When We Tried To Be Good E-Book

Ruth Danes

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Joshua Delacourt's world is built on stories. Certain of his claim to the title of Lord of Lothwold, he commands a devoted following, but his arrogance leaves him isolated in the so-called real world.

Poppy is just as determined to seize power. Convinced she’s the true Lady of Lothwold, she’s ready to defy everyone - including her parents, to claim her place in the legendary Woldsheart.

Across town, Ishita dreams of escape from her grim existence as an escort. When the mysterious Captain Drogo steps into her life with stories of battles across the void and monstrous invaders, she can scarcely believe him.

Thrown together in a whirlwind of ancient feuds and secrets, Joshua, Poppy, and Ishita have to face truths about their pasts and decide what they truly desire... and what they’re willing to risk to get it.

A gripping fantasy adventure, WHEN WE TRIED TO BE GOOD is the third book in the Woldsheart Chronicles series by Ruth Danes.

Leseprobe

When We Tried To Be Good

The Woldsheart Chronicles

Book Three

Ruth Danes

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

About the Author

Copyright © 2024 by Ruth Danes

Layout design and Copyright © 2024 by Next Chapter

Published 2024 by Next Chapter

Edited by Lorna Read

Cover art by Lordan June Pinote

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

ChapterOne

1st May 2029, Nottingham, England

Like most people, I tried to be good. Indeed, I considered myself to be a good person. However, not only was I good, I was someone special. A first amongst equals. A leader. A man destined for great things. The heir to a noble house which nobody much talked about, living hidden in exile. The secrecy only added to what was special and pleasurable.

My paternal grandmother, Josephine Delacourt, told me tales when I was a little boy that both drew us closer and encouraged my parents and wider family to cut contact with her.

“Only foolish people believe there is only one world, this world,” she would tell me. “You and I know better. We know the truth. Don’t we, Josh?”

I would beam back at her, basking in the knowledge that I was her favourite grandchild and enjoying her stories because they were interesting in themselves. Whether I was a sporty seven-year-old watching Britain do so well at the Olympic Games during that glorious summer of 2012, or an eleven-year-old trying to understand what was going on when my country voted to leave the EU, her tales were a backdrop to my life.

My parents disapproved of these tales. I was an only child and my father’s plumbing business made plenty of money, so they were on the alert to my becoming spoiled. They were kind and loving, but also firm and clear-headed. They knew I had an ego, a tendency to arrogance and to have a high opinion of myself. They realised Granny Josephine’s fantastical tales were not helping me to become a pleasant, grounded and balanced person.

Looking back, I think the bizarreness of her stories stopped them from taking them seriously for years.

Granny Josephine told me how, many millennia ago, there were multiple worlds, many universes which existed side by side until the gods decided to amalgamate them into two worlds.

“Ignorant people don’t believe these gods and goddesses exist. They either don’t believe in any deity, or they believe in false gods. However, we know better, don’t we?”

Of course we did. We knew that Fairy Folk once walked in the other world and that their magical powers still lingered in their descendants. We knew that, in the other world, dragons did not just live on Welsh flags or Chinese takeaway signs. We also knew that there was a noble house in this other world, the House of Lothwold.

“It’s the noblest, most ancient house in the Kingdom of the Woldsheart,” she would tell me. “Our ancestors, Lord Augustim and Lady Richeldis, came over some two hundred years ago. They were the heads of the House of Lothwold, but they were betrayed, then overthrown by a couple of evil usurpers. Their descendants apparently still rule those lands in the Woldsheart, but it’s not right, Josh, it absolutely isn’t. I should rule, and you should be my heir.”

“Me? Not Dad, or Uncle Ashley, or Auntie Lou? Why me and not them or any of my cousins?”

I knew why. I just wanted my ego stroked.

She would shake her head.

“No. Neither of my sons or my daughter would do. They don’t have the courage, the ability or the strength of character to rule. I also reject five of my grandchildren. Instead, I choose you, Josh. You are a worthy successor, my only worthy successor. You are the true heir, by right of blood, to the House of Lothwold. How I curse the descendants of those who stole from our ancestors and who occupy that place which should be ours.”

She sighed heavily, her light blue eyes gazing into the distance at a life which had been snatched away from her, before turning her attention back to me.

