by Hannah Emery
Daphne.
Philip.
Tom.
She waited when Tom disappeared for years and then watched again as he came back to Silenshore with someone who appeared to be his new wife. She held her breath when the wife appeared to stop visiting Broadsands with Tom, when his left ring finger became suddenly bare, his face drawn and tired. She stood at her window and sobbed as she saw a hearse slide against the kerb of Broadsands, as the man who had accepted the role of Tom’s father so graciously for over thirty years was carried out. She watched the nurse who had become a mother and the baby who had become a man weep as they climbed into the car, shrouded in neat, black clothes.
And then more time rolled by, season by season, month by month, day by day. Evelyn became weaker and Jack became slower, his breaths rasping whenever he climbed the stairs or got up from his chair too quickly. He was finally weaker than her. He barked commands from his chair, twisted his face into bitter smirks, made the whole house smell of unwashed skin and misery.
And then came the blue-black autumn evening when Evelyn was standing in her usual place at the window, absently rubbing her chest. A woman, no older than thirty, in a bright-blue coat and glittering beret that caught the streetlights and twinkled with movement, arrived at Broadsands with Tom. The woman gripped Tom’s hand and they looked at one another as they walked up the drive. This was a big occasion, Evelyn saw. She saw it in the way Tom inclined his head towards the woman slightly, the way he placed his hand on the small of her back. He’d never been like that with the wife who disappeared. She saw the woman’s hair flying out in the wind from beneath her beret: a beautiful burnt copper. She saw them disappear into the hall and shut the door softly behind them. It was a few weeks after that, a night of driving, angry rain that Evelyn saw the same woman swinging a yellow car onto Daphne’s driveway. As the woman got out of the car, her auburn hair whipping around her delicate face, Evelyn found herself running to her door, flying out into the rain. Her muscles ached and moaned in pain: she never moved very far these days. As the woman hammered on the front door of Broadsands, Evelyn stopped.
She could not tell them now. She would wait. She needed to wait until Jack was gone. He could barely move and Evelyn could sense that death was near to him. But after Harry, poor Harry all those years ago, she could take no risks.
She allowed herself to watch the scene for a little longer, the rain stinging her eyes and drumming through her clothes onto her frozen skin. The woman turned around and met her eyes, and for a moment Evelyn was unable to move. She stared into the woman’s round, dark eyes until the door of Broadsands opened and the woman was ushered in by Daphne. Daphne’s word of greeting was carried on the wind, across the wide, flooded road.
Isobel.
As another silver Christmas fell softly down on Silenshore, Evelyn tried hard to avoid Isobel, tried not to stare as she and Tom wandered to and from the house, sometimes holding hands, sometimes not. But on Christmas Eve, Evelyn had been unable to stop herself from speaking to Isobel. Evelyn had been asleep for days on end and had emerged from her bedroom thick with dreams and sadness. Isobel had been on her way home, her chin nuzzled deep into her scarf, her mind obviously elsewhere, and Evelyn had found herself floating towards her, heard herself rambling about Tom and his other wife. She shouldn’t be talking, she thought, but she just wanted to say something nice, to see Isobel up close: her bright hair and her feathery, mascara-ed lashes and the pale freckles on her cheeks. She wasn’t going to tell Isobel anything, or even mention Tom, but then she heard her own voice, old and shaky and unrecognisable: words that made Evelyn’s worst fears dance in the air, words about sharing Tom and wanting to be his number one, because that’s what Evelyn dreamt of, and in those dreams, Tom mixed with Harry and Harry mixed with the man that she first thought Jack was on the day she met him. The words and dreams tumbled from Evelyn’s cracked, thinned lips, making Isobel stare at her in fright and rush away.
