Page 47 of A Season for Scandal

Oliver returned to scowling down at his food, colour touching his cheeks, and I resisted the urge to fling my fork at Mrs Lavigne.

Instead, I took a deep breath, toying with a carrot – at least I thought it was a carrot – on my plate. Mrs Finch had managed to get very little out of the Lavignes in mine and Oliver’s absence, and we had both agreed that dinner presented the perfect opportunity for a politely veiled interrogation. After all, idle chatter was one of my particular skills.

“I hope you won’t mind my asking,” I said, looking over the table and past the warm flicker of candlelight to the Lavignes, “but I must admit I’m absolutely desperate to hear the story of how Helene and Mr Lockhart came to be reunited. As you can imagine” – I fluttered my lashes at Oliver – “Mr Lockhart has been rather scant on the details, and it is such a romantic tale.”

“Miss Bloom.” Mr Lavigne chuckled. “And here I thought it was your sister who was the novel reader.”

“I think anyone would find it hard to resist being swept up in a story like this, and one with such a happy ending.” I picked up my wine glass and sipped casually. “I understand the accident was in Paris, Helene? Do you know why you and your mother were there?”

Helene cleared her throat. “No, I don’t. There is much that I still don’t remember about that part – only pieces of the journey. We were on a boat, and Mother was very sick.”

“She always did suffer from terrible seasickness,” Oliver put in. “She couldn’t even go out in a rowing boat on the lake without turning pea green.” It was another fact to add to the tally of what Helene knew.

Helene nodded. “The accident itself is nothing but a blur. Only the image of the inside of the carriage, a sharp noise, I think, loud and frightening. Then everything goes … blank.”

“For which I think we can all be extremely grateful,” Mr Lavigne said firmly.

“Yes.” Mrs Lavigne covered her daughter’s hand with her own and squeezed. “I’ll always be glad that part of the experience is lost to you.”

“It must have been awful,” I said gently. “You were so young. Your parents are quite right that missing that particular memory can only be a blessing.”

Mrs Lavigne’s face softened at this. “From what we have been able to piece together, Helene’s accident took place in an area called Le Pecq, just outside Paris.”

“It’s a place where the river loops round,” Mr Lavigne continued, gesturing with his hand to indicate the serpentine path of the water. “It seems that during the accident Helene was thrown quite some distance from the carriage and ended up in the water. She had suffered a nasty head injury and travelled down river some way, before being washed up on the banks somewhere to the north. From there, she wandered, disorientated, towards the village of Herblay, where we were living at the time.”

“I remember none of this,” Helene said. Oliver was watching with an expression that was impossible to read.

“When she was found, a ten-year-old child, bleeding from her head” – Mrs Lavigne’s face contorted with emotion – “she answered questions in French, but didn’t seem to remember anything but her name – Ellen, which the people who found her took to beHelene.”

“You must understand,” Mr Lavigne said earnestly, leaning forward, “that we tried to find out where Helene had come from, but it didn’t occur to anyone that she would be connected to an accident that happened over ten miles away, involving a Spanish woman who was presumed at the time to be travelling alone.”

“From what I have been able to discover,” Oliver added, “the authorities were under the impression that my mother had travelled to Paris by herself. By the time they realized Ellen had been in the carriage, it was easy to assume her body had been washed away, and my father was perfectly happy to accept this explanation.”

My opinion of Oliver’s father continued to sink lower and lower.

“We were unable to have children of our own,” Mrs Lavigne said with a tremble in her voice. “When Helene appeared, she seemed like a gift from God. She was alone in the world, and we took her in, raised her as our own. For months we spoke only French, and we tried to piece together information about her past, but Helene remembered nothing.”

“It was all … a blank space,” Helene said quietly.

“We didn’t even realize she spoke English at first,” Mrs Lavigne said, eyes wide. “And, if I’m truly honest, after a while we stopped asking questions. We couldn’t stand the thought of finding anything out that would mean Helene was taken from us.” She lifted her napkin to her face and dabbed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said tearfully. “It has been hard.” Here, her husband’s hand came down on her shoulder, while she clung to Helene’s fingers.

They made an affecting picture, the three of them holding on to one another. I felt my own throat tighten.

“About two months ago, Helene had another accident.” Mr Lavigne picked up the thread of the story. “A silly domestic scene involving a basket of apples and a loose floorboard. Helene hit her head, and although she was soon perfectly well, she began having these strange … visions, like waking dreams.”

“The first thing was a room with a rocking horse in,” Helene said. “It was old and missing one of its eyes, so I used to comb its mane over to cover it. Threaded my ribbons through the hair to make it pretty. I could remember it so clearly; hear the sound it made as it moved, a sort of soft creak.”

“My rocking horse,” Oliver said, his gaze frozen on Helene’s face.

She smiled tremulously. “Yes, that was why I wouldn’t let anyone get rid of it, even though we were too old to ride it any more. You said the eye was lost in battle.”

“That’s right.” A smile flickered on Oliver’s lips now.

“It took a while for us to realize these images were memories,” Mr Lavigne said. “Memories of her life here.” He looked around the dining room.

“Is such a thing really possible?” I murmured, caught up in the story they were weaving.

“The doctor we consulted in London certainly seemed to think so.” Mr Lavigne shrugged ruefully. “When we realized what was going on – that what she was seeing was not a strange dream or hallucination, but rather memories that had been somehow unlocked; we wanted to consult with an expert before turning up and upending the life of Mr Lockhart.”