Roxy's Baby (10 page)

Anne Marie punched Roxy's shoulder. ‘There. What did I tell you?'

‘But who adopts the babies? How do you know they're decent respectable people?'

Mrs Dyce pushed her balled fists deep into the pockets of her cardigan. ‘Don't you think we run checks on everyone? Probably more thorough checks than any of the social services. We, after all, don't have to be politically correct. If we don't think a couple are suitable we don't have to make excuses.' She wasn't smiling now. She was holding something in check. Anger at Roxy and her nosiness probably. ‘There are so many people out there who just aren't eligible with the proper authorities, older couples for instance. And even after the adoption has gone through we keep a check on them to make sure the babies are doing well, being treated well. Does that satisfy you, Roxy?'

Roxy only said, ‘Is it legal?'

Anne Marie took a step closer to Mrs Dyce. Her face seemed to say that Roxy was asking too many questions. But Roxy wasn't ready to stop now.

‘It just doesn't sound as if the law knows about these babies, or these couples. How do they explain where
they get their babies from?'

She could hear frogs from the stream close by, croaking in the hot summer night. Otherwise there wasn't a sound.

Mrs Dyce took her hands from her pockets and waved them around, at the house, at the grounds. ‘All this isn't legal, Roxy. Legally, we should be handing you over to the authorities. We should hand over a lot of the girls, the illegal immigrants especially. I can't do that to them. I want to help … you … and them. So, I keep you here, illegally. You can go any time you want, I have told you that before. All I ask is a promise not to tell anyone about this place. If I'm doing a wicked thing, then that's too bad. I think I'm helping girls. Girls like you, Roxy.' She wasn't hiding her annoyance this time.

Anne Marie put an arm around the woman's shoulders. ‘You are, Mrs Dyce. Roxy doesn't mean what she said, she's just curious.'

Mrs Dyce patted Anne Marie's arm. ‘I'll say goodnight, girls. Don't stay up too long.' Only then did she look at Roxy. ‘You can be quite hurtful at times, Roxy.'

Roxy and Anne Marie didn't say a word as they watched her disappear round the house. Then Anne Marie turned on Roxy. ‘You've hurt her feelings, Roxy.
You're always questioning everything. I think you should apologise to her.'

But there was no way Roxy was going to apologise to Mrs Dyce. Not until she found out exactly what was happening here.

Anne Marie wouldn't let it go. It worried her that Roxy had offended her beloved Mrs Dyce. ‘Where would you be without the Dyces, and have they ever shown you anything but kindness?'

In the end, she talked Roxy into apologising. Maybe Mrs Dyce
was
‘selling' babies, but if she was helping girls like herself – even girls like Babs – and if they were helping couples to have the children they were desperate for and, most important of all, settling a baby in a loving home, then who was Roxy to complain? It was the thought of how Babs would bring up a baby that helped her change her mind. Babs's baby was much better off being adopted.

But Mrs Dyce wasn't getting Roxy's. Roxy knew that now. No one was.

Roxy's baby.

How was it that now it filled her heart just thinking
about that baby, growing inside her, with tiny feet and fingers? Curled up in the safest place in the world.

Inside Roxy.

Roxy could look after herself. She had proved that. And when she had some tiny little someone else depending on her, she would look after them both.

As soon as she told Anne Marie about her decision, she insisted that Roxy apologise to Mrs Dyce the very next day. ‘Sure you've hurt her feelings. And, fair play to her, Roxy, she did tell you the truth. She is having some of the babies adopted. What she's doing here is illegal, she admits that. We're the ones with the power. We could tell on her any time.'

That was what swayed Roxy in the end. Mrs Dyce had admitted everything. Surely, she thought, there couldn't be anything else to tell.

Yet it seemed that just as one question was answered, another would surface.

Roxy watched for Mrs Dyce from the kitchen, saw her driving up in the old jeep and pulling to a halt. She had obviously been for provisions. (So somewhere nearby, Roxy thought, there had to be a village.) She waited until Mrs Dyce started unloading the boxes of fruit and vegetables from the jeep before she hurried
outside to help her.

