Emma: There's No Turning Back

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘You’re probably right again,’ Seth said.

  At that moment he didn’t know if Emma was even still alive, if she’d succumbed to her injuries. She’d taken quite a bashing. And Fleur could be dead too, he knew that. But he’d go back to Emma as Olly was saying he should.

  They passed Edward on the way to Seth’s car.

  ‘I’ll drive you home, Edward,’ Seth said.

  ‘No, sir. I’ll keep lookin’. Ma will kill me if I don’. You go ’ome to Mrs Jago, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Edward,’ Seth said.

  ‘An’ tell ’er I’ll be there in the mornin’, same as usual, for the pastry and that. There’s orders.’ Edward turned and moved away, continuing his painstaking search of every inch of ditch in Spratt Lane.

  Seth had a feeling that neither Edward nor Emma would be fulfilling orders in the morning.

  ‘Ah, you’re awake at last, Emma,’ Dr Shaw said. ‘Are you feeling a little better now?’

  ‘Stronger,’ Emma said. She balled her hands into fists and then flexed her fingers out again. She raised one arm over her head before letting it drop again.

  ‘Good, good. Drink this.’

  He handed Emma a glass with whisky in it and she guessed that it was a test of her feeling stronger if she could take it and raise it to her lips.

  She did. Emma had never drunk whisky in her life before, but she’d drink a whole bottle of it if it would make her feel a whole lot better than she felt at that moment.

  ‘Now then, is there any chance that you are with child?’

  ‘No, doctor,’ Emma said. ‘I’ve been thinking of coming to see you about that. It doesn’t seem to be happening.’

  How could she remember that and not the name of the girls who’d attacked her? And probably snatched Fleur as well.

  Would Seth even want another child if Fleur was lost for all time? she wondered.

  ‘Time enough,’ the doctor said. ‘Lie back a little for me, can you?’

  Emma did as she was told and the doctor pressed his fingers gently enough into her abdomen and her ribs. The stiff whisky the doctor had poured her had coursed through her body, warming her, relaxing her. Emma wanted to get any examination over before Seth got back, whenever that might be.

  The clock on the mantelpiece was showing twenty-five minutes past three in the morning.

  She and Seth had taken the doctor into their confidence over Fleur when they’d registered her as one of his patients. He’d been told that Fleur was Seth’s child, but not who her birth mother was.

  ‘It must be me, though,’ Emma said. ‘Mustn’t it? Seth’s fathered a child.’

  ‘Hush yourself. Now’s not the time to be talking of such things. You’ll need to get back to full strength, to heal from this physically and emotionally before you can think about having a child.’

  Again the doctor took her pulse.

  ‘There’s money to pay you in the desk in the dining room,’ Emma said.

  Dr Shaw shook his head as if to say he didn’t want paying at that moment, as he reached for the cloth to bathe Emma’s forehead once more.

  But if the doctor had been called out and was administering medicines and using dressings on her, then he would need paying some time. And she had the money to pay him. Not once had she asked Seth for money to pay doctors’ bills or for her clothes and other things she needed. And she never would.

  But Seth did buy her things – wonderful lingerie from Perrett’s in Torbay Road; and perfume that smelled of jasmine and a summer’s day from the pharmacy. And shoes – once he’d come home with some shoes with a strap and button in the softest kid leather the colour of bay leaves. Emma had asked him why he’d bought them because it wasn’t her birthday, and he said he’d bought them because he loved her, and did he need another reason?

  It seemed frivolous thinking about those things now.

  ‘I wish Seth would come back soon,’ Emma said.

  ‘He probably won’t until Fleur is found one …’

  Emma knew what it was the doctor had been going to say: ‘… one way or the other’, which meant alive or dead.

  But just at that moment they both heard Seth’s car pull up.

  Emma tried to stand to go and greet Seth, but her legs buckled under her.

  ‘Patience,’ Dr Shaw said. He began taking things from his bag, placing them on the seat of the couch. ‘I’ll show your husband what to do with these and then I must be going. Some other patient might be in need of my attendance.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’ Emma began, but then Seth came bursting into the room with Olly Underwood. Their faces grim.

