by Jane Shemilt
Darling Ed,
By now Dad will have told you what happened to our dearest Naomi.
At least she found what she wanted; lots of people never do.
If she hadn’t got ill, she would have brought her baby to see us, sooner or later.
I’m so glad you have Sophie.
I’ll see you later today or tomorrow. I’m thinking about you all the time.
Mum
I hope Sophie’s arms are round him. I hope she is wearing her bright colours. She’ll listen to him, she’ll make it easier.
I flick the kettle on, Bertie shifts a little at the noise, then sleeps. The coffee is black and scalding hot.
Theo’s is difficult to write; it feels as though I am brushing his brightness with thick dark paint.
Theo darling,
You will be on your way home so I will send this to Bristol. I hope Sam is there, sitting next to you.
You said she didn’t talk to you much before she left. It was the same for me. I think she was saying goodbye.
She took the baby cup, the one with the frog at the bottom. I’ve got it now.
When we find her and the baby I’m going to bring them home. They will be buried here in the churchyard, so we’ll know where she is.
Mum
The rain is softer, the light stronger. Last two letters.
Nikita,
I am going to phone your mum today, so she will have told you by now what has happened.
Michael told me that you knew she was pregnant. She would be pleased you kept her secret safely. She had a little daughter. I don’t know her name.
I think the corals were her goodbye present to you, even if you didn’t know she was going. I’m glad you have them.
Jenny
Michael’s letter is the hardest. I know him so well and yet so little – it’s like writing to a stranger. I try out sentences in my head as I pace the kitchen but they look artificial on the page. There is so much to say that I can’t find the words and I end up writing almost nothing.
Dear Michael,
I’m leaving now and I’m not sure when I’ll be back.
Bertie will be happier here. Can you let him out and feed him before you go? There’s half a tin in the fridge. Mary will take him in until I get back. I’ll phone her; she’ll come and fetch him.
I need to be with my family. I know you’ll understand.
Jenny
I leave Michael’s envelope propped against the coffee jar on the table and address the others to the Bristol house, even Nikita’s – I can’t remember her address. No stamps, but I can stop somewhere.
Michael’s fingers are curved loosely on the duvet cover. When I slip my hand inside his, his grip tightens but his eyes stay closed. I ask him in a whisper where Yoska’s parents have been taken, so I’ll know where to start from. He sleepily murmurs the name, then his hand relaxes again and his breathing becomes deep and regular.
Newtown. A market town on the banks of the River Severn in Powys, Mid Wales. The tourist website gives me the postcode and I put it into the satnav. I must drive slowly; I haven’t slept. It’s been four hours since Michael woke me and the time has fallen away, vanished. The shock is echoing in my head; I’m still waiting for the pain.
I let the car roll down the little slope into the road quietly and start the engine out of earshot of the cottage.
The folded Dorset landscape flattens into Somerset; I drive past Bristol, just a sign on the motorway which disappears behind me. I stop in a garage outside Newport, the envelopes skidding off the dashboard to the floor. Mary picks up after a while; she agrees immediately to look after Bertie asking no questions. Then I phone Ted. When he answers I hear the radio in the background. I picture him at the window in the bedroom, tightening the knot of his tie, planning his day.
I warn him it’s bad news and I hear him turn off the radio and sit down. Then I tell him what happened. In the silence that follows I hear myself say she had been part of a different family. She had given birth to a daughter. She hadn’t been raped or maimed, she’d been loved. He starts crying and I try to talk to him some more. I tell him I am going to post him a letter, but there is silence. After a while he puts the phone down.
I buy a cup of coffee but it tastes bitter and I tip it on the ground and start off again. The roads are filling with cars and lorries. I drive faster. Michael said they had been biding their time; they might be packing up to go now.
