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CRISTY: ‘Connor and I have just pulled up outside the Notley Arms in the quaint Exmoor village of Monksilver. If you’ve never been, do put it on your list, because it’s absolutely the best pub in the area, if not the county. It’s owned and run by Simon and Caroline who’ll give you the warmest of welcomes, and who doesn’t want one of those on days as freezing as this one?’

CONNOR: ‘The reason we’re here is to meet with Gita Brinkley, the Winters sisters’ housekeeper from twenty-three years ago, and her son, Robert. Apparently Gita has memories of the sisters from the time they rented a holiday home on Exmoor, but perhaps more crucially, she recalls the child who came to live with them.’

Pausing the recording, Connor said, ‘Do you think we need to make reference here to the box of “Sadie’s Things”? It kind of expels any doubt that she was the child, so I could say, “The child we now know to be Sadie.”’

Cristy shook her head slowly. ‘Let’s do a sound edit on that later.’ She was staring along the sunlit, puddled high street to where an elderly couple was coming out of a picturesque thatched cottage with an even older-looking dog. So many of the properties in this secluded valley, with its centuries-old church and cherished spot on the Coleridge Way footpath, could grace a chocolate box, and plenty could probably tell their own colourful stories of past owners and their secrets.

‘We should go in,’ Connor said, packing up the recording equipment and opening the car door. ‘They could already be here.’

Not entirely sure why she was feeling uneasy about this meeting – was it to do with a persistent sense of something not being right about the story, or simply because she hadn’t slept well last night – Cristy got out of the car and followed Connor into the pub.

The instant they walked in to be greeted loudly and exuberantly by Simon, the wonderfully eccentric ex-prison governor, now landlord, her misgivings seemed to fade.

‘Come in, come in, my lovelies,’ he cried, pulling them both into fulsome hugs. ‘Great to see you. You’re looking very well. Caroline should be down any minute, and your guests are already waiting by the fire around the corner. Now, what can I get you to drink?’

‘I’ll start with something hot,’ Cristy decided.

‘Toddy or tea?’

‘How about coffee, black? And Connor’s been gagging all the way for a pint of Exmoor ale.’

‘Coming right up.’

Hefting his heavy bag onto one shoulder Connor led the way round to where a well-stocked log burner was throwing out heavenly warmth and all tables bar the one next to it were empty. ‘Hey! You must be Robert,’ he cried enthusiastically, as if he and the man turning to greet him had met plenty of times before, rather than over just one phone call yesterday. ‘And you have to be Gita! No, please don’t get up.’

Cristy winced; Gita was in a wheelchair, although he presumably meant Robert who was already on his feet.

‘Good to meet you,’ Robert smiled, shaking Connor vigorously by the hand. He was every bit as impressive in person as he’d appeared online, she decided, perhaps even more so. Tall, around six-two, with silvery dark hair, perfectly formed features and compelling dark eyes.

‘Thanks so much for agreeing to talk to us,’ she smiled as he took her hand. His grip was cool and firm, his fingers long, and his answering smile could surely put anyone at ease. Not a bad quality for a surgeon.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said, ‘but I looked you up online, so I could say I’m feeling a little starstruck right now.’

With a laugh of surprise, she said, ‘We also googled you, so, if anyone’s feeling starstruck – well, overawed is perhaps a better word – it’s us.’

‘He makes me feel like that all the time,’ Gita piped up from her chair, ‘and I ask you, what sort of way is that to treat your mother?’

With a droll glance at Cristy, he said, ‘The last time you were overawed,’ he informed his mother, ‘was in 1968 when Dad beat you at Scrabble.’

‘He only managed it because I was going into labour with you at the time,’ she retorted, ‘and you’ve been messing things up for me ever since. He’s made a habit of it,’ she told Cristy, reaching out both hands to take Cristy’s. She was exquisitely twinkly, with as many lines on her face as pearls around her neck, silver-threaded hair clasped loosely behind her head, and a very lovely smile. ‘Please excuse me being in this silly chair,’ she said, ‘it’s not that I can’t walk, I just find it painful at times and today isn’t one of the better ones. Not to worry though, I can still speak and that’s what today’s all about.’

