Ten Little Words

by Leah Mercer

  Not fear, and not regret.

  Another step. She was up to her knees now. Just a few more and the water would close over her. Just a few more and she would be gone.

  Her fingers reached up, automatically closing around the heart pendant hanging from her neck. This pendant with those ten little words had been her saviour when she couldn’t carry on, when the darkness and anger swirled around her so strongly, trying to carry her off. She’d clutched on to it, drawing strength from the vow and strength from the love, willing it to anchor her down. She’d even said those same ten words to Ella, feverishly hoping the goodness in them would blot out the bad.

  But it didn’t, of course. Nothing could erase what had happened to her. Nothing could blot out the life she’d been forced to live . . . not even love.

  Jude took another step forward, the water now up to her chest, the pendant shimmering under the surface. She stepped back, jerking the gold heart away from the water’s reach and cursing at herself. It was stupid, but she couldn’t do this with the chain around her neck. This necklace represented all that was good, and she wouldn’t let this darkness claim that, too. She screwed her eyes shut, trying to force away the image of water seeping into the message inside, the ink running and the paper dissolving.

  She’d leave the necklace on the beach – leave a piece of what had been the happiest time of her life behind. She’d promised the pendant to Ella, anyway. Maybe her daughter would have something good to remember her by, after all.

  Jude clambered from the water and on to the rocks again, shivering as the air whipped around her body. She lifted her hair and pulled the chain over her head, grimacing as it caught on wet strands. She tugged again, but a lock of hair had become trapped in the links of the necklace. She pulled and she yanked, but short of tearing a chunk from her scalp, she couldn’t free herself from it.

  She let out a cry and sank to the stones. What was she going to do? As ridiculous as it was, she couldn’t take this necklace where she really wanted to go. Yet she couldn’t go home, either. She couldn’t go back to Ella; back to being a mother. Not only would she damage herself, but she’d damage her daughter, too.

  She stood, and without knowing where she was heading, she let her feet carry her across the promenade and up the hill. The town was deserted so early on a Sunday morning, and even those who were out barely glanced her way. She knew how she must look, clad only in a T-shirt and jeans and wandering the streets barefoot.

  Druggie out for a fix, she could see scuttering through their minds, their lips curled in disdain before their gaze slid away from her. She wasn’t a druggie, but she was out for a fix – for something to make her feel less broken. She kept walking until she reached the train station.

  Her feet carried her forwards, on to the platform. A train swooped into the station, screeching to a halt. The departures board said it was going to London, and she stepped on board in a daze. She didn’t have a ticket. She didn’t have cash. But perhaps she could make it that far without running into the ticket inspector.

  Maybe London would be an escape, after all, she thought, a mad laugh floating out of her. It wouldn’t be a dream, though, that much she was sure of. More like a nightmare.

  The dead couldn’t dream, anyway, she told herself. Because even if she hadn’t walked into the sea, the person she’d been was gone.

  And that was exactly what she wanted.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  JUDE

  September 2018

  Jude sat in a patch of sun that fell across the futon in her dingy bedsit. If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe she was lying on a warm, sandy beach, the constant traffic whooshing by her window mimicking the sound of waves. Even after thirty years of living in London, she’d never quite got used to opening the soot-stained blind of her bedroom to reveal row after row of slate-grey rooftops and satellite dishes rather than the sea stretching out before her like an escape.

  London had been her escape, although not through singing, like she’d dreamed when she was young. After holing up in a women’s hostel and starting to make some money giving piano lessons, she’d made a life . . . as much as one could, anyway, staying below the radar. It was amazing how easy it was in a big city like London. Parents paid her in cash, she paid her landlady in cash, and no one asked any questions. She was perfectly anonymous, each day unfolding the same.