At Cardiff I turn off, and take the road to Pontypridd and Merthyr Tydfil. The Black Mountains. It starts to rain, and I drive carefully as the road dips and curls around the Brecon Beacons. Theo must have brought her somewhere here for his project; her eyes were so alive in those photos. We came here once too, just Naomi and I. She would have been nine, maybe ten. Her blonde bunches pushed under a pink woollen hat, her legs in waterproof trousers climbing up the brown slopes, ahead of me, always. She stood on high ridges, too high; leaning into the wind. I couldn’t look.
I get to Newtown at midday and find a small pub on the road with a parking space. The journey so far has taken four hours. It’s warm inside the pub and the smell of stale beer and dog is overwhelming. Music is playing from the juke box by the wall, and a group of men sitting near the window are reading newspapers and drinking. An old collie lies under the table, eyeing me sleepily. The woman behind the bar rolls her eyes when I ask if there is a travellers’ camp nearby; she stays silent.
Behind me, male voices chip in. The gentle sing-song lilt at odds with their speech.
‘There’s been a camp near Llanidloes for months, Hugh’s old farm.’
They are watching me, talking around ends of cigarettes, eyes narrowed against the smoke. I thought smoking had been banned in pubs but I keep quiet.
‘They’ve been nicking stuff. Coming into town causing trouble.’
‘The police don’t do anything.’
‘Gypos. Did you see that in the papers about the drugs?’
‘Pikeys.’
I leave quickly without saying goodbye.
Llanidloes is a pretty place with an old half-timbered market hall. In a Budgens at the crossroads a man in a brown apron is stacking shelves with jars of peanut butter. He straightens and looks down at me.
‘You don’t want to go there,’ he says. When I persist he shrugs, takes my map and rests it against the empty shelf.
‘It’s beyond Bwlch-y-sarnau,’ he says, pointing with an orange-stained finger. ‘Take the B4518 out of town. When you see the postbox by the grey bungalow on your right, take the next left and then left again. It’s in a dip. You’ll see a stony track leading into the field. There’s dogs, mind.’
He wants to say something else. Perhaps he wants to tell me there was trouble last night. The police got involved. High time, he might say. He watches me closely as I leave.
I am on a twisting downhill road when a Toyota Land Cruiser comes towards me. I back into a gateway. It’s followed by a car pulling a horsebox. I wait as it moves slowly by. As I inch out a minibus comes by so I back again. It passes, children at the window staring. Bags and packages and suitcases press against the glass; it’s then that I realize that some of the travellers are moving out, as Michael had said that they would, at least the ones that haven’t been taken into custody.
If I drive on further I can turn in the track the man in the shop told me about. I can catch up with them if I’m quick. Round the corner the track and a field come into sight. There’s a group of caravans towards the edge of the field, near some trees a hundred yards away from where I park. Most of the caravans are behind a striped tape which sections off that part of the site. In the mid-distance, towards the back of the field, there are about ten policemen and men in yellow oilskins, bent over in a line, digging.
There is a caravan in front of the tape, and a man is fixing its towing hook to the back of a muddy Land Rover. This must be the last family the police are allowing to leave. The rain has stopped and a dark-haired little boy of about
six, with a thumb in his mouth, leans against the caravan in a patch of sun, watching the man at work. When I get out of the car and push the gate open the movement snags the child’s attention though the police in the distance don’t notice; if they did, they would probably stop me. The boy turns to stare and the man beside him straightens. His face, edged with grey stubble and reddened with effort, is older than his body looks. Sixty? Seventy? He looks at me briefly, nods, then bends again to his task. In a moment he calls something I can’t catch. A middle-aged woman comes stiffly down the steps of the caravan; she is dressed in black, with a black scarf tied around her long dark hair. She carries a large canvas bag over one shoulder and takes the free hand of the little boy. Without glancing at me, she opens the door of the Land Rover. The little boy is ushered in ahead of her. As she is stepping in after him, she turns her head towards the open door of the caravan.
‘Carys,’ she calls, singing the word in her Welsh accent.
I look around the site. Beside the caravans, there are pale squares in the green grass where other vans must have stood. There are no dogs on chains; several rubbish bags tied neatly lean together in a heap. There is a patch of deeply charred grass in the middle. One of the policemen in the distance calls something and waves me back. I step back outside the gate.