‘She can certainly speak,’ Robert said dryly.

As Cristy laughed Gita scowled and patted the chair next to her. ‘We saved this one for you,’ she said, ‘and you, Connor, could give me a lovely hug before you sit there next to Robert.’

Readily doing as instructed, he said, ‘I think I already like you.’

Clearly delighted, she gave a cluck of satisfaction and folded her hands in her lap as everyone sat.

‘Isn’t this lovely?’ she declared, looking from one to the other. ‘I’ve been quite excited to meet you, you know. Robert has too, haven’t you, dear?’

‘I’ve hardly been able to contain myself,’ he agreed. ‘Embarrassing me is one of her favourite pastimes,’ he informed them. ‘Ah, here are your drinks.’

‘And the menus,’ Simon added, setting down a tray with a flourish. ‘No mussels today, I’m afraid, but the chef can do you some lovely scallops instead, if seafood’s your thing. I know you’re partial to scallops Gita, so we can pop a couple of extras on the plate for you if you like. Robert and Connor, you might be interested in the venison stew with you both having a liking for game, and for you, Cristy, my angel, we’ve got some delicious baked Cornish hake with lemon and herb dressing.’

As everyone marvelled at his knowledge of their tastes, Cristy threw out her hands saying, ‘Sounds like you’ve got us covered, Simon, unless anyone wants to choose something else?’

‘Happy with mine,’ Robert and Connor replied, almost in unison.

‘Me too,’ Gita smiled. ‘And I’ll have another ginger ale when you’re ready.’

‘Same again for you too?’ Simon asked Robert.

‘I’m good with this, thanks,’ he replied, nodding towards his almost full pint of ale. Cristy watched his hand go around the tall glass and the way he stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles and seeming as comfortable here as if at his own hearth. She really wasn’t sure what to make of him, certainly his friendliness and easy confidence made him likeable, however … She couldn’t decide what was troubling her, only knew that she felt wary, concerned that his looks might in some way skew judgement, as often happened with particularly attractive people.

Gita said, ‘I don’t mind admitting it came as quite a shock to me when Connor got in touch. All these years later … It seems like a lifetime ago that I worked for those sisters and that dear little dot turned up out of the blue. Well, it was a lifetime, twenty-three years … So much has happened since …’ She smiled up at Simon as he delivered her drink and sighed nostalgically. ‘I used to think about them quite a lot at one time, wondering where they might have gone when they left, how the child was getting along. It was a tragedy her losing her parents so suddenly the way she did, but I always told myself she was in the best hands. Her aunts doted on her, there was no doubt about that, and you could tell she’d never want for anything.’

‘So you didn’t ever doubt that they were her aunts?’ Cristy asked, casting a quick glance at Robert. His eyes were down as he listened, making his expression hard to read.

‘I had no reason to, then,’ Gita replied, ‘but after … Well, now you’re saying she wasn’t related to them?’

‘She wasn’t,’ Cristy confirmed.

Gita shook her head as if trying to slot her many thoughts into place, to rearrange perceptions, maybe suspicions … Certainly she was showing little surprise.

‘Did you have much to do with the child?’ Cristy prompted.

Gita brightened. ‘Oh, I did, I did. Little angel she was. I remember she had a birthday not long after she arrived, we baked a cake with lots of icing and two little candles … She ended up with flour all over her face and in her hair, how she laughed when I popped a dab of cream on our noses. She thought that was the funniest thing in the world. The sisters came to see what was going on and next thing you know we all had cream on our noses.’ Her eyes began to drift, her smile wistful as she recalled the happy moment. ‘I’m sorry to say she cried a lot too,’ she added soberly. ‘She missed her mummy, of course, but we did our best to comfort her and they bought her so many toys, everything a child could wish for …’

‘Did she ever mention her father?’ Connor asked.

