Emma: There's No Turning Back

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘You had no right to do that,’ Emma said. ‘I’ll be back to normal soon enough. I have to be.’

  And then she realised that to find the telephone numbers of her clients, Seth would have had to go to her drawer in the bureau – the one where she had Matthew’s letter, and his birthday card to her, stashed underneath a pile of invoices.

  Had Seth seen them? Opened them? Read them? Although she’d done nothing to instigate the arrival of those letters, she still felt guilty that she had them. That she’d read them. Kept them.

  Emma felt sick that Seth – her dear, kind Seth – might have seen them. She put a hand to her breastbone where usually her mama’s amethyst necklace lay, only it wasn’t there. She felt naked, bereft, without it. Unprotected.

  And even sicker to think he might be holding a letter to her from Matthew in his hand.

  Emma made to get up from the bed but became woozy in seconds.

  She flopped back onto the pillow.

  ‘Who are the letters from?’ she asked, her heart hammering in her chest.

  ‘A few bills, which I haven’t opened yet. One in my aunt’s handwriting which I have – Uncle Silas is getting more frail physically even though his mind is as sharp as ever.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Emma said. ‘That his mind is sharp, I mean, not that he’s more frail.’

  ‘I know which you meant,’ Seth smiled at her. ‘I just popped up to see you were all right before I go and deal with these.’

  He waved the letters at her.

  ‘Well, I’m fine now after my long sleep. I’ll get up now, before you go, so you can see how fine I am.’

  Emma made to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, but the effort was too much and she felt giddy again.

  ‘You patently aren’t,’ Seth said. ‘And you’ve gone as white as a sheet.’

  ‘Have I?’ Emma said weakly. She put a hand to her neck where the chain of her amethyst should have been, but wasn’t. ‘I want my necklace, that’s all.’

  Matthew had risked his skin – and possibly also his job – to get it back for her, she knew that. The day he’d returned it to her, in a box he’d hand-carved, had been one of the happiest days of her life.

  ‘Then I’ll go and ask Beattie right away if she’s seen it. And if she hasn’t I’ll call in on Dr Shaw on my way to Olly’s.’

  ‘And if neither of them has seen it, what then?’

  ‘No more questions, sweetheart. I’m going downstairs now.’

  Seth placed the most tender of kisses on Emma’s lips, and then he was gone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Emma slowly slid her legs over the side of the bed. She grabbed at the edge of the bedside table for support. She’d heard the engine of Seth’s car splutter into life just seconds ago. Lurching forward, she grasped the edge of the chest of drawers and hauled herself nearer the window. She wanted to see Seth with her own eyes driving out of the gateway and going down over the hill towards Olly’s boatyard.

  She was being as quiet as she could because she knew any noise would mean Beattie would come rushing upstairs to see if something was wrong. And she didn’t want that. She wanted to get downstairs by her own efforts as soon as she could. Take Matthew’s letter and his card from her drawer in the bureau and consign both to the fire in the range. It was too dangerous to keep them in the house. Seth might even have seen them already, although in her heart she didn’t think he had.

  A scrunch of gears. Why did Seth always scrunch the gears before he drove off? She never did when she drove the car. Perhaps it was a man thing?

  On legs that felt they might snap at any moment, Emma stepped closer to the window. She could see the roof of the car now, saw as it inched forward and manoeuvred between the gate pillars. Another step. She pressed her nose to the glass and counted every second – nineteen of them – before Seth in his car disappeared around the bend in the road.

  ‘Oi, my lady, what do you think you’re doin’ out of that bed?’

  Beattie. With a squirming Fleur in her arms.

  ‘I wanted some air,’ Emma lied.

  With fingers that pained her to move, she slowly dragged the catch on the sash window from right to left. But when she went to lift the window she found she had no strength at all, and her knees began to buckle. She had a feeling it wasn’t only the beating Margaret Phipps had given her that was responsible for that buckle. Was this, then, what guilt felt like? What it did to you? Still the image of Matthew giving her back the necklace was in her head. She could see him so clearly: his red blond hair, his green eyes that had amber flecks in them. His height, looming over her, but not threatening. His voice, so deep and rich, especially when he laughed; at her to begin with when first they’d met, she’d been certain of that. But when they’d got to know one another better, he’d laughed with her. Made her laugh.

