Home » Book Reviews » The Birdcage by Eve Chase
Possible spoilers ahead
This is another of my (in-person) book group read choices, and I’m very intrigued by the cover with the picture of the birdcage, and indeed intrigued also by the title of the book too as it doesn’t give much away, I wonder what the birdcage will symbolise, I guess it traps and encloses a bird so does it indicate that a character in the book feels trapped and enclosed, and also we might follow their escape? And I’m also intrigued by the reminder of the eclipse in 1999 which has immediately prompted me to try and remember where I was then! Grab your copy and let’s read it together!
On 4th January 2019, three half-sisters, Lauren and Kat and Flora, each of them sharing the same father but with different mothers and having had very different upbringings, are heading to their father’s house, Rock Point in Cornwall, for the weekend, having been summoned there by him saying he has an announcement. They are all reluctant to go, due to difficult memories of the last time they were there in 1999, the time of the solar eclipse, which was also when their father painted a picture of them all with a birdcage alongside. Their father is a famous painter, Charlie Finch. When they stayed there in 1999, Charlie’s mother (the girls’ grandmother) was also there at Rock Point with her parrot, Bertha, and the parrot is still at Rock Point now with Charlie, to Lauren’s horror as she is scared of birds. Lauren’s mother has recently died, Kat lives in America, and Flora is married with a young son, Raff, who she has brought to Rock Point with her. Hmmm, the book starts enticingly with the ‘breaking news’ (dated early 2019) that a body has been pulled from the sea, and I was immediately wondering if this was murder, though the body is described as a swimmer (I presume he/she was dressed in swimming clothes which therefore indicated this) so that seems they were in the water voluntarily rather than being forced into the water, so perhaps it was more that they got into difficulties as opposed to them having been killed or having killed themselves (do I read too many detective books, tee hee, always looking trying to read more into any death?!). I’m also wondering if this dead person is one of the main characters we are about to learn more about. I feel like I will need to keep this newspaper report in mind too as the main story is beginning earlier than this point so I imagine we might only come back to it at the end of the book (by which time there is a high chance I will have forgotten about it and therefore failed to identify clues throughout the book relating to it!). It’s interesting that it is Lauren who we are first introduced to, so is she going to be the main character we follow and empathise with and view the various forthcoming situations from her perspective? And is she the character that the author most emphasises with, perhaps? Lauren seems to be an anxious person, so I imagine she would have a lot of thoughts and feelings about a scene or situation which would then be helpful for the reader to envisage the scene or situation so that’s useful if she is to be our ‘eyes’ throughout the book, but I’m also considering that she could view scenes and situations through a worse-case scenario aspect so that could influence the reader’s perspective too. My main impression though after these first few chapters is how much I love this author’s descriptive writing, such as ‘the snow is still falling, feathery flakes whirling in the golden light of the train window and then sucked into the black’, and ‘the view rolled past lush green, hazy with insects, heat and hope’, and ‘the surrounding fields have a tremulous sheen, like the silky flank of a panting black horse’, which are beautiful descriptions of nature, and there are also wonderfully unusual and touching descriptions of people too, such as ‘tiny explosions of jealousy and awe popped in my chest’, and ‘granny’s heart was like a sea anemone, it closed if you reached for it’, and ‘he (Grandpa) smelt warm and woody, like the inside of a violin case’, and ‘his (dad) eyes were grey as pencil lead, a smudgy soft one, like a 4B’, wow, such gorgeous and almost old-fashioned writing, just my type of thing! I’m already keen to read this author’s other books. She also describes the characters well so I can easily imagine and like them (it’s always important to me to like the characters, if I can!), and they are interestingly different from each other. I also like the style of the story with its mix of past (August 1999) and present (January 2019), and its mix of perspectives from different characters too, usually I get a bit frustrated when chapters jump around between different times and different people and times but I don’t feel that with this book as the author has woven it all together very well so it doesn’t feel as jarring as I usually find it. And I’m loving the intriguing hints to what happened within the family on the night of the solar eclipse, just enough hints to whet the appetite but not so many that it distracts me from learning about the characters. But there’s also Lauren’s apprehension that the man on the train seemed to possibly recognise her from the time she was there before (for the eclipse) and this alarms her, so I’m obviously wondering why she should seem to wish to be anonymous and if him recognising her means a threat to her and if we are going to see him again! There are also some nice touches of humour in the book, and I chuckled at Flora’s list of emergency supplies which included not only expected things like medications and toilet roll but also unwaxed lemons, tee hee, which are clearly a necessity in her life! The word ‘leviathan’ has been mentioned too and I must look up exactly what that means, oh and I have just done so and see that historically it meant a sea monster (it does make me think of something monstrous!) but now it means any large object (so not necessarily as alarming as a sea monster, thank goodness!).
