepped forward and kissed the top of Jessica’s head. But there was something robotic about the gesture. It was as if she’d already moved on from Jessica and was thinking about her new child – the troubled, violent one they were going to save from her unfortunate life.

THE OFFICE OF DR WARREN, PSYCHIATRIST

‘Right,’ Dr Warren says. He is wearing a different tie – green today – but everything else is the same: the brown suit, the crossed legs, the manila folder in his lap. I’ve been sitting in silence for six minutes so I’m surprised when he suddenly addresses me.

I blink. ‘Right . . . what?’

‘Right . . . are you ready to talk about Wild Meadows?’

When I shake my head, he sighs heavily. Clearly, he wants to hear about what happened there. Who wouldn’t? Despite his show of acting disinterested, he probably thinks it’s a real coup, getting to speak to me. It makes me wonder about the kind of man who does a job like his. The kind of stories he must hear, day in and day out . . . I imagine it does something to a person.

‘In that case,’ he says, ‘you may as well talk about something else.’

He scribbles something in his file. He is probably playing sudoku or doing the crossword. Perhaps if I were in his position, I’d do the same.

‘Like what?’ I ask.

‘Childhood?’ he says with a shrug, as if he is making it up as he goes along. ‘Tell me about a time when you were happy.’

‘Okay.’ One thing to be said for having a horrific childhood is that pinpointing the happy parts is easy. ‘In the early days of my childhood, believe it or not, I was spoiled. No one forced me to eat my vegetables, to make my bed, to contribute much to the household chores.’

I try to assess Dr Warren for a reaction, but his expression is bland. Carefully neutral, or perhaps bored. A sixth sense tells me he’d prefer to hear about the gory stuff.

‘I was an only child,’ I continue. ‘My dad was my hero. When I was little, I wanted to go wherever he went. Even at dawn, when he got up to milk the cows, I was right by his side. My mum liked to sleep in, so that was a time just for us. When I got older and started school I couldn’t go with him to milk the cows anymore, but I still stood on the back porch every morning and waved to him when he left. I did it for years. Then, one morning, he didn’t come back. Massive heart attack, apparently. And that’s kind of it for the happy memories.’

Dr Warren jots something down. A note about me, or perhaps he just figured out the answer to seven across.

‘After that it was just me and Mum,’ I continue. ‘The community rallied, as country folk do. People brought food and arrived to help with the farm work. It was a relief, because Mum didn’t have the faintest idea how to run a farm – she was a city girl. I overheard some of the neighbours saying that they assumed we would sell up and move into town eventually. I hoped they were right. Dad’s absence hurt anew every day. I thought a fresh start would be good for us. But six months passed, and Mum didn’t suggest we move. When I brought it up, she said, “Maybe”.’

Dr Warren is looking at me now. Whether it is intentional or I just happen to be in his line of sight is unclear.

‘She slept a lot,’ I go on. ‘She stopped showering, started drinking and taking pills. She sent people away when they came to help with chores, even though they needed doing and she wasn’t attempting to do them herself. She stopped opening the bills and notices that appeared in our letterbox, each more urgent than the last. When I drew her attention to them, she threw them in the fire.’ Even all these years later, I could feel rage building at the memory. ‘Her ineptitude and her inability to keep us afloat terrified me. It also made me furious.’

Dr Warren cocks his head with something resembling interest. His buffed scalp catches the sunlight, reflecting it brilliantly across the room.

‘I don’t know how much later it was, but at some point a group of women from the local church came to the house. I recognised a couple of them. They told us the church had funds for people who’d fallen on difficult times. I’d never been much of a believer but when they said that, I was willing to suspend my disbelief. They said Mum would be eligible and that they were going to help her get her life back on track. They also suggested that we think about coming to church services.The only one who can help with your spiritual recovery is the Lord, they said. We weren’t churchgoers, but if they were going to help Mum I didn’t care if they represented the Devil himself. They handed me a pocket-sized prayer card on the way out the door. It was the Our Father, printed and laminated. I kept it for a long time. At that point, I thought God might really be the only one who could help. Unfortunately, it turned out that even He couldn’t.’

Having finally aroused Dr Warren’s interest, I talk and talk. Turns out you start to crave attention after a while when no one pays you any. Dr Warren only looks at his crossword once or twice. Before I know it, there is a knock at the door to indicate that our time is up.

‘You did well today,’ Dr Warren tells me. ‘See you next time.’

I’m still not sure about Dr Warren, but I have to admit, I blush a little at his compliment. I never wanted to be in therapy, but since I appear to be stuck with it, I plan to graduate at the top of my class.

7

NORAH

Around 9 pm, Norah stood up from Jessica’s couch. They’d managed to convince Jessica to go to Port Agatha and speak to the police first thing in the morning. Like Jessica, Norah didn’t relish the idea, but as it seemed to be an inevitability, it felt wasteful to keep the debate going. Besides, a part of her was intrigued by the discovery of the bones. She wanted to know who they belonged to. She wanted answers.

Norah was a big fan of answers. It was, undoubtedly, why she was so fond of maths. The knowledge that the square root of this equalled that had always been a balm for her soul. Even when she took into account irrational numbers – numbers that could not be expressed as the quotient of two integers – there was certainty in knowing that combining an irrational number with a rational would form something real. Norah had thought she’d done that with her memories of her childhood at Wild Meadows. She’d taken her irrational memories – the ones that the police and psychologists had deemed to be false – and combined them with rational facts to form truth. But the discovery of the bones meant she was back to square one: stuck with an irrational number, with nothing rational to help her make sense of it.

It was why she needed to go back to Port Agatha.