Sarah Rayne - House of the Lost

‘But the doctors in the clinic would have known the child had lived?’ Lesley was saying.

‘By then I had been moved to a sort of convalescent place,’ said Petra. ‘It was way up in the mountains, one of the German-speaking areas. I don’t think any of them knew the truth. None of them had much English and my knowledge of German was almost nonexistent. Helen acted as interpreter – she wasn’t fluent, but she had some quite good school German. It’s possible she told the convalescent place that the child really had died. I never knew, though. When I had recovered a bit more, she came home, letting everyone believe she had been with Desmond all along. I followed later. But if you remember,’ she said, looking across at Guff, ‘I was only in England for a couple of weeks. I didn’t see Helen, and the only one of the family I saw was you. I collected Theo from your house and went back to Romania with him to be with Andrei. Travelling there was difficult, but it wasn’t impossible. And Mikhail still had contacts in the October Group who could oil the wheels a bit. I never asked questions about that,’ she said with a sudden grin.

Theo was staring at her. ‘I went with you to Romania?’ he said at last.

‘Yes. You weren’t quite five. I told you it was a holiday before you started school. I tried to make it sound like an adventure – something from a book.’

‘Where did we stay?’

‘In Andrei’s old house,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember any of it? Not even Wilma? She was a kind of housekeeper – a dear motherly soul. She had known Matthew’s mother from childhood.’ Petra smiled. ‘Wilma had no English at all, and I only had a few phrases of Romanian picked up from Andrei and Matthew, but we managed to communicate somehow. She made a great fuss of you,’ she said to Theo. ‘She gave you a room all to yourself at the very top of the house. She said it was Matthew’s room when he was small.’

‘And it had a view towards smudgy mountains, and, on the horizon, an old, crouching house with a sinister legend,’ said Theo softly. Dear God, he thought, not only have I met Matthew, I’ve slept in his bedroom – that room I wrote about. I saw the view he saw – the Black House and the Carpathian Mountains in the far distance. ‘I don’t remember any of it,’ he said aloud. ‘How long were we there?’

‘Only about a week. That’s probably why you don’t remember. And maybe it was fixed in your mind as being an adventure in a book. I might have overdone that. I’d meant to stay there much longer, but conditions were far worse than I realized. There was hardly any food and electricity was switched off for hours at a time. The people were so downtrodden, it broke my heart. I saw I’d made a massive mistake in taking you, and I wanted to get you back to England and safety. But before we left I went out to the convent to Andrei. You stayed with Wilma for a couple of days. The nuns were so kind to me, I remember.’

And, thought Theo, while you were there someone took a photo of you with the nuns as a little record of the English lady’s visit. Then years later someone at that convent – perhaps Sister Teresa, even – sent the photo to St Luke’s for their centenary book.

‘So you came home properly then,’ said Lesley.

‘Yes. And it was to find that while I’d been gone Helen had apparently given birth to a child,’ she said rather dryly.

‘And that child was Charmery,’ said Theo.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you guess she was your own baby?’ said Guff.

‘Not absolutely at once. At first I was suspicious because it was a whopping great coincidence, but I dismissed it. But then I put things together and challenged Helen and she admitted it. What she had done was to simply come home with the child, letting everyone think Charmery was born while she was with Desmond. She told them all she had kept the months of pregnancy a secret because the doctors feared a miscarriage, and she hadn’t wanted to tempt Providence by telling anyone except Desmond. Really, of course,’ said Petra, ‘she had to wait to be sure she could actually get Charmery from me. The dates were a bit askew, but I think she said it had been a premature birth.’

‘And Desmond went along with all that?’ said Theo.

‘He believed Helen took Charmery with my knowledge and my permission. Theo, what’s wrong?’

Out of the tangle of complex emotions and memories, Theo said, ‘But Desmond was infertile.’

Petra stared at him. ‘He was, as a matter of fact. But how on earth did you know?’

‘Charmery found out,’ said Theo. ‘She challenged her mother.’

‘And Helen told her she had an affair with your father?’

‘Yes.’

‘And therefore the two of you were half-brother and sister?’

‘Yes,’ said Theo, staring at her.

‘Oh, Theo,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry you found out about it in that twisted way.’ She studied him for a moment. ‘Was it a problem for you?’

Theo returned the stare. ‘No,’ he said at last.

‘Helen and John never had an affair, of course,’ said Petra. ‘That was Helen’s back-up story. Desmond’s infertility was the one weakness in her plan. She didn’t think anyone knew about it, but it was just possible it might come out some day. If it did, she was going to say she had a brief fling with John just before he died.’

‘Did you mind about that?’ said Lesley.

‘Yes, I did. I was furious,’ said Petra. ‘But when I thought about it properly, I saw it didn’t really matter so much. It seemed to belong to another life.’

‘When did you find out the truth?’ asked Guff.

‘Shortly after Charmery’s first birthday. I confronted Helen with it. She broke down and begged me not to do anything or tell anyone. She sobbed for hours and clung to me and pleaded with me not to take Charmery away. She said she had wanted a child more than anything in the world, and she had been devastated – very nearly suicidal – when Desmond’s infertility was confirmed.’ She spread her hands. ‘What could I do? I couldn’t bring myself to suddenly take a small child from two people she believed were her parents. Helen had registered Charmery’s birth in Switzerland. She had stated she and Desmond were the parents. It would have been exhausting and cruel to Charmery as well as Helen to break it all apart. Charmery was aware of the world around her. So I agreed to let the lie stand. But it was an extraordinary sensation to know the child I’d secretly mourned was alive and growing up, and that I knew her so well,’ said Petra. ‘I’d bought birthday presents for her, and taken her out with Theo. But the really curious thing,’ she said, ‘is that after I knew, I always found it difficult to stay in this house when Charmery was here. Silly, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ said Theo, leaning forward to take her hand.

‘I didn’t want Helen and Desmond to buy Fenn – there were too many memories and they weren’t all good ones. But Helen had come down here with me right at the start and she fell in love with the place. She said she and Desmond would renovate it and extend it for family summers and holidays. She said I wouldn’t recognize it when it was all finished. It would be like a different house. But it never was,’ she said. ‘For me it always meant Andrei and the start of that huge deception over Charmery.’ She looked at Theo. ‘I never really came to grips with my feelings for Charmery,’ she said. ‘I could never equate her with the baby I thought had died in the Swiss clinic.’

Theo said, ‘All those times you were travelling – when I was at school – were you with Andrei?’

‘Most of the time.’

‘Helping him look for Elisabeth?’

Petra turned to look at him. ‘So you know about Elisabeth, do you?’ she said.