While settling her son to bed, Flora spots a large man with a dog standing outside the house. That evening the sisters all try to relax and appear natural with each other and with Charlie and the house. Charlie tells them that his doctor has informed him that his health has been affected by the toxins in the paints he’s handled for decades. Charlie also says that he plans to tidy and update Rock Point and dispose of all the decades of accumulated bits and pieces there, and then to rent out the property and divide his time between London and Paris, urging them to take anything they wish from the house that weekend. He then announces that he is getting married next month in Las Vegas to Angie, who was the sisters’ au-pair in 1999 and who he has recently met again. Angie then arrives at the house, and the sisters are united in their dislike of her and also their apprehension of her as they are aware that she knows what happened on that day in 1999. Charlie then shows them all a note he found pushed through the letterbox, which says “We remember. We know what you did”, and asks if any of them wrote the note. During a solitary walk on the beach, Lauren remembers her friend Gemma who she was close to during her stay there 1999, and who was the daughter of the woman who cleaned Rock Point, and she thinks about the letters she writes to Gemma now she is based at the Greenland science station. Also on her walk Lauren bumps into the man from the train, who is out walking his dog, and he introduces himself as Jonah, but she can’t remember him from 1999 even though he clearly seems to recognise her name. Oooh, plenty more enticing hints and possible threats, both from 1999 and from the present day! So who is the man outside the house that Flora saw, is he Jonah and was it him who wrote the threatening note? And the note is very intimidating, and also more intimidating with the use of the word ‘we’ which implies there is more than one person, and the sisters’ (and Angie’s) horrified reaction to its contents is very interesting!. And there was a mention of a teenage boy in 1999 who looked through the hut window at Lauren and Gemma inside, so was this Jonah and was there something threatening with him looking at them like that? And are Lauren’s memories of Gemma significant too, was she part of what happened that night in 1999? I initially wondered if Gemma was the victim of whatever went on (if indeed there was a victim!) but as Gemma seems to be alive in Greenland as Lauren is writing to her there then it seems not, but then there is there something more to this, is Gemma actually there in Greenland or is this just a story Lauren is telling herself in order to block out what happened that night and she then reinforces this pretence to herself by writing letters to Gemma, are these letters actually more of a journal allowing Lauren to express her thoughts about that night with the safety of a created distance? Hmmm, it will be interesting to see if Lauren actually posts these letters, and if the others mention Gemma at all. And I was intrigued at the tension there was between the sisters when there was that seemingly throwaway comment about poison, so is this something to do with the secret they concealed on that night, did they poison someone?! And how interesting that Angie was part of what happened that night too (or at least she seems to be aware of what happened), though I smiled at how beautifully atmospheric it was with the storm blowing violently outside just as Angie arrived! And yet more beautifully written descriptions and I am in danger of constantly making lists of them (!) but I particularly loved ‘grains of sand slip and shift so the forward motion of each step is countered by a small movement backwards, exactly how life has been’, wow, that is so clever and yet so beautiful! I also chuckled again at Fora with her realisations of how she’s changed now she’s a mother and what she once viewed as charming or exciting she now views as potentially dangerous or costly, bless her, such as the Atlantic storms which she used to view as exciting but now prompts worries about slates being blown off the roof, and the crackling fire in the fireplace which she used to view as cosy but now prompts worries about when the chimney was last swept and if there’s a carbon-monoxide alarm fitted! And I chuckled at Kat’s wish to ‘self-soothe with a Twitter scroll’, how appropriate that is for today! I’m also not quite sure what to call the group of women (Lauren and Kat and Flora), I know ‘sisters’ isn’t really accurate as they are half-sisters but I find it easier to call them ‘sisters’ in my mind so will do that.