  ‘Then it would ’ave been more sensible to let me do it, wouldn’t it?’ Beattie said. She plonked Fleur down on the floor and rushed to Emma’s side. ‘Just an inch mind. Seein’ as ’ow it’s sunny I don’t think it’ll be too cold for you this mornin’. And then it’s back into bed with you. I just came to say I want you to keep an eye on this scallywag of yours – who, I’m ’appy to say, don’t seem none the worse for ’er adventures – while I go and fetch you a breakfast tray and then I’m goin’ to take ’er out in that gurt perambulator Seth spent a fortune on. And seeing as ’ow I think you need buildin’ up, I’m goin’ to Foale’s to get some beef skirt to make you a pasty. That’ll put flesh on your bones, and colour in your face.’

  And a merciful amount of time to go and do what I know I’ve got to do, Emma thought, as she allowed herself to be helped back to bed.

  ‘Sorry, I’m late,’ Seth said.

  ‘No need to be,’ Olly told him. ‘If that flush on your face means what I think it does.’

  ‘It doesn’t. And you need to scrub your mind out with carbolic soap.’

  He knew exactly what it was that Olly meant – that he’d been making love to Emma. If only he had. Making love before breakfast was always the best time for them both; Seth thought it set him up for the day the way a plate of eggs and bacon did, only for his soul instead of his body. But there had been no lovemaking this morning and there had been something other than the loss of her necklace troubling Emma – the way she’d snapped her gaze away from his and had gone deathly pale when he’d said he’d telephoned her clients and explained what had happened to her. He’d half expected her to remonstrate with him for having gone behind her back and taken control of the situation – her business in effect – but she hadn’t. Her hand had flown to her breastbone and he’d noticed her breathing quicken.

  Did he dare ask her when he got home later why that might have been? Did he want to know?

  ‘And there’s grass on your boots. Wet grass if I’m not mistaken.’

  Seth looked down at his boots as though seeing them for the first time.

  ‘So there is. Dew. I went to the churchyard. Emma’s amethyst necklace is missing. Neither Mrs Drew nor the doctor has seen it.’

  Seth threw his arms wide and flipped his hands over so they were palms upwards. He didn’t need to explain to Olly what might have happened to it – he’d know that it might have been snatched from Emma’s neck in the attack, or loosened so that it had fallen somewhere. It could be anywhere – not necessarily in the churchyard among the graves.

  ‘You went looking for it. Like looking for a needle in a haystack I imagine.’

  ‘The odds are bigger than that. Who’s going to hand a gold chain in at the police station if they find it? If they haven’t stolen it in the first place?’

  ‘Buy her another,’ Olly said.

  If only it were that easy. Seth could understand how sentimental the necklace was to Emma, although he couldn’t understand how she wanted to even be in the same room as it, seeing as it had been taken from her mother in the first place by his father in lieu of rent. Somehow it had then got into Sophie Ellison’s h
and and been around her neck the night Carter had killed her.

  ‘I can see you’re thinking about it,’ Olly said with a laugh, when Seth was slow to answer. ‘Well, think about it some more while you get some varnish on that hull.’

  Seth picked up a brush and took the lid from the tin of varnish.

  Something had shifted in their relationship – his and Emma’s – since the attack on her. A shiver of something that felt like a mixture of ice and broken shards of glass shot up between Seth’s shoulder blades and his shoulders twitched.

  ‘A bit of hard work will warm you up,’ Olly said, noticing the twitch but misinterpreting the reason for it.

  ‘Hope so,’ Seth said, and got to work.

  Sometimes, least said was soonest mended. He wasn’t going to distress Emma further by asking questions she might not want to answer. Whatever it was, he hoped and prayed with all his heart it would blow over, and that they could get back to how they’d been before.

