Esther awoke to the deep, brassy bong of a clock chiming. She swallowed, feeling the pull of her tongue across the dry roof of her mouth. She must have fallen asleep with her jaw hanging open. A seam of light escaping heavy curtains that had been drawn across a window came into focus and she raised her head to fully appraise her surroundings. She had no idea where she was. Beneath her, an eiderdown, on top of her a blanket, though she was still clothed. She tried to move her arms but found that they were securely wrapped around her waist. A coarse fabric chafed at her neck. She rolled to one side in an attempt to free her arms, but it was in vain. She had been bound. The design of the garment was such that it could not be torn, could not be loosened. She’d heard of such things, but never actually seen one: a straitjacket. The realization sliced through her and she cried out without thinking, a whimper at first and then louder. “John!” she called out. “John. Help!”
Silence.
She rolled herself awkwardly to a sitting position, threw her legs over the bed and onto the floor. She stood up and staggered to the window, pushing her head through the gap in the curtains and blinking at the brightness. Nothing in front of her save rippling grasses, steel-gray ocean, and the soughing of the wind as it caught on the walls of the house. A desolate landscape. The island. The house. Embers. Memories flashed back to her now, like the card game she sometimes played with Teddy. She tried to match them up. Scarlet poppies on charcoal serge. Jaunty flags atop a fishing boat. An olive-green armchair. A ruddy-cheeked face. Chestnut hair.
Had she perhaps fallen asleep—such an event was entirely possible, given her habits of the past few months—and then been helped upstairs to rest? But that didn’t explain the binding.
Esther went to the door but, with her hands useless, she could not turn the Bakelite handle. She knelt instead and attempted to peer through the keyhole, but there was a key on the other side of the mechanism blocking her view. She called out again, bending down and putting her mouth to the hole, and then straightened up and kicked the door, hard, with her foot, ignoring the pain it caused her stockinged big toe. “Help!” she bellowed, as loud as she could. “Help me! Someone! John! Where are you?”
There was only the answering sound of the wind as it gusted around the thick-walled old house. She collapsed against the door, her knees buckling underneath her as she slid to the floor. As the truth of what had happened began to dawn on her, the words puerperal insanity swam into her head. She’d first heard them spill from the doctor’s lips—another doctor, one who had visited in the days after the baby was born, the same one who later prescribed (“for your nerves, my dear”) the red pills that brought such blissful oblivion. Schoolgirl Latin meant she knew the word puer meant boy, and parere to bring forth. But she was confident that she was not insane by the mere fact of childbirth.
True, after everything that happened, she had struggled to get out of bed some days, had lost interest in all the things that she normally enjoyed, even, to her horror, becoming short-tempered with Teddy, but nevertheless, that was perfectly understandable given the circumstances . . . But now . . . They were on holiday, weren’t they? Could John have brought her to a virtually deserted island in the middle of the Celtic Sea, to a strange doctor, for some other reason? Esther had never imagined him capable of subterfuge but was now forced to consider the possibility.
As she sat, there was a heavy tread outside the room, the click of a key turning and the rattle of a door handle.
“Mrs. Durrant, is that you?”
A female voice, a clipped accent. It was not the housekeeper then; Esther remembered her. She shuffled away from her position against the door, far enough for the person attached to the voice to push it open and see her sitting there. “Oh my goodness.” A woman with tightly curled brown hair bound by a starched white cap, a spotless apron covering a sky-blue dress, looked at her with concern. “Mrs. Durrant. I expected you would sleep for longer and that I would be here when you awoke. Well,” she said. “This all must be a terrible mystery to you, I suppose.”
“What am I doing here? And where is my husband?” Esther glared at her, suddenly furious.
“Please stay calm.” The woman’s voice was soothing but Esther was not interested in being placated. “Your husband is only considerate of your welfare, you must understand that. It was necessary to sedate you, I’m afraid; Dr. Creswell thought it for the best. Your husband has assigned the care of you to us for the time being. This is a place where we heal those who are sick, not in body but in mind.”