  The past was another lifetime. She never let herself drift backwards. For her own survival, she couldn’t. She’d cut the necklace from her hair as soon as her train had pulled into London that day, using a pair of scissors nicked from the station’s stationery shop. The pendant might have kept her alive, but it had no place in this world now. She hadn’t been able to throw it away, though, despite several attempts. She’d tucked it inside a drawer in her bedside table, where it had gradually been buried by years and years of receipts and other debris of the life she was living now – the life of an entirely different person to the one Bertie had fallen in love with.

  She stared at her reflection in the mirror, thinking she even looked like another person – a bit like her sister. Jude’s curly hair was short now and her curves had sagged into ‘plump’. Even her wardrobe of matronly skirts and blouses mirrored Carolyn’s. Pulling on her ‘uniform’ made her feel like she was wearing armour, adding another layer to the dowdy middle-aged teacher persona she’d created . . . a woman you’d pass on the street without a second glance.

  She fitted the image of a typical, no-nonsense piano teacher, exactly what the parents who employed her wanted. From the moment she knocked on the doors of their West London houses to the minute she packed up her books and left, she was playing the role they expected; a role that came so naturally to her now it felt like it was her. Sometimes the mothers or nannies tried to engage with her – to offer her biscuits or an espresso when she finished the lesson, or invite her to stay until it stopped raining, but she always said no. She didn’t want to chat. There was nothing beneath the facade she’d created. She was Mrs McAllister, piano teacher, and nothing else.

  She wasn’t sure why she’d taken Bertie’s surname. She certainly hadn’t meant to, but it had just slipped out when the hostel workers asked for her name after she had first arrived in London. She supposed it was because she’d linked her name with Bertie’s so many times after he’d asked her to marry him. In her mind – in the fairy tale she’d lived for a short time – that had been who she was. But despite the stories she’d spun for Ella, real life wasn’t a fairy tale . . . far from it.

  Jude placed her bare feet on the gritty floor and threw on her robe, then flicked on the coffee machine. After almost three decades in this room, every step of her morning routine was etched into her mind. She knew every inch of the space as intimately as her own body. Nothing had changed since she’d climbed the stairs that day so long ago and opened the door, breathing a sigh of relief at the empty space before her. There was a small single bed in one corner, a plain white dresser in the other, a tiny counter with sink and hotplate, and freshly painted white walls. After living in a women’s hostel, where every inch was clogged with belongings, toiletries and people, the simple space was just what she’d needed.

  Jude sighed as she waited for the coffee to trickle down, for the heady smell to fill the air and signal it was time to start her day. She drank it as quickly as she could, then pulled on her light summer jacket and hurried down the stairs, thankfully not bumping into any of the other tenants. There were eight other rooms in this three-storey terraced house, and the faces seemed to come and go seamlessly, one melding into the other. Sometimes a tenant would try to strike up a conversation, but Jude always made it clear she wasn’t up for talking, and that was that. What would she talk about? She didn’t have a life. Everyone she’d cared about thought she was dead. She wasn’t even a person. She was a ghost, and she was fine with that.

  Outside, the street was littered with the usual rubbish from the nearby chicken shops and kebab joints, but
she was used to it by now. Despite its gritty appearance, Vauxhall was apparently coming up in the world, if the huge posters advertising glossy steel-and-glass high-rises were anything to go by. When she’d first moved here, it was hard to believe anyone with money would want to live ‘south of the river’. It had been a little rough, but the room had been affordable and she loved that she could walk to the river.

  In the days when she had plenty of time to fill and nothing to do, she used to spend hours there, gazing into the brown water, moving her legs forward as boats glided past. She’d watch the water suck at the wall and, for a second, she could almost envision it pulling her under, too – the same way she’d thought the waves would take her and glide her into oblivion. The river walkway was still one of her favourite places, although her schedule was so busy now she rarely had time to go.

  Forty-five minutes after leaving Vauxhall, Jude emerged from the Underground into a world that was vastly different from the one she had left – pristine white houses, where rubbish was whisked away by street cleaners seconds after it dared touch the pavement, and streets lined with wine shops, estate agents and nail bars instead of chicken shops, tatty off-licences and kebab restaurants. Potted plants hung from street lamps, and almost each house had a window box so perfect it looked like it had been curated by an art director.

