The Forgotten Orphan: The heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 historical novel

by Glynis Peters

  THE FORGOTTEN ORPHAN

  Glynis Peters

  Copyright

  One More Chapter a division of

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  The News Building

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

  Copyright © Glynis Peters 2020

  Glynis Peters asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008410742

  Ebook Edition © 2020 ISBN: 9780008363284

  Version: 2020-09-28

  Dedication

  For Charlotte Ledger

  Thank you for fulfilling my dream

  You are more than just my publisher

  x

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Glynis Peters

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  1940

  Maisie Reynolds peered through the grubby window of Holly Bush Orphanage. Another child turned and waved to her from the driveway below. Maisie waggled her fingers in a half-hearted response and leaned her forehead against the cool glass. Another heartbreaking moment for her. She knew the little boy’s adoptive parents lived in Yorkshire and she doubted he would ever return to Southampton. His long lashes, gentle smile, and willing personality made him the perfect child to adopt, even at the age of eight.

  A familiar ache of want and need burned through her body and Maisie allowed the tears to fall. She wanted the world to stop turning, for familiar faces to stay with her, for people to give her the love and affection she saw the boy receiving from his new parents.

  When she was his age, Maisie had known she was not a trophy to parade around the parlour as the new member of a family. With her long, frizzy ginger hair, freckled face, and gangly limbs, many a time she’d been passed over by potential adoptive parents. She’d often been told she was too old and lacked the cute qualities most potential parents sought from the residents.

  She noticed some women visibly cringe when she walked in the room, and once a man had questioned her parentage, likening the redness of her hair to that of an ape he’d seen at London Zoo. Maisie had rushed from the room and into the hallway and no amount of cajoling from Matron had made her return. Maisie had suggested it was a waste of everyone’s time her being there, and Matron had given a slight nod and released her to kitchen duties. She’d not offered comforting words or reassurance that all would be well. The woman had simply treated the event as she always did, with a bland ‘what will be, will be’. From the age of four, Maisie had listened to nothing else but potential parents and their rejection of her.

  For the rest of that particular day, Maisie had not been able to concentrate. All she’d heard were the sneering words of the upper-class city businessman swirling and raging around her mind. She’d avoided as many people as she could, not wanting to subject herself to any more torment and teasing about her stick-thin body. On some days she shook it off, but on others, like today, it tore her apart.

  Matron had chosen to ignore such attacks, and so resentment had built a wall around Maisie, a protective barrier, which had also earned her the reputation of having a sullen streak.

  Around the age of fifteen, she’d snuck downstairs during the night and found the large kitchen scissors in the drawer by the sink. Without hesitation, but with a steady determination to complete her mission, she’d cut her hair close to her head. When finished, she’d bound her head in a scarf so she looked like a nun she’d once met. It had given her a sense of security, and Maisie had felt sure no one would ever be allowed to see or ridicule her hair again. She’d slipped back upstairs to bed and spent several hours tossing and turning, thinking of ways she could run away. Eventually sleep had taken over, and the following morning the clang of the bell to announce the start of another day had echoed loudly from downstairs. A nervous Maisie had made her way into the toddler room to assist with the washing and dressing of eight children.

  When she’d pushed open the door, the nursery attendant Norah Bately had glanced her way and laughed, making snide remarks about the scarf. Maisie had responded with a shrug of her shoulders, and no smile. She’d kept her face as expressionless as possible; it was the only protection she had against the woman. If she’d reacted to the laughter, Norah would have found another way of humiliating her, so Maisie had chosen the safest option: no reaction.

  There was no love lost between Maisie and Norah. The woman had never approved of Maisie remaining at the orphanage, an opinion made loudly and clearly during each assessment period. Anyone who would listen to her bitter words was told Maisie was a waste of precious funds.

  After many years of watching other children leave, Norah had never stopped to think that the distraught fifteen-year-old had resigned herself to the ranks of the unwanted. During a meeting with Matron one afternoon, Maisie had wept as she declared she’d be forgotten and would end up dying at the orphanage. She’d never be loved and would remain an old maid. Matron had said her personal view was that if a child needed a home, she would always endeavour to find one, no matter how long it took … but she couldn’t force people to like someone. She’d told Maisie to accept her lot in life.

