Where I Found You (25 page)

‘Elsa?’ Maggie asked. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘The baby’s coming,’ she answered in gasping sobs. ‘I’m scared. I don’t want to lose her.’

Crouching down as best she could and using Harvey to balance herself, Maggie reached out a hand but found empty space. Twigs snapped as Elsa scrambled backwards. ‘It’s Maggie. You’re safe. I won’t let anything happen to you.’

Cold, trembling fingers wrapped themselves around Maggie’s hand but when the grip tightened, it was like iron. ‘Help me, please.’

‘That’s why I’m here. You’re safe now,’ Maggie said. She could hear Kathy and Judith approaching from behind her. ‘Please come into the house with me. You can’t stay here.’

Maggie wanted to believe it was Elsa she was helping to her feet but it was the frail and broken body of Mrs Milton she led back towards the house with Kathy’s help. It was a task made doubly hard because Maggie needed both arms to support the old lady. Harvey remained a few steps behind with Judith who was giving whispered directions to Maggie so she could find her way safely.

‘I’ll go to my room now,’ the old lady said with a youthful lilt as they stepped over the threshold.

Kathy made no objection to opening up her home to this relative stranger and Maggie helped Mrs Milton up the stairs. The old lady appeared to be far more familiar with the layout than Maggie and turned immediately left and through a door. The smell of stale air and musty drapery suggested the room had been shut up for a long time.

Springs creaked as Mrs Milton sank onto the bed while Maggie made her way around to the other side, feeling her way as she went. The bed was a double with a wooden frame and a bedspread folded at the bottom, which Maggie lifted up and over Mrs Milton before slipping off her shoes and lying down next to her. The pillows were musty but the cotton cases cool and crisp.

‘Everything’s going to be fine, Elsa,’ Maggie whispered but the lie brought tears to her eyes.

‘Where’s Mrs Jackson?’

‘We’ll let her know.’ Kathy was standing at the bedroom door with Judith. Harvey was close by panting with anxiety rather than exertion. ‘We’ll go downstairs and phone for help,’ she added meaningfully.

‘Thanks, Kath.’

Mrs Milton tensed her body and cried out in pain. ‘It’s nearly here. Oh, my God I don’t want this to happen. Please, please, I don’t want to lose her,’ Elsa continued, sobbing now. ‘I won’t let them take her. I’d rather die. I want to die. She’s all that I have. There’s no point in carrying on without her.’

‘Yes, there is,’ Maggie insisted. ‘You have a future where you’re going to be happy again, Elsa. You’re going to find someone who will love you and never leave you.’

Elsa moaned as she twisted and turned beneath the bedcover. ‘No, no, I don’t want anyone else. I want my Freddie. No one else, not ever!’

Maggie wondered if Ted had been forced to witness this too. She couldn’t imagine the pain he would feel listening to his wife cry out for a lost love and at the same time dismiss nearly sixty years of marriage.

Instinctively, Maggie began to rock her friend and slowly but surely the sobs began to ebb and her body relaxed. It seemed to take forever but it was probably only minutes before Elsa fell silent. Her breathing was nasal but less laboured, and with a sense of relief Maggie realised she had fallen asleep.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ Judith whispered.

Maggie raised herself onto her elbow. ‘Actually, could you bring Harvey over here,’ she said, keeping her voice as low as she could. ‘He might help keep her calm when she wakes.’

The dog padded over to Elsie’s side of the bed and put his head on the mattress. She heard what she thought was Harvey licking his chops then realised too late that he was licking Elsie’s face.

‘What?’ Elsie groaned as she tried to cover her face. Her grasping found Harvey instead but rather than push the dog away she began to stroke him. ‘Hello, fella, what are you doing here? Ted, what’s going on?’

As Elsie twisted around she actually jumped with fright when she discovered it was Maggie lying next to her. ‘It’s all right, Elsie.’ Maggie gave her a confident smile but she suspected Elsie, unlike Elsa, would be less willing to accept her futile assurances. ‘You’re in Kathy’s house. We found you in the garden. You were upset.’

Elsie eased herself up into a sitting position. As she rubbed away her dried tears, the weathered skin on her hands made the sound of sandpaper across her cheeks. ‘Oh, what a silly old bat I am,’ she said with a note of self-admonishment and more importantly, without a hint of the vulnerable young woman who had cried herself to sleep. She took a deep breath. ‘At least I get to see you and this chap again. I’ve missed you both.’

