When they accused me my world split apart, just as if an axe had cleaved right through it. The day of the fire, a storm had been closing in. I’d fallen asleep in the summer house at the bottom of the garden. Whatever it was that Roger, Simone’s husband and our doctor, had given me, it was strong enough to sedate me. Anyway, I must have accidentally knocked over the oil lamp. I don’t know how. But I remember waking and feeling drowsy before falling asleep again. Maybe I stood for a moment before? Maybe I knocked over the lamp then? I don’t recall. I do, however, remember the smoke and Douglas dragging me out of there. Just in time, they said.
Simone sat with me afterwards.
The fire was my undoing. The police believed I’d started it deliberately to conceal my poor baby’s dead body. They’d previously searched the summer house, of course, but hadn’t taken up the floorboards. Once fire had destroyed everything, nothing could be found.
They questioned me all over again.
‘Did you see anything unusual on the day you say you found the pram empty?’ the sharp-eyed, bald policeman asked.
I shook my head. ‘I’ve already told you I did not.’ I looked into his eyes in the hope of finding some compassion there, but there was none, merely a blank expression he used to disguise what he really thought of me.
My skin prickled. It wasn’t only the heat of the day. Although I struggled against it, I jumped up and felt anger exploding inside me. ‘Why aren’t you looking for the person who took my baby? Why won’t you leave me alone?’
He put out a hand as if to push me back down but when I flinched he stopped short.
‘Now, now, Mrs Hatton … Diana, I’ve told you before, such a belligerent attitude will not help your case. Please sit down.’
‘Case?’ I whispered. ‘I have a case? Are you charging me?’
‘As of now you are simply helping us with our enquiries. Now to go back to the day in question. Did you sense something might be wrong? You were in the summer house that day too, weren’t you, with the pram in full view? Surely you were keeping an eye out for your child? Are you really saying you did not hear or see anything?’
I shook my head, numb with exhaustion.
All day the questions went on. Round and round. What time did you come out to the garden? How long had the baby been alone? Who did you see in the garden? Why didn’t you call for help immediately?
Beware the darkness hidden within the mind. The thought was so loud in my head, for one moment I was certain I had spoken, but the policeman was staring at me with a disingenuous smile, the type that stops short of the eyes.
‘Humour me, Mrs Hatton,’ he said, arms folded now, antagonistic, the smile gone. ‘What about cracks in your marriage before this happened?’
I dared not look him in the eye.
I had thought I had everything: a beautiful house in Rangoon, a caring husband, my old childhood home in England, and a garden I had laboured over day after day. I knew nothing of cracks within our marriage, except for the one noticeably large one, but I was not about to admit an indiscretion to the policeman.
‘Mrs Hatton?’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you love your husband?’
The silence went on a fraction too long.
The servants must have told him I’d been acting strangely since Elvira’s birth. It’s hard to remember clearly. All I know is I loved her so much I thought my heart might burst and yet … those bouts of crying I was unable to soothe. They tore me in two. No matter what I did, I could not comfort her, nor could I control myself. I wept continuously and felt so ashamed I would often go to the summer house to hide my face.
As for what happened to Elvira … I don’t know.