Mrs Dyce waved her aside. ‘No, no, Roxy. You can't carry anything heavy.'

‘It's only a couple of cauliflowers. They're not going to do me much damage,' Roxy said. Neither of them looked the other in the eye.

As they were putting the shopping away in the kitchen, Roxy said, ‘Can I speak to you?'

Mrs Dyce turned to look at her and seemed to suck in her cheeks. ‘What is it now, Roxy?' Her husky voice sounded just on the edge of anger.

‘I want to apologise,' Roxy said at once. She didn't want the woman to be angry with her. Because what if they decided to put her out, expel her like Eve from the Garden of Eden. Where would she go? What would she do?

However, as soon as Roxy spoke the coldness in Mrs Dyce's eyes melted away.

Roxy hurried on. ‘I know I ask too many questions. I won't ask any more.'

Mrs Dyce shook her head and smiled. ‘Yes, you will, Roxy. I don't think you'll ever stop asking questions.'

‘I wanted you to know that I am grateful you took me
in. I really am. I don't know where I would be without you.'

Mrs Dyce pulled her close and hugged her. Now,
that
, Roxy didn't like. It smacked too much of an American sitcom.

‘You've said enough, Roxy. Let's just forget it, shall we?'

Roxy was so happy to be back in Mrs Dyce's good books she almost felt like crying. It was so silly to feel like that, she told herself, yet she couldn't help it. She only hoped her next request wasn't going to spoil things again.

‘Can I send a letter to my mother?'

‘Do you want to go home?' She couldn't read Mrs Dyce's face at that point. She had turned towards the cupboard and was stacking tins inside.

Home was the last place Roxy wanted to be at the moment. ‘I just want her to know I'm all right. I won't tell her about the baby.' It occurred then to Roxy that what Mrs Dyce would fear most would be Roxy telling her mother about the set-up here. She wanted to reassure her about that. ‘I'm not going to tell her where I am. You can read the letter when I've written it.'

Mrs Dyce's shoulders visibly relaxed. ‘No need for
that. Of course you must write your letter. I'll see it's posted. I think it's an excellent idea.'

And if she really wanted Roxy to write to her mother, then why should Roxy ever be suspicious again? She promised herself she never would be. Like Anne Marie she would accept everything here, and be grateful.

Roxy started that letter a dozen times, then crumpled up the paper and hurled it in the bin. In the end what she wrote could have fitted on a postcard. ‘I'm safe and well. Don't look for me. I'll write again soon. Roxy.'

No ‘love'. Not even a ‘Dear Mum'. Terms of affection she couldn't bring herself to use. Maybe her mother didn't love her any more after what she'd done. Maybe none of them wanted to hear from her ever again.

It was almost a week before she gave the letter to Mrs Dyce, one night after dinner. Mrs Dyce took it and slipped it in her pocket. ‘I'll have it posted tomorrow, Roxy.' She said it brightly, as if they were friends again.

‘You won't be posting it from anywhere near here, will you?' Roxy couldn't help notice the hesitation in Mrs Dyce's eyes. ‘You can tell me the truth, I understand. If the letter is posted from here, my mother might just come to this area looking for me … I
wouldn't want that. Neither would you. Of course you have to post it from somewhere else.'

Mrs Dyce stared at her. ‘You really are something else, Roxy. You should be a detective. You're quite right. I'll have someone post it from London. It wouldn't just be you who would be in danger if the postmark was local. It would be all these girls here.'

Roxy looked around her. All these girls here were now mostly dark-skinned, frightened and alone. Illegal immigrants, dumped when they were pregnant. No English. There was only herself and Anne Marie left of the original crowd. No more nights piled into each other's rooms, like boarding school. No more midnight feasts. Everyone kept to themselves. Everything was changing here, Roxy thought.

She felt better after she had given Mrs Dyce that letter. At least she had let them know she was safe. That she wasn't dead, that she hadn't been murdered or kidnapped. That she was alive and well.

That night as they lay in bed she asked Anne Marie if she had ever thought of writing home.

