Daisy’s Notes- Wednesday, 20^th of March, 2019

Aunt Coralie was not kidding about the ivy.  Most of the house looks as if it’s being eaten by a hedge.  I’d say that Elodie Healy should hire a decent gardener, but, honestly, it looks like the ivy’s the only thing holding the place together.

I was pretty shocked when Elodie agreed to speak to me, but Gran wasn’t.  “Any excuse to talk about herself,” she said.  I asked her if she wanted to come with me, and she said no.  So did Mum and Coralie.  So did my cousins, though in their case it was less because they’d vowed never to go anywhere near THAT WOMAN again, and more because they didn’t want to spend their days off driving to the other side of the country to talk to a crazy old lady they didn’t know.  If Uncle Matt hadn’t agreed to come along, I’d have had to decide between cancelling the whole thing and agreeing to be alone in an old, creepy house with somebody who terrifies most of my extended family.

Honestly, after reading Coralie’s last couple of letters, I think she terrifies me as well.  Nausea, dizziness and headaches are consistent with, say, the flu, but you know what else they’re consistent with?  Carbon monoxide poisoning.  And, given what we know about Elodie Healy, I wouldn’t put it past her.

Apparently Elodie’s famously cagey about her real age, but from what I can gather, she’s probably about 86.  In some ways, she looks a lot younger- dyed blonde hair, perfect makeup, plus I suspect she had a facelift or two back in the day.  But… you know when you find an insect, and you’re not sure if it’s still alive, so you tap its shiny shell with your fingertip, and it crumples to bits because everything underneath’s already rotted away?  Something about her made me think of that.  Of course, it could be that that simile just popped into my head because there are so many ACTUAL dead insects in her house.  Every surface I saw in there had a bunch of little specks on it that I didn’t really want to think about.  The whole house looked as if it had been uninhabited for about two hundred years.  Here and there, you could see traces of that splendid architecture Coralie was always banging on about, but most of it was under about six inches of dust.

Elodie’s not easy to pin down to any particular subject.  In the first half hour that me and Uncle Matt were there, she managed to talk about her artistic talents (varied and plentiful), her thoughts on iPhones (negative), her view of the modern world (cold, aloof and petty), and her children (still not speaking to her.)  Then, it was as if she suddenly remembered who we were, because she abruptly changed the subject so she could launch into a tirade about how terrible Gran was when she worked for her.  “My husband and I took Lorna in and nurtured her gift.  Could anyone else in her life say that?  I doubt it!”  She waved her hands about to celebrate scoring a point.  “Maybe if we’d got her two or three years earlier, it would have been different, who knows?  But by the time we met her it was already too late.  She’d got used to grabbing for herself and never considering her duty to the theatre itself.  All three of them were like that, really- spitting on their ancestors’ gifts to them, the future generation they longed to know would succeed and thrive.  If only they’d known!”

Matt cut in.  He’d end up regretting it.  “When you say ‘all three of them’…”

“Her and those boys,” said Elodie, “Her paramours.”  Her lip curled.  “It was shameful, the way those three behaved.  You’d have thought they were animals.  It didn’t matter which combination of the three of them, as long as there was a hole and something to put in it.”

I think she was trying to pick a fight, but I didn’t really want one.  Matt might have, but he’d gone quiet and ill-looking.  I didn’t blame him- if Gran had a lot of threesomes in the Sixties, then I’m happy for her, but I didn’t want to hear about it from Elodie Healy.  And in Matt’s case, these were his PARENTS we were talking about.  Anyway, I decided to steer the conversation elsewhere.  “That’s why Coralie came to yours in 1981, right?  Because she thought her parents’ friend Adam might have been her real dad?”

“Oh, no doubt about that,” said Elodie, smiling snake-ishly, “Let me let you in on a secret- I might have played along, but I knew who Coralie was the moment she opened her mouth.  It was as if I had Lorna Lazenby and Adam Summers in my hallway all over again.”  She sighed.  “Passing off another man’s child as her husband’s.  Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.”