  She’d been lucky to break into this competitive world as a piano teacher. One of the volunteers at the hostel lived in this area and had taken a chance by recommending Jude to teach her neighbour’s sons. The boys had been about as interested in piano as they were in painting their toenails pink, but she’d persevered and had managed to teach them the basics. Their mother had been so pleased that she’d recommended Jude to all of her friends, and, eventually, Jude’s client base had grown. Parents were happy to pay her in cash, although that was getting more and more difficult as people used cash less and less. Opening a bank account was out of the question, though, for obvious reasons.

  She glanced at her watch: half past nine; right on time. Once, she’d been a minute late to a lesson, and the mother had insisted on deducting exactly the cost of that minute.

  ‘Mrs McAllister!’ The door swung open and the au pair’s face appeared. She was Australian and in her early twenties, and something about her reminded Jude of herself at that age: full of confidence, full of life. ‘Come on in.’ The au pair turned her head. ‘Amelia! Your piano teacher is here!’

  Jude stepped inside the house, slipping off her reliable, orthopaedic shoes. They’d cost more than she usually paid, but she did a lot of walking in her job and she’d needed something serviceable. They were hideous, sturdy things that made her feel about a hundred years old, but at least they matched the piano-teacher persona she’d created.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ the au pair asked, ushering her into the lounge, where a gleaming piano that had never been played until Jude had started with Amelia – what, five years ago now – was pushed up against the far wall. Jude would have given anything to have had a piano like that when she was growing up (hell, she would have given anything to have had a piano, full stop), but with her father barely scraping a living working as a fisherman and her mother at home taking care of them, there’d barely been enough money for that week’s groceries, let alone extras like a piano. It had been a house full of love and life, though – and music, with her father constantly blasting his favourite songs on the dodgy ghetto blaster he’d picked up from somewhere or other.

  Jude pushed the thoughts from her mind. They were gone. Gone, along with everyone else from her past. Gone, along with her.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, Mrs McAllister!’ Amelia raced into the room, her long blonde hair flying out behind her. ‘Sophie sent me a message, and I had to respond, and then— anyway, I’m sorry. Please don’t tell my mum!’

  ‘Sit down,’ Jude said, conjuring up her stern voice. ‘You’ve already wasted fifteen minutes.’

  The lesson passed in its usual torturous way, with her unwilling student, who hadn’t practised all week, murdering the pieces that Jude had heard a million times by now. Knowing there was no point in asking Amelia to play the song again, Jude set another two pieces that wouldn’t be practised and would be butchered the same way next week. Sometimes she wondered if parents realised they were throwing away their money just for the privilege of saying their kids were taking piano lessons.

  She was packing up her things when the au pair burst into the room.

  ‘Hang on a sec!’ the girl said. She shoved her mobile phone under Jude’s face. ‘Is this you? It is, isn’t it?’

  Jude blinked, struggling to take in the small type on the screen in front of her. She drew it closer to her face, everything inside her freezing when the letters of the headline swam into focus.

  ‘Help Me Find My Mother,’ the bold type said, and underneath it was a photo of her from about thirty years ago. It didn’t look much like her now – hell, it didn’t look anything like her now – and was that—? She drew in a breath. Was that Ella? God, she looked like Bertie . . . like him. It was the angle of her chin and that long, straight nose . . .

  Her heart beat fast and she felt herself sway. This was her daughter, right here in front of her. It was so unreal it was hard to take in. Jude hadn’t thought of herself as a mother since leaving all those years ago. Blocking it out was the only way to survive.

  ‘What is this?’ she managed to ask, aware of the au pair watching her with undisguised curiosity.

  ‘It’s been going around Facebook, but the link is from The Post,’ the au pair said. ‘That is you, right? That’s your daughter? Are you going to get in touch? Sounds like she really wants to talk to you!’

