We knew we had to come up with a plan. I thought if we were really going to commit to such a huge lie, it had to be to everyone—to all our friends and family—and we would have to move away from the Suffolk village we’d lived in all our lives. I resigned from my job at the hospital. Doug had wanted for some time to expand his building business, so he applied for a loan, and the idea was to move from the area and start again. We began researching villages and areas in Cambridgeshire, the next county, miles away from our village, where no one would know us.
Two weeks after Hannah came to us, I went to the local pub to have a drink with friends, and broke the news that Doug and I had decided to split up. In the shocked silence, I told them that I was going away for a while to stay with a friend from the hospital while I decided what to do. I knew the gossip would spread like wildfire. Later that night, I took Hannah, drove to a town near the Cambridgeshire village we’d chosen to move to, and stayed in a hotel while I looked for a house to rent. Doug gave notice to our landlord and, a month later, came and joined us.
My parents had moved to the Lake District after I had married Doug, so the fabrications we had to weave, though difficult, were not impossible. When I announced my “pregnancy” to them, I said that, because of my previous miscarriages, we’d waited four months before telling them. Later we said that as the baby had arrived a month early, she’d had to spend several weeks in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit—a place where only the child’s parents are allowed to visit. Finally, citing problems with the move and so on, we were able to put off their first visit for a further couple of months. Hannah was a naturally very small baby, so when my parents did finally get to meet their grandchild, they didn’t guess that she was in fact far older than we said. It was very difficult—I hated lying to them, but what else could I do? Doug’s own mother had died some years earlier and his father, who lived in Devon, was not the type to be much interested in newborns, so that at least was easier.
As far as local friends were concerned, I told them that Doug and I had got back together after our split when we’d found out I was pregnant, and we were now living happily together in Cambridgeshire. Yes, I hurt some feelings, burned some bridges, but, well, it was a small price to pay.
In the event, everything seemed to go our way. I took that as a sign that it was meant to be. I told myself that although it hadn’t happened in the best of circumstances, neither was Nadia’s death our fault. Lana would have had to have been adopted by someone eventually, so why not us, who had waited for so long and so desperately for her? I guess I made myself not think about Hannah’s real-life family, the grandparents who were mourning both her and Nadia’s loss. I read the newspaper reports about Nadia’s suicide and put them away, out of sight, locking my guilt firmly away as I did so.
So, suddenly there we were: new house, new village, new daughter, new life. God, I was so happy. I thought I had it all, that all my dreams had finally come true. Soon it felt as though we truly were just an ordinary, natural family. Doug was as besotted with her as I was and took to fatherhood right away, doing his fair share of nappies and night feeds, cuddling and playing with her every moment that he could. He was so proud of her; we both were.
And later, when the small, niggling doubts crept in, I ignored them at first, telling myself that it was nothing, that I was imagining things. Occasionally, when I couldn’t sleep at night and the worry that something wasn’t quite right with Hannah loomed larger, I would torture myself, wondering if her antipathy toward me was because she wasn’t really mine—that she sensed I wasn’t her real mother. I even wondered if I was imagining things because of the guilt I still felt at the dreadful way she’d come into our lives, at all the lies we’d colluded in. But always, at least in the beginning, I’d push the doubts from my mind, because I wanted so badly for it all, at last, to be completely perfect for Doug and me.
TWENTY-SEVEN
SUFFOLK, 2017
From the hallway, the clock above the stairs struck one. The fire had long since died out; the coldness that seeped into the corners of the room made Clara shiver inside her thin jumper. They were seated now: Clara and Mac on the large and uncomfortable chesterfield, Rose and Oliver in the two creaking armchairs. Clemmy lay on the floor at their feet, emitting the occasional uneasy grumble, her eyebrows shooting up unhappily toward first one, then the other of her owners. Only Tom still stood, his back to the window, listening to his mother speak. He continued to drink steadily, pouring again and again from the bottle of wine, watching Rose grimly from above his glass.
“We cut all ties with Beth and Doug,” Rose went on. “We all agreed it would be better that way.” Her voice rose imploringly as she looked from one to the
