Letters to the Lost (52 page)

Stella nodded, silenced for a second as emotion thickened in her throat. ‘He thought he knew what he wanted, and then he got it and found he didn’t want it after all. Dr Walsh had suspected there was something wrong with Daisy for a little while, but Charles had always refused to accept it. After he found out about Dan I think it planted the seed in his mind that she might not be his daughter, and so the suggestion that she wasn’t “normal” gave him the perfect excuse to get rid of her.’

‘And you had no idea.’

‘Not then. Not for a long time. I found out later, of course, but for twenty years I carried around the pain of losing her and the burden of my guilt. And you see, that was why I couldn’t go to Dan. I had my freedom, but because of what I’d done I knew I didn’t deserve it. I certainly didn’t deserve to be happy.’

She trailed off, remembering what he’d said in his letter at the start of it all.
Stella, I don’t want you to feel guilty . . . It poisons happiness and makes us believe that we’re not good enough . . .
She’d read that letter a hundred times, and then she’d put it in the box with all the other ones and given them to Nancy. For safekeeping, but also so she couldn’t read them any more. He was offering her a forgiveness to which she believed she had no right.

‘How did you find out what Charles had done?’

‘When he died. He had left all the paperwork – the forms he and Dr Walsh had signed originally, and all the letters he’d received from the hospital over the years, requesting money for new clothes, informing him that she’d had measles, that sort of thing – in an envelope with my name on it. I suppose it was his one act of kindness that he didn’t destroy them as well as himself.’

‘Himself?’

‘Oh yes. You see, for all those years he had been carrying his burden of guilt too, though he kept it hidden from me. Eventually the burden got too great for him to bear. The coroner was very kind – kinder perhaps than Charles deserved. He said it could possibly have been an accident that Charles took too many of his sleeping tablets. An oversight perhaps.’

‘Death by Misadventure,’ Will said softly.

‘Exactly. Charitable of him, since suicide is an abomination in the eyes of God.’

If Stella had had her way it would have said ‘death by poisoning’ on the certificate: twenty sleeping pills and as many years of toxic guilt.

‘And so you were finally reunited with Daisy,’ Jess said, bringing her gently back to the story. ‘What was it like?’

‘Heartbreaking.’

Stella had talked about this before. In fact, during the long years of campaigning she seemed to talk about little else, to anyone who would listen, waving the truth in front of unseeing eyes like a banner. ‘Putting children into places like that was considered to be the right thing to do at the time, but the conditions they lived in were dreadful. You can’t imagine . . . They were treated like animals, tied up or left in bed because no one bothered to get them up.’

It was familiar territory, but it had never stopped being painful. ‘Of course, I wanted to gather her up and take her as far away as possible, but I couldn’t. I was a stranger to her. She’d grown up without knowing warmth or affection, and it had turned her in on herself. It took a whole year to get her to trust me enough to hug her, and two years to get her to talk. She had simply forgotten how to because no one ever spoke to her. I did what I could – for all of the patients there. I spent as much time as I could with the children, playing with them and talking to them; it became the focus of my life. And when I went home I wrote letters to the authorities, asked questions, made demands, and generally made a thorough nuisance of myself. Gradually things began to improve. Daisy died when she was just thirty-six – she had a heart condition, you see – and the hospital was an altogether different place by then. A happy place. There were so many others that weren’t, though, and so the work didn’t stop there. I set up a charity, and became a consultant for the government on policy – things I’d never dreamed I could do.’

‘You got an OBE,’ Will said gravely. ‘I couldn’t find any information on the internet about Stella Thorne, but there was plenty about Stella Daniels, including some great pictures of you at the Palace.’

Stella laughed, touched by his admiration. ‘I changed my name after Charles died. I didn’t feel like that same timid, powerless girl any more. I felt a terrible fraud accepting the OBE, though. I did what I did for such selfish reasons. For Daisy, to make up for being such a poor mother to her for all that time, and to fill the huge hole left by Dan.’

‘You’re amazing,’ Jess said quietly, getting up to put her arms around Stella. ‘Honestly. Amazing.’