  Emma’s heart sank. Please, please don’t tell me Fleur’s been found dead.

  But it seemed neither Seth nor Olly could speak. It was the doctor who broke the silence.

  ‘Is the search continuing?’ he asked.

  Seth nodded.

  But it was Olly who spoke. ‘The whole town seems to be out now. Bad news travels faster than a rat up a drainpipe and when word got to the Blue Anchor, where some of Seth’s old crew were drinking after hours, they put down their pints and went home for lanterns to join the search.’

  ‘And thank God for that,’ Dr Shaw said. He explained, briefly, to Seth the details of his examination of Emma. But he spoke so softly Emma couldn’t hear all he said – which was, she realised, probably his intention.

  Dr Shaw left then, promising to return before morning surgery started.

  ‘Olly’s stopping here tonight,’ Seth said. ‘I’ll show him to the spare room. Then I’ll be back.’

  Seth couldn’t stop himself. He pushed open the door to Fleur’s room, something he’d done every night since she’d come into his life. And always he’d sketched her as she slept – a permanent memory – just a few lines at a time so as not to waken her. He had a half-completed portrait of her in a small room at the back of Olly’s boatyard, which Olly let him use for painting. He’d intended that portrait to be for Fleur’s Christmas present this year. Would she be alive for him to give it to her? The door squeaked as usual as he pushed it open further. But there was no fear of that squeak waking Fleur tonight.

  Seth walked over to her cot. The sheet and blanket were draped over the rail waiting to be used to tuck her in for the night. He picked up the blanket and held it to his face as a sob rose up from deep inside and came out in a noisy splutter. The blanket did little to stifle the sound. His chest hurt as he struggled to swallow another sob.

  ‘Men don’t cry’ he could hear his father, Reuben, saying. When Seth’s ma had died after falling down the cellar steps, his pa had taken a strap to him for being weak and shedding tears at the funeral.

  But his father was no longer here to take a strap to him, or ridicule him for letting his emotions show. Seth let the tears fall, then wiped his eyes. Dr Shaw had suggested he give Emma a warm bath with some Epsom salts in it. It would draw out the bruising, ease her aches, and help her sleep.

  He ran down the stairs, but he knew it was going to be a very long night.

  ‘Oh, that was lovely, Seth,’ Emma said. ‘I felt so dirty.’

  Dr Shaw had examined her intimately to check whether or not she had been sexually interfered with, despite her protestations that it was a woman who had attacked her, and with a stick. The doctor had countered that the sergeant down at the police station would want confirmation that Emma had been examined. She hadn’t liked the examination one bit. No other man but Seth had ever touched her in her private places – unless she counted the day Carter Jago had grabbed her breasts, intent on raping her. But she’d beaten him off and escaped.

  ‘You were rather,’ Seth said. ‘The water’s like soup.’

  Emma smiled at him. She hadn’t meant that at all. But burdening him with her thoughts at the moment was something he didn’t need.

  Seth had gently bathed her as Dr Shaw had suggested he should. And now she was wrapped in a towel, sitting on his lap as he dried her. Her nightdress was warming on the
fireguard in front of the fire. They would have to go to bed soon. The clock was saying nineteen minutes past five in the morning.

  Any other time but now they would have made love at this stage. This wasn’t the first time Seth had soaped her all over, roused her. But she wasn’t roused now. She was relaxed physically from the warm bath and the whisky and the medication Dr Shaw had given her, but her mind was still on Fleur.

  Seth reached for her nightdress and carefully helped Emma into it. Already her bruises were coming out, dark as night.

  ‘You know we can’t go on like this, Emma, don’t you?’ Seth said.

  Emma’s heart skipped a beat. What was he meaning?

  ‘You and me?’ she said, hardly breathing as she waited for his answer.

  Was that what he meant? He wanted to end their marriage? – sham as it was.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ Seth kissed the tip of her nose. ‘I’ll never love anyone but you, sweetheart. What I meant was, I’m done with living here. With England. I’m done with my pa’s and brothers’ past misdeeds hanging over me like a sea mist that refuses to lift. I’m done with the looks of hate towards me in the eyes of some. And I’m done with living in fear that Miles or Caroline will harm us some day.’