Flora and Kat are sitting in dad’s studio with him, chatting while he sorts through sketches. He tries to conceal a sketch of a nude lady dated 1980, and Kat is intrigued why he wanted to conceal it so she goes back to the studio later to search for it but can’t find it. Flora has a flashback to 1999 with ‘Lauren on the aviary floor, twitching, eyes open, glazed, unseeing, the blood at the bottom of the staircase’. Lauren goes to Gemma’s cottage where she used to live with her mum, Viv, but it is abandoned and falling apart. She is slightly alarmed to see Jonah there at the cottage. When Lauren returns to Rock Point after she leaves the cottage, she finds a note pinned to the gate saying “LEAVE, leave us in peace’, and Angie’s car tyre has been slashed. Lauren tells Kat that she thinks her mum was trying to tell her a secret about that time in 1999 before she died but she was too weak to say it, and Lauren asks Kat if she knows the secret but Kat says she doesn’t. Lauren also remembers that it was Angie who found her and Gemma at the hermit’s hut in 1999 when the boy was looking in at them, and that Angie had also said hurtful things to Gemma, and that she later learnt that the boy was Gemma’s brother’s friend. Oooh, it’s intriguing that Lauren seems to remember things gradually and this is a very enticing way to reveal the details to us, and also a sign that she has blocked out the trauma of what happened (so there is likely to have been trauma!), but it sounds from Flora’s recollections that Lauren was unconscious so there’s also that aspect which prevents her remembering or things coming back to her in fragments, but she clearly suspects the other sisters know the details of what happened and are trying to conceal this from her, with her asking Kat about it, and it seems like Lauren’s mum perhaps knew too. And Flora’s flashback to 1999 is extremely interesting, and whose blood was this? And whatever happened then was clearly dramatic enough to get into the papers, so I wonder again if someone died, especially with the blood that Flora remembers. And there’s also the mystery of who the nude is in the painting dated 1980 that dad wants to hide from his daughters, who is she and is it relevant to what happened? Oooh, it’s so enticing, all these hints! And there’s another note, and who is the ‘us’ referred to? And Jonah is beginning to look a bit sinister, especially turning up at the cottage when Lauren was there.
Lauren doesn’t tell her sisters about the note on the gate as she didn’t want to worry them, which she has put in her pocket. Meanwhile, Flora realises that Raff is missing and everyone begins looking for him. Lauren goes out to the clifftop searching for him, and sees Jonah in the distance walking his dog but also begins to feel that someone is there watching her through the evening fog and even thinks she hears footsteps. She remembers the ledge a short distance down the cliff face that they used to sit on as children, and looks down and sees Raff sitting on the ledge. She is then assailed by a memory from 1999 of sitting on the ledge with Flora and Kat and then stumbling as she got up because she was trying to stop the other two from stealing the straw bird that Gemma made for her, she remembers that Flora and Kay seemed to briefly pause considering their next action before then grabbing her to stop her falling to the beach below, and that the boy from the hermit’s hut was watching and commented on them not immediately seeming to pull her to safety, which they strongly denied. When safely back at home, Raff tells them that he ventured outside the house to stroke a dog. Later Angie notices a print on the outside of the living room window where someone has pressed against it to look in. She also sees and grabs the note when it falls out of Lauren’s pocket, and when she shows it to Flora she shares her suspicion that it could be Lauren writing the notes. Meanwhile, on her long-distance run Kat feels overwhelmed with anxiety and sadness, and to her frustration she can’t complete the distance back to Rock Point so has to call Flora for a lift from the pub where she’s stopped to rest. Lauren goes along in the car with Flora, and the sisters all have a relaxed time together at the pub bonding and sharing happy memories, keeping away from any discussion of that time in 1999. As they leave, another car pulls out of the pub carpark and seems to be following them and also drives intimidatingly near the back of their car, scaring them that the driver wishes them harm on the lonely country road, but the car takes a different turning as they approach Rock Point. Oooh, who was driving the car that followed them back from the pub and seemed to be intimidating them? Though was it someone wishing to intimidate them or was it nothing sinister and the sisters are just hyper-sensitive now to any potential danger? But if the driver did mean to intimidate or harm them, then was he/she inside the pub watching them and they didn’t spot him/her, or was he parked in the carpark waiting for them to come out (or was he there anyway and followed them on impulse)? As if he’s following them then it’s alarming to consider he might have followed Kat on her lonely run, or followed Flora and Lauren from the house. And there’s Jonah’s possible involvement in Raff’s wandering off, so did he lead Raff into danger as some kind of revenge, is Jonah a goodie or a baddie? And was Lauren correct when she thought that there was someone else out in the evening fog when she was searching for Raff? Also I can’t quite picture this ledge that Raff was on and that the sisters sat on as young girls, how did they safely access it from the clifftop and particularly how did little Raff access it on his own? Lauren says it’s ‘a few metres down…a few feet below’, so which is it, a few metres or a few feet, as a foot is less than half a metre (I’ve just googled!) so a few feet is significantly less than a few metres! And Lauren remembers reaching it by having to ‘scramble down facing the cliff, checking the rocks held firm…grabbing the tough tussocks of grass’, so there aren’t even steps hewn into the cliff face for