The Cotswolds, England, 1981
The weeks following her return were characterized by whispers. It was obvious to Frances that her mother knew something of what had happened in France, and Tabitha suspected that Aunt Henrietta had been on the telephone, sharing information she believed to be true. Annabella had always had her concerns about letting Frances travel alone, expressed freely before the event, so that when she was quiet and friendly upon Frances’s return it felt unnatural and out of place. Seeing her mother waiting in the train station, their shared characteristics implying that Frances was home, only served to increase her disappointment at her early return.
That night when she stood in her old room, surrounded by her childish collections, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to be anymore. She had left that house so certain of her future as an archivist, but that summer had changed everything. How could what she had shared with Benoit be over, she thought, as she looked at the Klinkosch box? Had he really loved her, as she had loved him? Lifting the lid, finding the little broach, Les Inséparables staring back at her, she felt for a second as if she was still there with him. Nothing that good could be a lie, could it? Surely you couldn’t feel as if you belonged somewhere with such certainty if you did not. But whatever it was they had shared, if it had meant anything to her, she had to honor what he had asked of her. Perhaps if she could get this right he would come back, claim what was rightly his as he said he would. But the people who had come for the box had left a real trail of destruction and danger. Benoit had told her he was going to disappear for a while, and she knew that the box too must become undiscoverable. So, she hid it as well as she could, just as she had promised.
The last weeks of summer passed without much ado. From the couch to her bed, she spent her days escaping into fiction instead of reading her schoolwork. It was as if she was paralyzed, unsure how to move forward into a future, and yet utterly unable to return to the life she had lived before. Last year it was easy to return. Well, not easy perhaps, but manageable, because she was always sure that she would be going back. Now the dream was over, stuck in England. What didn’t help were the strange phone calls that the house had been receiving, always hanging up before her parents had a chance to inquire who it was. Then there was the blue car that had been sitting outside the house. Who was that? Had she been followed? Were they here about the box?
A letter from Benoit had arrived not three days after her return, unsigned of course, but she knew it was from him. Just to know he was thinking about her came as a comfort, that in her absence she had left a space in his life, one that would grow as he did, and which could only be filled by her. But the thought of his regret did little to settle her despair of being away from him, because the void that his absence had created in her life was equally destined to remain unfilled. All those mini episodes that her parents had panicked about, those quiet moments her aunt had tried to avoid; they were the collective precursor to what was coming for her now. The fog was stirring, coming to claim her, as black as the night descending.
It was only when her exam results came in, when she thought about how much she would like to tell Benoit that she had done well, that she realized how long it was since they had been together. Six weeks had passed since her return from France, twelve weeks since she had first arrived at the retreat. All those days she had spent in his old farmhouse, uninterrupted by the rhythms of her body. When was the last time that she had been forced into bed by debilitating stomach cramps, the type she always got during her menstrual cycle? That afternoon she went to the doctor, and they took a small vial of blood from her arm. Three days later they gave her the results. When she had wondered what she wanted after coming back to England, the answer had never been a baby.
Fueled by a sense of desperation she wrote and sent a letter to Benoit that same afternoon telling him the truth. If she didn’t say it right there and then she thought she might not be able to tell anybody at all. Weeks went by without a response, so she tried to call the warehouse, but not even Alex picked up. It was as if Benoit had disappeared from the face of the earth. Two months later and tired of shouldering the burden of truth, she stood in front of her mother and whispered the words.
“Mum,” she said, and watched as her mother looked up from the legal paperwork she was working on that night. Frances had chosen the time carefully, an evening when her father was at work overnight. Convincing the family doctor to give her a few days to tell her parents hadn’t been easy, but she knew if she didn’t tell them now, the doctor would do so on her behalf. It must have been the heat or something, because her eyes already appeared glazed over. “I’m having a baby.”
Immobilized by her daughter’s words, Annabella said nothing at first. But as the truth of the statement sank in, she rose from her seat, walked to her daughter, and took her in her arms.
