Without moving a muscle, Gracie stayed put behind the glass, watching and waiting for Ruby to do her bit. When she’d discussed their arrival with Ruby they had decided that the women would be given time to rest and then they would be offered tea in the lounge at a time when no other guests were around, so that Gracie would join them there.
Over and over again Gracie had told herself that Rosaleen Donnelly’s opinion wasn’t important now she and Sean were no longer together, but still she was nervous of the initial face-to-face and the inevitable inquisition. She felt so defensive of her fragile daughter and she didn’t want anyone maligning her.
Fay was growing and thriving, and Gracie was even more besotted than ever. The tiny girl was wide-eyed, dark-haired and contented. She took her bottle happily, slept well and rarely cried nowadays; she was perfect.
Gracie knew that it was the perfection that worried everyone but it didn’t worry her. She saw her contentedness as a sign that Fay was cosseted to the point that she didn’t need to cry and she interpreted her baby’s wide-eyed observation as a sign that she was intellectually sound. She didn’t want to hear that there might be something wrong with her daughter until it was proven beyond all doubt so she had pushed it to the back of her mind and carried on doing what she was doing.
She hadn’t seen or heard from Sean since his second fleeting visit and although Gracie was sad about it, she was able to be pragmatic. She knew that, thanks to Ruby, she was in a position to provide for her baby without Sean, but she was sad for Fay that her father didn’t want to know her.
In the quiet of the night she often thought about her own gentle father who, unlike her mother, had always loved all his daughters without favouritism. He had been away during the war but never spoke a word about it once he came back, he just went back to work and it was as if he had never been gone.
She had wanted a father like that for her children, for Fay, but it wasn’t to be. Gracie now accepted that Sean wasn’t the one. She had made the wrong choice.
The atmosphere in the lobby changed when Ruby appeared, apologising profusely.
‘Mrs Donnelly, Mrs Hall, welcome to the Thamesview Hotel. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to greet you but the laundryman arrived early and I had to go through the list …’ Ruby looked from one to the other, her professional smile plastered on. ‘I hope you had a good journey? The weather’s been good so I hope the Irish Sea didn’t cause too much sickness – I’ve heard it can be a cruel sea at any time of the year.’
‘The journey was just fine,’ Rosaleen said. ‘If you could show us to our room and tell Gracie that we’re here …’
‘We thought you would like to have a rest after your journey …’
‘No, I want to see Gracie as soon as possible. I can’t be worrying about this any longer. I want to hear from her what’s been going on these past few months.’
‘If you could fill in this card I’ll go and find her but she may have gone to the shops. We’re very short-handed here and we all have to do what needs doing.’
Ruby continued to smile and she then turned away and winked at the glass window, knowing Gracie was watching.
As Gracie looked at her mother-in-law so her feeling of dread started to fade. Although she was trying to hide it, Rosaleen Donnelly looked sad and lonely standing there with just a friend to support her.
Gracie didn’t wait any longer. She took a deep breath and walked through to greet them as professionally as Ruby and Johnnie had done.
‘Good day to you Mrs Donnelly, Mrs Hall. Johnnie here will show you to your room and I’ll be waiting for you in the lounge …’ Gracie smiled politely and shook hands with them both.
‘Hello Gracie,’ Rosaleen and Yolande said in unison.
‘This way, ladies,’ Johnnie smiled as he headed to the stairs. ‘Let me carry your bags …’
A few minutes later Rosaleen Donnelly was back downstairs and walking through to the residents lounge to meet Gracie for the first time since the wedding, with Ruby just a step behind, carrying a large tray carefully laid with tea and an assortment of biscuits and cakes.
‘Please have a seat,’ Gracie said as she indicated an armchair. She waited for the woman to sit down before sitting in a nearby armchair that was neither too close to be uncomfortable nor too far from the woman to be rude. She wasn’t trying to cause discomfort, she simply needed a little space between them to feel emotionally safe.
Ruby laid the tray down and then quickly left the room, leaving them to it.
Gracie poured the tea, offered her mother-in-law a cake and then sat back and waited.