them to step onto, would they really just effectively abseil without ropes down the cliff like that, even just a short way? And I definitely can’t imagine little Raff even thinking of doing that, never mind actually doing it, so then did Jonah or someone else lift him down and abandon him there?! I am wondering if the painting of the naked woman dated 1980 was Viv, Gemma’s mum, and then I’m going further and considering if Charlie could be Gemma’s father, with him seeming to look oddly at Gemma, ‘something moved across his eyes, like a light just under the surface of water’, so was this a sudden recognition of himself in her or perhaps a recognition of one of his other daughters that he saw in her and this had given him the first idea that she could be his child? Or was he just seeing her as a series of shapes to possibly paint? I do very much hope though that there is nothing sinister and abusive here, surely surely not, please! But would the dates fit right for him to be her father, I’m not sure how old Viv would be then, though I guess if Gemma is a similar age to Lauren then as they were 13 in 1999 they were therefore born in about 1986, so I guess it would fit. And does this then go back to my earlier wonder if it was Gemma that died in the incident in 1999 if Flora and Kat found out that she was their sister and were angry and jealous? Although I see flicking back through what I’ve already read looking for clues (!) that when Granny had hired Viv as a cleaner, she and Gemma had only just moved to the area and Gemma’s father is a fisherman and is living with Viv and Gemma, so perhaps that doesn’t fit with Gemma already being born then, though I guess Viv could have lived in the area before and this is why they moved there again as a family and she could have pretended to the fisherman that Gemma was his or even met him when Gemma was a baby and he was happy to raise her as his own? But then if so, would she accept a job as a cleaner at Charlie’s house? And is there anything significant in Granny seeming interested in the straw bird that Gemma made for Lauren, as it seemed like Granny took this away so does this perhaps link to Viv in some way and a memory Granny then had of Viv being with Charlie in the past and him possibly being the father of Gemma? And Granny spoke privately to Charlie shortly after she’s taken the straw bird and Lauren notes that afterwards he looked ‘flushed, restless, like something had rattled him’ so was this Granny sharing a suspicion with him that he is Gemma’s father? And I’ve also noticed during my flicking back through the book that all the 1999 reminiscing chapters are from Lauren, so Kat and Flora don’t get reminiscing chapters, though they refer to events in 1999, so I guess this confirms that Lauren is the main character of the book and probably is the person through who we are going to learn what happened then. I note too that all the sisters seem to have issues which cause them distress, Flora secretly being on the pill even though her husband believes they are trying to conceive and him seeming to control her and her keenness for alcohol possibly being her way to deal with this, and Kat with her memories of growing up with an alcoholic mother and frequently having to fend for herself and of her past relationship with her boyfriend Kofi and her keenness for punishing exercise possibly being her way to deal with it. And then of course there’s Lauren with her desperate eagerness to be accepted by her sisters and the trauma of whatever happened that day in 1999 which seems to have affected her the most and causes panic attacks.
Lauren asks Kat again about what happened that day in 1999, pleading that none of them talk about it and her memory of it isn’t clear, but Kat distracts her and avoids answering. Lauren can remember that she’d asked Granny if Gemma could join them to watch the eclipse and there seemed to be a horrified response from everyone until Granny eventually said yes. Meanwhile, Flora hears Kat’s phone ringing from her bedroom and impulsively answers it when she sees it is Kofi, Kat’s ex, and she speaks to him. She later begins to tell Lauren about her conversation with Kofi and says that he had revealed something about Kat, but they are interrupted. Kat can tell from the call history on her phone that someone spoke to Kofi and angrily suspects Flora, and then informs the others that she has booked a flight home that evening. That evening Raff presents to Flora a straw bird he has found and she recognises it as the one that Gemma gave to Lauren in 1999, she is horrified and tries to take it away from him but he won’t release it, and he later presents it to Lauren resulting in her fainting. When she resumes consciousness though, she insists that she is delighted that the straw bird has been found and later writes a letter to Gemma telling her this. Hmmm, there is obviously some tension within the family regarding Gemma which is intriguing. I’ve also noted that there have been several mentions of Lauren and Gemma wearing the same dress back on that day in 1999, so now I’m wondering (me still being focused on the possibility that Gemma died then) if perhaps Floral and Kat did something to who they thought was Lauren but was actually Gemma (perhaps pushed her down the stairs)? It’s also fascinating with the little reveals that Bertha the parrot gave back in 1999 of private conversations between Granny and Grandad which seem to hint of things that were worrying Granny. And of course there’s the link with the painting that includes the birdcage, and Bertha being there, and of course the title of the book too, so I wonder if Bertha is going to instrumental in some way with her revealing some bombshell. There are another couple of lovely descriptive lines in this section, ‘the sea a dip-dye of Farrow and Ball blues’, and poignantly Flora’s thought that her married life seemed ‘small and airless as a utility cupboard’, and tantalisingly sinister the line, ‘a dark undercurrent beneath the homeliness of sun-faded chintz…like a brush hair in an oil painting, a tiny ridge under a varnished surface’, such wonderful evocative writing!