And as Evelyn tried and tried to keep away from Isobel and Tom, and mouthed sorry when she saw them, and made herself stay indoors, away from trouble, Jack faded and faded in his chair. He slept silently, until sleep became death and eventually Evelyn was free of him. On the day of Jack’s sad, empty funeral, Evelyn saw Daphne at the window of Broadsands, staring down at the hearse. As the slow black car glided down the street, she gazed up at Daphne. Evelyn’s body was failing now. The lump on her chest was becoming bigger. She hadn’t told the doctor and she had no plans to. She, like Jack, was running out of time. Her body became more frail with each day, her bones as brittle as hair. But her eyesight was still bright and clear. She could see the golden castle, her old home from so many years ago, rising up over Silenshore. She could see the outline of wispy clouds, the gleam of spring sunlight, the motes of dust in the hearse. She could see the pain etched on Daphne’s face, the realisation that Jack was dead, that the obvious reason for Evelyn keeping their secret was gone. She could see the fright scored on Daphne’s features, the same fright that she’d seen a glimpse of on Isobel’s face that day she’d spoken to her: horror that her time with Tom might now be up.
Two days after Jack’s funeral, Tom and Isobel brought home their baby. Evelyn heard yowls and murmurs as they carried the bulky, ugly car seat into the house. She wondered if she might be able to go over and speak to them, act like a neighbour who wanted to see a baby for no reason other than being neighbourly, but then she remembered her garbled words when she’d tried to speak to Isobel, the look of panic on Isobel’s pale face. Perhaps she would telephone them instead.
After a few months of considering it, dreaming about it every time she slept, Evelyn pulled her telephone directory from its place under her book-laden coffee table and coughed as dust flew from under the table and scratched its way down her throat. She found the surname she had seen on a letter some time ago and underlined the number in sharp blue ink.
Daphne was angry, or perhaps she was just frightened. Her words hissed down the telephone.
No, you may not speak to him.
You must leave him alone.
You know what was agreed.
Evelyn remembered that night at the castle when Daphne stood before her and told her that the baby had lived. She remembered what she had promised Daphne. And she had kept her word. She’d sent Tom a Christmas card for the first time a few months ago: had risked walking across the wide, grey road and along the crunching drive of Broadsands to slip a red envelope through the heavy brass letterbox. She’d written the card years before, when her hand was still steady, when the future was still wide and held a chink of hope. Years passed and the light of the future diminished, until last Christmas, when she knew there would be no more chances. But she asked for nothing in her words; she had never tried to take Tom back, had never intended to, not even when her heart felt as though it might be implode, because she knew that Tom had a better chance at life with Daphne, away from Evelyn, because everything Evelyn touched fell apart.
Now, time is slipping away and Evelyn is becoming weaker with each day. She is fading away and her connection to Tom is crumbling, disintegrating by the minute. Just one more letter, that’s all she needs to write now. And then the rest, once she is gone, will be taken care of.
Dear Daphne,
I must thank you for being such a good mother to Tom for all this time. I can see that the years have been blighted with fright that you should lose him. I would never take him from you, for he is not mine. He is not yours either. He used to be Victoria’s, but now he belongs to Isobel and their baby. It should stay that way, whatever you decide to tell him. I am fading now, going into another world where I might see Jack and Victoria, or I might see nothing but black.
I don’t have much to leave Tom when I go. Jack spent most of our money. I have this house, which Tom is welcome to. I have left everything I have to him. I know you mustn’t have given him my card this Christmas, or told him that it was from me, because he has never so much as glanced at me. I sent it because I knew it
would be my last chance to send him a Christmas card, to let him know somebody was thinking of him and how special he is.
If you tell him now what you have been keeping from him, you might lose him. But if you don’t he will lose his connection to me, to his real history.
You have made choices that have shaped Tom’s life, as parents are meant to, as I never did for Victoria. This last choice also lies with you.
Think carefully.
My thanks are with you forever.