  But leaving the country for Canada was out of the question for the moment. Despite what Dr Shaw had told the police, they were still keen to prosecute Margaret Phipps for kidnapping and were preparing a case. And a case against her mother for being an accessory after the fact. A court case loomed if Dr Shaw’s appeal against it wasn’t successful. The doctor was, Seth knew, trying to protect Emma from having to go to court as much as he was trying to do his professional best for Margaret Phipps.

  But the day he could go into Tapper’s Travel and book their passage – his and Emma’s and Fleur’s – the better it would be for everyone.

  It surprised Emma that she didn’t heal as quickly as she’d thought she would. Beattie had been ‘feedin’ ’er up ’andsome’, as the good woman told Seth. She had been every day with pasties and broths, and making sure Emma had lashings of butter on her vegetables, but there were still days when Emma felt weak.

  A whole month had gone by and she still had a scar on her forehead that was proving slow to fade. Dr Shaw said he realised now he ought to have given the cut a stitch or two and he apologised that he hadn’t. He also said the scar might never fully go and Emma said it wouldn’t be a problem, she’d just grow her fringe longer.

  More of a problem was that she was beginning to dread the plop of letters on the mat. Foolishly, she’d given her address when she’d written to Matthew to tell him he was not, under any circumstances, to write to her again. But she hadn’t been thinking straight at the time when she’d done that.

  Mercifully, no letters from Matthew had arrived at Mulberry House and neither had Ruby brought any that had been delivered to the hotel – or any that she’d been able to get her hands on. Some might still have been delivered and found their way into other hands. Mr Smythe’s hands for example. Emma often woke in the night having nightmares about just such a scenario.

  After she’d been unable to fulfil her orders for the Titanic survivors fund-raising, Emma’s orders had dried up. The Carlton over in Torquay had withdrawn their contract. Mr Clarke at the Esplanade had shown more understanding and Emma’s contract with him was still in force, but with a reduced requirement now that autumn was all but over and fewer guests were booking in. Rich, private, clients – like the Singers – had all gone to their homes in Cannes or Nice for the winter.

  Edward, with Beattie’s help, had done his best to bake as well as Emma did, but he just wasn’t up to it. And he never had been a fast mover, either in mind or body.

  Emma knew it was the wrong end of the year for finding new business, but she was doing her best. Christmas wasn’t far away and she’d had the idea of making a French dessert she remembered her papa making the year her mama had had Johnnie and was weak from the long, protracted birth and unable to stand for long in the kitchen – bûche de Noël. She’d even, in a rash moment, considered asking Mr Smythe if he would be interested in her making some for the hotel, seeing as his late wife had been French and his children being brought up bilingual. She doubted she would ask him, though.

  The bakery was full now of the scent of chocolate and whipped cream and chestnut purée. She had no recipe to follow so had had to experiment. While some of the prototypes were nowhere near good enough to sell, they’d still tasted delicious.

  Emma closed her eyes doing her best to conjure up her parents’ and Johnnie’s faces in her head. But she couldn’t. It was as though as their bodies were fading to nothing but bone in the cemetery, her memory of them all was fading, too. Each day they slipped further and further away from her. Since Margaret Phipps’s attack on her in the churchyard, she hadn’t felt up to going up to their graves either. Maybe if Seth would go with her, then she’d go. But not alone. Not again. Not yet. If ever. Not even on the off chance she might find her amethyst necklace lying somewhere. Margaret Phipps had been questioned and denied vehemently that she’d snatched the necklace from Emma’s neck. No one believed her.

  Before Emma’s beating, Seth and Olly had often gone down to the Blue Anchor of an evening for a glass of ale, but since that time Emma hadn’t liked being left alone when it was dark outside. And now the nights were drawing in quickly. It was dark by half past five, and if it had been a cloudy day, even earlier. Emma was working on her self-confidence, but it was rather slower to come back than she would have liked. It felt like trudging through wet mud sometimes just to venture from the house. But she made herself do it. She wasn’t giving in.