Kat tackles Flora about her speaking to Kofi, but Flora immediately offers sympathy to her regarding what she learnt from Kofi, which was that he is due to get married and also that Kat’s firm is in financial trouble, which leads to the sisters sharing other secrets in their lives and laughing together. Later Lauren decides to go for a walk and Raff insists on going with her, which Flora agrees to and Lauren is flattered that Flora trusts her with her son, and they head up to the moor. While they walk, Lauren suddenly begins to remember the mysterious event in 1999, which was that Flora and Kat had pressured her and Gemma into drinking lemonade mixed with alcohol in the garden and Lauren had reluctantly agreed but then ran into the house to be sick, but when she returned outside she felt better and also over-confident and had suggested to Gemma that they go into the aviary which Gemma agreed to, but Kat and Flora locked them inside the aviary and Gemma suffered an asthma attack and collapsed, having concealed from everyone that she was allergic to birds. Finally Lauren had managed to get the aviary door open so she and Gemma could escape, though all the birds in the aviary escaped too, but Lauren then fainted on the lawn, though she thought she saw Angie at the window upstairs watching everything, and when Gemma is found she is near to death. Meanwhile back in the present day, a storm has suddenly started so Lauren picks up Raff and runs to take shelter in Gemma’s ruined cottage as that is the nearest place they can reach. However, a stranger who says he is Pete (Gemma’s brother) has seen them go into the cottage and follows them in there with his dog, and Lauren realises through her growing fear at his threatening manner that this man and his dog was who she had seen around the area, not Jonah. She also realises she has no signal on her phone, but as she tries to leave the cottage Pete blocks her way. Meanwhile Kat and Flora and Charlie begin searching the area for Lauren and Raff. Kat comes across Jonah and his dog during the search, who insists on helping. Flora returns to the house to check Lauren’s room in case she and Raff have returned, but she finds Lauren’s letter to Gemma and phones Kat in a panic saying that Lauren is unstable. Omg, it’s all very tense with Pete effectively holding Lauren and Raff captive. But I’m also still reeling from the fact that the details of the mysterious event in 1999 have finally been revealed, and Gemma is dead (well, I am leaping onwards here, I guess, as she is only nearly dead at this point but I’m sure she will shortly be dead!). Though I have to admit that I’m a bit surprised it wasn’t more dramatic, with my guesses of Kat and Flora deliberately killing Gemma (perhaps mistakenly thinking she was Lauren) and the blood at the bottom of the stairs being hers. But it’s actually that they inadvertently killed Gemma through playing a nasty trick of locking her and Lauren in the aviary, and Gemma’s reaction to this was so much more severe than they could have ever intended. But whose blood is it at the bottom of the stairs? I remember that when Kat and Flora were talking earlier they mentioned that there was something only they knew, so was it this (that they locked Lauren and Gemma in the aviary) and no-one else knew this (with Lauren not remembering, and them thinking that no-one witnessed it, though it seems now like Angie did witness it), or was there something else that they also did (related to the blood at the bottom of the stairs)? I’m also wondering what happened when Lauren ran inside feeling sick and if they forced Gemma to drink the alcohol which perhaps made her symptoms of asthma worse and so this also contributed to her death? But inbetween all this drama, I loved the line ‘ghosts of old summers cartwheel across the lawn’, I just adore this writer!