‘Me? You've got to be joking. I wouldn't risk them finding out where I was and coming after me. Not to look after me, mind, just to thump the living daylights
out of me. Do you know something, Roxy? Mr and Mrs Dyce, they're my family now. And you too. You're like my little sister.'

Suddenly, a wonderfully bright idea hit Roxy like a thunderbolt. She jumped up in bed. ‘Anne Marie, why don't we live together after the babies are born? We could help each other, and we do get on really well.'

But Anne Marie didn't sound too certain. ‘Sure, that would be a great idea, but you're under age Roxy, it isn't going to be so easy for you.'

Roxy knew that was going to be a big problem, one she wasn't ready to face right now. But the thought of sharing the future with Anne Marie suddenly seemed so right.

She sat on Anne Marie's bed. ‘I'm sure the Dyces would sort things out for us. Find somewhere for us to live, maybe. They would keep in touch. You could still see them.'

Anne Marie smiled. ‘Do you know, Roxy, this might be the perfect answer. You and me, and our babies, all together.'

They lay back in their beds giggling and talking about the future. The bedroom window was wide open to let in some air, and the sky was clear with bright
stars. It seemed to both of them that night that nothing could go wrong.

Anne Marie's face, with her apple-red cheeks, beamed happily in the moonlight. ‘Roxy, do you know, I think our story's going to have a happy ending.'

Mrs Dyce liked the girls to rest in the afternoon, insisting they pull down the shades to darken the rooms, and keep out the hot sun.

Anne Marie loved her afternoon rest, especially now, so near her time. But not Roxy. She could never sleep and she hated lying on her bed, listening to the gentle snores of the other girls drifting in through the open doors. But the house was never so quiet as on those afternoons, and Roxy used the time exploring. She was determined to find a way into those attics, into those other rooms, blocked off from the rest of the house.

She had already found stairs that led nowhere, that seemed to disappear into walls, and doors that were locked, or even boarded up, but on one of her hot afternoon explorations she found exactly what she had been looking for.

She had often walked past the back stairs.
Underneath was stacked with old carpets and bags of clothes and boxes and chairs. Up against the back wall there was an upended table. Just a load of old rubbish, she had always thought as she walked past it. But that day, something made her stop and look more closely. It occurred to her that the back wall had to lead on to the back of the house. She moved closer into the gloom, lifting boxes, moving carpets as silently as she could, trying to clear a way to the back, to the upended table that blocked the back wall. But close up she realised the table would be far too heavy for her to move on her own. Still, she refused to give up. Could she get behind it? she wondered. It wasn't flush against the wall, but stood at an angle, and as she crept closer she could see behind that gap. She could see that there was a door behind the table.

She knew she had to get through to that door. Nothing was going to stop her now. If she had to pick the lock, if she had to break the door down, she was determined to do it. That door had to lead into the rest of the house.

It would be tight, she knew that. But she was carrying this bump of hers neatly, everyone said that. ‘You'd hardly know you were pregnant,' Anne Marie would tell
her. Roxy stretched out her hand between the gap to grasp the door handle, half expecting it to refuse to turn, to be locked. But it wasn't. She gasped as the door opened, and with a quick look back to make sure she hadn't been seen, Roxy squeezed behind the table and stepped through the door.

She found herself in a dark, musty corridor. At the far end a narrow window was shuttered closed, but through the gaps in the shutters streams of light shone through. The bottom half of the walls was panelled with dark wood, the top half had ancient paper peeling from it. She stepped gingerly along the hallway, hardly daring to breathe. There was a smell in here, the smell of long-dead rooms. At the end of the corridor was a door leading to narrow winding staircase and she began to climb. These would have been the servants' quarters long ago. She was sure of that. No lady would ever have been allowed to use a tiny cramped staircase like this. There would have been no room for their ornate dresses, for a start.

There was a door at the top of the stairs too, and this one creaked open so noisily that it made Roxy catch her breath, afraid someone might hear. She stood for a
moment listening, waiting for a call, or footsteps, but there was nothing. She realised she must be in the main part of the house. She was standing in a hallway that must have once been quite grand. Dusty curtains half hung on high windows. Chairs lay upended on the floor, and thick brocade tapestries rotted against the walls.