Roxy's Baby Read online

  ‘You know some wonderful big words, Anne Marie,’ said Roxy. ‘“Jeopardy”, I like that.’

  ‘Well, I for one have no plans to go into any village.’ Babs looked around them all. ‘Come on, I can’t be the only one the police are looking for?’

  Roxy saw Agnes’s eyes shoot to the floor. She was on the run too, but not from family, from the law. ‘It was only shoplifting. It was the assistant’s own fault, she shouldn’t have got in the way. I only pushed her.’ She defended herself in her squeaky little voice, as if they had all accused her. She almost shouted. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

  For a moment no one said a word. It was Anne Marie who broke the uneasy silence. ‘Where’s Sula?’

  ‘Mrs Dyce took her for a walk round the grounds,’ Agnes said. ‘Just to keep her out of the way, really.’

  ‘Roxy, watch out for her coming back. Agnes, you get the cake ready.’

  Roxy stood at the open French windows. The night was still and warm with the scent of roses drifting through the air. It was almost idyllic looking out over the gardens, watching the tall grass sway in the light breeze, breathing in the scents of early summer. She listened to the girls laughing and giggling and felt a warmth for them too. So what if they were petty criminals. They all had secrets. Hadn’t she some of her own? Here, they were all in the same boat, and she felt a togetherness with them she hadn’t felt with anyone for a long time. Roxy was almost happy – almost. There was still a niggling doubt that this was all going to come to an abrupt end. That in the end there would be a price to pay. That she would have to pay the piper.

  ‘Does Sula’s family know she’s coming back?’ Roxy was asking no one in particular.

  It was Babs who answered her. ‘She’s written to her family. Mrs Dyce posted it.’

  ‘You know, it’s hard to believe that someone like Sula with hardly any English and so quiet would want to come here by herself and look for work.’

  Anne Marie was already pinning up another banner. CONGRATULATIONS, it proclaimed. ‘But she wasn’t alone, Roxy,’ she said. ‘She came here with her boyfriend.’

  Babs patted her belly. ‘The sprog’s dad.’

  ‘He dumped her as soon as he knew she was pregnant.’

  ‘Ratbag,’ Babs spat out.

  ‘So, her parents didn’t know about the baby, but they’re still happy to take her back now?’ Roxy was thinking aloud, not really asking anyone.

  ‘Parents usually do. Forgive you anything to get you back.’ Anne Marie laughed, but there was a sadness in her voice. ‘Unless you’ve got parents like mine who couldn’t care less.’

  Would Roxy’s mother forgive her, as Sula’s had? she wondered. But she dismissed the thought almost immediately. Why would she want to go back there anyway? Hadn’t she landed on her feet? Enjoy the moment, Anne Marie kept telling her. So she would. This was luxury. These girls and Anne Marie were her family now.

  And Mr and Mrs Dyce her loving parents?

  Suddenly, Mrs Dyce appeared through some shrubbery with Sula hanging on to her arm, whispering softly to her.

  ‘They’re coming.’ Roxy called out. ‘Is everything ready?’

  They closed the windows and drew the heavy curtains shut, making the room almost dark, and then they pressed themselves against the walls and tried not to giggle. Agnes waited in the kitchen with the cake at the ready.

  Roxy stood in a gloomy corner, waiting. She could hear Mrs Dyce’s voice outside, moving closer. Murmuring softly, though the words were indistinct. Could Sula understand? Or was she just so excited to be going home she would listen to anything?

  The door opened at last and the curtains opened with it. The setting sun streamed in with a fanfare of burnt orange. Sula walked in first, her face puzzled. She looked around, just as the kitchen door opened and Agnes stepped into the room carrying the cake, with the candles already lit.

  Roxy stayed back, watching all their faces. Sula immediately began to cry, covering her face with her hands. Anne Marie reached out and pulled her into a hug, then she began to cry too. Even Babs managed a tear, wiping it away dramatically. ‘This is ruining my make-up,’ she was saying.

  Agnes was trying desperately to squeeze one out. Crocodile tears, Roxy’s mother would call them. Phoney as a three-pound note. Roxy couldn’t cry. It just wouldn’t come. She looked around the other girls and her eyes finally fell on Mrs Dyce, and there she was, watching Roxy closely. She wasn’t crying either. She wasn’t smiling. It was as if she knew what Roxy was thinking, and didn’t like it. Then her gaze moved back to the girls and it seemed to Roxy that her eyes were as cold as ice.