Pete is speaking to Lauren about Gemma, saying how her dying affected him and how much he misses her, and Lauren tries to keep him talking by praising Gemma, though she remembers her own sadness at Gemma’s death and her decision to pretend that Gemma was actually still alive by writing to her and inventing a life and career for her. Pete says he wrote the notes to the family and followed them in his car from the pub, but adds that this was because Lauren looked so much like Gemma and he was hurting so much at missing Gemma, but he apologises for scaring them. He then tells Lauren that she and Raff are free to leave and offers to walk them home. As Lauren and Raff emerge from the cottage, Viv (Gemma’s mum) arrives, shortly followed by Flora and Kat and Charlie and Angie and Jonah who have driven there in Flora’s car, after Jonah’s suggestion that they might be at the cottage. After Flora has checked they are both safe she tells them to sit in the car while the rest of them go into the cottage to speak to Viv and Pete. Viv assures the others that Pete is sorry for scaring them all and for sending the notes. Jonah knows Viv and Pete well and he explains that Pete has recently had a hard time having got divorced and losing his job and it’s been difficult for him seeing the sisters back at Rock Point. While waiting in the car, Lauren remembers more about the event in 1999, which was that Charlie was with her on the lawn as she gained consciousness and paramedics were dealing with Gemma who was still alive, though barely, and that Charlie had insisted on going to the hospital with Gemma. Lauren had then gone into the house and found Granny kneeling over Grandad who was covered in blood and laying at the bottom of the stairs, as they had seen from the window who they thought was Lauren having collapsed in the aviary, because both girls were wearing the same dress, and in his rush to help Lauren he had fallen down the stairs. Lauren remembers that Granny assured Grandad that help would be coming soon for him but that the paramedics had prioritised Gemma’s care first. Hmmm, so Pete feels that Lauren and Gemma look alike, which is more weight to my suspicion that Charlie is the father to both of them! And Charlie insisting on going to the hospital with Gemma, rather than waiting with his own father who was injured too, also seems significant. And the fact that Gemma and Lauren were wearing the same dress was important (as I had hoped it was) because the mistaken identity of Lauren caused Grandad’s accident. And it was Grandad’s blood at the bottom of the stairs, so nowhere near as sinister as my imagination had led me to think, tee hee! The answers are coming thick and fast now! I guess Angie’s hint to Kat and Flora that she knows what they did was because she was looking out of the window, though again was this locking them in the aviary, or was it something else yet to be revealed? And Gemma is indeed dead, even though the paramedics tried to help her and prioritised her care over Grandad (with Pete speaking to Lauren about his sister being dead).
Kat resigns from her company, feeling that everything that has happened has altered her priorities. Flora decides to leave her husband and be with a woman she kissed at bookclub (Louise). Angie apologises to Kat for running away (in 1999) after Gemma and Lauren were discovered and their Grandad was injured, saying that she was fearful of the police coming to the house as she’d been in trouble before and also feared that she’d be blamed for not supervising the girls better. Lauren and Jonah talk and he says he was the one who looked in the hermit’s hut at her and Gemma, and was the one who shouted at Kat and Flora for seeming to be about to let her fall from the ledge, saying that he has always liked her, and they then kiss, to Lauren’s delight who has realised that she loves him. Flora states to Kat that they have to now tell the whole truth, and Kat agrees, so they admit to the others that they had previously taken a bottle of rubbing-alcohol from the studio intending to sniff it but they dared Gemma to sniff it and she did because they had previously told her that Charlie has a nude painting of her mother and she was angry at them and keen to prove her own strength, and they then concealed this from the paramedics (that Gemma was likely feeling the effects of sniffing the rubbing-alcohol) and have felt guilty ever since wondering that if this information had been known at the hospital then their treatment may have been different and Gemma might have been saved. Angie interrupts to explain that the bottle of rubbing-alcohol they took would actually have been extremely weak and unlikely to have done any harm as she had reorganised the studio so they had actually taken a different bottle to what they thought they’d taken, to Kat and Flora’s intense relief. Lauren however knows that she had put everything back in its correct place in the studio, as she had been annoyed at Angie’s interference in the studio which she felt was a special place that she shared with Charlie, so it was actually the full-strength bottle of rubbing-alcohol that the girls had made Gemma sniff, but Lauren decides there is nothing to be gained by saying this and making her sisters carry that guilt again. Angie then admits that she slashed her own car tyre as she was worried that the sisters would convince their dad to send her away. Lauren asks her dad what he did to her mother that caused her to leave him even though they clearly loved each other, and what the secret was that