Harvey groaned as she rubbed behind his ear.

‘We’ve missed you too,’ Maggie said as she slipped off the bed and retraced her steps to sit on the edge of the bed next to Elsie.

Judith was still standing at the door. ‘I’ll let Kathy know Mrs Milton’s feeling better,’ she said diplomatically.

‘Thanks, Judith.’

‘Oh dear, not again,’ Elsie whispered. ‘Isn’t that your mother-in-law? Goodness knows what she thinks of me.’

‘She has a good heart,’ Maggie offered. ‘Deeply hidden but I think I’ve been convinced that it’s in there somewhere.’

‘I can see we have a lot of catching up to do. Ted meant well but it looks like you can’t get rid of me that easily. I’m getting worse, Maggie, so no more keeping away. If that’s all right with you?’ Her last question sounded less confident with echoes of Elsa’s voice.

‘That’s more than fine by me.’

‘Good. You can begin by helping me up if you can manage? These joints of mine seize up as soon as they come within two feet of a bed or a comfy chair,’ she joked.

There were plenty of grunts and groans as Maggie did as she was bidden and she followed Elsie not to the door but towards the light that streamed through the window and danced across her limited vision. Maggie could feel the sun warming her face as she waited for Elsie to collect her thoughts.

‘I’ve been here before,’ Elsie said with mild curiosity rather than shock.

The statement didn’t come as a surprise to Maggie either. ‘We found you in the garden. Is this the house that belonged to the lady who made her own lilac-scented soap?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mrs Jackson?’

‘Yes.’

‘And this room?’

‘It’s where I stayed,’ she said, turning away from the window to focus on her surroundings. ‘I tried to run away but I was already in labour at that point. I was a silly girl back then and it was Aunt Flo who got me back in here. This is where Tess was born.’

‘Is it the first time you’ve been back since then?’

‘It’s the first time I’ve been back in this room, yes.’

‘But you came back to visit Mrs Jackson afterwards, didn’t you?’

‘I couldn’t talk to anyone about what happened here. I still can’t, but with Mrs Jackson, I didn’t need to. She understood how I felt without me having to explain. She became an honorary member of my family: in fact, my girls called her Aunt Flo too. It was a shame she didn’t get the same kind of attention from her own family. The way her niece behaved was just awful. The only time Anne came back here was to bury her and collect her inheritance. I think she was terrified of the past catching up with her. She didn’t even have the courage to tell me Flo had died. We turned up here one day and a bunch of nurses were renting the place, that’s how we found out.’

‘Alice said she remembers playing with your girls.’

‘Yes and it’s nice being able to share some good memories. You may not believe it but there were plenty of good times in my life.’

‘Just not here.’

Elsie sighed. ‘I never, ever wanted to return to this room.’

‘But you wanted to return to the park,’ Maggie said. ‘Why?’

‘Sometimes even the bad memories can be precious. I was a mother when I sat on that park bench. I couldn’t see my baby or hold her but she was growing inside me and I kept her safe,’ she said, her voice reduced to a whisper as she reached towards Maggie and touched the swell of her stomach. ‘Until the day she was born.’

‘I want to help you find her again,’ Maggie said.

Elsie was shaking her head. ‘It’s too late.’

Maggie wasn’t ready to take no for an answer; something told her that Elsa’s spirit wouldn’t rest until Tess was found but she didn’t argue with the old lady who had been through enough for one day. They both turned to the door as they heard footsteps hurrying up the stairs and a moment later Kathy appeared, slightly out of breath. ‘Ted’s on his way, Elsie. He should be here soon.’

‘You’re good girls,’ Elsie said. ‘I’d be lost without you.’

‘Yes, that garden is a bit overgrown. You could have been in there for days,’ Kathy said. They all did their best to laugh and chase the ghosts back into the corners of the room.

When Elsie returned downstairs she was very quiet. The whole episode had left her exhausted but it was her embarrassment that kept her spirits low. Kathy and Judith were in the living room and, to their credit, chatted away as if Elsie was a long-lost friend while Maggie waited at the front door. She had made the excuse that Harvey needed a toilet break but she was waiting for Ted.

‘It looks like I’m a bad penny that keeps turning up,’ she said as he ambled towards her.

