Page 4 of Don't Believe A Word

Taking a moment to refocus – why wasn’t Cristy over these teenage flutterings yet, it had been almost a month since they’d first ‘become official’ great euphemism, introduced by her nineteen-year-old daughter, Hayley. ‘Sadie,’ she said, firmly, ‘why don’t you tell me about yourself and your life today. I’d like to have a fuller picture of who you are, what you do, where you live, although I take it it’s here on the island.’

As Anna took a breath to answer, Sadie put a slender hand over hers and said, ‘There’s not all that much to me, really …’

‘Not true!’ Anna protested.

‘Maybe we need to call your father back,’ Cristy suggested.

Anna scowled as Sadie laughed and said, ‘I’m soon to be twenty-six – at least I think I am – and I’ve lived in Guernsey for most of my life. Anna and I went to school together, that’s how we know one another. I left for a few years when I went to uni in London and I worked there for a while after. I came back when one of my aunts fell ill. She recovered, thankfully, but by then I’d already decided I was going to stay on. Jasper – my fiancé – works here in St Peter Port, he’s an investment analyst, and I’m trying toset myself up as a freelance editor of fiction. No clients yet, but it’s still early days.’

‘She’s going to be brilliant,’ Anna insisted.

Sadie’s eyes sparkled as she said, ‘We all need an Anna when it comes to confidence boosting. Anyway, that’s what I do when I work, which actually isn’t all that often. Jasper and I have a small house on my aunt’s estate just a couple of miles along the coast from here. She’s on her own now, since my other aunt passed away, so I’m glad to be nearby, although J and I spend a few days a month near Bath with his parents. He’s not from the island, you see, so he feels the need to escape now and then, and I guess I do too, but I don’t like leaving Mia for long.’

‘The two of you are close,’ Cristy concluded.

Sadie nodded. ‘We have been for as long as I can remember. Her name’s Emilia, Mia. I grew up with her and my other aunt, Carlotta – Lottie. They were the best parents anyone could ever wish for. Real characters, in their different ways, often unpredictable, generous to a fault, sometimes bossy especially with each other, far too forgiving, but not gullible, never a great idea to get on the wrong side of them, but on the whole they were just …kind.’She thought for a moment and added, ‘Controlling as well, but there again, aren’t all parents? Anyway, since Lottie died, just before Covid, it’s like Mia has … This is going to sound strange, I know, but she seems to get confused about who she is. She often talks to Lottie out loud, asking what she thinks about something, or what she, Mia, should do in a certain situation. Then she answers herself and laughs at how “dotty” she must sound.’

‘She’s not demented or anything,’ Anna put in, ‘well, maybe she is, a bit, but what matters for our purposes today is that she just won’t answer questions about Sadie’s parents.’

Cristy’s gaze returned to Sadie. ‘What exactly have you asked her?’ she prompted.

‘Lately, not very much,’ Sadie admitted, ‘but a while ago, I mean a few years back, I started looking into my roots and that’s when I discovered that I’m not their dead brother’s daughter, the way they’ve always claimed. In fact, I can’t find any record of them having a brother at all.’

Understanding how alarming that must have been, not tomention disorientating, Cristy said, ‘So are you thinking now that the child on the beach is probably you?’

Sadie swallowed dryly. ‘I think it’s possible, yes. And my aunts either kept me because whoever wrote the note didn’t come back, or …’

‘Or they stole her,’ Anna finished, clearly having reached her own conclusion. Then not quite so certain she added, ‘There’s also the chance they might have bought her and what we’ve read is a kind of cover story?’

Intrigued by both possibilities, random as they were, Cristy said, ‘Just to be clear … these pages here are written like fiction, but it’s your belief they are, in fact, or could be, a record of how you came to your aunts’… What shall we call it? Care?’

Colour seeped into Sadie’s cheeks as she said, ‘It’s the way she’s used our names,’ she explained, clearly worried that Cristy had already concluded she was reading too much into a few random pages.

‘We reckon this could be a fictionalized version of fact,’ Anna said, spelling it out helpfully.

Cristy nodded, still not entirely sure what she thought, although she was ready to accept that there might well be something more … sinister? manipulative? at play. ‘How old is your aunt?’ she asked Sadie. ‘The one that’s still living.’

‘She’s seventy,’ Sadie replied.

‘And still quite glam,’ Anna added, ‘in a bit of a funky way. I mean, she likes the Sixties look, flicked-up hair, mini-dresses, fake leather trousers and all that sort of stuff, but it kind of suits her.’

‘Lottie, on the other hand,’ Sadie continued, ‘preferred a more masculine sort of style, although her features and her mannerisms were entirely feminine. She loved baggy trousers and men’s shirts. She’d even go to balls dressed in a tuxedo at times.’

‘She wasn’t gay,’ Anna insisted. ‘She really liked men, didn’t she? I mean, it says so in these pages, and she was always messing with the blokes around the yacht club here on the island.’

With a wry sort of smile, Sadie said, ‘Mia used to accuse her of liking men a bit too much, and Lottie would accuse her of being jealous, or frigid, or tell her to loosen up and get a dildo.’ She laughed and Cristy did too, as much at the unexpectedness of it asthe comedy. ‘Not that Mia didn’t have her share of “admirers”,’ Sadie continued. ‘I mean, she was married once. I never knew him, and they never really talked about him, or about anyone Lottie was involved with. She used to keep her affairs, or flings, or whatever we want to call them, to when she travelled.’

‘So are your aunts from the island?’ Cristy asked.

‘No. They’re from London originally.’

Anna said, ‘We think the house mentioned in those pages is somewhere their grandparents took them a few times when they were young.’

Cristy frowned curiously. ‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because my aunts used to talk about it. They told me about going to Somerset as children when their parents were in more exotic places. They described it as an adventure, somewhere different, more rustic with no rules and lots of freedom. Lottie told me once, years later, that on a whim they got someone to find it for them, and they rented it for a while. She joked that they weren’t as much into the rusticity or bad weather then, so they didn’t stay as long as they’d intended.’

Seeing how the girl’s mind was working, Cristy said, ‘So what exactly did they tell you about your parents, and how you came to live with them?’

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