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Spoilers Beyond This Point

Characters:

• Jessica: the first girl to move to Wild Meadows, the perfectionist
• Norah: the second girl to move to Wild Meadows, the fighter
• Alicia: the third girl to move to Wild Meadows, the peacemaker
• Miss Fairchild: the owner of Wild Meadows & the girls’ foster mom
•  Scott Michaels: Jessica and Norah’s social worker
• Sandi Riley: Alicia’s social worker
• Dirk: a ranch hand 
• Amy: a toddler who comes to Wild Meadows

Summary (with Spoilers)

Jessica arrives first at Wild Meadows, at four years old. And in the beginning, Jessica is the only child staying with Miss Fairchild. During the first few years, Miss Fairchild dotes on Jessica, and even has Jessica call her “mommy.” But by the time Norah arrives 7 years later, at the age of 10, Jessica has learned that there’s a lot of rules to follow in the house. She helps Norah keep up with Miss Fairchild’s expectations and moods. A year later, Alicia comes to Wild Meadows. Her stay is supposed to be brief, just waiting for her grandmother to heal from a routine surgery. Alicia struggles with Miss Fairchild’s rules and meager way of living, and the other two work double-time to protect Alicia from Miss Fairchild’s wrath.

“Grammy would have a phone in her room—and even if she didn’t, surely she could ask a nurse to ring? She’d be anxious about Alicia being placed into foster care. She’d want to know that Alicia was all right. Her silence didn’t make sense.”

Darling Girls, Sally Hepworth

Alicia’s entrance is when the three’s story truly begins. Jessica is 13, Alicia is 12, and Norah is 11. The girls work together to keep the house clean, do well in school, and pep each other up. Alicia’s grandmother passes away a month after Alicia arrived at the house, and she goes into a spiral of depression. It takes Jessica and Norah months to get her to even crack a smile.

A few months after Alicia’s stay became permanent, Miss Fairchild revealed the next few tricks under her sleeve. First, she started punishing the girls by torturing one of the other ones. The most common punishment was getting locked in the basement. The two free girls would sit on one side of the door, trying to calm down the one locked in the dark, windowless basement, with no timeline for when they’d get out. 

The second trick was signing up for infant placement. One day, Miss Fairchild simply had a baby at the house. Over the next few months, she cycles through them. Every time, she gives a spiel about wanting the baby to connect with only her, and forbids the girls from any interaction. Then, inevitably, she gets exhausted and hands the baby over to the girls.

“‘You didn’t give her those crackers, did you?’ she shrieked one evening after Alicia had managed to get the most recent foster baby to eat some rice crackers. The baby had refused everything but formula for three days. The irony was, Miss Fairchild had given Alicia the crackers and pressured her to feed them to the baby.”

Darling Girls, Sally Hepworth

Despite their fears of Miss Fairchild and her many moods, the girls refuse to let the babies be mistreated. So when she leaves the babies to scream in their cribs, the girls are there to quietly soothe the baby. They hold them, feed them, change them, and spend every waking moment worried about them. They miss periods of school when there’s a difficult baby at home, but no one seems to mind. 

Then one day, the girls would come home from school, and the baby would be gone, soon to be replaced with a “better” one. Unfortunately, Miss Fairchild would grow to resent the next one, and the pattern would continue.

In the present, the three girls are now in their late thirties. Once the body was discovered underneath the farmhouse, the police ask the women to come back to town and give interviews about their time at Wild Meadows. All three are understandably stressed at the thought of returning. They’ve stayed in contact since childhood, and live in the same city. They agree to go back together. 

They spend their first day recounting how they each got to Wild Meadows, and then are informed they’ll need to stay for several days to finish their interviews. They find a bed and breakfast to stay at, then head to the only open place in town, the pub.

While there, they run into the detectives that are interviewing them, and some of the other people that are being interviewed. It’s revealed that the group of women in their late twenties are many of the babies that had passed through the house. The three sisters start piecing together which adult is which baby from their memories.

“Then, just when Jessica thought things couldn’t get any more momentous, Miss Fairchild walked into the pub.”

Darling Girls, Sally Hepworth

Miss Fairchild, who still lives in the same town, comes to purposefully find the women. She interacts with them briefly, but sends Norah into a rage spiral that ends the evening for almost everyone. Back at the bed and breakfast, each of the sisters is dealing with their own issues. Jessica, a home organizer, has been confronted by a client about stealing Valium. Norah punched a guy, then begged him not to report it because she’s on parole. He’s trying to extort nudes from her in exchange for his silence. And Alicia, a social worker, is struggling with a toddler placement and her own fear of commitment.

“‘So the reason I called,’ Aaron went on, ‘is that I was wondering what was going to happen to Theo after he leaves here.’ Alicia sighed. ‘I don’t know yet, mate.’ ‘It’s just that . . . I was wondering . . . if I applied to be a foster parent, once I turned eighteen, could—could I take him?’”

Darling Girls, Sally Hepworth

Theo is the toddler, currently placed in a home with good friends of Alicia’s. Aaron is a 17-year-old boy living with the family. Alicia has started to help Aaron with getting things sorted out when he becomes a legal adult at 18. This includes working with a lawyer, Meera, who Alicia has had a brief romantic interaction with in the past.

“‘Amy is nearly two,’ Miss Fairchild said, her smile growing. ‘And here’s the best bit. Amy isn’t a respite baby. I’m adopting her!’”

Darling Girls, Sally Hepworth

Back in the girls’ interviews, they reveal that one day, instead of a baby, Miss Fairchild had a toddler. Amy was sweet and well-behaved, and Miss Fairchild was even more protective with her. The girls weren’t allowed to even touch her. But as the days go, Miss Fairchild’s patience fades, and the girls are soon taking care of Amy every day. 

