Darling Girls

Before Alicia and Meera go to bed, Norah asks Meera to give her some legal advice. Alicia looks panicked, wondering what Norah has done. Norah tells Meera and Alicia what Kevin has been forcing her to do, and Meera asks her to tell her the story from the beginning.

Back in the bedroom, Meera tells Alicia that the assault charges against Norah will depend on the leniency of the judge. She promises to make sure that Kevin is punished for his actions. Alicia apologizes to Meera for the drama of the last few days, but Meera says that things make sense now. She observes that Alicia cries whenever children and kindness are mentioned, and she now understands that Alicia’s abusive childhood has caused her to believe that she doesn’t deserve happiness. Meera recommends that Alicia go to therapy, and Alicia is shocked to hear Meera utter that word. Meera compliments Alicia and kisses her, and the two fall into bed together.

Afterward, Alicia has trouble falling asleep, so she leaves to check on Jessica. She runs into Norah, who is doing the same thing. They barge into Jessica’s and realize that Jessica has vomited and has blue lips. Jessica is rushed by ambulance to the emergency room at the local hospital. Meera, Norah, and Alicia wait in the lobby, and a nurse tells them that Jessica had been abusing benzodiazepines. Everyone is shocked. Jessica’s condition is serious and her prognosis uncertain.

Norah and Alicia spend the night on the plastic seats of the waiting room. Norah wonders whether Jessica overdosed intentionally, and Alicia assures her that Jessica would never do that. Meera brings food and coffee, and Norah wonders whether she and Alicia are dating. Meera shows Norah a headline that reads, “Primary School Vice Principal Quits After Pornography Extortion Scandal—Leaked Text Messages Released” (314). Meera has given the press access to Kevin’s texts to Norah.

Norah’s phone rings. Detective Hando wants to give her an update from the coroner. He asks her to come into the station. Jessica remains stable but is still unconscious, so Alicia and Norah agree to go to the police station.

At Dr. Warren’s office, the first-person narrator continues the story of her time in the basement. John’s plan was for her to breastfeed the child until he decided to release her, at which point she was expected to leave the house forever. However, the narrator loved Amy and didn’t want to leave the baby with her abusive stepfather. One night, an intoxicated John assaulted her, even though she had recently given birth. When he left, however, he forgot to lock the basement door, so the narrator wrapped Amy in a blanket and fled. As she left, she was confronted by her mother, who pressed a tin full of cash into her hands and wished her luck. However, the narrator was still furious because she knew that her mother had only given her the money due to her love of Amy and had no such feelings toward her own daughter.

Norah, Alicia, and Meera arrive at the police station just as Bianca, Zara, and Rhiannon also arrive. Detective Patel joins them and asks after Jessica, and the conversation is overheard by Miss Fairchild, who has entered behind them. Alicia confronts her angrily. Dirk appears behind Miss Fairchild and suddenly admits to seeing Amy on the morning of her disappearance.

He continues to talk, telling everyone what really happened. Dirk was listed as a sex offender because he had had a relationship with a 15-year-old girl when he was 18. He had moved to the country to escape this label. As part of his punishment, he was not allowed to come within 100 meters of a child. On the morning of Amy’s disappearance, Miss Fairchild visited him and told him that “there was a mix-up with the adoption paperwork” (321) and that “she’d had the little girl illegally for six months” (321). Miss Fairchild threatened to report Dirk to the authorities for allowing the girls to ride the horses, thereby violating the conditions of his sentence. He explains that he recently heard about the body buried under the house and was worried that it might be Amy, so he decided to confess his role in the cover-up.

Detective Hando tells the assembled women that upon examining the remains, there was no evidence of a sixth toe; the bones buried under the house are not Amy’s. The forensic anthropologist also noted that the bones belonged to a child who was less than a year old. This confuses both Norah and Alicia. The bones are also more than 25 years old, and possibly more than 50. Suddenly, Zara admits that she has six toes on her own left foot.

The narrative shifts back to the first-person perspective of unnamed narrator in Dr. Warren’s office. After fleeing the house, the narrator was stopped by John at the end of the driveway. When he violently demanded his money back, the narrator attacked him. During the struggle, her mother took Amy and returned to the house with her.

The narrator tells Dr. Warren that she never saw Amy again after that moment.

Zara’s confession shocks everybody into silence. She tells the assembled group that when she was adopted, her parents told her that she had come from a foster home in Port Agatha. She tried to return to meet her foster mother, but Miss Fairchild never returned any of her calls. As Zara speaks, Miss Fairchild breathes heavily in anxiety.

Zara removes her shoe and displays the scar on her foot that remains to mark where her sixth toe was removed. She shows Alicia and Norah photos of herself from the age of two, confirming that she is Amy. She also tells them a man named Scott—not an agency—facilitated her adoption. Norah wonders aloud about the bones are under the house, and Miss Fairchild suddenly begins to wail.

Miss Fairchild says that her mother lied and told her that Amy had gone to a good family. This outburst confuses everyone in the room. Miss Fairchild asks how the baby under the basement died and is devastated to learn that the baby died from blunt force trauma to the back of the skull.