  ‘Do you think they were responsible for those girls beating me?’

  ‘God, I hope not,’ Seth said. ‘But the time has come to seriously think about leaving the country. My Uncle Silas asks every time he writes to me that I go in with him and take over the office side of running his fishing fleet. His handwriting is more of a scrawl these days which is, I think, an indication of how he’s weakening. There was a note from my aunt in with his last letter voicing her worries over him. We’d be safer over in Vancouver, sweetheart. In Canada.’

  ‘I know where Vancouver is,’ Emma said. ‘And so, probably, does your brother. If he found us here, he’d find us there.’

  ‘He might. But Uncle Silas was my mother’s brother and neither pa nor my brothers were remotely interested in her side of the family. And Canada’s a big country.’

  Too big, Emma thought. It might swallow me up. I’d disappear. I’ve never known anywhere but here and I don’t know that I want to.

  ‘But you’ve just sold your own fishing fleet because you hate fishing!’

  ‘I hated my fishing fleet because of my pa’s part in it. Office work, figures and accounting, I like well enough.’

  ‘But you said you’re enjoying working for Olly. And that you want to paint.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Seth said. ‘I’ll be leaving Olly in the lurch with his ma being as sick as she is at the moment.’

  ‘Then don’t,’ Emma said.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Seth said, ‘but we can’t always live our lives to please others. We have to think of our own well-being, too. Uncle Silas—’

  ‘Is in Canada!’ Emma interrupted. ‘The other side of a huge ocean. And in case you’ve forgotten, you get seasick.’

  ‘I’d be seasick every day for a month if it meant I was taking you and Fleur to a safer place,’ Seth said. ‘I think we must go. I can’t put you at risk from another beating.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go to Canada! Ever. It’s the backwoods, even worse than the worst places here for poverty. I read about it in The Times when I was working at Nase Head House.’

  ‘You can’t believe everything you read in the papers, sweetheart,’ Seth said.

  ‘I still don’t want to go.’

  ‘I think we should,’ Seth said firmly. ‘I have a responsibility to you.’

  ‘I have responsibility, too, Seth. To my clients. I have a business, too.’ And then Emma stopped. How cold-hearted she must sound with Fleur still missing to be putting her business above everything. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that in the circumstances. I don’t know what got into me. Do you think evil is transferable? You know, that something from those evil girls might have leeched into me?’

  ‘Hush,’ Seth said. ‘Don’t think such things. I ought not to have brought the subject up.’

  ‘Let’s try and sleep, Seth,’ Emma said, feeling weary beyond belief now. She touched his cheek gently with a finger. ‘Dr Shaw said we should. I’m being truly horrible and I’m sorry. I can remember so much, but not who it was attacked me. And we ought not to be talking about anything but getting Fleur back. And alive.’

  ‘No,’ Seth said. ‘You’re right. Come on. I’ll help you up the stairs.’

  Emma let Seth lead her up the stairs to bed.

  But there was no way on this earth she was going to Canada with him if she could avoid it. She wasn’t going to let anyone or anything force her from the place she loved.

  And there was no way on this earth, either, that she would be able to sleep with Fleur still missing.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘It’s not unusual, after being party to a dramatic event, to remember small details and yet forget bigger ones,’ Dr Shaw was saying to Sergeant Emms, who had come to interview Emma the next morning. ‘Our minds can blank out really bad things; things we don’t want to believe even though they have happened. As in Mrs Jago’s case, with it being women, as she says, who attacked her.’

  ‘It was women. Three of them. Two of them ran away when the third picked up the stick and hit me.’

  Honestly! Why had Dr Shaw bothered to insist on sitting in on the interview? Was it because of the fragile state her body and her mind were in? There was nothing wrong with her mind! And her body would heal quickly enough. Why couldn’t they believe that a woman was capable of inflicting such injuries on her? Emma’s eyes swam with tears.

  ‘Perhaps,’ the sergeant said, ‘the first blow clouded your thinking.

  ‘Enough, Sergeant,’ Dr Shaw said. ‘I can’t have my patient distressed further.’