‘This is very difficult for me, Gracie …’ Rosaleen said after a few minutes’ awkward silence. ‘I don’t want to be here with you after what you did to my son but I want to see my granddaughter, Sean’s first-born, and to pay respects to my only grandson, God bless his soul. Poor little thing.’
Gracie chose to ignore the barbed comments. ‘Does Sean know you’re here?’
‘Not yet. We’re going to visit him this evening. I have his new address.’
Gracie wanted to smile. She could just imagine her turning up at the dilapidated house and finding Sean living in drunken squalor with his sister-in-law.
‘Mrs Donnelly, there are so many things you need to know. I don’t want to criticise Sean but there are two sides to the story …’
Rosaleen held her hand up as if she was stopping traffic.
‘Please don’t try and blame my son, Gracie. You gave birth to an illegitimate baby and didn’t tell him. You married my son under false pretences and that invalidates the marriage in anyone’s eyes. Now, just let me see my grandchild. We don’t need to be having a conversation.’
Gracie stood up. ‘I suppose that’s true in a way so if you’re not interested in my side, I’ll just go and get Fay …’
She went through to the kitchen first. ‘That woman will drive me to drink before the end of the week! I was going to warn her for her own sake about Sean and Jennifer and their hovel but now I’ve decided she can lump it. Imagine her and Yolande on the doorstep …’
Gracie and Ruby both laughed as Ruby handed Fay to her mother and then Gracie paused for a moment, flexed her shoulders and took a deep breath. ‘Into the lion’s den, we go. I don’t want to do this but I suppose I have to.’
‘You don’t have to do it but you’ll do it because you’re a very nice person … Good luck!’ Ruby said.
Gracie held her precious baby close and reluctantly went back to the lounge, where Rosaleen Donnelly was still sitting in exactly the same position, wearing the same expression.
‘This is Fay, your granddaughter …’ she carefully handed her sleepy daughter out for Rosaleen to take.
Still in her seat the woman took Fay in her arms and laid her across her ample lap. Gracie was braced for a comment but instead Rosaleen just stared silently and without expression. Gracie sat back down herself and watched and waited. It wasn’t panning out the way she had expected.
It was several uncomfortable minutes before Gracie spoke. ‘She looks like her daddy, don’t you think? Her colouring is his.’
‘I do think she looks like him, yes …’ Rosaleen said, with a grudge in her voice. ‘He was such a beautiful baby was my Sean. So loving and easy to care for after all the daughters. I’d waited so long to have a son and then sure enough, God gave me the perfect one. Or so it seemed …’ She was still staring down at the baby on her lap.
‘None of us are perfect.’
‘No, we’re not. I’d like to take her for a walk tomorrow …’
‘You can’t take her round to Sean, I won’t allow that.’
‘He’s her father!’ Rosaleen snapped.
‘He lives in a hovel with his girlfriend – it’s filthy there …’ The words were out before she could stop them and for one moment Gracie thought that Rosaleen Donnelly was going to throw Fay across the room. Her face reddened dramatically and she stood up, clutching Fay, and hugged her fiercely, making
her whimper.
‘Don’t you talk about my son like that; don’t you dare, after what you did to him! I told him to forgive you and let sleeping dogs lie, that the marriage vows are sacred, but now I see he was right. You are wicked, wicked, wicked! He deserves better.’
Gracie was not surprised at the woman’s reaction and in a way she admired her for sticking up for her son regardless, but her total denial told Gracie that she couldn’t be trusted.
Gracie stood up also. She was determined to keep the peace, especially while Rosaleen was holding Fay in her arms.
‘I don’t think I am wicked. I was wrong, but what Sean did was a million times worse.’
‘Nothing could be worse than what you did.’
‘Would you like to give Fay her bottle? Here, let me take her while you sit down then I’ll go and get it.’ As a distraction Gracie forced a smile. ‘I don’t want to fight with you, I know you don’t care for me and I don’t mind but I do want you to care about Fay. Now shall I go and get Mrs Hall so she can meet Fay also?’
