The Girl Before(86)

I feel no guilt about Simon, either. I knew when I closed the lid on Isabel’s memory box that I’d kill him if I could. But by the time the police arrived I’d picked up all the loose pearls, and there was nothing to suggest I’d played any part in his sad, unfortunate death.

“Oh, Jane.” Edward shakes his head. “Jane. How…magnificent. All the time I thought I was controlling you, you were actually controlling me. I should have known you had your own agenda.”

“Can you forgive me?”

He doesn’t reply at first, letting the question hang in the air. Then, to my surprise, he nods.

“Who knows better than me what it’s like to lose a child?” he says quietly. “How you’ll do anything, however destructive or wrong, that seems to numb the pain? Perhaps we’re more alike than either of us realized.”

For a long moment he’s silent, lost in his own thoughts.

“After Max and Elizabeth died I became quite deranged for a while—mad with guilt and grief and self-hatred,” he says at last. “I went to Japan, to try to get away from myself, but nothing helped. And then when I came back I discovered Tom Ellis was planning to finish One Folgate Street and put his own name to it. I couldn’t bear to see the house Elizabeth and I had planned together, our family home, come into existence like that. So I tore up the plans and started again. I didn’t really care what kind of place I built instead, to be honest. I built something as sterile and empty as a mausoleum because that was how I felt at the time. But then I realized that in my madness I’d inadvertently created something extraordinary. A house that would demand a sacrifice from anyone who lived there, but repay that sacrifice a thousandfold in return. There are some, like Emma, it destroys, of course. But others, like you, it makes stronger.”



He stares at me intently. “Don’t you see, Jane? You’ve shown you’re worthy of it. That you’re disciplined and ruthless enough to be One Folgate Street’s mistress. So I’m making you an offer.”

His gaze never leaves mine. “If you’ll give this baby up for adoption…I’ll give you the house. Your house, now, to do with as you choose. But the longer you leave it, the harder the decision will become. What do you really want? A chance of perfection? Or a lifetime of trying to cope with…with…” He gestures wordlessly at Toby. “The future you were always meant to have, Jane? Or this?”





18.

? Give up the baby

? Don’t give up the baby





NOW: JANE

“And if I say yes, we’ll have another child?”

“You have my word on it.” He seizes on my hesitation. “It wouldn’t just be the right thing for us, Jane. It would be right for Toby. Better for a child like him to be adopted now, than to grow up without a father.”

“He has a father.”

“You know what I mean. He needs parents who can accept him for what he is. Not who grieve for the child who might have been, every time they look at him.”

“You’re right,” I say quietly. “He does need that.”

I think of One Folgate Street, the sense of belonging and calm I feel there. And I look at Toby, and think of what’s to come. A single mother, alone with her disabled child, battling the system to get the therapies he needs. A life of turmoil and muddle and compromise.

Or a chance to try again, for something better and more beautiful.

For another Isabel.

There’s a posset of regurgitated milk on Toby’s shoulder. Carefully I wipe it away.

There. All gone.

I make my decision.



I will take what I can from Edward. And then I will let them fade into history, all the characters in this drama. Emma Matthews and the men who loved her, who became obsessed with her. They’re not important to us now. But one day, when Toby is old enough, I will take down a shoe box from the shelf where it is kept, and I will tell him again the story of his sister, Isabel Margaret Cavendish, the girl who came before.





NOW: ASTRID

“It’s extraordinary,” I say, looking in disbelief at the pale stone walls, the space, the light. “I’ve never seen such an amazing house. Not even in Denmark.”

“It is rather special,” Camilla agrees. “The architect’s actually rather famous. Do you remember the fuss last year about that eco-town in Cornwall?”

“It was something about the residents refusing to accept the terms of their leases, wasn’t it? Didn’t he get them all thrown out?”

“The lease here is quite complicated too,” Camilla says. “If you want to take this any further, I should probably talk you through it.”

I look around me, at the soaring walls, the floating staircase, the incredible serenity and calm. In such a place, I think, I could be whole again, put all the bitterness and rage of the divorce behind me. “I’m definitely interested,” I hear myself say.

“Good. Oh, and by the way.” Camilla’s looking up at the roof void now, as if reluctant to meet my eye. “I’m sure you’ll Google the address anyway so there’s no point in not telling you. The house does have a bit of history—a young couple who lived here. First she fell down the stairs and died, and then three years later he died in exactly the same spot. They think he must have thrown himself down deliberately, to be with her.”