Sara picked up the brittle letter paper from the desk.
Decades of condensation had made the paper mushy to the touch, and the corner came off in her hands.
As she began reading the letter, a voice came back to her, one that had laced itself into her dreams and nightmares, a woman’s voice, soft yet firm, flat but with a trace of accent.
8 August 2005
Dear Sara,
I will call you by the second name I gave you.
It was a new name for a new start. I hope that proved to be the case.
You are standing in our family home. The entire house was ours. We were wealthy once. And happy I am told (although I can’t remember that).
You are reading this in your great-grandmother Helen Duncan’s study. A secret place. I discovered it only by accident. Ten years after we were evicted.
I know the spies will have tried to find you. They will never stop. That is why I did what I did – that terrible thing I did to you. I wanted to hide you from them. And hide your true nature from yourself.
They offered me security, a powerful thing for a single mother of two. They said they just wanted to study us in return. I was naive. What they really want, have always wanted, is to control us.
I knew I could not change what was coming. I believed that if I could not change the future, I could change the past. By making you forget.
I left you your great-grandmother’s locket, knowing that you would find your way back here if you needed to.
I have come here each week, looking for you. But I am getting old, and this will be my last visit. Come and find me. I am at the retirement home in Bromley. Part of me hopes I won’t see you. It is better you start fresh. But the selfish part of me hopes to see you again. There are things to be said.
Your mother,
Phoebe Duncan
The paper seemed like branded stationery of some sort. At the footer, in letters almost too small for reading, was the address of the home.
Sara shook the envelope to see if there was anything else inside. Something shifted. She delicately opened the flap. Inside was a Polaroid picture.
The black backside was dimpled and swollen, warped through years of condensation. One corner of the photo was missing, peeled off, while a heavy furrow ran along the border of the Polaroid, as if it had sat under the weight of a hollow object for some time.
The photograph was of an attractive woman in her mid-forties, standing in a field. She was bending to the side, accommodating the weight of a baby girl slung on to her waist. Sara. She must have been only one or two years old. Tiny flowers stuck out from the woman’s long brown hair, and her dark eyes were staring at the camera, seemingly oblivious of the child clinging to her.
Sara knew the picture was intended as a gift to her from her mother, a keepsake of happier times. But, for her, the picture was unsettling. Her mother only had eyes for the person taking the picture. The baby seemed like a distraction from whatever connection was happening between the photographer and his or her subject.
The dappled sunlight fell through the trees, warming Sara’s tiny hands. Nearby, Christian played with a plastic spade and bucket, sitting on the same blanket as her. He could see them close by, but was ignoring them. Sara watched transfixed as the two naked bodies moved in syncopation against each other.