Stella returned the hug, blinking back the sudden sting of tears. ‘No. I started off being ordinary and in the end I was
lucky
. I found my daughter, and I discovered my voice.’ As Jess released her she brushed her cheeks quickly and laughed. ‘Now, let me make you some more tea. A hot cup this time . . .’

She gathered her strength to get up, but Will was too quick for her. ‘Let me do it. We’ve tired you out enough already.’

The lamplight reflected on the glass, sealing them into a golden bubble, holding the darkness beyond at bay. Over freshly brewed tea they moved on to other subjects, and Jess told Stella about the mother who, like Nancy, had opted out of her daughter’s life, the boyfriend who, like Charles, had abused her. So many similarities, and a world and two generations of difference, but Stella was grateful that she shared her story. When the teapot was empty Will and Jess carried the cups across to the sink. She washed while he picked up a tea towel and dried.

‘Dan told me that he wrote to you often, after the war,’ Jess said above the noise of running water. ‘He wanted you to know that he was waiting for you and he still loved you, but Nancy must have thrown the letters away. Why would she do that?’

Stella was tired now. She had been talking for a long time; her voice had worn thin with use and there was a faint throbbing at her temples. ‘Nancy was a survivor. She could be ruthless, and she always did what was necessary to protect herself. I imagine she was worried that if I heard from Dan I’d leave Charles to go to him, and Vivien would be sent back to her. Or that Dan would come over here to be with me and we’d want the house back . . .’

Or maybe she was thinking of me
. The idea came out of nowhere, like the pale moth that emerged suddenly from the darkness to batter delicately at the windowpane, then settle there in the lampglow. Nancy had seen her in the hospital and witnessed her painful journey back into the outside world. In her brisk, no-nonsense way she’d encouraged it – partly for her own sake, perhaps, but there was little doubt that she’d saved Stella’s life. Maybe she’d believed that letters from Dan would undo all those months of laborious progress and drag her back to the cliff edge?

She would never know now. Nancy was gone, like so many of the other people whose names she’d spoken tonight for the first time in half a lifetime.

The glass in front of her reflected the bright kitchen behind, where the shapes of Will and Jess moved around each other, speaking in soft murmurs. Beyond the windows layers of dusk deepened into night. Stella felt herself suspended between the present and the past, the lit-up room and the dark garden.

Talking had exhausted her, but she was glad she had done it. She felt calm; lighter somehow, as if she’d shrugged off a heavy overcoat on a hot day. Speaking those things out loud had given her a different perspective on them: she could see them now simply as a series of events, like beads in a necklace, distinct from each other but joined together in an unchangeable sequence. Bad ones, but good ones too. In locking the past away she’d forgotten about the good things.

The cat was warm on her lap and her eyelids were heavy. She let them drop. In the comforting blackout she began to take out memories and examine them one by one. It was like unwrapping precious tissue-swathed treasures. There was Nancy, with her fierce, grudging kindness and her raucous laugh; hitching up her blue satin bridesmaid’s dress to get a cigarette from her garter, eating tinned peaches at the church fete, showing off her smart new trench coat. The colours of each image were fresh and unfaded. She saw Ada wearing her flowered pinny, and recalled her miraculous ability to defy rationing and produce a hat, a bread pudding, a pretty dress. Ernest Stokes came next, with his insatiable appetite, and Fred Collins with his Box Brownie. Marjorie and her scones. Hilda Goodall dispensing milky advice in the maternity ward. Dan
.

Dan . . .

And there the flickering film reel behind her eyes stuttered and ended.

She didn’t want to relive the old moments with Dan. She wanted more than memories, no matter how precious and perfect they were.

She wanted
more
.

She picked up his letter and held it to her cheek. Even after all these years she wasn’t on good enough terms with God to ask Him anything, so she squeezed her eyes shut again and sent a whispered message straight to Dan.

I’m here, hold on . . . Forever isn’t over yet.

The Spitfire’s headlamps gilded the pale froth of cow parsley in the hedgerows and made the cats’ eyes gleam. The night’s breath was cool.

‘What if we’re too late?’

Jess spoke in a low voice, through clenched teeth, as if she was cold and trying to stop them from chattering. Will switched on the ineffectual heater and turned it up to high.