Gita thought for a moment. ‘She didn’t actually speak much, just a few words, “Mummy” being the one she said most. And Gita. Or Yita, as she pronounced it. She seemed to like my name because she always smiled when she said it. The sisters had called me Mrs B up to then, but they took to Gita after Sadie came. They were lovely women, very kind, although they had their ways … Mia, I think she was the eldest, she could be all airy-fairy one minute and scared of her own shadow the next. Such a funny thing she was. Chatty, without ever really saying anything. Lottie was different, more … outspoken, confident, I suppose … Lovely to look at, and always lively. She’d sing and dance about the house, run down the hillside with Sadie in tow. I remember them collecting all sorts of horrible little creatures in buckets and bringing them back to torment us all with. Mia and I would put on a show of being terrified and Sadie would laugh … It was an infectious sound; I can hear it even now. It was like we were all cheered up by her and I couldn’t help thinking what a pity it was that the sisters had never had any children of their own. They took to motherhood like a pair of naturals in spite of being in their mid-to-late forties.’

‘How often did you go to the house?’ Cristy asked.

Picking up her glass as she thought, Gita said, ‘Tuesdays and Fridays, sometimes Wednesday if they wanted me to cook.’ Her eyes sparked with merriment again. ‘I’m surprised they kept me on, because I wasn’t any good at cleaning. Oh Lord, I was a disaster when it came to mops and dusters. I’d never really done any before, you see. Charles and I always had someone living in who took care of those things … That was when we were in Hong Kong, but then life took a different turn … We had to leave and London didn’t work out well for us, so we came back to Charles’s roots. He never really liked it here, but we didn’t have a lot of money after losing so much and it suited me just fine. He got a right bee in his bonnet about me working, but someone had to or we’d have starved.’

Cristy looked at Robert as, shifting in his chair, he said, ‘If you’d told us how things were, you know we’d have helped …’

‘Oh shush now, it’s all in the past and you had your life in Australia with Jenny and the children to be worrying about.’ Turning back to Cristy she said, ‘I’m just telling you how I came to work for the Winters sisters. Charles and I had restaurants when we were in Hong Kong, but there wasn’t much call for my sort of cooking around here, not back then. And he didn’t have the heart to start again after we lost everything … I didn’t blame him. It’s hard for a man, isn’t it, when it comes to their pride … Anyway, I saw the advert in a local shop and got in touch with the sisters and when they interviewed me they decided there and then that I was right for them. It was for the whole summer, they said, but then … It wasn’t long after Sadie’s birthday … You should have seen her dear little face when she blew out the candles on her cake. She was thrilled to bits, clapping her hands and laughing … Then she shut her eyes tight to make a wish and we all knew what it was … She wanted to see her mummy, of course. It broke our hearts, it did. I remember offering to take her up on the moor to show her the ponies, to distract her, but they didn’t want me to do that. I don’t know why, but looking back, they never did take her far from the house.’

‘Do you remember anyone coming to visit?’ Connor asked.

‘No, I don’t, but I wasn’t there all the time, and never at weekends.’

‘So you don’t recall who brought Sadie to the house?’

‘I suppose I always assumed one of them had gone to get her, after the accident. Although I remember thinking it was funny that she hadn’t brought anything with her. No clothes, or toys, not even any pyjamas.’

Cristy glanced at Connor as he said, ‘How long would you say she was with them before they left Somerset?’

Gita frowned as she thought. ‘A few weeks, maybe. It must have been early June when I got there one morning to find them all packed up ready to go. They hadn’t said anything about leaving the last time I was there, a few days before, but all their things were in the car … They paid me right through to September to make up for giving me short notice. We all cried when it came time to say goodbye, I remember that.’

‘Did they say where they were going?’

‘I don’t think so. I presumed it was London.’

