Page 50 of Darling Girls

She spoke in an exaggerated singsong voice even when she saiddrug addicts. It was like she’d been sedated or lobotomised or something.

‘I told Scott to put my name down for infant respite care,’ she continued, her eyes fixed on the baby. ‘Short-term placements for babies who are removed from their parents at short notice. There are so many innocent babies who need homes, and I decided that we should do our part.’

Jessica was surprised to hear this. She had assumed Miss Fairchild was only prepared to take in older kids. After all, babies were a lot of work, and Miss Fairchild was so attached to her routines, her clean house, her ability to control everyone and everything. It was hard to imagine how a baby would fit in with the environment she’d created at Wild Meadows.

In other ways, though, it made sense. Above all else, Miss Fairchild demanded utter devotion. She’d made it clear that Jessica had failed to provide it. She wasn’t sure Norah and Alicia were ever expected to provide it – their purpose, as far as Jessica could tell, was to help pay the bills. Obviously she’d decided to find someone who would offer the unconditional adoration she craved. Who could be more devoted than a baby?!

Jessica heard muffled voices in the hallway, and a moment later Norah and Alicia peered around the corner.

‘Come in, girls,’ Miss Fairchild said cheerfully.

‘It’s a baby,’ Norah said, entering the room then almost immediately taking a step back, as if afraid the baby would leap at her.

‘A little girl,’ Miss Fairchild replied. She cooed softly at the bundle in her arms. ‘Her name is Rhiannon.’

‘Are we keeping her?’ Alicia asked.

‘It’s just a respite placement for now, but who knows?’

Norah’s lip curled, making it clear what she thought of the idea.

‘Anyway, I might put Sleeping Beauty down for a nap, and then I might have a nap myself. Little Miss was quite unsettled last night, and I’m exhausted.’

Miss Fairchild heaved herself to her feet, baby still in her arms. Before leaving the room, bizarrely, she kissed each of them on the forehead.

‘I think she’s gone mad,’ Norah said, when Miss Fairchild had disappeared upstairs.

‘I think she’s in love,’ Alicia said.

The three of them got busy with the morning chores, but Alicia’s comment reverberated in Jessica’s mind for hours.I think she’s in love.It was distressing how much it hurt.

Rhiannon was an astonishingly unsettled baby. In the three days she’d spent at Wild Meadows, the only time she wasn’t crying was when she was asleep, which wasn’t very often.

‘That baby is broken,’ Norah said for what felt like the fiftieth time. ‘It has no off switch.’

‘She,’ Jessica corrected. ‘Shehas no off switch. She is a human.’

‘She is a monster,’ Norah muttered.

Miss Fairchild tried everything she could to soothe her – patting her, singing to her, reading aloud. Nothing seemed to work. For a newborn, she had an impressive set of lungs.

‘Norah is right,’ Miss Fairchild said tersely on the fourth day. ‘This baby is broken.’

Miss Fairchild’s buoyant mood had well and truly sunk by then. Jessica wasn’t as worried about it as her sisters were. They’d enjoyed her brief period of good cheer, when she’d been far too worried about the baby to bother with persecuting them, but Jessica, to her shame, hadn’t enjoyed it all. As far as she was concerned, the less Miss Fairchild liked the child, the better.

On the fifth night, Rhiannon’s crying just didn’t stop. When Jessica finally peeked into Miss Fairchild’s bedroom, she noticed Miss Fairchild hadn’t even bothered to pick her up from her crib.

‘Want me to have a go?’ Jessica said.

‘Would you mind?’ Miss Fairchild replied with an almost comical level of gratitude.

‘Of course not.’ On the contrary, the idea of feeling needed and appreciated by Miss Fairchild was still like a drug to her. ‘You go to sleep. I’ll take care of everything.’

Jessica carried Rhiannon downstairs, where she rocked, soothed and sang to her. Rhiannon didn’t seem to care for Jessica’s singing, because she screamed the whole night through. But as the sun rose, she finally drifted off to asleep in Jessica’s arms, likely out of sheer exhaustion. And Jessica lowered herself into the armchair and slept too.

When Jessica opened her eyes again, Miss Fairchild was standing in front of her.

‘Oh,’ Jessica said.