“What? What on God’s earth does that mean? How can he even do that? And who exactly are you?”
“My name is Jean Bardcombe; I’m a nurse, but you probably gathered that.” The woman touched the cap that indicated her position. “You are unwell and it is our job to help make you better again. The binding is because your husband said that you scratch yourself. Without being aware of it.”
Shame washed its ruddy tide over Esther, making her shrink away from the nurse. It was true. Ever since the baby had gone she’d woken up every morning with rusty bloodstains streaking the bedsheets and long, angry welts across her forearms and torso, her thighs . . . She had no idea how it happened, for she slept each night as if she had tumbled into a dark well.
Deep in the marrow of her was the thing she’d been trying to avoid, brought to the surface by this strange new place. She was bad, rotten at the core, not fit to be called a mother. What was worse was that she had brought this on herself. She probably deserved it. That was why he’d been taken from her, her sweet baby, her second son. That was why she was here, locked up.
Still, some part of her refused to give in. “Where is John? Is he downstairs? I demand to see him. John—” Esther’s voice rose and she shouted through the open door to make herself heard.
The nurse shook her head. “Your husband has returned to London.”
Esther was dumbfounded. He’d left her there? She’d heard of husbands committing their wives to insane asylums—for she was under no illusion, now, that was what this godforsaken place must surely be—but had never imagined John would do such a thing to her, despite everything that had happened. She’d always believed that he loved her, depended on his kindness. Would he have really thought this the most appropriate course of action?
“Exactly how long will I be here for?” She still couldn’t comprehend that she was a prisoner on this desolate island. Marooned miles from home, miles from Teddy, her fate surely no better than the shipwrecked sailors from the captain’s story.
“That really depends on you, Mrs. Durrant. If it helps, try to think of it as a convalescence if you like. You’ve been through a great deal.”
Esther railed at the patronizing tone. She was incensed. How dare John discuss their private matters with strangers—no matter if they were a doctor or nurse—without telling her?
A tall figure appeared behind the nurse and Esther recognized Dr. Creswell.
“Ah, Mrs. Durrant, there you are. I trust Nurse Bardcombe has explained matters satisfactorily?” He gave her a smile that momentarily brightened the dim room but Esther did not return it.
“I’m afraid there’s been a dreadful mistake—” she began.
“Shush now, don’t upset yourself,” he said. “Perhaps you might like some breakfast? We grow quite a few of our own vegetables, the chickens give us eggs, and Mrs. Biggs is a fine cook.”
“I don’t think you heard me,” she insisted through clenched teeth. She didn’t give a damn about chickens or vegetables. “My husband would never—”
“I’m afraid he did,” Dr. Creswell interrupted. “But we’re here to help you, Mrs. Durrant.”
Esther’s shoulders slumped, not wanting to believe it but hearing the ring of truth in the doctor’s words.
“As I was saying, a boat comes once a week with other essentials. So you’ll see we manage rather well.”
Once a week. Esther began to calculate rapidly. At worst, she’d be here for no more than seven days; if she managed to escape the confines of the house, that was. But if she did escape and make her way home, would John not simply send her back, believing it was the best place for her? Where would she go instead? Her parents? Or would they defer to her husband’s authority and insist that she be returned, like an unwanted package, to this windblown, pitiless place? And what about Teddy? Nanny couldn’t look after him all by herself—what about on her day off? Even as she thought this, she acknowledged that Nanny had been looking after Teddy for months, forfeiting any leave owing to her, working around the clock to see to his needs because Esther had been unable to. Her mind whirled as she tried to make sense of her situation, to find a way out.
“Now, some breakfast, Mrs. Durrant?” the doctor asked again as if she were a welcome guest. “We will, of course, unbind you.” He said this as if it were nothing out of the ordinary to wrap a person up in thick calico so tightly they could barely move.
Esther threw him a withering look.