‘Carys,’ the woman calls again, then ducks out of sight into the Land Rover.
The caravan door is pushed wider open and a young woman comes out. As I glance at her, I stop breathing and hold the gate tightly. She has shaved her head so it seems small. The stubble has been dyed red, which matches her long skirt. Her skin is very pale. A tattoo wraps round her neck, and from here it looks like leaves. She is carrying a little girl of about six months in her arms and the child has red hair too; I can see her bright curls from here. The child has been wrapped in a red and yellow stripy blanket and it appears as if she is asleep. At the bottom of the steps the young woman half turns so she is facing the gate, the baby held across her like a shield.
The fingers holding the wrapper are long, though from here it’s impossible to see the freckles, like grains of demerara sugar, reaching to the second knuckle or if the nails are still bitten. It’s too far to see the little mole beneath her left eyebrow. Her gaze meets mine; her eyes are calm, though there are red marks underneath them as though she has been crying. We look at each other. I will think about this for ever but there are things in her glance that I will never know how to name. Recognition. Yes. Vengeance, shuttered. She made Maria vengeful when Tony died. Was that a warning? Something else, something opposite, softer … Sorrow or forgiveness? I can’t tell. She is there. That’s all. She is there. The world disappears around her. The lies they must have told the police, even the lies they taught the children to say, all fall away. I don’t cry or laugh or smile. There isn’t room. There isn’t time.
‘Carys. We’re leaving.’
I start running towards her then, but my feet slip in the wet mud by the gate. I strain to keep her face in sight even while I lose my balance and fall clumsily on my side, but as I watch she turns away. She clasps her baby’s head tightly against her thin neck, bends into the car and vanishes from sight.
I get to my feet, coated in mud, and stumble into a run. By now the car has started and the wheels are spinning in the wet grass. I run faster and for a moment it seems I’ll reach it in time, but the car jumps forward and starts to move towards the gate. If I run in front it will surely stop, but as it comes closer and closer, despite myself I swerve. The side of her face, partly hidden by the child, is so near that if the window was open I could reach and touch her. Then, suddenly, she lifts her hand to the glass, her fingers spread wide. In that fragment of time I see the clear red lifeline on her palm, curving like a line on a map. Then the car has gone by; it doesn’t stop as it turns onto the road but it accelerates up the hill and quickly goes out of sight.
FIFTEEN MONTHS LATER
Carys. It’s a Welsh name. I looked it up. It means love.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my agents, Eve White, Jack Ramm and Rebecca Winfield.
Many thanks to the team at Penguin, especially Maxine Hitchcock, Samantha Humphreys, Celine Kelly, Clare Parkinson, Beatrix McIntyre, Elizabeth Smith and Joe Yule.
Thanks also to the team at HarperCollins USA, especially Rachel Kahan, Kim Lewis, Lorie Young and Mumtaz Mustafa.
My gratitude to my tutors, including Patricia Ferguson, Chris Wakling, Tessa Hadley, Mimi Thebo and Tricia Wastvedt, my personal tutor. And to Rowena Pelling.
Thanks to my writing group: Tanya Atapattu, Hadiza Isma El-Rufai, Victoria Finlay, Emma Geen, Susan Jordan, Sophie McGovern, Peter Reason, Mimi Thebo, Vanessa Vaughan.
I am grateful to PC Nick Shaw for the police details and his kind help with the manuscript, and to my sister, Katie Shemilt, for her photographic skills.
My family made all the difference. Martha’s encouragement was the starting point and Henry and Tommy were very generous with their technical skills. Steve, Mary and Johny were the essential back-up team.
To my father and mother, whom I miss every day, thank you.
THE BEGINNING
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First published 2014
Copyright © Jane Shemilt, 2014
Cover: Dolls house © Martin Poole/Getty Images
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental
ISBN: 978-1-405-91530-4