“You must always be good, Josh. You must always be a good boy and set an example to your peers. Lead by example, whether you are on the football pitch or in the classroom. Your behaviour must be worthy of your house and your rank.”

Other lads might have taken this as a command to behave well, to be polite and respectful towards others and thus earn their respect.

Not me. I took it as a licence to always be right, to always lead and to never compromise on anything. My parents tried to curb this domineering behaviour, but as I grew older, they could do less and less to control me. My grandmother, who did not receive the calls from the school about my refusal to cooperate in class, or hear complaints from parents that I had upset their sons, made it clear that I was perfect in her eyes. I could do no wrong. Teachers who could not handle a high-spirited child had no business being in a classroom. My football coach was overreacting. I was not dangerous on the pitch; I was just an enthusiastic player. My friends must have spun their parents a lie, because I was a good boy. I would never knowingly harm anyone.

Growing up and having nobody to play with, or being mocked for making crazy claims, meant that I had learned to temper my arrogance and keep quiet about my noble blood by the time I started secondary school. Granny Josephine approved of the second change.

“A wise man knows when to shout, when to speak and when to stay silent. There is no point in casting pearls before swine. Besides, there are enemies everywhere.”

“Everywhere?” I was surprised. Sure, I had fallen out with half of my class, but they were just other ten- or eleven-year-olds. What harm could they really do to me?

“Oh yes. With power comes danger. People want what you have. Look what happened to our forefathers. Forced into exile in an alien world, via a void full of evil creatures, obliged to live at a lower rank than their blood merited. No. Face people head-on in battle when you have to, but it is no disgrace to avoid unnecessary conflict.”

By now, my parents wanted me to avoid unnecessary contact with my grandmother. They had been glad of our close bond, and her caring for me after school had saved them money, but they no longer thought she was a good influence on me. They no longer thought she simply told me tall but harmless tales to entertain me.

Slowly but firmly, Granny Josephine was removed from my life. By the time I turned twelve, late in the autumn of 2016, I realised I had not seen her alone for months, and when we did meet it was not for long. As soon as I realised what was happening, I protested, but to no avail. My parents never said anything explicitly, yet we were kept apart. The following spring, she fell ill and was moved into a home, where she died the following summer.

Although I was devastated by her death, life moved on. Friends, watching or playing football and school distracted me. I became interested in girls. Now that my grandmother was no longer around to show blatant favouritism, I started to get on better with my cousins and other wider family, although they were spread out all over the East Midlands, so we did not meet often. My parents and I remained in South Loxley, a prosperous suburb of Nottingham.

Over the years, I thought about Granny Josephine and her stories. I missed her and her love, that was constant, but my feelings towards her tales of a secret world, where aristocrats ruled in a mediaeval manner, dragons were ridden and my ancestors were usurped, changed frequently.

I had learned to keep quiet by the time I started secondary school, so nobody teased me or raised concerns. As a teenager, I became convinced that she had either been deluded while appearing sane in all other areas of her life, or she had made up a fantastical tale to entertain her beloved grandson. She probably never realised that I had taken her words as seriously as I did.

However, this changed when I was in my mid-teens. It was 2021, the third lockdown was dragging, and I was sixteen. I was as fed up with restrictions as the rest of the nation was. I wanted to be out and doing things with my friends. Like everybody else, I also spent too much time online, where I amused myself by reading about conspiracy theories. I would shake my head in a superior sort of way, knowing myself to be too smart to believe in such nonsense.

One day, I read about one that I could not shake off as made-up rubbish. Indeed, I could not stop re-reading the words.

My grandmother’s wild story was being reported as fact. There was a secret world. In the distant past, there had been many more worlds, but they had become combined into two worlds. A void, full of danger, separated our world from this other world. However, it was possible to pass from one world to the other. Portals had existed in the past and might exist again in the future.

Of course, most people mocked these claims, just as they and I had mocked those who insisted that the Earth is flat and that Covid vaccinations contained microchips. However, a small but significant number of people either believed these tales, or at least did not dismiss them out of hand. Instead, they asked questions.