Rosaleen handed Fay over and sat down again but she kept her arms folded to ensure Gracie didn’t pass her back again. ‘Yes, go and get Yolande. I want her to see the baby before I go and see Sean. But I won’t be taking Yolande with me, I have to see my son alone.’
Gracie watched the fight drain out of the woman and she felt sad for her.
Jennifer McCabe, her own sister, had destroyed so many lives in such a short space of time.
‘How did it go?’ Jeanette asked her that evening when she got home. ‘Ruby said you were so controlled, she said you didn’t even hit her!’
Gracie forced a smile. ‘I feel sorry for the woman but she is so hard to like. Still, she’s going to see Sean tomorrow, to surprise him. That’ll be funny! I almost want to tag along and see what happens … Then next week she’ll be gone and we can get back to normal.’
Gracie waved her arms in the air and wiggled her hips. ‘Think we’ll have to celebrate. We should all go to the Kursaal …’ she stopped and opened her eyes wide. ‘Bugger bugger, Ruby and I have missed our date on the roller coaster …’
‘What date’s that?’ Jeanette looked bewildered as she listened to her sister grumbling away and berating both herself and Ruby, even though Ruby was downstairs.
‘Never mind, for one year only we’ll have to change the date to next week when the dragon has flown.’
THIRTY-ONE
Gracie was walking through the hotel, holding Fay’s heated bottle, when she saw Henry dragging a trunk down the stairs.
‘Hey, you shouldn’t be doing that, Henry! Where’s Johnnie? That’s his job …’
‘Oh I don’t mind, it keeps me fit.’ Henry flexed his muscles and picked the trunk up by the handle on the end. ‘See? Easy, it just bounces down the stairs but don’t tell Mrs Skinner that’s how I do it!’ He looked around. ‘Now, where’s my favourite baby?’
‘She’s outside in her pram, I just came in to get this. It’s such a lovely day I thought I’d feed her under the porch.’
‘That’s right, dear – a bit of fresh air is just what a baby needs …’
Gracie put the bottle down and helped Henry get the trunk up to the desk.
‘We’ve just been to the shops up the road to pay some bills and now she’s dozed off. I might have to wake her for this,’ Gracie waved the bottle. ‘She needs all the help she can get if she’s going to catch up.’
‘Listen to me, young Gracie. I know babies – we had enough of them, me and the missus – and I can see there’s nothing wrong with that little ’un that a dose of Virol won’t fix. A bit of building up and she’ll be right as rain, mark my words.’
Gracie smiled to herself as she walked outside. Henry had reiterated what she herself had been thinking: Fay was going to be just fine.
She pushed the canopy back and stood for a moment looking at the pram, trying to get her brain to process what she could see.
The pram was empty.
Gracie looked all around but there was no one with a baby. And then she screamed and started to run.
‘Where’s Fay?’ Gracie shouted as she flew into the hotel and ran through the lobby into the kitchen. ‘Who’s picked Fay up? I left her in her pram outside. I went to make up her bottle and she’s gone! The pram’s empty, her blanket’s gone …’
‘Calm down,’ Ruby said as she ran through from the office. ‘Someone’s probably picked her up. Where was she?’
‘Just under the window in her pram. It’s a nice day, I was going to feed her out there on the bench. Ruby, she’s gone, the pram’s empty …’ Gracie could barely breathe, she was hyperventilating so badly.
The two young women ran back outside together and looked in the pram, more in hope than expectation – and then realisation hit and all hell broke loose.
‘Where’s my baby?’ Gracie screamed at full volume. ‘Where is she?’
Word of Fay’s disappearance spread like wildfire and people ran back and forth between the two properties, looking in all manner of unlikely places around the hotel. Gracie’s screams had alerted some of the guests and a few neighbours, and within minutes the area was alive with those who wanted to help, and those who just wanted to know what was going on.
‘We have to call the police,’ Ruby said, ‘and we need to ask around properly. Shouting isn’t getting us anywhere. I saw Sean and his mother outside earlier, maybe they saw something.’