  Even after witnessing Maisie’s distress, Matron had made no attempt to hold her close, to comfort her and reassure her she’d never be forgotten. As always, Maisie only experienced indifference. From the day her twin brother Jack walked away holding the hands of a new mother and father, Maisie noticed the matron had a deepened coldness towards her and no matter what she did to try and please the woman, Gloria Mason only fo
und satisfaction in treating her as her personal lackey. Years of pleading with the woman to find her brother, to send her to him so they could be together again, fell on deaf ears. Quite often it earned her a slap or two, hidden beneath Gloria’s loud assertions that Maisie had become hysterical again and therefore deserved her punishment.

  Over the years, Maisie had begged people to write letters on her behalf, and as soon as she could write for herself, she’d written endless letters to Jack, pleading for him not to forget her, and to write back. She begged Matron to address them and forward them to him, but she suspected they never got sent.

  As the second world war was announced in 1939, the more she pleaded with Matron to check he was still alive. They were seventeen and with war on their doorstep, Maisie wanted to reach out before it was too late. Each time she asked for news, Matron would tut with impatience and firmly state there was none, and that Maisie should move forward and forget he existed.

  But Maisie found it hard to think that Jack could forget her, or the day they’d arrived as new residents of the orphanage, scared and desperate. For hours they’d clung to each other for comfort before they were separated into their new living quarters. She refused to believe he’d forgotten he had a twin sister. She certainly could never forget the day five weeks later when Jack was dragged to a small van screaming for her as she screamed for him. She’d bitten and clawed at Gloria and the staff who held her back, not one offering comfort to a child so distressed she didn’t eat for a week. From that day, Maisie drew up a wall of survival as she mourned the loss of her brother. She went to school, spoke with only a handful of children, and allowed life to spin her into its web, tying her to a life of misery. She fell into a pattern of existing and the years melded together, one after the other. As she reached her teenage years, she tried to make plans to run away but with no money and no one to turn to outside the orphanage, Maisie let the ideas slip away.

  The only time she’d known affection was when she turned twelve. Life before the orphanage had faded into memories she struggled to cling onto: a woman shouting at her and Jack to be quiet; a man making the woman scream. Neither she nor Jack knew if she was their mother. She was just a woman who threw bread with dripping scraped over it their way whenever she appeared in the small room where they slept.

  Often, when a child at the orphanage wet the bed, the smell dragged Maisie back to that room, to its dank smell and the damp feeling against her skin as she and Jack huddled together in fear. These were memories Maisie pushed to the back of her mind as swiftly as they appeared. As she grew older, some days were a struggle of loneliness and loss. The world around her seemed cruel and unkind, black and steeped in sadness.

  During these dark times, Maisie drew upon the only memory of affection she had – someone giving her a warm hug and a tender kiss on her lips.

  It had been her twelfth birthday. Her friend Simon had held her in a clumsy embrace under the walnut tree and placed his lips on hers. Simon never commented on her tangled hair, or her inability to walk gracefully. He told her he saw her as a special girl in his life. She was bereft when he left the orphanage to live with old family friends. He’d written a few times, telling of the wonderful life he enjoyed in Scotland, but to her distress he never wrote again, and Matron mentioned that his guardians had spoken of leaving the country due to whispers of another war.

  She had never forgotten Simon, or their tender kiss – the impact of such tenderness and affection could never be swept from the mind of someone so desperate to be loved.

  Every day from then on, Maisie had made it her duty to comfort the other orphans by embracing them from the day they arrived, and offering them friendship instead of the official efficiency Matron was apt to prefer. Her days became busier as she comforted more and more victims of the second war who had been deprived of parents in the most dreadful ways. The orphanage took them in until relatives claimed them or until they were evacuated to safer towns and villages.

  Maisie knew their willingness to embrace her in return wasn’t genuine affection on their part, but of the necessity of comfort during confusing times. But Maisie didn’t care; she took what was on offer. Her only regret was that no sooner had she inhaled sweet baby perfume, or shared a giggle and clutched the chubby hand of a toddler, they were snatched away into large cars by women wearing fur collars, and swept into a new life.

  Today, Maisie’s mood was dark. Envy had snuck into her heart and no matter how she tried to suppress her envy, she found it hard. She chided herself for begrudging an eight-year-old boy a new life, but she resented the time she spent in hope, and the hours she was worked to the bone without thanks. Envy wormed its way inside her gut, and she clamped down on her emotions in order to protect herself yet again. She wiped away the tears, drew back her shoulders, and headed out for another round of chores. Each day she asked to be released from the orphanage to enable her to join up in a wartime unit of some description, but each day Matron gave her reasons as to why she couldn’t. Closeted in the orphanage for so many years, Maisie believed all she was told and accepted she was to remain a resident until she received her call-up papers or reached twenty-one. Neither could come soon enough for Maisie. She found it unbelievable that it was 1940, and at the age of eighteen her life was no different from when she was nine, always looking out of a window waving goodbye to yet another child.