A few people, a thousand people, who could tell how many online, stated that they had travelled between the worlds, that they knew someone who had, or even that they came from the other world. Their accounts differed but had many similarities. A sort of medieval society where a kind of paganism dominated all aspects of daily life, like the Catholic church had in the Middle Ages. The landmass that we knew as Great Britain was split into multiple independent kingdoms. The aristocracy held far greater power than they did in modern Britain. Words like Lothwold, the Woldsheart and the Westlands danced before my incredulous eyes.

Granny Josephine was right. She was telling the truth. I really am noble, the rightful heir to the House of Lothwold, a descendent of Lord Augustim and Lady Richeldis. But what should I do now?

I told my parents, showing them what I had found on my phone. They were flabbergasted and did not know what to say. Later that day, my mother tried to persuade me that Granny Josephine had been inspired by what we had both read online. I had simply read the origins of her tales.

“It doesn’t make them true,” she warned me.

The caution in her eyes showed how she feared I would be sucked in again. Become arrogant again. Start acting like a mediaeval lord again.

“Granny never used the internet any more than she had to,” I retorted. “It took Dad several months to persuade her to have an email account, and none of us could ever persuade her to use it. She told me many times that she didn’t trust the internet, she thought it spread viruses to humans, and it was full of lies. She reckoned she could get all the information and entertainment she needed from The Times, Radio 4 and the BBC. I bet she knew the truth before those posters did.”

“Josh…” my mother’s voice trailed off. “Please. Please be reasonable and think. Those posters have not posted anything true. It’s nonsense. Imagined, fabricated nonsense. The result of people being cooped up for too long by themselves. This is all just a coincidence. It must be. You are studying for science GCSEs. You must realise that this cannot be true. It’s simply impossible.”

I was not convinced, but I could not convince her that I was right, so we let the subject drop. Neither she, my father nor I mentioned the subject again, although I suspected they had many a private, anxious discussion between themselves. However, I had changed. I never stopped thinking about it.

My grandmother was right. I was right. Another world, a magical world exists, and in it lies my destiny. I am the rightful Lord of the House of Lothwold.

A week or so after I first read the claims online, I returned to the pages. Interest in this other world, its inhabitants and the void between ours and it, was growing. More people were claiming links to it.

Glowing with pride, I joined them, announcing myself as the true Lord of Lothwold. Mindful of the online safety which had been drummed into me from early childhood, I was careful not to give out any details that could be used to trace me in real life.

A few people were scornful at first. I suspect most people who read my eager words just ignored them. However, as I recounted my grandmother’s tales, adding specific details and answering every question put to me, the tide changed.

Within a month, I had a significant online following, hailing me as a lord in exile. The rightful ruler of an ancient house, who was being cheated of his rights. A young man to be listened to and admired.

This spilled out into my real life. As I left school to become an apprentice with Castle West Pest Control, my reputation grew. I encouraged it. While I learned how to eradicate pests naturally, using birds of prey and terriers to deal with vermin, I also navigated an online following which unnerved my family. My parents were afraid that I might attract trouble in real life. My wider family, to whom I was not close, kept their distance, as they found my behaviour embarrassing.

I admit that my behaviour was poor at times. I believed I was a ruler, and I followed my desires rather than any real sense of duty. I told others that I may do things that they may not. This worked a surprising number of times. People were willing to be led, especially in the virtual world. In contrast, my colleagues made it clear that they would not put up with my overbearing manner, so I kept my opinions to myself at work.

To my intense frustration, as life began to return to a new normal, as people spent more time in the real world and worried about the rising cost of living, my following faded. It was not possible to prove or disprove the existence of this secret world, and the debate about it reached a stalemate that soon became tedious. I was not cancelled. I simply became irrelevant, much to my parents’ relief.

Inwardly, I was hurt, but I asked myself what exactly could I do? I could not go to the second world and demand my birthright. How would I find a portal when they had all been closed for years, let alone pass through it without being attacked by the evil creatures of the void? Instead, I had to settle for being ordinary. One of the crowd. A young, white Englishman, living in a suburb which was mainly white in an English city. I spoke with the local accent. My job was unusual, hunting vermin using animals and expelling other pests using herbs was a new idea, but it was rapidly becoming mainstream. It was no longer anything extraordinary. I was not recognised as extraordinary.

