‘You never know,’ I say. ‘Maybe.’

Another teacher walks over and coos over the baby. ‘How old is she now?’

‘Almost four weeks,’ the mother answers.

I leave them to it, go through the gates. What I know about babies is precisely nothing. But she was so tiny. Four weeks old? I frown. In that first album of me, I’m fat-faced and crawling, playing with toys. How old am I when that album starts? Maybe Stella has another album tucked away some place. She’s so photo-mad it is hard to believe she didn’t bother taking any when I was really little. That must be it.

Something niggles inside that day, like a sore tooth that you should leave alone but worry at with your tongue, pushing and prodding until it is loose. I’m out of Art and in a Year Two class today, through all their lessons, and my mind wanders so much that their teacher has to repeat instructions to me more than she does to her students. She must think I’m an idiot.

They have reading after lunch and there is a birthday girl in their midst, seven today, who gets to pick the next story to be started. The teacher starts reading her pick: an old and tattered book from a bottom shelf, about princesses who rescue animals, and I fade away again, looking at the birthday balloons tied to her chair float over her head.

As Riley my birthday has changed to the 17th of September. Funny how Stella is about birthdays; they are such a huge big deal to her. She’d actually seemed rattled when I mentioned my birthday wasn’t in November any more.

That night at dinner, thoughts are rattling through my head. I feel disconnected to what is happening around me. When will I hear from Aiden’s contact? It could be anyone, even someone at this table. I grin to think so: Astrid wouldn’t like that. Anyhow, I’m sure she keeps a close eye on this place. I glance about at the other girls chattering, Stella at the head of the table. She looks different somehow. She gives me a quizzical look as if she senses something is on my mind, but I don’t even know what is wrong, so how could she? Mother’s intuition, a voice whispers inside, and I shake it off. What nonsense.

Steph, Stella’s helper, has finished carrying serving dishes out, and sits with the rest of us. I notice she is as quiet as I am; she eats dinner, looking around at the others much as I do.

I can’t shake a deep sense of unease, and can’t work out what it is attached to. But somehow, underlying everything else, there is something about that tiny baby today, about the photo albums. The missing early photos. Everything else is in there. Maybe those are ones Stella keeps for herself.

I notice now what niggled earlier about Stella. Her hair is darker; not a huge amount, but the dark roots are gone, blended in, and the overall colour is a shade darker. She’s been to the hairdresser. I frown to myself: it was like she said when she first saw my blond hair had changed to dark. Bet she goes a shade darker each time until we match.

Why is she so obsessed with matching? Is it just part of her being clingy?

Something does a flip in my stomach. Wait; think. There is too much weirdness mixed up together. Stella matched her hair to mine years ago, as if to say, we belong together; now she is trying to do it again. Then there is how weird she was about my changed birthday. And that there are no early baby photos.

Dinner is like dust; I put down my fork.

‘Are you all right, Riley?’ Ellie says, and I can feel other eyes turning towards me, but I don’t answer.

Birthdays. Dr Lysander told me cell testing said I was under sixteen when I was Slated, but if my birthday is in November, I’d have been over sixteen. She said I was a Jane Doe: not identifiable from DNA. Her eyes had been wrong when she said it: not that she was lying, she just couldn’t believe it. That no one knew who I really was. She said… No. She said I might have been a baby born in an out of the way place?

‘Riley?’ I hear a voice say again, but it is distant and removed.

What did Astrid say that day? Precisely and exactly. I close my eyes, going back, and I’m spinning, I’m someplace else. A dark corridor, crouching down. Full of a game that is going wrong, trying to hear her exact words…

Isn’t it about time you tell him the truth? That his precious daughter isn’t his; that you don’t even know whose she is.

Everything goes black.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

* * *

Gradually nothingness is replaced by cold floor, voices.

‘Lu— Riley.’ Stella’s voice.

I open my eyes and she is holding me, cradling my head.

I stare back at her. ‘Who am I?’

‘She must have hit her head,’ Stella says, her eyes communicating alarm.

Then Steph is there. She holds my glasses in her hands. ‘One of the lenses has come out,’ she says.

I close my eyes. Steph must have seen; she must know my eyes are really green. That the glasses mask who I am.

Who am I? You don’t even know whose she is.

Stella helps me up. ‘To bed with you now,’ she says. And we start across the room.

‘Wait,’ Steph says. ‘I fixed them. The lens just popped back in.’ She holds out my glasses and I reach for them, put them back on. Steph looks between Stella and me, a thoughtful look on her face.

Ellie scampers ahead and holds doors open. I want to shake Stella off and walk on my own, but my head is still fuzzy, and it does hurt. Did I really hit it when I fell? When I fainted.

Stella helps me to my bed; Ellie hovers next to us.

‘That’s fine, Ellie. You can go now,’ Stella says. Ellie looks uncertainly between us, leaves, shuts the door. It clicks to.

Stella looks at me with something like fear in her eyes.

‘You’re not my mother.’ I say it like a statement, not a question.

She breaks gaze, looks away. ‘What nonsense.’