Evelyn
When she has pressed the lid back onto her best fountain pen, the scent of fresh blue ink floating up from the paper, she opens the box that she has kept for so many years. Memories fly out, clawing at her, trying to pull her under, and she turns her head slightly so that she can’t see the things she’s packing into the parcel for Tom. A small case. A peach shawl, badly knitted. A book called The Blue Door. The emerald that Evelyn had pressed into Victoria’s cool fingers on the day that they had left her at Gaspings. A smooth red ribbon, which Evelyn ties around a neat pile of unopened letters: those that Harry and Sally sent to Victoria at Lace Antiques, and Evelyn kept for when Victoria came home from Gaspings, hidden inside her pillowcase and under a loose floorboard and behind the books that Jack never read. To look at these things that were all from so long ago, to really see them properly, would break Evelyn forever, and it’s too soon for that because there’s something she needs to do first.
She smiles into the mirror encrusted with sapphires that has brought and cost so very much, and her lips crack and sting. She thinks of her mother warning her off the mirror. How different life might have been if Evelyn had never found it, never taken it from the castle. Would she never have met Jack? Would she have walked past his shop that day, past a future of misery and on to a different one in London? Would she not have lost her parents? She knew now that it was Jack who had frightened them away. The day he died, Evelyn had dragged his chair out of the house, wanting to be rid of his every fibre. Underneath the chair a floorboard was loose. There had probably been all sorts of things kept in there by Jack, Evelyn realised as she stared down at the space where a faded letter lay, things that she didn’t even want to know about. She had pulled the letter free, the handwriting making her heart sink and sing all at once.
Evelyn
We have come to France sooner than planned. As I told you, we owed money to different people in Silenshore. We were hoping that word hadn’t got out that we were in trouble, that we could sneak away from some of the people we owed the least to and get their money to them in the future somehow. But oh, Evelyn, we received a letter the morning after your wedding telling us that everyone knew we had lost everything, and that if we didn’t pay back every penny then our lives, and yours, would be at risk. It threatened to tell the newspapers what we’d done, that we’d squandered away our fortune on parties that we couldn’t afford. I couldn’t bear it for you, and for Jack, our new son. Of course, it wasn’t clear if the letter was to be believed, but to be safe we decided to come to your father’s family earlier than planned. Please, write to me at the address above and we can arrange to see each other again.
Your loving,
Mother and Father
Jack, Evelyn had thought. It had been Jack who had written to them, his fury at the loss of what he saw as his fortune spilling out into a cruel letter. And they had fled to try and protect him.
How little they had known him.
She stared at the address at the top of the page: the address that she had searched for, for so many years. Jack must have known that Evelyn had been looking. He must have moved it around the house so that Evelyn had chased it endlessly. There must have been others, thrown on the fire perhaps, or torn into senseless pieces. But this one, he had kept. Perhaps he’d thought that finding it when it was too late would be more painful for Evelyn than never seeing it at all. And in some ways, it was. Grief pulled at Evelyn as the address blurred with her tears. But like all the other pain she now bore, it was a softer pain than she used to feel. Time and old age had weakened her senses, and now it was too late to feel anything other than a dull ache where a roaring pain should have been. But along with the ache came a sense of calm. Evelyn’s parents hadn’t abandoned her. She had been right for all these years. They hadn’t simply disappeared without telling her where they were or how to reach them.
They would be gone now, to another world with no secrets and no curses. And soon, Evelyn would be returned to them.
Now, thinking about her parents, Evelyn looks down into the mirror again. Her hair is silver where it was once golden. Her eyes are still blue, but now they are pale, and sit in a sagging face, the skin weighted down by time. Her collarbone juts from beneath the cool-blue blouse that she wears. She sees shards of herself glittering in the air as she throws the mirror across the room. It shatters into a thousand pieces and she sweeps them up, lightheaded with relief.
The sun bakes the world as Evelyn steps out of her house onto the bright white street. She stares across at Broadsands, as she has done so many times in her life. The house stares back, unwavering, hostile. There is nothing to indicate anything is any different today. The front door is shut. The hanging basket creaks backwards and forwards slowly in the summer breeze. The curtains are open, the blinds half drawn as always. It’s a normal summer’s day with nothing to suggest a time for change.
And yet.
Evelyn crosses the road. Her steps are small, weak. If a car was to come careering around the corner from the promenade, she would be gone, her delicate bones crushed, her body catapulted into the summer air like a doll. The letter and the package she has kept safe for so long would fly from her hands into the breeze and back down into the debris of her death.