The mirror and memories of compliments told me that I was handsome. My auburn hair was thick, my skin was clear, my deep-set eyes were well-shaped and a rich brown in colour. I was tall and both lean and muscular. My manager frequently told me I did a good job at work, I had scored all eights and nines in my GCSEs and passed my driving test first time. Nobody could deny I was intelligent, and plenty of people had praised both my achievements and my quick mind.

I was also intelligent enough not to believe everything that the media, especially social media, promised me. Indeed, I was no follower of Andrew Tate. Nobody could accuse me of misogyny, nor could I be accused of thinking that I could become a billionaire simply by putting my life online.

Yet surely I deserved something more, something better, something special? I was special, wasn’t I? There was just the small matter of proving my birthright, once and for all, finding a portal, avoiding evil creatures and claiming my true identity in another world.

The years passed. Charles III abdicated the evening before his coronation. He believed he was too old for the weight of the crown, but in trying to do right, he unleashed chaos. His eldest son did not become William V. Instead, a series of events led to London declaring its independence from the rest of the UK and becoming a city-state. This move shocked everyone, especially Londoners.

Independence campaigns in Scotland led to the country being split into the Highlands and the Lowlands instead of breaking off from the rest of the UK. The Troubles flared up once again in Northern Ireland. Embers of hatred were nurtured and fanned to become raging fires that tore lives apart.

These events were soon dubbed ‘the Disorder’ by the media and the general public. From the May of 2023 to the beginning of 2025, there was chaos and poverty all over what was once the UK. Law and order broke down, supplies of everyday items ran low and people were unsure who or what to believe or believe in. I briefly attracted attention online due to my birthright in the other world, yet that faded away as a stability of sorts returned.

As the UK became a republic, officially called the British States and ruled by six parliaments that formed a super parliament every year, though everyone still said the UK out of habit, life returned to something like normal for me. In the summer of 2028, I moved into a flat-share in another part of Nottingham with two other men from Castle West Pest Control: Dylan Eames-Duffy and Felix Grove.

The three of us were lucky, especially Felix and me. Neither of our families were poor, and they lived close by. His background was solidly middle class, mine was working class made good. Despite my highlighting my working-class roots whenever I deemed it advantageous to me, I could not pretend to have ever known poverty. My father’s business saw to that. Nottingham was not affected too badly by the Disorder, and my friends and I could even eat some sort of fruit or vegetable every day.

Dylan was more adversely affected because he came from Church Newton in Northern Ireland, where the Troubles had merged with the Disorder to produce a hell which he, a man born in 2006, had never expected to experience. His parents had never expected their children to experience such hatred and terror as their parents had in the last century. My flatmate firmly described himself as Northern Irish, both British and Irish. His parents had had a mixed marriage, which had caused slight tension in their communities. This tension was now growing and was affecting his wider family, who had previously been accepting of the union between a Catholic and a Protestant.

Nothing irritated Dylan more than what he called my desire to stir up hatred and division, as he put it, by repeatedly talking about my roots in the other world, namely how Lothwold was superior to all other houses, and the various wrongs done to my ancestors. If I knew what it really was like to live in a place where people blamed each other for the actions of their co-religionists years, if not centuries, ago, I would not talk such shite. I could not know what it was truly like to live in a divided community.

This annoyed me because deep down I knew it to be true. Felix, five years younger than me and three years younger than Dylan, would try to keep the peace in his genial, witty manner. Despite being the youngest of the group, he often seemed like the oldest and wisest of us. I knew that Dylan had a lot of respect for him.

The three of us meandered our way through life as people generally do. 2028 turned to 2029. I met my girlfriend, one Delilah Coren. Felix, an only child like me but who had now lost both his parents, was clearly seeing someone, yet he was unusually tight-lipped when asked questions. Dylan remained single. He wanted to return to Northern Ireland, where his family was. They had left Church Newton for a town on the coast which they described as much nicer and far more tolerant. He agonised over the decision of whether to stay in Nottingham or to try life in Brideport Bay.

For the meantime, the three of us remained living in our flat near the city centre and working for Castle West Pest Control. Despite the Disorder being officially over and reports of the Troubles dying away, we all kept a watchful eye on the news.

