The Winter Children (39 page)

How far can he have got? He was only out of my sight for a moment.
She sends up a prayer.
Please, please, let me find him . . .
All she knows is that she has to reach the pond
as soon as possible. The thought of the little body floating in the dark water drives her on.

I can’t lose him . . . not my boy . . . my baby . . . I can’t lose my baby . . .

Bea has had enough of the wild run and starts to struggle in Francesca’s arms. ‘Down, down!’ she cries and tips herself over so that she can fall from Francesca’s
arms.

Francesca tries to hold her firm, forced to slow her pace. ‘Stop it, stop it, you’ll fall! We have to look for Stan!’ She struggles with the child but Bea doesn’t care about Stan or about what Francesca wants. She only wants to
pursue her own desires, no matter what. She pushes herself further out of Francesca’s arms, not seeming to mind that she will plummet to the ground and hurt herself. Francesca is full of
anger, frightened and frustrated, desperate to get to the pond. There are only seconds in which to act if Stan has fallen in. But she has to stop, clutching on to the little girl as she twists and
writhes, trying to slip free.

‘Bea!’ she yells. ‘Stop it! Don’t you understand? Stop doing that!’ With her free hand, she strikes the little girl across her cheek. The blow is sharp rather than
hard, but Bea gasps and is still, then pulls in a huge breath and begins to cry, her palm over the place where Francesca has hit her. At once, Francesca is mortified, appalled at herself.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Bea.’ She tries to kiss the child, who turns away sobbing.

‘Mummy, Mummy!’ Bea says through her tears. ‘I want Mummy.’

‘I’m your mummy!’ Francesca says, pleading. ‘I didn’t mean to get angry. I’m scared about Stan.’ Her own eyes are full of tears; she’s about to start sobbing too. ‘I’m your mummy!’

‘No, no.’ Bea twists to get away from her. ‘I want Mummy. I want Mummy!’ She starts to howl in earnest, and Francesca begins to cry as well, in fright and despair and
remorse.

What am I doing? I don’t want to hurt them!

‘Put the girl down.’ The order comes in a rough, accented voice that’s cracked with age but full of command.

Francesca looks up, her vision blurred with tears. The old man, the gardener, is striding towards her. ‘I’ve lost the boy,’ she manages to say through Bea’s wails.

‘That’s no excuse,’ he answers harshly, ‘for hitting a child like that. What were you thinking? Put her down.’

Francesca obeys meekly, letting Bea down gently where, now she has her way, the little girl clings to her legs, her wails subsiding into whimpering sobs. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t
mean to hurt her, but she was struggling, she was going to fall. I need to find Stan.’

‘What would she say? Their mother? If she could see this now, what you’re doing with her children?’ The old man fixes her with his faded but intense stare. His mouth, wide and
surrounded by the deep lines of age, is tight with disapproval. ‘Children are precious. Easily hurt. Easily lost.’

Francesca is ashamed that he should see her like this, tearful and afraid, humiliated. But she also needs him. ‘Will you help me find Stan?’

William says roughly, ‘I’ll do it for her, not for you. And on one condition. You keep those little ones away from that pool, do you understand? As far away as you can.’

‘Yes, yes, I understand.’ She sniffs, her panic still swirling through her body. Without Stan, nothing can be right. ‘But please, the pond . . .’

‘He’s not there.’ The old man turns on his heel and heads back along the walk, his old tweed jacket flapping around him. ‘I think I know where we’ll find
him.’

She follows, picking up Bea, who doesn’t resist. The little girl has stopped crying, the mark on her cheek has faded and she seems to have forgotten the slap. She holds tight to Francesca, her fingers digging hard into her skin. Francesca is still afraid but she is also grateful that there is someone else to share this awful burden with, and hope springs up that the old man is
right and Stan is nowhere near the pond. He leads them back along the walk to the topiary hedge and begins to inspect the hollows within the carefully trimmed figures. He’s bent over almost
double as he looks under the wall of green to the darkness inside, and then suddenly he darts forward and she sees a flash of pink. The next moment he is guiding Stan out into the open, his jacket
bright magenta against the hedge.