I frowned.  “Coralie’s kids are…”

“NOT Coralie’s children!”  Elodie snorted.  “My God, I wonder what goes through the minds of…  LORNA’S mother.  SHE had another man’s child.”

I thought of that letter I’d found in the attic, the one Gran had written to her mum.  I don’t know if the Len Healy I met is the same one you did, but…

“Yes, my husband was Lorna’s father.  That’s why she sought us out in the first place.”  She let out a laugh that sounded more like a bark.  “I suppose that made me the wicked stepmother.”

I glanced at Matt.  He shrugged, as if to say, I guess that makes sense.

“I was married to your great-grandfather, Daisy,” Elodie added, as if prompting me to be more shocked.  As if she’d expected me to fall to my knees and wail, “You mean my great-grandad wasn’t some guy I never met because he died before I was born, but actually a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT guy I never met because he died before I was born???  Say it isn’t so!”

Instead of that, I asked her about Coralie again.  Luckily, this time she remembered she hated her as well, and started talking.  “I trusted the Daniels girls,” she said, “I wanted to show them something truly special.  And how did they repay me?  By invading my home under false pretences and lying as easily as they breathed.  She didn’t care about the school at all. She just saw it as a means to an end.”  She put her hand on her heart.  “To me, that was the greatest insult of all.”

“But you didn’t tell her you knew who she was?”

“And she completely believed she had me fooled!” Elodie crowed, “Can you believe it?  How people take each other for granted?”

Which totally justifies poisoning someone, obviously. It was around then that I started looking around to check that I had a clear route to the exit if I needed it.  “So… did you have a plan?”

“A plan?”

“Say, when you locked her in her room at the end?”

Elodie went silent for a moment, and I honestly expected her to try and deny it.  She didn’t, though.  “That school was my dream.  Do you understand? And we were up against powerful forces.”

“Right,” I said, “So you locked her in because…?”

“I wanted to teach her a lesson.”  She made a face.  “I’d suffered long enough.  It was her turn now.”

I glanced over at Uncle Matt, to check that he wasn’t about to scream at her and walk out.  I mean, it would have been understandable if he had, but if he left I’d have been stranded here.

“She wasn’t in any danger,” Elodie added, “I planned to unlock the door before it came to that.”  As if she was an expert on how much carbon monoxide will and won’t kill you.  “I planned to write to the sister and tell her she could pick her up from the local hospital.”  She let out another bark-laugh.  “Poison in her veins.  Given what she and her mother put me through, I found that quite fitting.”

I could actually FEEL my skin crawl.  I reached out and grabbed Matt’s hand.

“I couldn’t let the insult to the school stand.  It was the one thing keeping me above the drudgery of everyday life.  I saw it as an oasis, a utopia.”  She smiled sweetly.  “Ever been through that kind of dream before?”

I swallowed.  My throat had gone dry.  “But then when you unlocked the door…”

Elodie’s eyes went wide with remembered disappointment.  “She was gone,” she said quietly, “I never worked out how she escaped.”

And that’s about what I assumed.  Coralie says she remembers waking up on Friday morning to find that her bedroom door was locked, and pounding on it for about an hour before she finally managed to break the lock and get it open.  She says she rushed through the door and found herself in the upstairs hallway of her house in Brighton.  When she looked back at the room she’d just left, it had completely vanished.

Mum, Gran and Matt all corroborate her story- according to them, Coralie just turned up in the house, and none of them could remember letting her in.  You’d have thought they’d have told me this story a million times (at the very least, it’s the kind of thing Coralie could use as a talking point anytime she liked), but I only found out about it two years ago, just after what happened with Keiran.  Before that, I probably wouldn’t have believed them.

Now, though…

The End

(One more set of papers to go.)

Monday, 29^th of July, 1981

 Dear Marianne,

This morning, about halfway through our first “cultural appreciation” of the day, Elodie was called out of the room by an assistant who said there was a telephone call for her.  To be perfectly honest, I was relieved to see her go- I had a bad stomach ache this morning, and I appreciated the chance to rest for a moment instead of going over scripts and trying to think of new ways to flatter my teacher.