But no car comes.
The door remains closed, even when she taps her long, yellowed nails against the oak. She’s just about to leave the package on the door when Tom arrives. Evelyn stares at him, at his easy, open features that show his charm and innate goodness, his greying hair that betrays the years that have passed, his smile that is a replica of the original, a carbon copy of the smile that cost Victoria so very much: his left canine slightly crooked, the rest of the teeth in perfect white rows.
‘Can I help you?’ he asks, his voice similar in tone to Harry’s, his words dusted with the same easy charm.
‘I need you to give this to your mother, please,’ she says, handing over the package and the letter. Their hands touch and something crackles in her blood.
‘Of course,’ he says.
Then the door swings shut and he is gone.
Epilogue 2015
Isobel glances in the mirror as she brushes through Beatrice’s hair and their eyes meet. Their faces match: they are starting to merge into a clear pair. Mother and daughter. The sight of them together in the mirror gives Isobel a thrill.
‘Plaits or ponytail?’ she asks.
Beatrice wrinkles her nose in thought and then grimaces as Isobel pulls a brush through her hair.
‘Plaits,’ she says eventually, her bright voice high and clear.
As Isobel weaves Beatrice’s hair into thick, dark plaits, she looks away from the mirror. The soft-yellow light of spring, of daffodils and sunlight and honey, leaks through her bedroom window. The light and the warmth in the air remind Isobel of another time, of a walk on the beach and the first days of Beatrice. She shakes her head slightly, freeing herself of the discomfort from the memories, and strokes the brush through Beatrice’s hair again.
‘Are you excited?’ she asks and Beatrice nods. Her nod is decisive, sure. Everything about it is like Tom.
At the thought of Tom, Isobel’s mind wanders to the last few years. They’ve been years of change: decay and grief for what was, but of blossoming and ripeness too.
The day that Isobel confronted Daphne about what she had been hiding, the day that Tom brought in a brown parcel with Daphne’s name on the front in swirling writing, was a day of fleshed-out, splintered secrets.
Daphne had tried to take the parcel away, but her trembling hands, the tears escaping from her in sorrowful gulps, made Tom rip open the thin brown paper himself.
Inside was a small pale-blue suitcase, with the letters V.L. inexpertly embroidered on the silk inside, so shakily that the initials bled together on the cream satin lining. A stack of unopened letters was bundled together with a piece of red ribbon, and a small green gem was covered in a fine layer of dust. An old mystery novel filled the kitchen with the scent of damp pages as Tom leafed through it. On the inside cover was an inscription to somebody called Miss Lace. Tom’s eyes flicked over it for meaning, and Daphne sobbed and sobbed. He put the book to one side and pushed the suitcase away, towards where Isobel was sitting.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked Daphne. ‘Who’s sent you all these things?’
Daphne’s face melted in agony, ‘I can’t lose you, Tom,’ she said.
The words hung in the room. They were Isobel’s words too, the words she had wanted to say all year, dressed up now in Daphne’s hoarse voice.
Tom had pulled the truth from Daphne, and when it came, cloaked in fright, he had pushed the suitcase slightly, so that it skated across the table and thudded onto the kitchen floor, the letters releasing themselves from the ribbon and floating through the air like ghosts. He had turned from Daphne and left Broadsands. Isobel had followed him, running after him towards the beach, the salty summer wind snatching at her hair and face.
‘She’s a fake,’ Tom had said, his words shaken, his voice not his own.
Isobel had pushed the image this conjured of Daphne from her mind: capes and furtive glances and evil plans.
‘She’s not. She loves you, Tom. I don’t know what happened, but you need to find out. She brought you up. She’s still your mother.’
Tom shook his head.
‘Tom! She is. She was there all the way through your childhood. She must have wanted you badly to hide this from you.’ Isobel held out her hand and took his. ‘Come on. I don’t know what she’ll tell you, but you can’t turn your back on her.’