Page 33 of Hidden Daughters

She stood back and craned her neck, looking up.

Shadowed against a grey-clouded sky – summer flitted between seasons in one day here, she mused – she could see three storeys punctured with narrow pointed windows. It certainly was a menacing-looking place.

She could only imagine how terrified young teenage girls would have been when they were abandoned at the front door. She thought of her own girls. How could a family do such a thing to their own flesh and blood? She suppressed a shudder. From the outside, the convent was so big and imposing it was like a giant mouth ready to gobble them up, strip them of their identity and eventually spit them back out, broken and battered.

Were they the lucky ones? Those who got to walk away rather than those whose bones were buried somewhere on the surrounding land? Or were they for ever scarred by their experience? She could ask Bryan if he knew of any women who had survived and were still living in the locality. If so, had they talked to the commission of inquiry, and if not, why hadn’t they come forward when it was ongoing? Or did this building house a darker secret than the other institutions? Too dark to make its way to the official investigation pages.

Her interest was sparked, not just because of what had happened to her own brother in a not dissimilar institution, but because this was an unsolved mystery of sorts.

She made her way around the side of the building. The windows were so high up that the ledges hung like bulging lipsabove her head, mocking her. As she moved to the rear, the trees seemed to shiver around her as birds took flight en masse.

Having picked her way through thistles protruding from the cracked and broken flagstones, she noticed a dip in the ground, like a moat circling the walls. Peering down through the long grass and weeds, she saw barred windows. Below ground. Her body shivered and shuddered. The cellar.

As she approached the steps to the back door, she could see that there was no lock on it. Or rather, the door hung open, the chain snapped by bolt-cutters or some such tool held by opportune burglars. Or maybe she wasn’t the first to come investigating. No, it had to be vandals or burglars. Only one way to find out.

She climbed the steps, turned the handle and entered into the hallway of an abhorrent, unforgiving history.

Perhaps she should have asked Boyd to accompany her. But he was busy with Grace, both of them mulling over what should be in or out of the wedding ceremony. At least Grace was at last showing some enthusiasm for her big day. Lottie hadn’t said exactly where she was going. Just out for a drive. Yeah, and what if she fell through rotting floorboards? Who would come to help her if no one knew where she was? But it didn’t stop her.

Ignoring her anxiety, she scanned her surroundings, her eyes becoming accustomed to the indoor gloom. She was in a dark corridor. Hooks nailed to the walls. Wrought-iron shoe racks lined up beneath them. At least she assumed they were shoe racks and not some antiquated method of torture. This made her think of the dead woman in the bath at the holiday cottage. She wondered how the investigation was proceeding. Not her concern. She moved further inside the old convent in search of answers for Bryan.

The high ceiling reminded her of St Angela’s, where her brother had been incarcerated all those years ago, and a sudden disgust filled her with unbidden nausea. Glancing back towards the door, she felt like fleeing the building. Running out into the fresh air. Not opening any more ancient doors hiding cans of worms wriggling to break free. But as she was here, she convinced herself that she might as well continue.

On one side was a large room that might once have been an industrial-sized kitchen. It was stripped bare of all copper piping, sinks and anything that had a value. Scavengers had been and gone over the years. Easing out of the room, she noticed a door to her left. She turned the ancient black knob. A dark stairway led downwards. Stairway to hell? She hoped not.

Scrabbling around for a light switch, she found a string above her head. She pulled it, but no light came on. Of course the electricity would have been cut off years ago. It puzzled her as to why the place had been allowed to rot. Why hadn’t the nuns sold it? If it became necessary, she’d get someone to check it out, but she figured the convent was something people would prefer to forget rather than resurrecting old wounds. Another thought struck her: if the religious order was no longer in existence, who actually owned the building? Probably the bishop and the diocese. And she didn’t fancy having a confrontation with a bishop. Been there, done that, she recalled.

It was ebony dark below. She remembered she had a slim penlight in her bag. By some miracle, she found it nestled among the detritus. When she flicked it on, a thin beam revealed concrete steps leading downwards.

‘I’m here now, I might as well see what’s down here,’ she said aloud, more to reassure herself than to alert anything or anyone that might be lurking beneath her feet.

She had no idea what she was about to encounter. Her breath lodged in her throat as she stepped off the last stair.The basement room opened out as she swept the light around, casting unnatural shadows.

Ransacked was too nice a word. Decimated might be more apt. It was as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to the huge old washing and drying machines. They lay in shattered, rusting pieces. Vast rollers, perhaps for ironing sheets, were still secured to the walls but were criss-crossed with a multitude of slashes. Why such wanton destruction? Teenagers with nothing else to do with their time? Or someone who had been consigned to the convent and later sought revenge on the inanimate objects? It was not her role to question.

An eerie sense of dread settled on her shoulders. It felt like a wet towel weighing her down, and her entire body shuddered. Even her toes curled.

Scratching and shuffling sounds echoed in the darkness. The tiny hairs rose on the nape of her neck, and she balled her hands into fists. Fight or flight? She had no idea, but she was unnaturally fearful. Lottie Parker did not scare easily, but she had a massive phobia of four-legged creatures that skulked in dark corners, skittered in walls and attics.

‘Now I’m frightening myself,’ she said, and twirled around on the ball of her foot.

Nothing moved in the thin beam of her penlight.

The hoot of an owl somewhere seemed to rattle the rafters. But it was the scurrying of tiny vermin that spurred her into action.

She wasn’t waiting around.

Taking the stairs two at a time, she fled.

He’d watched her park her car from his unintentional hiding place, huddled beneath the overhanging branches of the large oak tree. It had stood there for over two hundred years. He had heard that said somewhere, though there was no one alive who could possibly know if the nugget of information was true. He himself felt two hundred years old betimes, but today he felt surprisingly buoyed by a stirring of internal electricity.

Who was this tall woman with straggly hair and a freckled nose? She didn’t appear to be dressed for the wind that was rising from the ocean, ready to blow in from the seashore and up over the fields. A tourist? Lost? No. She seemed to know where she was going and what she was doing. Peering in through the cracked windows, trying the front-door handle and then skirting around the back. What was she hoping to find? He mulled this over in his head and decided he needed to do something.

Leaving his shelter, he crept forward in her footsteps. She’d gone inside. He knew there was nothing left there worth stealing. He’d commanded that operation. Maybe he should report this interloper to the guards. But then he’d have to provide a reason as to why he was there too. Best to wait and see.

Still, he itched to follow her inside. To accost her. To demand what her business was. If she didn’t come out in the next five minutes, he was going in. This decision consoled him somewhat. He kept his eyes on the old silver watch with the worn black leather strap.

‘I’m counting, lady,’ Mickey Fox muttered.

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