‘Did they keep in touch after?’

‘No. I could have kicked myself for not getting an address, I’d have liked to write to Sadie, send her a little card once in a while, you know, but well … Charles wasn’t in a good way around the time they left, and then Robert was getting ready to go back to Melbourne …’

‘About that,’ he confirmed. ‘When I realized what was happening over here, with my parents, I worked things out at home so I could spend a good amount of time with them …’

‘He was another one who tried to persuade me to give up my job with the Winters sisters,’ Gita told them, ‘but I wasn’t going to be bossed around by him or anyone else, and nor was I going to let him give us money. He needed it for his family and we were managing perfectly well on what little savings we had left, and my bit of income.’

Cristy was watching him, perhaps too intensely she realized when his eyes met hers and his brows rose in query. Quickly she said, ‘Did you ever meet Sadie?’

Robert shook his head. ‘No, but it’s possible I saw her a couple of times, from a distance. Not at the sisters’ house, it was before Mum told me about their “niece”, in fact, and I wasn’t ever sure it was the same child. But after Mum got your call we both thought I should tell you about the young woman I met while out hiking …’

‘It’s what he does when he has a lot on his mind,’ Gita explained. ‘He hikes. And he was on the South West Coast Path when he first noticed this young woman …’

‘Are you going to tell it?’ he asked.

Gita chuckled and put a finger over her lips.

‘Sorry if now’s a bad time,’ Simon interrupted, bringing in their food, ‘but I expect you want it while it’s hot.’

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Gita clucked. ‘I was about to faint.’

Laughing, Cristy said, ‘Actually, this seems as good a moment as any to break. If it’s OK with you, Gita, we’ll go back over what you’ve said when we’ve finished eating, and commit it to tape? And maybe you, Robert, won’t mind if we go straight to record to hear your part of the story?’

‘Fine by me. I just need to reiterate that I still can’t be certain it was Sadie I saw, but when Mum and I put things together, after the Winters sisters left Exmoor, well … You’ll be able to judge for yourselves whether or not we came to the right conclusions.’

*

Half an hour later they had moved from the now busy bar area into the garden room where another roaring fire had been lit to warm the cosy leather sofas, and a large pot of coffee was waiting to be poured.

As Cristy did the honours, Connor set up to record and Robert made his mother comfortable with a patchwork woollen throw over her knees and a quick polish of her steamed-up glasses.

‘I must say I’m very much enjoying our time,’ Gita commented happily as Cristy passed her a cup and saucer. ‘Of course, I might be taking a different view if Sadie hadn’t turned out well, but she has, hasn’t she?’

‘I think you could say that,’ Cristy assured her, ‘but obviously she’s very keen to know who she really is.’

‘Yes, of course, I can quite understand that.’ Then, ‘So you’re certain she wasn’t their niece?’

‘We are,’ Cristy confirmed.

As Gita sat with that, Connor said, ‘If it’s OK with everyone, we’ll start recording now?’

Robert gestured for them to continue, and as soon as Connor had mic-ed them all up, he sat down with the equipment and gave Cristy the nod to begin.

‘OK, Robert,’ she said, ‘Connor and I will provide the actual intro to this section, but just to make sure we get it right: it was when you saw the photos Connor sent to your mother of a young couple with a small child that you recognized the woman as someone you’d met while staying with your parents back in 2000?’

‘That’s right. I knew it was her right away. She was very striking.’

‘Good. Fine. So, if you could lead us in by telling us about how you met.’

He nodded slowly, and stretched an arm along the sofa back as he rested an ankle on one knee.