  It was a great party. They ate the cake and drank Babs’s punch and they all got so giggly that Roxy began to wonder if Babs had indeed found some alcohol to put in it. She said so to Anne Marie.

  ‘It’s our mood. A good mood, a good laugh, it’s better than alcohol any day. And a happy ending, Roxy.’ Her eyes went back to Sula, sitting on the carpet, her face glowing as Babs tried to explain in sign language that she must write to them.

  ‘Sula’s got her happy ending.’ Anne Marie said it wistfully, wishing for her own. ‘Don’t you just love happy endings, Roxy?’

  Loved them, Roxy thought. She just didn’t believe in them.

  Mrs Dyce stayed for most of the party and only stood up to go when they began to clear the plates and glasses away.

  Roxy found that annoying. ‘Why does she stay? Can’t she see we’re just young girls and we want to be alone, to party on down? We can’t even talk with her here.’

  Anne Marie, as always, stuck up for her. ‘If it wasn’t for her, none of us would be here. Where would you be, Roxy? She’s like a mother to us.’ To make her point she crossed the room and linked her arm in Mrs Dyce’s.

  Mrs Dyce patted her hand and smiled. ‘I’m trusting you, Anne Marie, to get this lot to bed. Sula has an early start in the morning.’

  With that she crossed to Sula and kissed her brow. ‘Tomorrow, Sula.’

  Sula beamed up at her. ‘Tomorrow.’

  They crowded into Sula’s bedroom before she went to bed. They all had gifts for her. Anne Marie had given her a holy medal, Babs a little bundle of pot pourri, Agnes had made her a special card. The only one who didn’t have a present for her was Roxy.

  ‘You’ve only been here a week, Roxy. No one expected you to get a gift,’ Anne Marie told her.

  Sula looked around them all. Her eyes were filled with tears. She muttered something in her own language, over and over again. And though they understood nothing, it was clear what she was saying. They were her friends, and she would never forget them.

  Chapter Twelve

  They never saw Sula again. By the time Roxy was up next morning, Sula had gone, her bed lay stripped and bare. Her pathetic knick-knacks had disappeared from her bedside table.

  ‘It’s as if she’s never been here at all,’ Roxy said to Anne Marie. The thought bothered her more than she could explain. They were eating breakfast outside in the sun, sitting on a rustic wooden seat that had seen better days. It was a late May morning, already bursting with heat and sunshine.

  ‘Her memory lingers on,’ Anne Marie said, laughing as she stuffed an orange segment into her mouth. ‘It’s the best anyone can hope for, don’t you think? To be remembered. Will you remember me, Roxy?’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere?’ Roxy was alarmed at the prospect. Already this older girl was her friend. Someone she could truly rely on in a strange new world.

  Anne Marie patted her beloved bump. ‘Not yet.’ She counted her fingers. ‘June, July. That’s when my baby’s due. Then, I’ll be gone.’

  July. It seemed a lifetime away to Roxy. The whole summer to look forward to first. Then, she’d be here alone, until her own time came. August.

  ‘You’ll have made more friends before that, Roxy.’ Anne Marie put an arm around her shoulders. ‘New girls arrive all the time.’

  But not like Anne Marie, she was sure. She could never be thi
s friendly with the loud and common Babs, or with Agnes, with the secret past and the horsey face. She would never trust any of them, or any of the other girls for that matter. Anne Marie was different, exactly what a big sister ought to be – someone to depend on and to talk to – and if the thought popped into Roxy’s head that she had never been that kind of big sister to Jennifer, she quickly pushed it out again.

  Anyway, Roxy thought, as another troublesome notion hit her, all the new girls seemed to be foreign – Asian or East European with no understanding of English. How was she to make friends with them?

  Anne Marie squeezed closer to her on the bench. She looked all around her to check that no one was listening before she whispered, ‘I’m going to ask Mrs Dyce if I can come back here to work after my baby’s born. They don’t even have to pay me. Bed and board, for me and Aidan. I’ll be able to do more cleaning and help to look after the girls. I’d be happy to stay here, Roxy. This is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.’