her mother tried to tell her on her deathbed. Charlie tries to deflect this question and avoid answering, but Kat insists he does answer as she already suspects what the secret might be, and it is revealed that he had slept with Viv and fathered Gemma whilst he was with Lauren’s mother and Lauren was just a baby. The sisters question why he then employed Viv as a cleaner but he said she asked Granny for the job while he was away from Rock Point, and he then admits to taking Gemma’s straw bird when Viv later told him that Gemma was his child, and that Lauren’s mum later learned all this when she had offered support to Viv after Gemma died. Yay, I was right about Charlie being Gemma’s dad! But why was Granny seemingly so funny about Gemma’s straw and took it in the first place? Had she guessed that Gemma was Charlie’s child and then didn’t want Gemma and Lauren to be close or perhaps didn’t even want to have Gemma in the house, so did she think taking away Gemma’s gift to Lauren would weaken their friendship perhaps? And there was an extra thing that Kat and Flora did (encouraging Gemma to sniff from the bottle of rubbing-alcohol). But I wonder why the author then effectively undid the bit of the plot where Kat and Flora were told by Angie that the contents of the bottle wasn’t that strong and wouldn’t have affected Gemma that much, so they had actually done what they feared they’d done (ie, given Gemma the full-strength bottle, which perhaps affected her reactions and contributed to her death) due to Lauren rearranging the studio again? I guess this allows Lauren to feel like she eventually has some power and knowledge over them, even though she is using this for kind reasons? And I guess it also perhaps demonstrates that Lauren is now able to let the past be in the past? And we’re getting lots of answers now with Angie saying she slashed her own car tyre too! And awww, there seems to be happy endings all round with Kat and Flora re-evaluating their lives, and Lauren finding love with Jonah, and Flora finding love with Louise! I am pleased, as I have grown to care for all the characters, which is a credit (again) to the author’s writing.
A newspaper report is printed saying that the man found dead in the sea a few days ago was Charlie Finch who had suffered a heart attack whilst swimming, and that he was pulled from the water by Pete. The final chapter is dated December 2019 and Kat and Kofi are together, as are Lauren and Jonah, and Flora and Louise. Lauren also now loves and cares for Bertha the parrot. The sisters speak to Grandad on the phone, who had survived the fall down the stairs in 1999, although he has dementia and is in a wheelchair and lives in a care home. The sisters are now redecorating Rock Point to run as an Art Bed and Breakfast and have employed Pete to do the renovations there. Lauren also has regular contact with Viv, who explains that she applied for the cleaning job at Rock Point back in 1999 as she was hoping to get to know the family better in order to decide whether to tell them that Charlie was Gemma’s father, and that after Gemma’s death her and Charlie had felt that it would cause Lauren and Pete more trauma to learn this about Gemma so decided not to tell anyone. Angie is now friendly with all the sisters and visits Rock Point regularly, and is now managing Charlie’s art studio in London, and when she arrives for Christmas she brings one of Charlie’s paintings that has been found tucked at the back of a cupboard there, which is another version of the Girls and Birdcage painting but this one includes Gemma instead of the birdcage and shows her holding the straw bird in her hand and is entitled Four Daughters and a Straw Bird and is dated six years after Gemma’s death. Omg, I’d totally forgotten about that newspaper report at the start of the book (I knew I would have, tee hee)! So the body was Charlie then! But now I’m wondering if he committed suicide, or if it was just an accident? I kind of feel sad that he’s dead though, as everyone else has been allowed to move on past the 1999 event now and have built better lives for themselves, so it seems a bit unfair that he wasn’t able to as well and be happy with Angie and continue loving relationships with his daughters. It wasn’t like Gemma’s death was his fault, he didn’t know about the asthma and wasn’t the one who locked her in the aviary or caused her to sniff the rubbing-alcohol (if that also contributed to her death). Or did he feel responsible for bringing on the jealousy of Kat and Flora towards Lauren and Gemma by keeping the secret of him being her father (and then couldn’t live with this and potentially committed suicide)? Though I don’t imagine their jealousy would have been diminished if they had known he was Gemma’s father, and it could have actually been increased as they were already jealous of Lauren for being his daughter and of having to share him with her so surely they’d have hated Gemma even more if he’d openly acknowledged her as his daughter and spent time with her. Or did he feel guilty for cheating on Lauren’s mum, who seemed to have been the only woman he ever loved (and this caused him to potentially suicide)? But he had been carrying that guilt for years, so why would he have been more affected by that now? Or did he struggle to deal with his daughters’ disapproval of what he did (cheating on Lauren’s mother and fathering Gemma), and their disappointment in him (whether he imagined this or not) was the changing factor that caused him to act (by potentially committing suicide)? But