Alicia, Norah, Meera, Zara, Bianca, and Rhiannon are expelled from the room so that Miss Fairchild can give her confession. Zara, who has just realized that Alicia and Norah believed her to be the body under the house, asks them to tell her what is going on. However, Alicia and Norah decide to take her to the hospital first so that she can meet Jessica.

The narrative shifts back to Dr. Warren’s office. The first-person narrator tells Dr. Warren that after her mother and John took her daughter Amy, she walked into town. Once there, she met Troy, the boy from her class, and the two ran all the way back to Wild Meadows and were greeted at the door by the narrator’s mother. Her mother seemed nervous, and the narrator immediately knew that something was wrong. Her mother pretended that she didn’t know who Amy was; this caused the narrator to pass out.

When she awakened, her mother told her that Amy had been placed in a good home. However, the narrator’s mother had lied to her; in reality, John had killed Amy that night in revenge and buried the baby under the house. Afterward, the narrator became a foster mother herself “because [she] was looking for a replacement for [her] daughter” (331).

Someone knocks on the door and tells the narrator and Dr. Warren that the time is up. A guard enters to escort the narrator back to her cell, and the narrative finally reveals that the narrator is Miss Fairchild. She has been speaking to a prison psychologist following her arrest.

When Jessica awakens, the first person she sees at her bedside is her husband, Phil. He admits that several months ago, he found the pill bottles that she had stolen; he regrets not saying anything about it. Norah and Alicia come into the room and introduce Zara to Jessica as the toddler she once knew as Amy.

Nine months later, Miss Fairchild has been imprisoned for kidnapping Zara, for she had knowingly adopted a child illegally. She is also charged with perverting the course of justice by blackmailing Dirk. Ever since her arrest, she has continually reached out to Jessica, and although Alicia and Norah don’t want her to go, Jessica decides to speak to her former foster mother. Jessica has been at a drug rehabilitation center in Melbourne and resigned from her previous position. She spent her time in rehab learning everything she could about narcissists, and she feels that this research has prepared her to speak to Miss Fairchild.

When Miss Fairchild comes into the room, she immediately tries to gain Jessica’s sympathy by complaining that she has been treated as a criminal. However, Jessica maintains neutrality and stresses that Miss Fairchild is indeed a criminal. Miss Fairchild tries unsuccessfully to intimidate Jessica, who matches Miss Fairchild’s aggressive energy. Miss Fairchild has blamed the entire incident on Scott, who has also been arrested and charged for his role in the kidnapping.

Jessica asks if Miss Fairchild fostered her as a replacement for her daughter Amy. Miss Fairchild denies this and claims that Jessica’s placement was “an attempt to make it up to [Amy]” (341). However, Miss Fairchild explains that Jessica was supposed to love her but instead betrayed her by loving Norah and Alicia. Jessica tells Miss Fairchild that her selfishness led to a child being kidnapped from her birth parents. Miss Fairchild begins to cry, but Jessica interprets her tears as a form of self-pity rather than true regret. When Miss Fairchild realizes that Jessica is five months pregnant, she reacts coldly and demands to know whether Jessica was planning on telling her. Jessica leaves the room without responding.

The narrative jumps forward a year. Norah spent 11 days in prison for her assault on Kevin, but Kevin was sentenced to four months in prison for his extortion of Norah. In the meantime, Norah has continued to date Ishir and is planning on moving to Port Agatha to be with him. While she is at the bar where Ishir works, she receives a call from Alicia, who tells her that they have found Zara’s birth parents. Zara’s parents have not seen their daughter since Scott kidnapped her and sold her to Miss Fairchild. The parents are from Russia, and a call has been scheduled with them later in the day so that they can meet Zara.

Alicia speaks to her therapist, Eliza, and cries over memories of her grandmother. When she gets home later that day, she finds Meera in the kitchen with Aaron, making a salad. Alicia has officially adopted Aaron and is sad to think that he’ll be leaving for university in a few months’ time. Alicia has also adopted Theo, which was possible because Meera and Alicia have legally become a couple. Alicia feels complete in her new life, with her new family, and is happy to be a mother to two boys.

From a first-person perspective, Miss Fairchild explains that she lied to Dr. Warren about what really happened with her mother because her false claims gave her a defense of mental impairment. Miss Fairchild reveals that John was not a strict disciplinarian and her mother was not complicit in his actions. In reality, Miss Fairchild had been jealous that her mother had fallen in love with someone other than her. Amy was really the child of John and Miss Fairchild’s mother, making her Miss Fairchild’s half-sister. Miss Fairchild also felt jealous of the infant, because her mother was giving Amy all of her attention.

One night, her mother and John left her to babysit the infant for a few hours. Miss Fairchild felt frustrated by the baby’s crying and claims that she never meant to hurt Amy when she threw the child against the wall. Her mother was the one who buried Amy in order to protect Miss Fairchild. Miss Fairchild never knew that her mother buried the infant under the house, but she feels grateful that this fact allowed her to create the fictitious story of her teenage pregnancy. The novel ends with Miss Fairchild thanking her mother for this unexpected gift.