Well, “a moment” turned into nearly an hour.  I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I’d fallen asleep in my chair as the other girls talked.  One of them had to shake me awake and tell me that Elodie had summoned us all to the ballroom. 

The ballroom is the most beautiful place in the whole house, all decked out in royal purple and gold, with a ceiling that takes up a whole extra storey by itself.  It made the perfect setting for Elodie to scream herself hoarse.  It seems her “detractors” are causing problems again, and she has decided that it’s all our fault. 

Spoiled, she called us.  Ungrateful.  Not willing to work for the things she generously gives us.  “Do any of you have it in you to defend me to my detractors? No!  You hide behind an excuse of shyness, but really, you’re all cowards!” 

Maybe we are cowards, Marianne, because not one of us had the nerve to point out that we have no idea who her detractors are, let alone how we might defend her from them. 

She continued.  “You sit here without a care in the world, and outside of these walls, the whole world is falling apart!  Nuclear weapons! Racism!  Twelve-year-old girls losing their virginity to their brothers! If you’re happy with the way the world is, then fine!  Stay silent!  But if not, GET INTO THE HABIT OF DEFENDING ME!”  And with that, she stormed out of the room.  We didn’t see her again for the rest of the day. 

Nobody knows for sure who that telephone call was from.  “Her lawyer,” said one girl; “her accountant” said another.  I would be interested to know, but, in my heart, I know that it probably doesn’t matter.  To Elodie, it all comes to the same thing- her detractors, her detractors, her detractors. 

Yours,Coralie

 *

Tuesday, 30^th of July, 1981

Dear Coralie, 

You need to buy a train ticket and come back now.  Elodie Healy is completely nuts, and whatever you find out from her, it’s not worth it.  (If what you find out is even true, because, again, ELODIE IS NUTS.) 

In fact, do you know what?  I’m taking back my promise from last week.  If you’re not back by Friday, I’m telling Mum everything, and I don’t even care if I get into trouble as well. 

Don’t think for a minute that I’m bluffing.  COME HOME. 

Yours,

Marianne

 

*

Thursday, 1^st of August, 1981

Dear Marianne,  

I had hoped that the stomach ache would go away after a little rest, but if anything, it’s worse now.  I feel as if I might throw up at any second.  Not only that, but it only seems to take the slightest activity to make me completely out of breath.  I feel like one of those fragile, fainting Gothic heroines we always read about- I’m certainly in the right place for it. 

Elodie is still angry.  No matter what we say to her, it’s never good enough.  Yesterday, she had a long, poisonous lecture in stock for me specifically, when I had no comment to give on a particular line in the day’s text.  “In a whole week of giving my best to you,” she told me, “I have seen no results.  Come on- think for a change!  Respond for a change!”  (She slapped the table with her hand as she spoke.)  “I can’t do it for you!” 

I tried to reply- I tried to say anything– but the room began to swim before my eyes, and I had to concentrate on getting my breath back.  When I could finally focus, I saw that Elodie was giving me a look of the purest disgust.  You would have thought that I had spat in her face. 

“There really isn’t a whole lot I can do for you at this point,” she told me, and then she went on to the next student. 

Yours,

Coralie

(To Be Concluded)

Monday 22^nd of July, 1981

Dear Marianne,

It’s a strange, strange school that I’ve ended up in.  I look back at all the times I complained about Mr Sparrow’s boring Maths lessons, and I can hardly believe how lucky I was.  Next to Elodie Healy, Mr Sparrow is Socrates in the Parthenon.

The start of every day is the same.  Elodie hands around copies of a script, and asks us to read a particular scene and share our “deeper thoughts” on the author’s intent.  Shall I share some of the titles of these plays?  The Shadows of the Morning, by Elodie Healy.  One Thousand Tears, by Elodie Healy.  Heart’s True Treasure, by Elodie Healy.  Laughing at Midnight, by Leonard Healy (edited by his wife, Elodie).