I’m sure, no matter how disappointed they were in him, they’d have preferred having him around. Hmmm, I have to say I don’t really understand the author’s decision with this part of the storyline! However, I have mentioned this to the others in my bookclub (as this was a book we were reading together) and one of them suggested that the author perhaps decided that Charlie needed to die (whether by his own act or through an accident) as this then gave his daughters the space they needed to live their lives, that he had always been such an overwhelmingly dominant character in their lives and they had always felt the need to impress him and try to shape their personalities to please him so they would always have been overshadowed by him even though they were now entering new lives and relationships with others. I do like this suggestion, so perhaps that is what was behind the author’s decision with this storyline. But I’m also puzzled at the author’s decision to have Pete being the person to pull Charlie out of the water, at great risk to himself as the newspaper says. It seems that Pete didn’t know that Charlie was Gemma’s dad (as if he had suspected this, then surely he would have said that to Lauren in the cottage, wouldn’t he?), though I can see that if he did suspect this then perhaps he’d want to save Charlie as he was a link with Gemma (though I’m not sure if Pete would perhaps more likely have been angry at this being another link with the family who caused Gemma’s death, so therefore he’d have been more likely not to have saved him). Or was it written like this in order to enable Pete to end up as a good guy and the sisters to be friendly with him? Hmmm, this is an interesting puzzle of the story too (for me), along with why and how Charlie died. And the discovery of the painting showing all the four girls is interesting too, and makes me wonder about Charlie’s thinking in choosing the birdcage in the first painting to represent Gemma. Was the birdcage being empty demonstrating (for Charlie) that someone was missing (ie, the bird was missing from the cage, like Gemma was missing/unacknowledged in his life), or did he choose something bird-related because of the straw bird that Gemma made? But it seems horribly ironic now for him to have chosen a bird-related item (a birdcage) to represent Gemma, given that Gemma died through her allergy to birds! Or, going with my fellow bookclub member’s theory that the author decided to have Charlie die so that the daughters weren’t constrained in the future by his dominating personality and presence in their new lives, then does the birdcage in the original painting not actually represent Gemma at all but actually represents Charlie who constrained his daughters through his dominating personality and presence (like a birdcage constrains a bird) and he subconsciously forced his way into the painting because he was such a dominant person? Or am I getting a bit too deep into all this now, tee hee?! Either way, it all ties in beautifully with the bird theme that runs through the whole book, from Gemma’s allergy to birds, to Lauren’s later phobia of birds, to Bertha the parrot who revealed some key secrets with the words she repeated, and to the straw bird which held such significance to so many of the characters. And I like the other happy endings in this last section too, with Kat and Kofi being together, the sisters working together to run Rock Point as an Art Bed and Breakfast, and them being friendly with both Angie and Pete, that Lauren and Viv have regular contact, and that Bertha the parrot is being cared for by Lauren, and indeed that Grandad is still alive (as I had presumed he had died in the 1999 event too), so everything is happily tied up, which I do like to happen in a book I’ve enjoyed reading.
Wow, this was a great book! I thoroughly enjoyed it and admired the author’s avoidance of the dramatic scenes that she could have written (which I had imagined myself, tee hee!), which kept the tale more delicate and understated. And yet she still had some cliffhangers and tense scenes and tantalising mysteries without going too over-the-top, which was beautifully done with finesse and a wise touch. And I also like that there are still some puzzling things in the book regarding the author’s decisions that will keep me thinking about it long after I have put it down. And I loved the beautiful descriptive writing too.
I will definitely look out for more books by this author. I see she has written The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde which has me desperate to read it just from the title alone (!), and The Glass House which sounds an amazingly dramatic storyline (!), oh wow, there are more books she has written too, I am so excited that I have plenty to go at, The Midnight Hour also sounds very gripping, and Black Rabbit Hall which I see is set in Cornwall again just like The Birdcage, and The Secret Thread will be released soon! I am one happy person to have all these delicious-sounding books to read! And the links to Cornwall and mysterious happenings also reminds me of Daphne Du Maurier’s books, and I’m still reeling slightly from her amazing book The House on the Strand (which I have now lent to a friend so am looking forward to hearing his view of it and I can hopefully obsess over it again, tee hee) which is 100% Cornwall with a delicious map and everything! And another friend has recommended Du Maurier’s book The King’s General to me so that is now on my list of books to read too. I am going to have to visit Cornwall!
