43. Jessica

"Okay," Anna said when they resumed the Zoom meeting back at the cottage. "So what happened after you finished giving your statements to the police? Did you go back to Wild Meadows?"

Jessica shook her head. "A social worker took us to a respite home."

Anna wasn't taking any notes now. Jessica started to feel self-conscious, worried that she wasn't making sense. She'd taken another pill half an hour ago, after the interaction with Miss Fairchild, and she was now feeling floaty and relaxed.

"We stayed there for three months, while they looked for a permanent home that would take all three of us. They couldn't find one, and we refused to be separated, so we went to a group home, where we stayed until we aged out. Because of our ‘trauma', we received ongoing weekly counseling until then." She smiled wryly at her sisters. "Norah and Alicia hated it, but I quite liked it. Having someone just listen to me like that, giving me their undivided attention? I'd never experienced that before."

"And Miss Fairchild wasn't investigated further?" Anna asked.

Jessica shrugged. "Not to my knowledge. But after that day we never heard much more about it."

"Wow." Anna appeared gratifyingly appalled, eyes wide as she shook her head. "Okay, let's recap… You reported Miss Fairchild's abuse of Amy to the cops, but they found no sign of her in the house and no record that she existed. Then they found a doll with her name on it and decided… what?"

"That Amy was a figment of my imagination brought on by childhood trauma," Jessica said. "My therapist thought that Amy was the little girl inside me, the one who yearned to be loved and cared for."

"And they asserted that all three of you had the same delusion?"

Anna sounded incredulous, as if they'd been stupid for going along with it. Maybe they had. While it wouldn't have been the first instance in history of three different people imagining the same thing, it was extraordinarily rare. Jessica had often suspected that, faced with three adolescent girls who swore blind the child existed, the therapist had been forced to dig deep to find a plausible explanation.

"And you believed this?"

Alicia shrugged. "Everyone said the same thing. The police. The social workers. Our therapists. Everyone we trusted. And given the fact that there wasn't a single shred of evidence that Amy was real, what were we supposed to think?"

"You never considered the possibility that your foster mother may have killed her and hidden both her body and any sign that there'd been an infant in the house?"

"No," Jessica said.

"Why not?"

"Because that would've meant that Amy was dead."

Anna was quiet for a moment. "But now," she said, "a little girl's body has been found underneath the house."

"Yes."

She frowned deeply, fiddling with a locket around her neck.

"What is it?" Norah asked.

"I was just thinking." Anna shook her head. "If this body turns out to be Amy, it will be a monumental cock-up for the cops in Port Agatha. When it comes out, it's bound to cause a political shitstorm."

"I hadn't thought of that," Alicia said.

"Maybe not," Anna replied, sitting back in her chair. "But I guarantee they have."

THE OFFICE OF DR. WARREN, PSYCHIATRIST

"By the time I turned fourteen," I tell Dr. Warren, "I'd noticed John was looking at me differently. He'd comment on even the most modest of my clothes, calling them sluttish. He talked about me being a young woman and having to be mindful of men's sinful thoughts—as if I could control them. He watched closely while I cleaned—too closely. Sometimes he'd ask me to go back and redo something that required me to bend over. It was revolting."

Dr. Warren tries to look aghast, but his exhilaration shines through.

"Mum noticed it too. I caught her watching him watching me. It made me hate her even more than him. It was around that time when John started visiting me in the basement. Whenever it happened, I thought about my mother upstairs. Sitting in her chair or washing John's underclothes while her husband defiled her daughter. She knew. She must have known.

"I didn't want it to happen, let me be absolutely clear about that. Not for a single solitary moment. But when I thought about how foolish it made my mother look, how humiliating it was for her and the pain it would cause… it helped a little. It gave me the strength to endure it."

Dr. Warren leans forward with his elbows on his knees like a child at the movies. His eyes are hooded, his cheeks flushed. "John sexually assaulted you?"

"Yes."

"And you blamed your mother for that too?"

I nod. "It was her job to protect me from monsters. He was just the monster, doing what monsters did."

Dr. Warren writes something on his notepad. I wonder if he was quoting me for his thesis on mother-daughter issues.

"I had just turned fifteen when I realized I was pregnant."

Dr. Warren's jaw drops.

"It was the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me. John had locked me in the basement for twenty-four hours without food and water just for answering back—what would he do when he found out I was pregnant? Fear of him finding out occupied most of my thoughts, but I was surprised to notice another emotion cropping up alongside this. Pleasure. Not about the baby; I was excited because I'd finally found a way to cause my mother even more pain and humiliation.

"‘I'm pregnant,' I announced one morning at breakfast.

"John looked up from his plate. By that point, I'd managed to conceal my pregnancy for nearly five months. It was easier than I expected. When no one pays any attention to you, you can hide quite a lot. Even if they were having sex with you, as it turns out. Eventually, I realized that if I didn't tell him, John might not ever realize that I was pregnant.

"As my comment registered, John's gaze dropped to my stomach. Unlike the last few months, when I'd dressed in oversized, baggy clothes, that morning I'd made no effort to conceal my growing belly.

"My mother stood by the sink, water dripping from her rubber gloves onto the kitchen floor.

"‘No,' she whispered. But she could see that it was true.

"John's expression told me I had good reason to be terrified. His lips tightened, his nostrils flared, and his giant, fat hands trembled. The fact that neither of them asked who the father was spoke volumes.

"‘You filthy little whore,' John said, rising to his feet. The quiet menace in his voice was more frightening than if he'd been shouting.

"I had prepared myself. I'd packed my bag and it was on the porch. I knew John would kick me out for being pregnant, despite the fact that it was his fault. Mum would do nothing to stop him, but she'd probably feel sufficiently guilty that she'd manage to connect me with friends in Melbourne or find some money to help me get started.

"The timing of my announcement was important. I needed plenty of daylight if I was going to walk into town (I doubted John would give me a ride after what I had to say), then get a bus to Melbourne. There, I'd find a women's refuge, get on welfare, and then find a job and a place to live.

"I'd thought about this day and night since the moment I realized I was pregnant. How could I have predicted that when John found out, he wouldn't kick me out? I should have known he'd do the opposite. Put me somewhere he could keep an eye on me."

"The basement?" Dr. Warren guesses.

"Bingo."

He smiles. Then he catches himself, straightens his face, and nods somberly. "I'm so sorry."

"This time, I was in the basement for months. My mother brought me food and drink, even a few books, but she rarely spoke to me. John didn't visit at all, which was a not-insignificant blessing. He had told everyone I'd been sent off to boarding school. It was genius. No one would think to question it. When I was old enough to have finished high school, John could say I'd gone away to university, then moved overseas. If my mother and John had been more sociable, it might have been hard to hide me, but as they rarely had visitors it was possible that I could spend the rest of my days in the basement and no one would think to look for me."

Dr. Warren's face lights up. "Being locked in a basement for months on end can have serious psychological consequences for anyone, let alone a pregnant teenager," he cries.

"I realize that," I say, and he has the grace to look sheepish.