‘Sean was here?’ Gracie’s brain started ticking.
‘He didn’t come in, Rosaleen went out to him. It looked like they had arranged to meet and he didn’t want to see any of us …’
‘Oh God, they’ve taken her! Don’t you see? That’s what Sean was doing here. They’ve taken Fay, they’ve taken her away from me …’
Despite Ruby trying to hold her back Gracie ran into the road, screaming hysterically. ‘They’ve taken my baby, they’ve taken my baby. Help!’
As Gracie ran back and forth so Jennifer McCabe watched, listened and smiled from her vantage point behind the nearby breakwater. She could see them, but they couldn’t see her unless they ventured down to the water’s edge. Although the sun was breaking through it was still a cool day so the beach was almost deserted and she was well tucked in behind one of the struts.
When Sean had cautiously told Jennifer that his mother had refused to meet her she was steaming mad. She had told him she wasn’t prepared to accept it but he didn’t take her seriously and so, after he had gone off to work at the café the next day, she had not gone to work but had instead gone to the hotel to try and force a meeting with the woman.
It wasn’t that she cared about Sean’s mother; she didn’t at all. She was simply furious that Rosaleen Donnelly was happy to be with Gracie and Fay in Ruby’s hotel, yet she was refusing to have anything to do with her. Jennifer was determined that the woman would speak to her.
When his mother turned up on the doorstep Sean had nearly had a heart attack on the spot. In panic he had carelessly bundled Jennifer down the side of the single bed, and thrown the grubby bedspread on top of her. She had laid there, imprisoned between the bed and the wall, for as long as it took him to chivvy Rosaleen away again by offering to escort her back to the hotel.
As Jennifer crawled out of the space she couldn’t believe that Sean had done that to her but she was more furious with herself for letting it happen. She should have stood up to him, to his mother, and demanded that they stop going on about bloody Fay Donnelly. The baby who was causing her more problems than even her sister had.
It wasn’t often that Jennifer McCabe admitted she had made a mistake but this time she had. She had allowed Sean to put his mother, and Gracie’s baby, first.
The more she thought about it, the more it rankled her that the woman had turned up unannounced and uninvited. It rankled that she had then scolded him like a schoolboy for the state of his living accommodation and it rankled that she had had to listen as Sean had initially denied her to his mother.
‘Jennifer is my sister-in-law. Gracie is just making this up to justify herself.’
But worst of all, it had hurt her because despite her original intentions, she really did love Sean.
She had always been the negligible twin, the one no one noticed or was interested in; the attention always on the little blonde poppet who was her twin sister. When she was a child Jennifer had hated being disregarded but then the light-bulb moment had come when she had discovered exactly how to use it to her advantage.
Jennifer had soon learned how to lie with wide-eyed innocence and let others take the blame for her misdeeds. She cheated at school with ease because no one expected it of her, and she could steal sweets from the shop on the corner and pencils from Woolworths and get away with it every time. Whatever she did she had always been able to deflect the blame onto someone else, because no one ever noticed she was there.
Just like her sister had never noticed she was there, inside her marriage.
The moment Gracie had refused to have her and Jeanette as bridesmaids at her wedding was the moment she had set Gracie in her sights.
Jennifer McCabe had never taken well to being snubbed. Jeanette had grumbled and stamped her dainty little feet but Jennifer had shrugged, feigned disinterest and bided her time.
She was a firm believer in everything comes to those who wait.
It was her ability to blend into the background that had made her feel quite secure sitting quietly in a deckchair a little way along the promenade, waiting for the right moment to ambush Rosaleen. She didn’t want to go into the hotel and be thrown out but she was determined to talk to the woman, to make her see that she was the right person for Sean. She wanted Gracie to be dismissed and she herself accepted in her place.
So she had watched and waited.
But as she was thinking about what she was going to say, Jennifer spotted Sean in the distance, walking along the promenade with his mother. She had been incensed to see the two of them strolling along the seafront deep in conversation and looking far too comfortable with each other for her liking.
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