  No wonder she loved Mrs Dyce like a mother. No wonder she had no qualms about the rules and regulations that seemed so suspicious to Roxy. No wonder she defended everything they did here. Anne Marie had never lived with this kind of security.

  ‘I think that would be a great idea,’ Roxy said. ‘But they don’t like babies here. You said so. What would you do about Aidan?’

  ‘I haven’t quite figured that out yet. But I’ll come up with something. Because I could never be parted from him.’

  Three weeks later and Agnes was gone. She’d gone into labour in the middle of the night and woke the whole house with her screaming.

  ‘Is it really that bad, having a baby?’ Roxy asked Anne Marie as she stood at the door of their room watching down the corridor, listening to the sounds of yelling and moaning coming from Agnes’s room.

  ‘She’s the drama queen, that Agnes. Just ignore her. She’ll be fine.’ Anne Marie pulled Roxy back into the room and closed the door. Roxy had just enough time to see Mrs Dyce steer Agnes towards the delivery room, towards that door marked PRIVATE.

  ‘And that’s the last we’ll see of Agnes,’ she said.

  ‘Probably better that way. Anyway, Agnes is having her baby adopted.’

  Roxy climbed back into bed, kicking the covers to the bottom. It was a hot night, too hot to sleep. ‘Maybe if you have your baby adopted, Mrs Dyce would let you stay on here.’

  Mrs Dyce’s answer to Anne Marie’s request to stay on had been a reluctant ‘no’, because of little Aidan, she had said. They simply couldn’t have a baby here. But Anne Marie hadn’t quite given up yet.

  ‘I couldn’t give up my baby, Roxy. He’s a part of me already. My soul. My little Aidan. But I’m working on Mrs Dyce. I think I could coax her into anything.’ She looked at Roxy for a long time. ‘What about you, Roxy, have you decided yet what you’re going to do?’

  Roxy had changed her mind so often. She would keep the baby. She would give it up. She didn’t know what to do. If she’d been going home she would have kept the baby, even if it was just to show them she could fend for herself. But she wasn’t sure whether she would go home. After all, she’d taken care of herself pretty well up to now. She shrugged her answer to Anne Marie. The baby didn’t seem real to her yet, even though she had her own little bump now. She still couldn’t think of him or her as a person whose future she had to consider.

  Mrs Dyce told them next morning that Agnes had been ‘safely delivered of a little boy’.

  It sounded like an announcement from a newspaper to Roxy. Proclaiming a royal birth. ‘Can’t we see her … and the baby?’ Roxy wanted to know.

  ‘They’ve both gone already,’ Mrs Dyce said. Roxy noticed she didn’t even look at her.

  ‘I don’t see why Agnes couldn’t have come back. She wasn’t keeping the baby anyway.’ Roxy knew she sounded annoyed, but she didn’t care. She wanted an answer. ‘What’s the point of sending her away?’

  Roxy was sure she could see a flash of anger in Mrs Dyce’s eyes. But it passed so quickly she couldn’t be sure.

  It was Anne Marie who jumped in with an answer. ‘Sure they can’t make any exceptions, Roxy. Isn’t that right, Mrs Dyce?’

  Mrs Dyce’s benign smile was there again, for Anne Marie. Maybe it’s just me she doesn’t like, Roxy was thinking. I seem to have that effect on people. Roxy almost smiled at the thought. It pleased her to be a thorn in anyone’s flesh.

  ‘Unfortunately, that is the case. We’ve tried it other ways, Roxy, and there’s always one of the girls who’s disturbed or affected.’ Mrs Dyce made to leave the room, but Roxy hadn’t finished yet.

  ‘Can’t we just see a picture of the baby?’ Roxy watched Mrs Dyce’s back straighten and she turned slowly, the smile still in place.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said, and then she left them.

  But they never did see a photograph of Agnes’s baby. Mrs Dyce never mentioned it again and none of the other girls asked. So, finally, neither did Roxy. But it bothered her, like so many things here.

  Yet she had only been treated with kindness and concern. That was the thought that kept intruding. Why was she so suspicious? She was worrying herself for nothing. Always looking for a dark side of human nature. She decided to forget about it and just enjoy the summer.