  ‘No, no.’ Jude forced out a laugh. ‘It’s not me, of course it’s not.’

  ‘Okay.’ The au pair looked at her suspiciously but, thankfully, didn’t ask more questions.

  ‘I need to go,’ Jude said, grabbing her coat and yanking open the door.

  The au pair shrugged and nodded, and Jude closed the door behind her. Out on the street, she pulled out her mobile and typed her old name in the search box, her heart pounding as the link to the Post article came up. She found the nearest bench and collapsed on to it, certain she was going to pass out.

  Her daughter’s image filled the small screen once again, and Jude’s fingers reached out to touch it. Ella was a grown woman now, a thirty-five-year-old. Jude could see traces of the little girl in that woman’s face, and she wondered if Ella had kids of her own . . . if Jude was a grandmother. She pushed away that thought before it could develop. Carolyn would be the grandmother, not her. Carolyn had raised Ella, not her.

  She stared into her daughter’s eyes, trying to read her expression. Ella looked tentative and uncertain, as if the camera was something she should approach with caution. Did she live her life that way, too? Jude wondered.

  Her heart sank as she read the article, published a few days ago. All these years later, and all it had taken was one random classified advert – which, according to this story, had appeared on her birthday – to set her daughter off. Ella still wanted to know why her mother had left . . . Ella still believed she was alive. Although Jude was sure Carolyn had done her very best, it sounded as if Ella had always longed for her mother to return – that despite everything, she hadn’t given up hope in the ten little words Jude had said every night. She couldn’t have given up hope if she believed there was a chance that Jude had placed that advert; if she thought those generic phrases had come from her mother. For a split second, Jude let herself wonder if maybe the advert wasn’t so random – if maybe those phrases weren’t generic, but from someone she knew. The advert had been placed on her birthday, after all. Was it possible someone was reaching out? She told herself not to be ridiculous, and yet she couldn’t stop a face filtering into her head . . .

  She froze as Bertie’s name leaped out from the text, like it had materialised from her mind. Oh, God. Bertie. Had it been him? After all these years, did
he still hope she was alive? Her gut twisted as she scanned the words, trying to beat back the emotions rising inside. Finally, she sat back, lowering the phone to her lap and forcing air into her lungs as she tried to absorb what she’d just read.

  Bertie hadn’t placed the advert, but he was looking for her, too. Had Ella talked to him, or had it just been the reporter? Had they connected the fact that Jude must have been pregnant when she’d left him? Was he wondering right now if Ella was his?

  Either way, he’d know that she’d abandoned her daughter, even though he wouldn’t know why or how she’d got pregnant. He’d know she’d done something terrible; something no mother should ever do. What did he think of her now? Running out on him, and then her daughter? God.

  Jude shook her head. She wouldn’t think of Bertie or Ella. She wouldn’t think of those ten words. They didn’t belong to her any more. She’d meant them at the time, but she wasn’t that person any longer: wasn’t a lover; wasn’t a mother. Lovers didn’t run away without explanation, and mothers didn’t abandon their children. Time had passed, each year burying her more and more, the same way her pendant had been buried in the drawer.

  She scrolled up to the headline again – to her daughter’s words imploring for help to find her mother. I’m sorry, she said inside her head, even though she knew Ella would never hear her. I’m sorry, but your mother is gone. That part of her had died the second she’d closed the door of their flat behind her.

  Jude closed the browser window on her phone. She slung her bag over her shoulder, then went down the stairs to the underground, feeling the old, familiar numbness slide over her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  ELLA

  It was funny how little my life had changed, yet how different it felt. I was still rising at the crack of dawn, performing my morning routine and working flat out at the museum, but now that the cocoon I’d been living in had lifted, it was as if my senses were heightened. The air tasted saltier; the sun felt stronger. The sea was deliciously cold as it lapped my toes, and the colours of the sunset were more vivid, like a painting come to life.