I’m afraid that when I questioned this today, Elodie flew into a rage.  I thought the light fixtures would explode with the strength of it!  “I’m sharing scripts with you that have never been seen by anyone before,” she told me through gritted teeth, “You should be thankful.  I have always done my best to show gratitude when I’m given a gift.”

Like a fool, I persisted.  “But we’re paying to be taught by you.  If you pay for something, then it isn’t a gift.”

This time I was surprised that the whole room didn’t burst into flames.  For half an hour, Elodie listed my faults with increasing speed, while the other students hid behind their scripts.  I don’t appreciate what is given to me.  I watch too much television, and it has made me too apathetic to respond to art.  I don’t treat Elodie like a human being.  I don’t act like a human being.  I am wasting air just breathing in her classroom.

I was confined to my bedroom for the remainder of the day.  Should I have stayed quiet?  Should I have flattered her like she seemed to want?  Maybe I should have.  I don’t stand much chance of finding out who my father is if Elodie won’t even talk to me.

I will write again tomorrow.  Hopefully I’ll be back in Elodie’s good books by then.

Yours,

Coralie

*

Tuesday 23^rd of July, 1981

Dear Marianne,

This morning, I was summoned to Elodie’s office to apologise.  Her office looks less like a place of business and more like a glamorous drawing-room, full of full-length mirrors, velvet sofas and shelves of expensive ornaments.  I gave her my apology gladly, of course- I still don’t see anything wrong with what I said yesterday, but there is a great deal I want to know about our mother’s past, and Elodie is the only one who can tell me.

“I’m prepared to forgive you this time,” she told me, “But let last night be a warning.  I need an engaged group of students at this school, Nora, not people who disrupt the discussion with their own cynicism.”

I wasn’t sure that what I had shown was cynicism, but I nodded and agreed.

A sad look came into her eyes.  It was as if she was looking at memories instead of what was in front of her.  “I want to tell you a story,” she said, “It’s about my daughter, Alicia.”

“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” I said.

She smiled sadly.  “You look just like her.”

Elodie told me that Alicia was beautiful, talented and clever, and that she and her husband had doted on her from the day she was born.  “She had long blonde hair just like yours, and when the sun shone on it, it looked as though she had a halo,” said Elodie.

I was all prepared for her to tell me that Alicia had died, but no.  According to Elodie, she and her husband spent every penny they had to end her to an expensive music school in Switzerland, and that was where she fell into the hands of “our detractors.”  Elodie didn’t go into detail about who, exactly these detractors were, but she did say that they poisoned Alicia’s mind against her parents, and she hasn’t heard from her since.  It was so strange to see such a rich, beautiful woman practically crumble to nothing with grief.

The upshot seems to be that I’m forgiven, but this whole incident just raises more and more questions.  If I look like Elodie’s daughter, then did our mother look like her as well?  Did the two of them meet at any point?  Could our mother even have been one of those terrible “detractors” who turned her daughter against her?  Could that be why she always dropped such terrible hints about her in her letters to us?

It’s getting dark outside.  This school seems like a darker place by the day

Yours,

Coralie

*

Thursday 25^th of July, 1981

Dear Coralie,

Guess what?  I’ve seen a photo of Elodie Healy’s daughter.  I was pretty sure I remembered one of Mum’s old theatre programmes having a picture of the entire Healy family (next to a note about how they’d built the whole company up with their own fair hands).  So I spent yesterday afternoon looking through the attic, and, hey presto, there it was.

Guess what else?  Alicia Healy looks nothing like you.  For one thing, her hair’s brown.  She’s little and chubby and covered in freckles.  Also, the photo’s from 1963, and she looks about eight.  Mum would have been eighteen by then, so I doubt they had many heart-to-heart talks.

I don’t know why Elodie made up a story about her daughter being blonde and having a halo.  I also don’t know why she forgot she had a son as well.  (His name’s Sebastian.  Also not blond.)

The school feels like a darker place every day, you say?  Then do the smart thing and come home.

Yours,

Marianne

 

(To Be Continued)