There are two social workers that visit. Scott Michaels is the social worker for Jessica, Norah, Amy, and all of the babies that had passed through. Alicia has a different social worker, Sandi, because she started as a temporary placement. One day Sandi stops by, and Miss Fairchild makes Jessica take Amy and hide in the basement.

“As she took the doll from the girl to return it to the box, she noticed it had blond curls, blue eyes, a blue dress, frilly socks, and black Mary Janes. Across its chest a name had been sewn into block letters. Jessica blinked as she read it. AMY.”

Darling Girls, Sally Hepworth

In the basement, Jessica finds a dolly with the name Amy embroidered on it. But in the grand scheme of things, like being forced to hide a toddler in the basement, it quickly fades to the background.
Like most toddlers, Amy starts going through a “no” phase, especially with Miss Fairchild. She refuses to do anything with Miss Fairchild, insisting on being with the girls at all times.

“Other days, when the girls left for school, she stood at the front door and sobbed. ‘How will you survive without your darling girls?’ Miss Fairchild would say crossly.”

Darling Girls, Sally Hepworth

The girls are starting to get worried about Amy and Miss Fairchild’s jealousy. One day, the girls come home from school and see Miss Fairchild in the pool, with two towels spread out behind her. Jessica realizes immediately that she’s letting Amy drown next to her in the pool. Jessica dives in and saves Amy, while Miss Fairchild yells at her for stopping the swimming lesson.

At this point, all three are in agreement that they will risk getting separated to keep Amy safe and report what’s happening. One morning, they meet with their school counselor and tell them everything that’s been happening at Wild Meadows. The counselor immediately reports to the police, and an officer comes to interview the girls. While that’s happening, they send another set of officers to Wild Meadows.

“‘The records show three children in Miss Fairchild’s care. You three. There’s no record of a toddler being placed for adoption or foster care at Wild Meadows.’ Max stood from the desk and paced, tired or frustrated or both. ‘According to our records, Amy doesn’t exist.’”

Darling Girls, Sally Hepworth

Once the girls tell their whole story, the officer, Max, tells them that there was no sign of a toddler at the house. Miss Fairchild had the doll with AMY stitched on her dress in the main room, and tells the officers that the girls play pretend with it daily. She even enlists the ranch hand from next door to testify that he also saw them playing with the doll.

“She didn’t tell me much,” Dirk continued, “just that there had been a mix-up with the adoption paperwork and it turned out she’d had the little girl illegally for six months. She told me the girl was already on her way to her new family, but if the police had questions just to say I knew nothing. If I did that, she said, she wouldn’t have to tell them I’d been fraternizing with the adolescent girls at the farm.”

Darling Girls, Sally Hepworth

In the present, the ranch hand, Dirk, admits that he was on the sex offender list. Miss Fairchild knew that, and told him if he didn’t go to the police and corroborate her doll story, she’d testify that he’d abused the three girls. As all the pieces are put together, the women are convinced that Amy is the body that was found. The police have confirmed it’s the body of a toddler, and they never saw Amy again after that day. They tell the police that Amy had 6 toes on one foot, so it should be easy to confirm it’s her.

At this point, one of the previous infant residents of Wild Meadows speaks up. Her name is Zara, and she has 6 toes on one foot. The police are able to go through records and confirm that Zara is Amy. She had been in foster care as an infant, with Scott Michaels as her social worker. He sold her to Miss Fairchild and told her immigrant parents they’d lost custody. Then Miss Fairchild needed to get rid of her before the police came, so she gave Amy/Zara back to Scott. It’s also revealed that Miss Fairchild knew about the girls’ confession to the police because Jessica broke and warned her. 

The women forgive Jessica, but it’s all too much for her. She takes too high a dose of Valium, and Norah finds her. They whisk her to the emergency room, and once she recovers, she willingly agrees to go to rehab. Alicia and Meera reconnect, and end up adopting both Aaron and Theo. And Norah strikes up a romance with the local pub owner.

Ready for the big reveal?!

After multiple tests on the discovered body, it’s determined to be fifty years old. As the only person living in the house at that time and aided by the women’s testimony of their treatment as foster children, Miss Fairchild is arrested. She’s forced to work with a therapist, and her sessions are interspersed throughout the book.

She tells the therapist about her father’s tragic death, which led to her mother’s second marriage to a horrible man named John. John starts forcing Miss Fairchild to do menial labor and chores. That quickly moves onto punishments like washing her mouth out with soap and locking her in the basement. Then John begins to rape her, which results in a pregnancy. She’s kept in the basement, and forced to give birth all alone. She gives birth to a girl, and names her Amy. When she tries to escape with her daughter, her mom catches her and tells John. John beats Miss Fairchild, and her mom takes Amy. Miss Fairchild runs away, and only finds out later that they killed Amy and buried her in the basement. And her therapist buys it, hook, line, and sinker.

“Did I mean to hurt her? Well . . . I won’t say it didn’t feel good to throw her against the wall. I won’t say it didn’t feel good to put an end to the crying. I won’t say it didn’t feel good to see Mum’s and John’s faces when they saw what I’d done.’”

Darling Girls, Sally Hepworth

Miss Fairchild then confesses to just the reader that’s not at all what happened. Her dad did die, and her mom did marry John. But John was a perfectly normal man who never harmed her in any way. But her mom got pregnant, and had a little girl named Amy. Miss Fairchild was so jealous of the baby that she herself killed Amy, and her mother begged John to keep it a secret so she wouldn’t lose both daughters.