ROBERT: ‘I’d only been in Somerset for a couple of weeks the first time I saw her … She was sitting on a bench in the park at the start of the South West Coast Path. I probably wouldn’t have noticed her if the child on her lap hadn’t dropped something as I passed. A rabbit, I think it was. I picked it up and handed it over and as the young woman thanked me I remember thinking … Bear with me on this, I thought of my father, a lifelong fan of Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront being one of his favourite movies. This girl was very like a young Eva Marie Saint. I saw it right away and wondered how often she might have been told that. I guessed she was in her mid-twenties … The other thing I noticed was that she hadn’t spoken in English when she thanked me. It wasn’t a language I recognized, but she didn’t seem keen to engage any further, so I just went on my way.

‘I didn’t think any more about her, and probably wouldn’t have again if I hadn’t come across her a day or two later, further along the trail. In fact, the only reason I knew she was there was because I heard someone crying. There was no sign of anyone, but the distress, the sobbing wasn’t something I could ignore. So I followed the sound down into a nook, and there she was, huddled into a ball crying as though she’d never stop.

‘I’m sure she had no idea I was there until I sat down on the grass a short distance from her. She didn’t acknowledge me at first, but when she did … It took a while for her to bring herself under control, but I was in no hurry. I simply sat with her and when her breathing was steadier I asked if there was anything I could do.

‘She thanked me and said she’d be fine. I asked about her child, thinking perhaps something had happened to it and that was why she was so upset, but she said she was fine too. “Playing,” she told me, “today she is playing in the camp.” I presumed she meant Butlin’s, which was, and still is, just along the coast or maybe one of the local caravan parks. She spoke English, quite well, although it was heavily accented. I half-expected her to get up and leave then, but she didn’t, and eventually we got talking, about the view and the weather, where I was from and why I was in Somerset.’

CRISTY: ‘Did you ask where she was from?’

ROBERT: ‘I did, but she waved an arm as if to say it didn’t matter. It was pretty clear she didn’t want to talk about herself so I didn’t press it.’

CRISTY: ‘Were you anywhere near the sisters’ house at this point of the trail?’

ROBERT: ‘I’d say we were probably half a mile or so away, close to where the path forks to start climbing steeply to the moor one way and dips down gradually towards the coast the other.’

CRISTY: ‘And this encounter was before your mother told you about the little girl who’d turned up at the sisters’ house?’

ROBERT: ‘As far as I recall, yes it was.’

CRISTY: ‘And you had no reason to think the young woman you were talking to might know the sisters?’

ROBERT: ‘Not then, no. As I said, we didn’t talk about anything in particular. By the time we’d walked back to Minehead together I still didn’t even know her name.’

CONNOR: ‘Did she live in Minehead?’

ROBERT: ‘I’ve no idea. When we got to the coastal end of the high street, she thanked me for being kind to her and we went our separate ways.’

CRISTY: ‘But you saw her again after that day?’

ROBERT: ‘Yes, about a week later. She was in the park, on the same bench. When she saw me she called out and beckoned me over. She seemed a little brighter that day, and I’m pretty sure that was when we properly introduced ourselves. She said her name was Janina and told me that she came to Minehead whenever she could to see her brother who worked at the Butlin’s holiday camp. Apparently he’d sneak her little girl in to play with the other children and ride on the carousels. While she was waiting she either went for walks or read books; if it was raining she took refuge in the library.

‘I’m not sure how it came up, but I recall how … interested she became when I mentioned that my mother worked as a housekeeper for two women who’d rented a place on the edge of the moor for the summer. She asked if I meant the Winters sisters and when I said I did she began telling me all about them and the work they did in various parts of the world to help poor communities … I remember being surprised that she seemed to know so much, and feeling I was letting her down when I had to admit that I’d never actually met them.’

He stopped talking as his mother gave a feisty little snore. Laughing, he said, ‘I often have this effect on her.’

‘I’m listening,’ Gita assured them, ‘just resting my eyes. Tell them about the second time you saw her with the child.’

ROBERT: ‘They were in a café close to the seafront. I was passing by on my way to the trail, as usual … The child was sitting on the lap of a young man with a hat perched on the back of his head. He appeared to be teasing her and she was trying to grab his face. I wondered if he was the brother Janina had mentioned. She hadn’t talked about a husband, at all, or about her child’s father.’