“The BBC are a month behind the rest of us,” Dylan said to Felix and me one evening while he scrolled through his phone.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“They’ve played an April Fools trick, and it’s an absolutely stupid one. It’s too obvious.”

Curious, Felix and I walked over to where Dylan was sitting. He read aloud from his phone.

There was talk of changing the law to extend the list of animals which people could not keep as pets. Strange animals, animals which could not be classified because they were new hybrids of some sort, had been rounded up and shot. They were unlike any other animal that the police had seen before. Their owners were reluctant to talk about exactly what species their pet was, let alone what breed. As they had broken no law, the police could take no further action.

The police were called because these animals had suddenly turned on their owners, or the family or neighbours of their owners. They were described as giant insects, ‘like a hornet but taller than a man’, or ‘massive birds like an emu and incredibly aggressive’.

“Weird,” was my take on it. “Very weird indeed.”

“If it’s not a late April Fools, it’s some sort of piss-take,” Dylan said, before returning to his phone. He carried on scrolling, I picked up my phone, and Felix, who had remained silent, slipped out of the flat.

That night in bed, a thought struck me. Were these the evil creatures from the void? They fitted the descriptions which Granny Josephine had given, but how had they travelled from the void to our world, and why would anyone want to keep them as pets?

I mentioned this to Felix the next day at work, but he did not want to discuss the subject. He kept brushing me off, which annoyed me. Here was proof that this other world existed, proof that my claims about my birthright were correct. Why was this not important to him?

To console myself, I went on my phone and got into an argument with someone I had never met about the status of the House of Lothwold within the Woldsheart. As the de jure head of that house, I put him right on several points of our history. He disagreed, quoting several sources, but I put him in his place. I knew better. My word trumped his because it was my word. I was Lord, and nobody could argue against that or against me.

This spat revived my online reputation, much to my glee and my parents’ concern. Dylan rolled his eyes and walked away when I jubilantly told him of my success. Felix was uneasy.

“Look, do you really know what you are dealing with?” he asked me, one evening in late May 2029. Dylan had gone out, leaving us alone.

“Of course I do. After all, I am a direct descendent of Lady Richeldis and Lord Augustim–”

He cut me off, which was unlike him.

“I know, you’ve told me before, but do you really know what being the Lord of Lothwold involves? Who you would be dealing with and within what sort of society? Do you truly know the impact of making such a claim, in this world and in the other?”

I was too hurt by his suggestion that I did not know what I was doing, to hear that he accepted the existence of the other world. I told him I knew better than anyone as to what being the head of the House of Lothwold entailed, and we argued as much as he would ever argue. In the end, we agreed to disagree, and he got up to leave.

“I’m off to see Bliss.”

I had never met his girlfriend, although I had brought Delilah back to the flat before.

“You should bring her over sometime,” I said, by way of reconciliation.

He said something non-committal, but we parted on good terms. Feeling at a loose end, I rang my girlfriend. Delilah picked up, and we chatted about commonplace matters for some time before she turned the subject to job-hunting.

“I’m just not sure what to do,” she sighed. “Do I keep focusing on permanent positions in Nottingham and the surrounding area, where I have had no luck since I graduated, or do I expand my horizons? I don’t want to be stacking shelves and mopping floors for much longer.”

“Do you mean looking for permanent engineering jobs further away, settling for temporary contracts for now, or working in a completely different field? Babes, you graduated with a first-class degree last summer. Electrical and electronic engineering has been your passion since you were a child, you’ve often told me that. Don’t give up now.”

“No, I won’t give up getting a permanent engineering role somewhere. I just mean… I think I need to be prepared to travel a bit further and be more open-minded about the job I might eventually do. Not hold out for what seems ideal, if you know what I mean. My dream job might only exist in my imagination.”

“You don’t want to move away?”

“No, absolutely not. I’m a proud Geordie, but Nottingham is my home now.”

I felt reassured. Although I did not love Delilah yet, I could feel myself falling for her. She would not be my first love, I had experienced that as a teenager, but she was my second serious girlfriend. I could see some sort of a future with her.

There had been a few problems in our relationship, but they seemed minor to me.

“What have you been up to, apart from work?” Delilah turned the subject to me. “How are Felix and Dylan? How are your mum and dad?”

