Emma and Her Daughter

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘At authorised visiting hours,’ the sister snapped. ‘And only if I consider Nurse Martin fit to see visitors.’

  ‘Get well, sweet Stella,’ Matthew said, with a quick, contemptuous glance at the sister – I’ll visit with or without your permission that glance said. He dropped another kiss on Stella’s forehead. ‘Get well.’

  He wished her nothing less.

  Chapter Fifteen

  AUGUST 1927

  Although it was now a fortnight since Fleur had gone missing with Paolo, Emma was still uneasy when she was out of her sight. She remembered waiting anxiously for Fleur to return to the Cascarini ice cream parlour and now felt a dreadful fear every time Fleur went out that she would never come back.

  ‘Ma! The telephone?’ Fleur shouted from upstairs.

  Had she been so deep in thought she hadn’t heard it? Almost always, the second it rang, Emma raced to it to snatch it from its cradle in case it was Caroline. So far Emma hadn’t rung Caroline to arrange a meeting between her and Fleur. Fleur wasn’t – in Emma’s opinion – ready for that yet and had said as much herself. Since Caroline’s surprise, and rather shocking, visit, Emma had told Fleur over and over as much as she knew about Seth’s and Caroline’s time together. Fleur had also walked out with Paolo and talked it all through with him over and over again, so she’d said. Fleur admitted that with each telling she was beginning to believe it a little bit more. What Paolo thought of it all and what advice he’d given Fleur, Emma couldn’t guess at and didn’t like to ask.

  Caroline hadn’t rung Emma either, not that Emma had given her her number, but if Bettesworth had been so unprofessional as to give Caroline Emma’s address he would probably have no guilt at giving out her telephone number as well, or finding it from somewhere.

  ‘Shall I answer it?’ Fleur asked, coming into the kitchen, wrapped in a dressing gown that had once been Emma’s – pink shantung with apple-green embroidery on the lapels. How young she looked, how beautiful. And how vulnerable.

  The telephone was in the hallway down the end of the corridor.

  ‘Ma, are you all right?’

  No, not really. When it began to get dark and you weren’t at the ice cream parlour as I’d expected you to be, it was like the time you’d been snatched from me as a baby in the churchyard of St Mary’s. The night Margaret Phipps beat me black and blue and for which she’d been incarcerated in an asylum, deemed too mad to face charges of abduction and assault and battery.

  Still the telephone rang on – and still only seven-thirty in the morning.

  Emma shook her head to banish the bad thoughts.

  ‘I’ll answer it,’ she said. ‘It might be Tom calling to say he can’t come in today.’

  Tom had been wonderful about protecting Emma as much as he could. And Ruby had caught the train over twice and called in to check that Emma was all right. She’d come on the pretext of buying things for the children for school from Rossiters but Emma had known that it was just so she could see for herself that her friend was fine. Tom was almost always at Romer Lodge about now. Emma had bought him a bicycle so he could cycle over in fine weather. If it was wet, he’d get the train. Today was fine. Yes, it might be Tom seeing as he wasn’t here yet.

  Emma hurried down the passageway to the hall. She snatched up the telephone. ‘Hello. Emma Jago.’

  ‘And about time, too.’

  Caroline Prentiss – or Jago, as she now claimed. Emma resisted the urge to slam the telephone back on its rest.

  ‘Time is mine to do with as I choose,’ Emma said. She wondered how Caroline had got hold of her telephone number but wasn’t going to waste breath asking. She could even have seen it on one of Emma’s advertisements for her dressmaking business, she knew that.

  ‘Then perhaps you could choose to let me speak to my daughter.’

  ‘In person, not on the telephone,’ Emma said. ‘And I will be present.’ The first time at least. After that it would be up to Fleur, but Emma owed it to Seth to protect her. ‘And I will require evidence. If I say September you will know what I mean.’

  ‘Ah, little ears are listening, since you are speaking in code?’

  ‘Fleur is here, yes.’

  Although not standing next to me. Emma could hear Fleur crashing about in the kitchen doing something with pots and pans. A cupboard door was slammed shut.

  ‘So, when?’

  ‘This afternoon. At the Cliff Hotel. Three o’clock,’ Emma said, the words coming to her as though she was reading from a script, or someone else was putting them into her mouth.

  But now she’d said them, she knew it would be best to have the conversation they were going to have in a public place.