‘Here he is,’ he says, his tone more gentle than she has ever heard. ‘I’ve found him.’

Relief crashes over Francesca in a huge wave. ‘Stan! Oh, thank God. Stan . . .’ She hurries towards him, Bea still in her arms. Stan has dirty streaks over his face but he gazes up
at her with round eyes and says simply, ‘Wabbit.’

Francesca laughs and sniffs at the same time. ‘What do you mean?’ She bends down and picks him up, her arms full of both children but unable to put one down in case she loses them, and kisses his face. ‘Oh, Stan, you gave me a fright, such a horrid fright!’ Then she turns to the gardener, who’s observing her with an unreadable expression.
‘Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for helping me.’

‘I helped the children, not you. And if you ever raise a hand to either of them again, you’ll have me to deal with, understand? Just remember what I said. You’re not their
mother.’ He lets his words hang in the air, and this time, she has to accept them. Everything between her and this old man has changed, and she can say nothing in reply. Something in his
words chimes in her.

I’m not their mother.

‘I’ll tell the men the boy’s been found. You take them home.’ William turns and strides off down the walk.

She gently puts the children down and they trot back to the hedge, clearly fascinated by it. They’re both quiet now, docile, prepared to allow her to look after them.

They don’t love me the way they love Olivia and they never will.

She has never considered that the twins might not want her to be their mother, or that they might not care that they were grown from her eggs. She thinks about the blow across Bea’s face
and knows that she never touched Fred or Olympia in such a way. And she knows, too, that if Stan had been lost, Olivia’s grief would have been the darker and more desperate.

He’s right. I’m not their mother. Nothing can change that.

The realisation seems to break open inside her, spilling out a clear-sightedness that is calm and almost soothing.
Her plan to displace Olivia and take the twins for herself appears almost fantastical suddenly, a strange, delirious dream imagined under the influence of something hallucinogenic.

That’s not the answer. That’s not what I really want. But what is?

Francesca knows she has to take the children home, where they belong. She goes to the twins, takes a pudgy hand in each of hers and starts to lead them back towards the cottage.

When she gets back to the house, Dan has returned and he comes out to greet them with an air of anxiety. ‘You’re back. Is everything okay?’

‘Everything’s fine,’ she says, outwardly calm now. ‘We just went to see the builders, that’s all.’

‘Really? The builders are here?’ He puts his arms out to the children, who come running. With a trace of irony in his voice, he adds, ‘So something’s finally
happening.’

‘What do you mean?’ she says, unable to resist pouncing on his remark, baited by his tone.

‘Come on, children, let’s go in for lunch. It’s all ready.’ The twins, chattering away, obediently take his hands and trot at his side as he says over their babble,
‘Well, you’ve been here for over a month. And absolutely nothing has happened until now. And you don’t really need to be here for the demolition either, do you?’ He speaks
casually, as though he isn’t throwing down the gauntlet. Does he want to quarrel with her? She isn’t sure, but she needs to decide how to react.

She says nothing as they go inside. Dan washes the children’s hands and puts them at the table in front of the plates loaded with their lunchtime sandwiches. Perhaps she imagined that
he was setting the scene for a fight. After all, he’s in no position to do so. She holds all the cards.

She watches as he goes about the usual task of feeding the twins. Whenever she tries to help, he stands between her and the children, preventing her from doing anything. She would protest if it
weren’t for the heavy burden of guilt that weighs her down. She nearly lost Stan. Imagine how it could have been if she’d been responsible for harm coming to him . . . Her magical,
almost divinely inspired connection to them is not infallible after all. She sits back and watches him bustle about, realising that she is happy to relinquish the children to him. Something in her
is beginning to cut them loose and set them free.

They’re not mine. I see that now.

But she senses that Dan is spoiling for some kind of confrontation, and she knows that she is ready for it. It isn’t about the children at all. Perhaps it never was. It is about them
– Francesca and Dan – and the past.

When Dan takes the children up for their nap, she puts out some things for their lunch, trying to calm herself. There is a crackle in the air, like the tension that comes with an approaching
storm. As she lays the table, she thinks that this could be their one opportunity. Olivia isn’t here after all. They’re alone together.