“Just thank god you’ve told us. We can help you now. We promise. We will do whatever it takes.”
Frances wasn’t so sure about that, and was hesitant when it came to her mother’s promises and faith in the concept of we. Her father was going to kill her. Gone was the promise of university, the journey to become a doctor as he wanted so much for her. But that night when he came home at her mother’s request, he sat alongside her, and following a sustained silence in which he seemed to make and unmake plans a thousand times over, he too promised her that everything would be all right.
“We can get through this,” he promised. “We can help you with whatever you need and support you with whatever you choose.”
None of the anger she had expected came forth, and that night when she heard their low mumbled voices as they spoke on the other side of the wall, she realized that even though Benoit was gone, they had in some way returned to her. He might have let her go, but she had been recaptured by her parents, where for years she thought they were lost. And true to their word they let her make all the important decisions. There was minimal pressure. Anything was okay by them, they said, although they suggested she needed to decide quickly if an abortion was what she wanted. Would her father prefer that? she wondered. Would Benoit? Perhaps life could go on as planned if the baby was out of the way. But when she chose to keep the child growing inside her, they were there for her too, just as they said they would be.
The months of pregnancy passed slowly, and her stomach grew. Her mood lifted. She felt her baby kick, and Christmas came and went as brisk as a December snowstorm. Settling on a name, her mother said they didn’t need a nursery just yet, that babies were the safest when they were kept alongside you. So instead of decorating one of the spare rooms they cleared out the old archives from her bedroom and placed the cot alongside the old chimney stack where it would be warmest. They painted the room in a fresh white, and her mother ordered linen from her sister-in-law in France. Although she missed her things, her father had agreed to let them be kept in the dining room while she focused on the imminent birth. Never once did they ask who the father was, but Frances never imagined it could have been because they already knew.
That April was showery, the petrichor strong, and while she slowed to a snail’s pace it reminded her of her early days in France. She was folding baby clothes and blankets when the pains began, and not half an hour later her legs were wet with amniotic fluid. The rains were heavier by then, her parents uncontactable at a work dinner for her father’s department. With no other way to go to the hospital, Frances called an ambulance. They wove through the streets, the hard foam of the trolley underneath her. When they arrived at the hospital a kind nurse with cold hands offered to contact her parents just once more, and this time she found her mother. They were on their way, she said, urgency in their voices. Yet three hours later when her baby boy arrived in the world they were still not there. It was an hour after that, when a police officer came into the ward and sat on the edge of her bed with a doctor and a nurse alongside him, that she would learn what had happened. All the conditions were against them, and they had been so busy of late that the car service had been put off. They didn’t suffer, the police officer reassured her as he handed over her father’s damaged watch, but neither the promises of help nor the broken timepiece brought her any comfort.
Once the funeral was over, although her aunt and uncle tried desperately to get her to go to them, she knew she couldn’t. Not because of the box, because then it paled in comparison to the need she felt to care for her child, but rather because Aunt Henrietta told her that Benoit had moved into the farmhouse. When Frances asked when he had returned to Mirepoix she had replied simply enough; he had never left. He had told her of the need to disappear, to leave Mirepoix for a time, but all along it had been a lie, designed to keep her away. Frances understood then; despite her letters and telephone calls he had made his decision, planned his future. Frances, and without doubt a baby, were not part of it.
Because Benoit didn’t want them. Even that idea had taken her by surprise. She was no longer her, no longer alone. They were each other. Mrs. Gillman from next door had been there every day to help. Frances wasn’t quite sure what she would have done without her, and no matter how hard it was when it was just the two of them at night, her baby was all the reason she needed to get through this. Only when she looked at him, that tiny, perfect, wrinkled face, when she thought about how precious he was, it wasn’t just love she felt. She also felt frightened. She had loved somebody else once, with everything she had at the time. She had given it her best, and it hadn’t been enough. What she and Benoit shared had been something precious, and she had ruined it with her lies. Looking down at the beautiful little boy she had decided to call Harry, she wondered even then whether her best would ever prove good enough for him.