‘I would have thought you could say the same thing of my wife.’ He groaned as he negotiated the small step to reach Maggie. ‘Thank you for being here.’

‘More luck than management,’ she said before lowering her voice. ‘This was a bad one.’

‘These days they all are, love. What happened?’

‘She thought she was in labour. Once upon a time she gave birth in this house,’ Maggie explained, ‘but of course you already know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes, this is Aunt Flo’s old place although I haven’t been here for, oh, forty years, maybe? Flo died in the late sixties.’

As they talked, Maggie had one ear to the sounds coming from deeper within the house. There was still a lot of animated chatter. ‘This was where she gave up her baby,’ she said. It was an opening statement for her to launch into the arguments she had held back from Mrs Milton. ‘Ted, we have to start the search for Tess. Elsie won’t find peace until she knows what happened to her, that’s why she came back here to Sedgefield.’

Ted reached over to give Maggie’s arm a gentle squeeze. ‘She already knows what happened to the baby, Maggie. I’ve done my own research and I’ve seen her medical records. The baby was stillborn.’

17

Maggie pressed the palms of her hands down firmly onto the wooden slats. The bench was warm and the sun strong enough to soften the rough edges of the chipped paint, blurring the distinction between one layer and the next. She smiled as she listened to the sound of approaching footsteps. The greeting was on her lips long before the breeze lifted the scent of lilacs towards her.

Three weeks had passed since Kathy’s birthday and July had slipped into August. Maggie had made up for lost time by visiting Elsie often. She couldn’t match some of the practical support they were receiving from the health and social workers but she was still a friendly face and one that Elsie trusted if only after a little prompting. But today was a red-letter day. Ted had agreed to a little excursion to the park. If this was the only place where Elsie and her baby could be reunited, then this was where she needed to be.

‘Here she is, Maggie,’ he said. ‘Now I’m expecting you to take good care of her.’

The sense of anticipation vanished into the ether as Elsie remained silent and Maggie realised she wasn’t with him, not in mind at least. ‘How is she?’ she asked.

‘Quiet.’

Ted helped ease Elsie onto the bench with a few gentle instructions.

‘Hello, Elsie. It’s Maggie.’

When Elsie didn’t reply, Ted tried again. ‘You remember Maggie, don’t you, love?’ Again, nothing. ‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asked Maggie.

Maggie and Ted were still getting to know each other but at least now they both knew they were on the same side. ‘We’ll be fine,’ she said with forced cheeriness.

‘Then I’ll leave you to it. I’ll nip over to the shops and come back in about half an hour.’

There was more than a hint of exhaustion in Ted’s voice that Maggie couldn’t ignore. ‘You sound tired; are you sleeping enough?’

‘She was up in the night calling for her mum. I always thought she gave me a hard time, but you should have heard the language out of her when she thought I was one of her brothers.’

‘Why don’t you go home and take it easy? We can find our own way back.’

‘Oh, don’t you worry about me. I don’t need that much sleep these days anyway.’

Maggie tried again but couldn’t convince Ted to take any time off; in fact, it took some persuasion to get him to leave at all. After he’d gone, the two women sat in silence, both deep in thought but only one keenly aware of the other’s presence. The sun was beating down on them and Harvey had crawled beneath the bench to find some shade. Maggie still held on tightly to his leash in case he was needed in an emergency.

‘Phew, it’s hot,’ Elsie said suddenly. She was wafting her hand in front of her face.

‘Elsie?’ Maggie asked, more surprised that it was Mrs Milton resurfacing from her fugue state than by the exclamation itself.

‘Oh, hello. I know you, don’t I?’

‘Yes, it’s Maggie.’

‘What on earth am I doing in Victoria Park?’

‘You moved to Sedgefield with Ted,’ Maggie said. ‘Do you remember?’

‘It’s a lovely spot. No wonder I wanted to come back.’

Maggie felt as if she was talking to a stranger, not Elsie; not even someone who knew her particularly well. ‘I think you liked to sit here and watch the swans once upon a time.’

‘Is that what I told you?’ There followed a mournful sigh then a poor attempt at a laugh. ‘Don’t go paying any attention to me, love. My mind’s befuddled at the best of times. There weren’t any swans in Victoria Park, not back in my time anyway. There were plenty in Sefton Park in Liverpool and that’s probably what I was thinking of. That was where my beau used to take me. He told me how swans mate for life – it was his way of telling me how he felt about me.’