‘Listen to me. I was cell tested by Lorders when I was Slated: I was under sixteen, and it was after my so-called sixteenth birthday that November.’

‘But tests can be wrong—’

‘You nearly flipped the other day when I said my birthday wasn’t in November. There are no early baby photos of me. And that day, my tenth birthday, when I heard you and Astrid—’

‘You remember that?’ she says, her eyes open wide.

‘Astrid said you don’t even know whose I am. I thought that just meant Dad wasn’t my father, but that’s only half of it, isn’t it? You’re not my mother either. Admit it!’

Colour has drained from her face. She looks back into my eyes with desperation. ‘I am in every way that counts. I’ve always loved you, Lucy.’

‘No! Not in one way that counts. Tell me the truth. Tell me now!’

‘You should rest. You might have concussion.’

‘I do not. Tell me where I come from! I have the right to know.’

Stella is shaking, her face crumbling. ‘I am your mother. I am.’ She’s choking back tears, and something else: the truth.

Part of me wants to comfort her, to put a hand on hers, but no. She has to face this. Is it something so buried she can’t even say it?

‘We can have nothing between us if we don’t have the truth,’ I say, and turn away from her, to the wall.

Time passes. Minutes, more? A hand touches my shoulder, then pulls away.

‘All right,’ she says, voice dull. ‘I’ll tell you. It’s a sad tale.’

I turn, sit up. ‘I’m listening.’

She doesn’t say anything at first, gathering herself, then nods. ‘Okay. Your dad and I wanted children. Desperately. But every time I got pregnant, I lost the baby. Sometimes a few months in, sometimes longer. I don’t know why; doctors didn’t know why. Then one last time it happened: I was pregnant again. But this time I didn’t tell anyone, even your dad. He went away a while: we weren’t getting along.’ She stops, bites her lip.

‘And?’

‘I was staying with my mother.’ The way she says the words, there is more to that, but I don’t interrupt. ‘My baby was born early: my darling, beautiful daughter. I had Lucy to adore for days, just a few days. And then, she died.’ Stella’s voice is choked, and I don’t know what to say.

She turns to me, takes my hand. ‘Then Mother, months later, brought you to me. You were perfect. And you were mine. I always loved you, Lucy: that is what makes you my daughter. Don’t you see?’

‘Wait a minute. Are you saying Astrid just came up with a baby to replace yours that died? Where from?’

‘I honestly don’t know. I guessed from an orphanage; as JCO she is in charge of those also. But I didn’t ask. I didn’t want her to take you away from me.

‘And this was months later that you got me? Didn’t anybody notice you had a baby, then didn’t, then did again? What about Dad?’

‘I told you. I was…away. At Mother’s. Your dad and I didn’t see each other for a long time. Then when he finally came back he saw you, and assumed you were ours: we got back together. I didn’t tell him the truth about you.’

I shake my head at her. ‘How could you lie to him like that?’

‘I had to. Mother threatened to take you away if I ever told. But then years later, she held it over me, and then one day you and Danny heard us talking about it—’

‘News out.’

‘Yes. He couldn’t handle it; he took off. It was a few days later when you went missing: Mother found out the AGT had you. That he’d given you to them. I know you don’t want to believe it. Mother tried again and again to get you back, but couldn’t find exactly where you were being held.’

‘You say you always loved me as your daughter. Why would it be any different for Dad? Okay, he had a shock to get over, but I was still me. Still the daughter he’d always known.’ I shake my head.

‘Maybe you are right. Maybe he didn’t have anything to do with what happened to you.’ She says the words like they are difficult to say out loud, and the interplay is there on her face. For her to accept he was blameless would be hard after all the blaming she has done over the years. Then to accept how he died. ‘Does it matter now?’

‘It does to me.’ But then I’m shaking my head, my eyes are welling up.

‘It is too much to take in all at once. I’m sorry you didn’t know. I—’

‘It’s not just that. I think I remember what happened that day. The day I disappeared.’

She stays very still, quiet.

‘There was this note from Dad under my pillow to meet him at Castlerigg. I went there at lunchtime, but he wasn’t there. Somebody else was – from the AGT – he said Dad sent them to get me. But when we got where they took me, he wasn’t there. I didn’t see him for two years, when he tried to rescue me.’

Her face goes hard, angry.

‘No, wait,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t mean he wrote the note. Maybe they faked it.’

‘But how would they get a note under your pillow, or know that Castlerigg was the place you and Dad always went, if he didn’t tell them?’

I shrug. ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to believe it; I can’t believe it.’

Stella struggles to pull away from her anger. ‘Listen to me. Whatever happened, he still tried to save you, didn’t he?’

‘So he died.’

‘He died trying to be a hero.’ Behind her words is an unsaid echo, one she can’t forgive him for even if he wasn’t involved in my disappearance in the first place. He failed.

We talk a bit longer, but I feign sleepiness, and she leaves. I stare at the wall in the dark.

So I’m back to this: as if I’ve been Slated all over again. To not knowing who I am. No parents, no place I come from. There is not even a name that is really mine. Lucy Howarth or Lucy Connor: either way, it is the name of a dead baby.