“We’re all good. Dylan is also wondering what to do next. He is still tempted to go back to Northern Ireland, but he thinks it’s better here in terms of job opportunities, and he is worried about the Troubles. He is being a bit off with me lately.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

She and Dylan were not close, although I had met her through him. They had known each other for a couple of years, through a shared hobby. I felt no qualms in confiding in her and telling her how he would not accept my opinion on my birthright.

“It’s crazy how he compares it to Northern Ireland,” I concluded. “It’s nothing like that. I am just being open about who I really am and asking for what I should have inherited. Nobody can say I am harming anyone.”

Delilah was silent. Eventually, she spoke in a careful voice.

“Josh… you know we’ve disagreed about this in the past. What is it that you expect from claiming this title? How will it impact your life? Why is it important to you?”

“Well… it’s who I really am. It’s what I’m entitled to. My family and I have been the victims of a gross injustice for over two centuries.”

“Okay, but what do you expect from holding this title? What benefits do you think you will gain if you are officially acknowledged as the Lord of Lothwold? And how will you be acknowledged as the Lord of Lothwold? You cannot expect to travel to the other world, or have people from there come over here.”

Her unspoken, because it doesn’t actually exist,hung between us.

“I don’t know how I will be acknowledged, but I can only hope that I will be. Should I receive what is rightfully mine, I know I will feel better because a wrong will have been righted. I will do good with my power. I know I will.”

“The thing is, are you the only person who believes they have a claim in this other world? Who else is out there, what are they demanding, and what will they do to get what they think they deserve?”

ChapterTwo

Narrative continued by Gemma Taylor

I sipped my tea and looked at Paige, who was observing me with compassion. My friend was proving to be the sympathetic listener that I badly needed. Her daughter had vanished some twenty-five years ago, and I was in grave danger of losing mine.

“What exactly has Poppy done? Do you know who she is communicating with online?” she asked. “This all sounds very out of character for her.”

“It all began back in January. She started having extremely vivid dreams about this so-called other world which people keep discussing. I told her it’s made up, but she believes it. Have you read any of it? It’s complete nonsense. She showed me an online declaration by King Ambrose of the Westlands, which is also signed by Lord Raburt of the House of Lothwold of the Woldsheart. It’s a declaration of invasion on our world.”

Paige’s bemusement showed on her pale face.

I continued.

“Apparently, we have mistreated people from this other world. We have found people who came through a portal, and we have imprisoned them for the purpose of conducting scientific research. Certain evil creatures that exist in a void between the two worlds have been tempted to come to our world by the same scientists. They have acquired a taste for human flesh, and they are causing havoc as they try to find people to eat in both worlds.

“King Ambrose and Lord Raburt have come with an army to kill the evil creatures, to make us return their people, and to swear to never meddle with their world or with the creatures that dwell in the void again.”

Paige’s green eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. It was some seconds before she could speak.

“Why does Poppy believe this blatant work of fiction? She turned seventeen at the end of February. Besides, she’s a clever girl who knows her own mind.”

“Oh, I agree she is clever, but her ability to use her brain has vanished, absolutely vanished. She appears to have no common sense now. If mental health services still existed, I would be getting her help. As it is, she has simply become one deluded, unwell person amongst millions of deluded, unwell people.”

“I remember you telling me about her interest in her Irish roots last summer. You said it was all she talked about for weeks. Has this interest in another world replaced that?”

“I believe it has. I think she has always felt very ordinary, a local white girl, living in an area where most people are white and sound local. She wanted to be special, to stand out. You know my maiden name is Taylor? Well, my grandparents were called Schneider, and they came to UK in the mid-1930s from Berlin. They quickly anglicised their surname, understandably. Poppy was very interested in them when she took an interest in my family history, but when we told her that her great-great uncles and aunts were fervent Nazis, she abruptly changed her focus to how Irish she might be, as Linehan is an Irish name.”

“How did her friends react?”

I sighed deeply and sadly.

