You by Joanna Briscoe

forearm.
    ‘I can’t remember,’ said Dora. A skin of near-incomprehension formed like a cataract over her eyes.
    ‘Please, Dora,’ said Cecilia, holding her mother’s shoulders, and her heart seemed to rise into her voice. ‘You know I’ve spent a – lifetime suffering over this. I blame myself. But I have to . . . to ask you.’
    Dora smiled blankly.
    ‘I had my baby,’ said Cecilia, ploughing on with audible desperation. ‘You arranged the adoption. The de facto adoption. “Informal” doesn’t even – even cover it. There are lots of bits of information missing, aren’t there?’
    Dora shook her head.
    ‘I just want to know now who took her and what her chances of a happy life were.’
    ‘You want to do investigation? More investigation work?’ said Dora weakly, clearly struggling for words.
    ‘Of course I do,’ said Cecilia. ‘Of course I have – always. It got – nowhere. But now I’m here, it seems more pressing, more – possible.’ Tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked them away impatiently. ‘I want to find her, to contact her. I want to love her, to say sorry to her.’
    ‘No, no, no,’ said Dora, shaking her head.
    ‘I do,’ said Cecilia.
    ‘What would that do to your daughters?’
    ‘I don’t know . . . I don’t know.’
    ‘Exactly. It would be dreadful for them, Celie.’
    ‘I don’t think so –’
    ‘I want to protect them,’ said Dora.
    ‘You hardly even knew them for years,’ said Cecilia. She breathed deeply. She calmed her voice. ‘Did you?’
    ‘It wasn’t my choice,’ said Dora, hesitating. ‘This isn’t the way it’s going to be, is it, Celie? That you’ve moved here and you’re going to start raking all this up again?’
    Cecilia paused minutely. ‘Just tell me what she looked like.’
    Dora moved through the cottage, stumbling determinedly towards a leaf fallen from a ficus. She clutched other leaves in her hand, tugged them from the stem, went to pour water, glanced out of the window.
    Cecilia made herself look at Dora’s back. A urine container sat on the window ledge, and Dora’s hair was thinning. Cecilia moaned very faintly.
    ‘You saw your baby,’ said Dora eventually. She opened her mouth, then shut it.
    ‘For a few minutes,’ said Cecilia.
    Dora said nothing.
    Cecilia waited. Dora dropped her gaze.
    ‘Please,’ said Cecilia.
    Dora hung her head. She stood still, then went and sat in the kitchen.
    Cecilia gazed at Dora for a moment, pain softening her eyes, then turned, walked rapidly to the door and opened it, and Dora let her go in silence.
    Cecilia ran to the house across the vegetable garden, hearing the phone ringing loudly through cold air, and when she spoke to Ari, she told him nothing of what had just passed, because she couldn’t, though tears ran down her face. She was so distracted that he noticed and asked her what was wrong.
     
    On the Friday of half-term, Cecilia drove her oldest daughter, the red-headed, focused Romy, to St Anne’s girls’ school, established almost a decade previously on the grounds of what had once been Haye House. While still in London, Romy had claimed that she would accompany her family to the bog-stinking sticks only if she could attend the expensive and academically selective St Anne’s, and had secured herself a scholarship with daunting efficiency. Her parents had eventually capitulated, with some reluctance. The middle child, fifteen-year-old Izzie, scorned the very notion of St Anne’s and chose the local comprehensive, while the youngest, Ruth, attended Widecombe Primary.
    St Anne’s rose before Cecilia like a polished, stagy version of Haye House, the buildings and grounds of the now defunct progressive school somehow rendered more aged and august with money. Large urns of flowers flanked the entrance, where once there had been purple-painted steps and twisty fibreglass sculptures. CCTV cameras glinted discreetly above the parapets. Cecilia felt diminished. She was, to her dismay,