‘Remember what he said in the letter. He hadn’t given up hope, and neither should we.’

He stopped at a junction. Turning to check for cars coming from the left he could see her face in profile, palely silhouetted against the dark blue beyond. The headlights of a passing car showed up the glitter of tears on her cheeks.

‘Oh Jess, sweetheart . . .’

She scrubbed quickly at her face with the sleeve of her shirt. His shirt, the one he’d given her from his wardrobe at home. ‘We tried to help, but I’m scared we’ve only made things worse. Isn’t hope a bad thing when it comes to nothing? Isn’t it better to accept less and not be disappointed?’

He turned out of the junction, out of the village. Only darkness lay ahead of them. ‘We’ve done our best. We’ve done everything we can.’

As he spoke he felt the inadequacy of the words, their smallness. The smallness of themselves, too. The car was a tiny boat, afloat on a black sea beneath the vast dome of night.

‘But what if it’s not enough?’ she said. ‘What if he dies without knowing that we found her?’

A gateway loomed ahead in the beam of the lights. He pulled into it and turned off the engine. The silence was sudden and complete.

‘Then he’ll still have known that you tried,’ Will said quietly, angling his body towards her awkwardly in the tiny space. ‘He’ll still have known that over in England a wonderful girl cared enough to listen to his story and take up his search. And Stella will know that he never forgot her.’ He reached out and stroked the backs of his fingers down her cheek. ‘All these years, through all she’s suffered, she’s been loved. Isn’t that the most important thing, in the end? To know that you’re loved?’

41

‘But the stain is still there.’ The woman jabbed at the fabric with a finger that was barnacled with diamonds, and gave an exasperated little laugh. ‘Look, perhaps you don’t understand, but this is a four-hundred-pound dress. I brought it to be cleaned, and you’re returning it in exactly the same state and expecting me to pay?’

‘I’m really sorry,’ Jess said, completely untruthfully. ‘ We did explain when you dropped it off that removing red wine from raw silk was unlikely. The solvents we use are the most effective available, but even so—’

The woman hitched her handbag onto her shoulder. It was the size of a tennis bag and hung about with gold padlocks and chains that no doubt signified its exclusive brand heritage to those in the know. ‘Yes, of course,’ she snapped. ‘I understand that. But I didn’t think I’d be expected to pay when it’s no better than when I brought it in.’

‘Well, it’s because we still had to do the work on it, you see.’ Jess’s patience was pretty much at an end. Anyone, she reckoned, who parked their gleaming black-windowed Chelsea tractor on the double yellow lines outside and came in lugging a handbag like that, wearing sunglasses with a designer logo big enough to see from space and bragging about how much their dress had cost could probably afford the £6.95 for dry cleaning. ‘It’s the cost of materials, and the labour involved—’

The shop door opened, letting in a blast of traffic noise and a tall man in a suit. Samia came through from the back and went to serve him, and Jess watched out of the corner of her eye as they both looked in her direction.

‘I don’t care,’ the woman was saying coldly. ‘The fact is that you expect me to pay for a service that has not been carried out to a sufficiently high standard. I’ll pay, but I’ll be taking it further, I can tell you—’

‘Do excuse me, madam,’ Samia interrupted, flawlessly courteous as always. ‘This gentleman would like a word with my young colleague here. Perhaps I can help?’

Jess’s immediate relief became a lurch of foreboding as she looked properly at the man for the first time and recognized him.

‘Mr Ramsay?’

‘Forgive me for bothering you at work, but I was passing and I thought I might as well drop this off. The council’s Empty Homes Officer delivered it yesterday.’

He placed a key on the counter. Jess picked it up and held it in her hand. It felt very small, considering everything it represented. She made an attempt to look happy. ‘Thanks. It’s good of you to bring it. Does that mean I can go into the house now?’

‘It does indeed. The electricity and gas have both been reconnected and the council have done an initial tidy up, but I don’t need to tell you that there’s still a lot to be done.’

At the other end of the counter the woman with the hideous handbag was speaking very slowly and loudly to Samia. ‘It’s the Supply of Goods and Services Act,’ she was saying, as if Samia was deaf, or stupid, or both.