“They didn’t care one way or another, which is good because they like her for herself, or rather they liked her. Since her obsession with this other world, she has driven almost all of them away. She is still close to Freya, a lovely girl, but since Freya has got a girlfriend, they have naturally spent less time together, which I think hurts Poppy and pushes her further down the rabbit hole. I must admit that although Poppy is far from stupid, she has remarkably little self-awareness. She has no idea how she comes across to others. Indeed, we had her assessed for autism when she was younger, in the days when those sort of services still existed, but we were told she is definitely neurotypical. She has no additional needs.”

“Yet you say she thinks she belongs in this other world?”

“Yes.”

“But it doesn’t exist!”

“I know.”

Digging deep within myself, this business was wearing me down, I told Paige how Poppy had been interested in history since she was tiny. Ian and I had encouraged this hobby and indulged her in many conversations about Joan of Arc and Lady Jane Grey. The two long-dead teenagers seemed to have merged in her mind and mixed with her sense of identity. The fact that we had given her Joanna as a middle name inspired her further.

“She thinks that it is her destiny to go to a kingdom in the other world and govern there. Her dreams are so vivid that they must be visions, apparently. Jane, Joan and Joanna are all versions of the same name. She sees herself in them.”

My friend looked at me in horror.

“For the love of God, Gemma, take her to a doctor! I know mental health services were phased out years ago, but GPs still exist, for now at least. Take her to a surgery and get her help.”

I nodded. Ian and I had divorced years ago, and we shared custody of Poppy, our only child since her elder sister was stillborn twenty years ago. Our relationship was good, and we still parented together. He had shared his concerns with me. Our daughter, our only surviving child, was striding down a path full of dangers that she was too young to see, striding with the same determination that she habitually showed when she wanted something.

“Don’t make the same mistakes that Charles and I made,” Paige suddenly cautioned me. “Accept that you are not infallible, acknowledge that there is no such thing as a perfect parent and that it’s alright to get help. If we had been better parents, if we had listened to professionals, then I am convinced that Marnie would be here today, and the three of us would be happy.”

I was surprised. Although Ian and I had known Paige and her husband for some dozen years, they had rarely spoken to us about their daughter, who went missing in 2004 and who would now be in her late thirties, assuming she was still alive. Not wanting to hurt our friends, we never raised the subject with them because they seldom did.

“Charles and I were appalling parents.” Paige spoke in a frank tone, although she did not meet my eye.

Intrigued, as this confession was a complete surprise to me, I leaned forward. Paige continued, her voice sad and riddled with guilt.

“Like you and Ian, we struggled to have a living child, although our problem was simply that I could not conceive for some years. When Marnie was born, we were both delighted, but then quickly overwhelmed. Despite support from our families, and I had babysat in my teens, we were completely unprepared for parenthood. The exhaustion, the tedium and the sheer relentlessness of it. We expected too much from parenthood, too much joy and too many happy moments, and we expected too much from our daughter. We expected her to behave better and be more understanding as a child than we were as adults.

“I was also ridiculously jealous and resentful of Marnie. I resented having to wait for what seemed like hours while she learned to tie her shoelaces or comb her hair. I resented her curiosity about life, yet she probably asked no more questions than any other young child. The phrase ‘Little girls steal their mothers’ beauty’ often sprung to my mind and wound me up. She was always extremely pretty and sweet-natured, whereas pregnancy and then motherhood definitely took their toll on me. Her intelligence and talents didn’t help, either.

“She was musical and a talented artist. I’m tone-deaf and can barely draw a stick figure. However, she had no aptitude for learning foreign languages, unlike Charles and me. I’m ashamed to say we harangued her until she broke down in tears over her homework, then we mocked her for crying. It felt like she was being stupid to spite us. We never smacked her, and she had everything she needed physically, like food, toys and nice clothes, but we did emotionally abuse and emotionally neglect her.”

I stared at her, thoroughly appalled. Paige saw my expression and flushed deeply.

“I know. There was no excuse for how we behaved. It is as well that my parents lived on the same street as us when we lived in Cardiff, and Marnie could spend time there and bond with them. Either parenting came more naturally to my parents, or they simply had a better attitude.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I murmured.