She has a mixture of fear and excitement simmering inside her, like stage fright. But she knows she is ready. He wants to shut her up and make her go away. He wants her to let him get away with it, just as he’s got away with everything in the past.

If that’s what he wants, he’s in for a surprise.

After twenty minutes, Dan returns and wordlessly sits down to eat the soup she has put out for him. She feels something inside her harden at his hostility.

So he is going to take me on. All right then. Let’s see what happens.

Dan pushes his empty soup bowl away and takes a breath, his brow furrowed and his mouth unsmiling. He says slowly, ‘I think you know that there’s a situation here, Cheska. I’ve
given it a few days to settle since we spoke the other night and it comes down to this. Either you leave, or we do. This can’t go on.’

‘Why not?’ she asks lightly but she has a prickle of half-excited apprehension on her palms.

He leans towards her across the table. ‘Cheska, you know it can’t. That thing you said, about how we’re a family. It’s not true.’

‘Yes it is. You know it is.’

‘No.’ He speaks slowly, as though this will somehow convince her more thoroughly of his point of view. ‘You and Walt and Freddie and Olympia. You’re a family. You
should be with them, not with us.’

The names echo in her ears. It seems an age since she has thought about them with any kind of intensity. Their images flicker through her mind like the contents of an old photograph album.
Why has it been so long? I miss them.
She feels a sudden yearning for her children.

Dan is watching her, the furrow between his brows growing deeper. ‘You know we’re not your family, don’t you, Cheska?’

Irritation surges through her. She turns to face him. Once she loved that handsome face of his. Now she sees the meanness in his eyes, the selfishness in the turn of his lips. He will give her
nothing, even now, after all this time. But, for the first time in their long relationship, she’s ready to fight. ‘Not a family? How can you say that, Dan? You can’t fight biology! You know very well that we are a family, because we’re parents. You and I. We are the parents of those children. I am their mother.’

There. It is out. She’s said the great unsayable, the thing that has been bubbling up in her for weeks.
Not weeks. Years. Ever since they were born.

He stares at her, his eyes cold. ‘Parentage is more than biology. You might be the genetic half of the babies but that doesn’t make you their mother.’

‘But it does, Dan, and you can’t pretend you don’t think so.’ Her voice is sharp now. She’s glad to be confronting him at last. She’s always been so afraid
that at any moment he could reject her and toss her out of his life without regret. She knew that she needed him much more than he needed her. She was always at the mercy of her deep longing for
his love. But now she has the power. He can’t treat her with contempt. He has to listen and accept what she has to say. ‘Why was it so important to you that you had a donor you knew? Precisely because you care about the genetic half of the children to such an extent you were prepared to have no children at all rather than risk it. How can you say I’m not their
mother, when you yourself value my input so much? You wanted my Cambridge mind and all that intellectual potential.’

‘It’s different, and you know it is. Olivia gave birth to them. She is raising them. They love her and she loves them.’

Francesca stares at him with all the intensity she can
muster. ‘I love them too. Because they are part of me. Can’t you see it? Bea even looks like me! Don’t you think that Olivia is going to guess one day?’

‘No, she won’t. Why should she? I don’t think Bea even looks that much like you, and she’s bound to change as she grows up. Are you a carbon copy of your
parents?’

Francesca laughs bitterly. ‘You want it the other way now, don’t you? Now you’ve got what you want. Beforehand there was nothing so important as the identity of the egg donor.
Now it means nothing.’ She shakes her head. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Dan.’

He stands up, and walks over to the countertop, taking his plate. It is something for him to do, to aid a change of tone. When he turns back to her, his expression is softer, puzzled. ‘I don’t understand, Cheska.’ Now his voice is bewildered, hurt. ‘What do you hope to achieve? I realise you love the children. They’re adorable. I’m not
saying you can never see them again. Of course you can. In fact, Olivia and I were discussing whether to make you a godmother – the only one – so that you will have a very special role in their lives.’

Francesca bursts out laughing again. ‘Oh, how kind! Godmother!’

‘No, listen. We want you to be close to them as they grow up, mentor them, be there for them when they need someone who isn’t us. That’s a role you could play.’