  The temperature soared as June moved into a sweltering July and Anne Marie grew too big and heavy to walk with Roxy, so Roxy took to wandering and exploring by herself. She loved the smells of the countryside, trying to pick out the different scents that came from each flower. Not a day now went by when she didn’t think about her mother. What was she doing this hot summer? Worrying about her? Or had she forgotten her wayward daughter already?

  When she had walked with Anne Marie they had always stayed on the well-worn paths, but that was never Roxy’s way. ‘If there’s a sign that says NO TRESPASSING, that’s where Roxy will go,’ her dad had always said to her, with pride. Yet that was the part of her personality that only ever seemed to annoy her mother. And worry her too. The part that would do what she wasn’t supposed to.

  Now, here she was, pushing her way through the long grass, thick and rich and crackling dry with summer, and heading towards the wrought-iron gates that lay at the bottom of the long drive. The gates that kept the world out, and kept the girls in. She didn’t use the main path because she didn’t want anyone, the Dyces, or even Stevens, to see where she was going, afraid they would stop her, suspect her of disobeying the rule and straying outside. The gates were ornate and from a distance it was hard to make out what the design of them was. It was only as she came closer that she could make out what the swirls and curls were.

  Dragons. Dragons rampant and threatening, wrought-iron fire shooting from their nostrils.

  The rusted gates were chained closed. And Roxy didn’t like that at all. Mrs Dyce had asked her not to go outside, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about being locked in.

  Roxy suddenly wanted desperately to get out. Normally, she would have climbed the gates. Even now, she was looking for footholds in the curls and swirls that were dragons’ tails and claws and tongues of fire. Dragons.

  They were everywhere.

  Here be dragons.

  Wasn’t that a warning of some kind?

  She grasped the gate with both hands. Even in the sweltering heat, the iron was cold to the touch as she clasped her hands round a dragon’s tail. Of course, she couldn’t climb. Not now. Not with this bump.

  She hated that bump at that moment. Resented it. Because of that bump, she couldn’t leave here. She was trapped. Locked gates, rusty with age, and high grass, and unkempt grounds apart from the drive and right in front of the house. Why?

  And one odd-job man to help.

  Suspicions rose in her again. There was a mystery here, she was sure of it.

  She stood for what seemed an age, just gazing outside.

  ‘You don’t want to go climbing there.’ The harsh voice made her jump and she turned in alarm.


  It was Stevens. His face was tanned like worn brown leather, his hair as wild as the grass around them, and he had a stubble of a beard. But it was his hands her eyes were drawn to, his fingers tightly clasping a shovel, those maggot-like fingers. She imagined them around her throat, squeezing.

  She began to sweat.

  ‘I wasn’t going to climb,’ she said quickly.

  ‘You shouldn’t even be here.’ His voice was like sandpaper.

  She began to try to explain that she’d got lost, was looking for the way back, any lie, until she realised he didn’t mean here, beside the gates. He meant she shouldn’t be at this Dragon House at all. Dragon House, it was the first time she had thought of it like that.

  ‘You’re too young,’ he rasped. ‘I told them you were too young. You should be home with your mother.’

  He took a step towards her and Roxy backed herself against the railings.

  ‘One bit of advice I give you. Go home, before it’s too late.’ It was a husky whisper.

  Roxy began to panic. There’s no one here, she thought. I’m all alone with this crazy man. Why had she ever come here? Why did she always have to break the rules? He came even closer, so close she could feel his breath on her face. She couldn’t stop watching his fingers clench and unclench angrily around the handle of the shovel. Why was he angry? What had she ever done to him?

  ‘What do you mean … before it’s too late?’

  ‘You’re stupid,’ he said. ‘You’re all stupid. You just get what you deserve.’

  ‘Why?’ she snapped, her fear making her angry. ‘What are you going on about? They’re taking care of us here, aren’t they?’

  He grinned at her. His teeth, what was left of them, yellow and sharp, like fangs. ‘Oh, they’re taking care of you all right.’

  ‘What do you mean by that? Tell me!’

  ‘Go home. I’m telling you. That’s all I’m going to say. More than my life’s worth to say even that.’

  More than his life’s worth. Hadn’t he said that before, to Babs?