“When she inevitably developed anorexia in her early teens, shortly after we moved to England, the hospital staff had plenty to say to us. They told us exactly what we were doing wrong. Instead of listening, feeling guilty, apologising to Marnie and trying to do better, we dismissed her illness and its treatment as attention-seeking self-indulgence. She was discharged, then equally inevitably ran off with someone, almost certainly an older boy or man. She vanished on the morning of Wednesday 22nd September 2004. She was fourteen, and nobody has seen any trace of her since.”

I sat back, unable to speak, let alone able to know what to say.

“It took losing our daughter and living with not knowing what has happened to her, to make Charles and I see the error of our ways and to appreciate the lovely girl that we had. Had we not had each other, we would have collapsed and never got back up. We both dream of her, but they are bizarre, fantastical dreams. Neither of us has much faith in dreams. They are no substitute for reality.”

She leaned forward and took my hands in hers. I neither pulled away nor clasped hers.

“You and Ian are wiser and better than Charles and I were.” Her voice had changed from weak and regretful, to firm and hopeful. “Dreams are simply our brains processing information. They mean nothing. They are not prophecies. Poppy is simply projecting what she wants, what she believes will solve her teenage angst, into her nighttime thoughts. Nothing supernatural is happening. You can deal with the real world, Gemma, I know you can. I know you can get her back.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I repeated.

She smiled kindly at me. I simply could not match this tender expression in my old friend’s familiar eyes, to a woman who had abused her child on multiple occasions over many years.

“What I have told you must be hard to hear and a lot to take in. I acknowledge that, and I don’t ask for sympathy because I don’t deserve it. What I want you to remember is that, although it’s too late for me, Charles and Marnie, it is not too late for you, Ian and Poppy. You are good parents, whereas Charles and I only thought we were and did not care how our behaviour affected our daughter until she left us. Even if she had not vanished, we would definitely have a distant relationship today. Too much damage was done, damage which, quite rightly, will weigh on our consciences for the rest of our days. Enjoy a clear conscience, Gemma. God knows I never will again.”

I was too taken aback by what Paige had confessed to continue our conversation. She soon left, with a sad expression on her beautiful face, realising that although I would remain her friend, I could never see her in the same light again.

I found myself ringing Ian, praying for him to pick up. Despite our separation, he was always the person I turned to when anything happened that even vaguely touched upon Poppy.

Thankfully, he answered and had time to talk. I repeated what Paige had told me. He was shocked but not surprised, and I wondered what Charles might have said to him over the years. Their most recent conversations that I knew of had focussed on Charles’s manager asking him to brush up on his Latin. The dead language was being revived in the wake of fears about AI, in the hope that it might confuse AI that was getting out of human control, and the news had surprised Ian and me. However, I kept to the subject of our daughter. She would always be the most important subject to either of us.

“I agree with you,” Ian told me. “We need to get her to see the doctor. The problem is that there is a twelve-week waiting list for appointments. I know, because I’m still registered with Balthazar Road Health Centre, and I rang them this morning about my migraine medication.”

“Oh God… Should we take her to A and E?”

There was a pause. I could almost hear him thinking.

“No. Let’s not go down that route just yet. What if they decide to section her? That would only make things worse.”

“Yes. She doesn’t need to be sectioned. It would only damage her.”

“I happened to mention this to Gordon the other day, and he was very interested. He told me he knows people who have gotten completely immersed in this world. Suppose I ask him to talk with Poppy? He’s known her since she was a baby, and even though they have never been especially close, I believe she trusts and respects him enough to listen to him.”

“Do you think he can help?”

“I think he would at least do no harm.”

ChapterThree

Narrative continued by Poppy Linehan

I spun away from Freya, my nose in the air and my harsh words no doubt ringing in her ears, thus cutting off the last of my so-called friends.

She did not call after me, let alone run up to me. Maybe I had hurt her too deeply this time. Instead, she let me get far ahead before starting her own walk home from school.

Too bad. She deserved it, I thought angrily as I marched through the busy streets, a seemingly ordinary girl wearing jeans and trainers and carrying a rucksack. Her words were exclusionary, and I was right to tell her not to comment about what she does not know and is not her place to comment on. I was also right that, as a lesbian, she should know better than to make exclusionary remarks. Yes, she was completely in the wrong to tell me that my behaviour is isolating me and worrying people. She does not even believe that the other world exists. How can such a person dare to make a single comment on anything?