  ‘Fair enough, Doctor. I’ve got clues to be going on now, seeing as Mrs Jago remembers what time she left the house and Mrs Drew has confirmed it. So I can begin making enquiries as to whether anyone was seen going into the churchyard soon after that.’

  ‘Three women!’ Emma said. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? All a year or so younger than I am. I know that because they were in a lower year than me at school.’

  ‘As you say,’ the sergeant said. He turned to Dr Shaw. ‘If she remembers more before you leave perhaps you would be good enough to ring me at the station, Doctor.’

  She is the cat’s mother, Emma wanted to say. Sergeant Emms was one of the police officers who’d come to Shingle Cottage three years before when she’d gone there to warn Matthew Caunter that the police thought he’d been involved in the murder of Sophie Ellison. The sergeant had had a sneering tone in his voice all the time he’d been in the house. It was as though he was going through the motions now because he had to, and not because he wanted to help a Jago in any way. Emma couldn’t wait for him to go.

  ‘I’d see you out, Sergeant,’ she said, ‘but as you see, I’m indisposed.’

  ‘Not necessary. I’ll see myself out.’

  And then the sergeant was gone, leaving Emma alone with Dr Shaw. Seth and Olly had gone back out to search for Fleur.

  Neither she nor Seth had slept a wink the night before, or was it the morning seeing as they’d only got to bed at 6 a.m.? Seth had been up again by half past seven, knocking on Olly’s bedroom door to wake him. Seth had brought a cup of tea and some porridge to Emma in their bedroom and then he and Olly had left.

  ‘They will find her, Doctor, won’t they?’ Emma said.

  ‘I sincerely hope so. And not too harmed either.’

  ‘If only I could remember the name of the girl in the red coat.’

  The doctor halted in the re-packing of his bag. He looked up sharply. ‘Red? You didn’t say what colour the coat was before, Emma. Are you sure it was red?’

  ‘Positive. I remember it was the exact same shade as the briar berries hanging over the boundary wall and … oh! That coat. I know it now. It used to be mine. I wore it to Mama’s and Johnnie’s funeral beca
use I didn’t have a black one. Mama had made it for me. But when I was at Mrs Phipps’s and came downstairs for the first time after I was ill, she said she hadn’t seen it.’

  ‘Surely, Mrs Phipps wouldn’t have worn your coat, Emma? Are you sure about this? The colour? It might help the sergeant in his enquiries if you are sure and we can tell him that.’

  ‘Margaret Phipps! It was Margaret Phipps who was wearing that coat. It was she who hit me.’ Emma pushed herself up from the chair. She had to let Seth know that he should go and look for Fleur at the cottage that Margaret and her mother had moved to. She took a few steps, but everything started to go black. She felt herself falling; felt the doctor’s hand grasp her elbow, and had no option but to let him ease her down onto the floor when, mercifully, the blackness receded and colour returned.

  ‘Sit up slowly,’ Dr Shaw told her. ‘Very slowly. If you feel woozy again, just tell me.’

  Emma did as she was told. But each time she tried to rush it, the doctor laid a restraining hand on her shoulder.

  ‘The telephone,’ Emma said. ‘It’s in the hall. Call the sergeant.’

  ‘In a moment. A few moments either way won’t make much difference. But you’re my priority patient at the moment, Emma. And then my other patients who are perhaps not being terribly patient in my waiting room this morning.’

  Why? Why was Dr Shaw explaining things to her so carefully and so slowly? This was urgent? Couldn’t he see that?

  ‘You believe me now, Doctor, don’t you?’ Emma said.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the doctor said. ‘I believe you now. I’m only sorry I didn’t think of this turn of events before.’

  ‘Seth! Seth!’

  Seth, about to get in his car, had heard the sound of another motor but hadn’t bothered to see who it might be. It could have been anyone now that more people were buying cars. Previously it had only been only the solicitor and the doctor who had had cars before Seth had bought his. He turned to see that it was Dr Shaw, waving and calling while winding down his window at the same time.

  ‘Emma?’ Seth said, rushing to Dr Shaw’s car. ‘Has something happened?’