CRISTY: ‘Did she ever tell you her brother’s name?’

ROBERT: ‘I found out later that it was Lukas, with a k.’

CRISTY: ‘What about her little girl? Do you know what she was called?’

ROBERT: ‘I tried very hard after Janina disappeared to remember if she’d told me, but I don’t think she did.’

CRISTY: ‘And she disappeared after your mother told you about the little girl at the sisters’ house?’

ROBERT: ‘I’m afraid the order of things is far from clear in my mind after all this time, but I can tell you that I had no reason, then, to connect the so-called niece with Janina’s little girl. It was only when Mum told me about an awful row she’d overheard between the sisters and Mia’s husband that we both started to feel … I guess, uneasy?’

GITA: ‘Yes, I should have mentioned him just now when you asked if they had any visitors. I actually only saw him once and he wasn’t there for long … Edward, I think he was called, or something like that. I know Lottie didn’t like him, the way she talked about him made that clear. She thought he’d only married Mia for her money and I got the feeling Mia thought the same, although she never said so. Anyway, I don’t know what started the row off, I walked into the middle of it when he was shouting about them being insane and thinking that rules didn’t apply to them. I slipped out before anyone knew I was there. I didn’t want it to seem like I was eavesdropping. I went back to my car and gave it a few minutes before going in again, this time through the kitchen. I assumed Sadie was upstairs, or in the sitting room, but I couldn’t get to her without letting it be known I was there, and they were still shouting. I couldn’t make out what was being said, but it was very heated, and someone – Lottie, I think – said something about calling the police. He ended up storming out, and he hit Lottie’s car with his own as he drove off.’

CRISTY: ‘What happened after that?’

GITA: ‘Well, they were very upset, of course, but they didn’t talk to me about anything. It wasn’t until Mia and I were on our own in the kitchen that she told me I shouldn’t take any notice of what he’d said about Sadie not being their niece. He was just trying to make mischief, she said. I suppose she thought I’d heard that, but I hadn’t, and it never entered my head until that day that Sadie might not be who they claimed she was.’

CRISTY: ‘What did you do when Mia told you that?’

GITA: ‘I went home and talked to Robert and Charles about it. Charles thought I should mind my own business, but then Robert told me about the young woman he’d met a few times who seemed to be taken with the sisters, and she had a girl of around Sadie’s age …’

ROBERT: ‘It seemed too far-fetched to think they were one and the same child, and I couldn’t come up with a single reason why Janina would let her little girl go. Nevertheless I remember keeping an eye out for her after that, hoping to run into her again, or at least to spot her somewhere with her child, but I never did.’

GITA: ‘You went to Butlin’s to look for the brother.’

ROBERT: ‘Yes, I did, and I was told he’d left, quite suddenly, no forwarding address.’

CRISTY: ‘Did you happen to get his surname?’

ROBERT: ‘It’s possible someone told me, but if they did, I can’t recall it now. It almost certainly wouldn’t have been English.’

GITA: ‘Then the next thing we knew the sisters had gone, taking Sadie with them – and Robert was getting ready to go back to Australia and I suppose … we just got on with our lives.’

Realizing they were at the end of what Gita and Robert could remember, Cristy signalled for Connor to stop recording. She was thinking now of what it was going to mean to Sadie to learn her mother’s name – and that the man in a hat whose shoulders she was riding in one of the photos was probably her uncle.

Where were Janina and Lukas now?

What had happened to them?

What about Sadie’s father?

Connor was saying, ‘We need to get Gita’s account of her time with Sadie on record. Is that OK with you, Gita? We haven’t worn you out, have we?’

‘Not a bit of it,’ she retorted. ‘I’m happy to go over things again. I’ll probably find better ways of saying them second time around. And while we’re doing that, perhaps Robert could take Cristy over to the coast path to show her the house?’