Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

“No!” The child twisted out of her lap. “I can’t. I mustn’t…”

“Come on, you’ve been to the doctor’s—”

“I never.”

“Now Karen—”

“Honestly, Aunty Doris.”

“You were probably too little to remember.”

“No. She wouldn’t let me. It was for my own good.” She recited the last few words in a flat, monotone as if they had been drummed into her many times. “Ava said…she said they’d…”

I wish I’d got that woman here, thought Doris. I’d wring her bloody neck. Karen looked terrified. Doris reached out and coaxed her close again.

“Tell me, sweetheart.”

Karen shook her head but climbed back into Doris’s lap.

“Whisper then.” Karen shook her head. “Go on…I won’t tell anyone.”

“Promise?”

“Faithful and true.”

Karen whispered.

Doris felt dizzy and knew it was her blood pressure. When able to speak, her voice trembled. She said, “That’s a wicked lie. And you mustn’t ever believe it again.” She kissed Karen’s forehead, rocking her gently. “Me and your Uncle Ernest – we’d never let such a thing happen.”

Trying to keep the anger that flamed in her heart from marking her face, Doris eased the child into a more comfortable position and kissed her again. How to handle this? Doris’s own doctor was on the point of retiring. She had been with him for almost thirty years and he had seen her through countless illnesses and minor operations. He was a kind man and very good at guessing what was really wrong, which was not always what you’d said. There would still be time to make an appointment and ask his advice about Karen. Perhaps he’d agree to make a home visit and talk to the little girl. As a family friend like, just dropping in.

If she really wasn’t registered anywhere it should be sorted straight away. Dunroamin’ would do as an address. And themselves, she and Ernest, as nearest relatives or next of kin. Better say they were officially fostering; all the details could be sorted later. Doris, for whom the word “respectable” could have been invented, found herself ready and willing to spin as many lies in as many highly coloured variations as the occasion might demand. A child who was lost had been found, and must never be lost again.

The stifling weather had broken. After lunch it had rained, releasing the fragrant scent of flowers. The grass on the croquet lawn still sparkled and pollen dust floated through bars of sunlight.

Observing herself and Polly, in their long summer dresses and straw hats resting under the great cedar tree, Kate thought they must appear like characters from a novel set in the early twentieth century. Howard’s End , perhaps. Or The Go-Between. Certainly the atmosphere was fraught and wretched enough to occupy either. There was a tray of lemonade, which Benny had made while they were out, but no one was drinking.

The journey back had been extraordinary. All of them had sat, silent, carefully upright, fearfully prescient, like people in a tumbril. Once home, Polly got out of the car and wandered into the garden, and Mallory followed. But Kate, already sensing great unhappiness to come and knowing the action to be pathetically childish, went into the house for her lucky beekeeper’s hat. She found a frayed old Panama of Carey’s in the back porch for Polly.

Now Mallory, who had been pacing about since they first arrived, suddenly stopped dead in front of Polly and said, “Aren’t you going to tell us—”

“Yes, I am,” said Polly. She was shivering with nerves. “I was going to. I was actually on the point of it. I knew I must. Then the police arrived. I’m sorry.”

“Come and sit down, Mal.” Kate tugged a garden chair closer to her side. “Looming over her like that.”

Mallory sat down but his energy and attention, unfaltering, continued to stream in Polly’s direction. He didn’t even feel Kate’s hand on his arm. When Polly began to speak he listened intently while his world and everything in it fell slowly apart.

The aftermath was terrible. The gradual unravelling of how he had been deceived cut Mallory’s joy and pride in his daughter into bleeding ribbons. When she had finished he sat, humiliated, his gullibility exposed in the market place. A fool for love.

All the lies. How many he would never know. That was almost the worst part of it. Because now so many memories, right back into her childhood, were tainted. How could he have deceived himself that the mocking, self-centred and ruthless girl the world knew as Polly Lawson wasn’t really Polly? Not his Polly.

He remembered the scene where she had led him up to explaining how it was he who had control of her legacy. Led him like a stupid donkey to admit something she already knew. How her eyes had widened with amazement. She had actually flung her arms around his neck and wept genuine tears. And then, to compound the lie, the pretence that she had only joined this syndicate in the first place to make money for him. So that he could leave the Ewan Sedgewick and be well again. How confident he had been then of her love; how overwhelmingly proud.

Endless recollections like this combined to leave him rigid with outrage and misery and shock. When, after a long silence, she tried to speak again he turned on her.

“I’m so sorry, Daddy—”

“Don’t call me Daddy. You’re not five now.”

“I’ll pay it back.”

“And don’t talk such rubbish.”

“I’ll work hard—”

“You’ve cleaned us out.”

“I’ll make money. In the city you can. Five years—”

“Don’t lie. You’ve no intention—”

“I have. I have…”

“I’m sick of your lies.”

“I promise—”

“And I’m sick of you.”

“Mallory—”

“Still, there’s always a bright side. At least we’ve seen the back of those grudging visits. You hardly bothered to take your coat off half the time.”

“Back of…?”

“Now we’re broke I’ve no doubt we’ll quickly be found expendable.”

“Please, Dad.”

“Mind you, there’s still Appleby House,” said Mallory, stony-eyed. “That must be worth a bob or two. Could be some while before you can cash in though.”

Polly dried the shining fall of tears on her pink-striped dress. She hadn’t looked at her parents since the beginning of her confession. Now she began slowly to get up.

“Because I’m buggered if I’m going to die just to please you.”

“ Mallory – stop it… ”

Kate caught up with Polly near the terrace steps. She took her arm but Polly gently disengaged it, shaking her head. She said quietly, “Stay with him,” before going into the house.

That was hours ago. Kate and Mallory, willingly abandoning the now-tainted comfort of the cedar’s shade, had moved to the terrace and were still sitting there under a darkening sky. A sudden cool wind ruffled the roses.

For a long tune Mallory had said little and Kate had said nothing. He was glad she was there. He didn’t want to be alone but could not have borne anyone else to witness his mortification. Now she was taking his hand, kissing it, holding it against her cheek. The magnanimity of the gesture overwhelmed him. He thought of her life, what he had dragged her through. How modest her ambition had been: to live quietly and happily with her family and publish a few worthwhile books. And now even that was to be denied her.

“Listen,” she was saying, taking his other hand, “everything we had yesterday we have today.” Then, when he looked incredulous: “All right, we’ve discovered some things we didn’t know—”

“Like our daughter’s a thief.”

“But nothing important has changed.”