  And in the evenings, when Fleur slept and Seth caught up with paperwork in the study, to take her mind off her slow recovery – and because she thought she might go mad with inactivity if she wasn’t doing something – Emma began to sew. She made dresses for Fleur, smocking the bodices the way she’d seen her mama do it. She was glad now that she’d paid attention – not only to the sewing, but to the making of a pattern. Her mama had been able to make anything just by looking at it and had never needed to pay for a Butterick or a McCall pattern from Rossiter’s to be able to make clothes. Why, once, her mama had gone with Dr Shaw’s wife to look in the window of Rockhey’s in Torquay because while Mrs Shaw liked the style, she didn’t like the colour and Rockhey’s didn’t have the dress in navy-blue. Her mama – so she’d told Emma – had stood, hands on hips studying the dress for a good ten minutes in total silence. And then she and Mrs Shaw had gone to the haberdashers and bought some material, and within a week the doctor’s wife was wearing her new dress to the Bijou Theatre in Paignton.

  Emma was working on a new dress for herself, sewing the seams by hand. She’d seen a sewing machine for sale for thirty-six guineas and just as soon as the monies for her pastries were in, she’d go and buy it.

  ‘Mama,’ Fleur said, interrupting Emma’s thoughts and bringing the bakery back into focus.

  Emma tipped another teaspoonful of chestnut cream into the bowl in front of Fleur in her high chair. As soon as the sponge had cooled she’d spread the chestnut cream over it and roll it up carefully in a tea towel.

  ‘And I can’t keep you in there forever while I work, can I?’ Emma said.

  The day before, Emma had stopped Beattie taking Fleur out in her perambulator because, worryingly, Beattie’s cough was back now autumn was slipping towards winter. Emma had told her not to arrive so early today, but the morning was galloping on and still no Beattie.

  Ah, the bang of the back gate.

  But it wasn’t Beattie who came into the bakery. It was Edward.

  ‘Ma’s took bad, Mrs Jago,’ Edward said. ‘Coughin’ all night ’er was. ’Er didn’ want me to do it, but I took some of the money from the teapot on the mantelpiece and I went fer the doctor. ’Er said I ’ad to come and tell you ’er id’n comin’ in today or you’d worry.’

  ‘I am worried, Edward,’ Emma said. ‘Your ma was far from well yesterday.’

  Emma would miss Beattie almost as much as she missed her own mama if anything happened to her; if she went to join that wastrel of a husband of hers in the graveyard. Emma shivered, just thinking about it.

  She wiped her hand
s on her apron, then took Fleur from her high chair.

  ‘Come with me to the house, Edward, and I’ll give you more money for anything the doctor says your ma needs. And some brandy. There’s a full bottle somewhere.’

  ‘There was blood, Mrs Jago, only you mustn’ tell Ma I told you ’cos she said she’d kill me if I did.’

  ‘No she won’t. And I won’t say you’ve told me either.’

  But Emma’s own blood had run cold at Edward’s words. The world and his wife knew what coughing up blood meant, didn’t they? It could, Emma knew, mean that Beattie had a burst blood vessel somewhere, but not with the cough – this was more serious.

  ‘Er said I wasn’t to ask you fer money or anythin’ at all.’

  ‘You didn’t ask me. I offered it. That’s not the same thing. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Jago. I think so. But I won’t be able to tend to Ma if ’er needs tendin’ to, what with ’er being ill and all, and come and work for you, will I?’

  No, Emma thought, you won’t.

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we?’

  Emma had been trying to decide how best to broach the subject of a nursemaid for Fleur with Seth. Because, even before her cough had come back, Beattie hadn’t been able to run after Fleur and clean the house, since Fleur was into everything now she was walking properly. Besides, the child needed more fresh air and exercise than Emma was able to give her with a business to run. But whoever they employed, Emma would have to be able to trust her completely. She still woke in the night sometimes in a panicky sweat of fear that Fleur had been taken again, although she knew Margaret Phipps would have no hand in it if she were. The poor girl was in an asylum in Plymouth, considered too mad to face charges.

  Would Emma ever be able to relax if she had a child of her own, fearing that bad things might happen again, just as they’d happened to Fleur?