  Walking along the corridor of the baby and toddler home she tried to find something positive in her life but failed miserably. Just then, her thoughts were interrupted by Norah.

  ‘What a face on you. Miserable mare, what’s eating you?’ Norah taunted.

  Maisie felt no reason to explain her sadness so ignored her and the other unkind taunts the woman threw her way.

  Maisie walked towards a baby girl holding out her arms from the confines of her cot.

  ‘Hello Deedee,’ Maisie said and lifted the child into her arms for a cuddle.

  Norah gave a loud tut.

  ‘Her name is Deidre.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Well, Miss Know-it-all, call her by her given name, not by some ridiculous pet name you’ve invented. Go and wash her. She stinks.’

  The tiny blonde child snuggled close into Maisie. Norah was right; the urine-soaked nappy gave off a strong whiff of ammonia, but the touch of another human being was worth the nose tingle to Maisie, and she staved off the dark thoughts that threatened. Deedee had the attributes Maisie wished had been bestowed on her – a tiny, pert nose, rosebud mouth, and snow-white hair which dropped into curls around the child’s neck. There was something angelic about the baby. She was a child who’d not live at the orphanage forever, but one who’d be adored by doting parents and Maisie feared it wouldn’t be much longer before she had to say goodbye. She was the kind of child Maisie dreamed of having of her own one day – not Deedee herself, but one exactly like her. Gummy smiles and chubby fingers to brighten a gloomy day.

  ‘She should have been called Angel,’ Maisie said softly as she walked to the bathroom.

  ‘And your parents should have named you Freak. No wonder they left you here. Your poor mother must have died with shock seeing you slide out.’ Norah’s vicious words were followed with a cruelly cackling laugh.

  Maisie, not giving in to the taunt nor the pain inside her chest at the mention of her parents, retorted in a voice loaded with venom, her hatred towards Norah spilling out.

  ‘And you should have been named Witch or Devil to match your evil tongue.’

  With force, Maisie slammed the bathroom door behind her to block out the sounds of cursing and more snide comments.

  The time had come to for her find a way out of Holly Bush. Norah’s nastiness was getting worse each time she spotted Maisie. It was time to find a life that matched her dream of a husband and family. To find comfort and happiness, to have children of her own to nurture and never let them out of her sight. To hold someone and share with them the abundance of love she held inside.

  Althoug
h Maisie had dreams of life away from the orphanage, she didn’t know where to go to find it – or if she ever would. She leaned against the door and closed her eyes. She imagined holding a child much like Deedee and feeling the love of a man prepared to protect them both. The more she sank into the dream, the stronger her determination to leave grew. She could not allow the likes of Gloria Mason and Norah Bately to destroy those dreams.

  CHAPTER 2

  The next day, Maisie received a request from Matron to see her in her office promptly after chores. She straightened her dress before knocking on the office door and entering.

  ‘Matron, you asked to see me?’

  ‘Maisie. Yes, sit down.’

  Over the years, Maisie had grown to judge the moods of the woman she’d known most of her life. Stern, sharp, insensitive, and cold, all words Maisie felt summed up Gloria Mason. There was nothing matronly about the woman. Today, her body language spoke of disapproval.

  ‘It appears you have put in a request for an evening excursion to attend the cinema, and the money from your allowance to fritter away on such a waste of time,’ Matron said.

  Maisie fidgeted in her seat. This was the first time in months she’d asked to spend an evening in Southampton and she knew she’d have to sit and listen to the same lecture as always. But it would be worth it because her friend Charlie and his girlfriend Joyce had asked her to join them, and they were always good fun. There were also rumours swirling around that hinted the orphanage could be closing, which would mean Maisie would be made homeless and her future would be even more uncertain. She knew she’d go to the cinema regardless of Gloria Mason’s decision because she was determined not to miss out on happier times.

  Matron gave a loud huff and puff. Her plump cheeks swelled, as did her over-large bosom. She plonked herself down onto her seat behind her desk.

  ‘Just this once. I’ll not have you gallivanting around town and giving the orphanage a bad name.’

  Maisie gave a false smile of gratitude as Matron counted out the coins from her allowance.