  ‘Don’t be late.’

  Emma winced as Caroline slammed the telephone down. She’d had the last word. Well, let her – she isn’t going to get her daughter back if I’ve got anything to do with it.

  The post shot through the letterbox then and Emma bent to pick up half a dozen letters or so. One from the bank. She put that on the top and went into the sitting room, found the paper knife and slit open the envelope.

  What? The balance was higher than it should have been, given she’d paid for lots of fabrics and notions in Beare’s and bought a car from Exe Motors.

  Emma scanned the bank statement. Exe Motors hadn’t banked her cheque yet. She would have to ring and ask why not. How could she keep an eye on her finances if others were so slapdash about presenting cheques?

  Something else to deal with. But small fry in the scheme of things considering what might come out in conversation this afternoon.

  Emma fixed a smile on her face and went back to the kitchen.

  ‘That was Caroline, Fleur,’ she said. ‘She wants to meet you.’

  ‘When?’

  Fleur didn’t sound frightened at the thought, which gave Emma encouragement to present her with the fait accompli, although she would cancel the meeting if Fleur was dead against it.

  ‘This afternoon. Are you ready for that?’

  ‘I can’t put it off forever, can I?’

  ‘No, we can’t. I’ve said I’ll be there with you.’

  ‘All right,’ Fleur said, although Emma thought she sounded as though it was anything but really.

  ‘So,’ Emma said. ‘I’ve got a lot of sewing jobs to do before I can go out anywhere, I’d better get on.’

  She wasn’t going to let her business suffer because of this.

  Caroline was already waiting at the Cliff Hotel when Emma and Fleur arrived. Emma gave their names to the receptionist and ordered tea for three, and he pointed them in the direction of the conservatory.

  ‘Mrs Jago is through there, Mrs Jago,’ he said, and the strangeness of the sentence brought a smile to his face. He sucked in his cheeks in an effort, Emma guessed, to stop himself laughing.

  ‘That sounds a bit odd,’ Fleur said.

  The whole situation is odd. Emma had woken in the night, every night, since Caroline had turned up, finding it hard to get back to sleep each time. Not for the first time she wondered if Caroline would have come looking for her daughter had Mr Bettesworth not been indiscreet in his professional dealings.

  Caroline rose from the wicker couch on which she was sitting, back to the window, the second she saw Emma and Fleur – as though she was holding court.

  ‘Just about on time,’ she said.

  Emma chose not to comment. She was a couple of minutes in hand and they both knew it. She waited for Caroline to offer a hand in greeting, but the gesture didn’t come. Well, Emma certainly wasn’t going to instigate the niceties.

  ‘I have a present for you, darling,’ Caroline said, bending to pick up an elaborately wrapped package from the floor. ‘I’ve had to guess your size.’

  Darling? Obviously the endearment’s not directed at me, Emma thought. But ‘guess the size’ – what could Caroline have bought Fleur?

  ‘Shall we sit?’ Emma said, when Fleur seemed reluctant to step forward and take the pres
ent. It wasn’t quite a question – more an informed suggestion.

  ‘Present first,’ Caroline said.

  A waiter came in with the tea and his presence galvanized Fleur into action. She took a few steps forward and reached out to take the present from Caroline’s outstretched arms.

  ‘Thank you,’ Fleur said.

  ‘Open it,’ Caroline ordered.

  ‘I’d like to do it in private,’ Fleur replied. She turned and put the present down on a chair.

  That’s my girl! Don’t let her start ordering you about, even if she is your mother. A bit late in the day for that!

  Emma sat, hoping Caroline would follow her lead. She set the cups upright on the saucers and began to pour the tea.

  ‘Milk in second,’ she said, looking up at Caroline.

  See, I’ve remembered. I’ve remembered you told me that a fortnight ago. Always try and make a friend of your aggressor – Matthew Caunter had told her that once, many years ago now. And he ought to know – he’d had enough aggressors in his time through his work for His Majesty’s Customs.

  Emma tried to smile but the smile wouldn’t come. She was terrified of Caroline and her potential for danger. Criminal deeds. Murder even.

  Emma handed Caroline a cup of tea. She took it without thanks or acknowledgement, and Emma hoped that Fleur would notice the lack of manners.

  ‘I’d like to ask you some questions,’ Fleur said as Caroline sipped at her tea.

  Hah! She’s wrong-footed you, Emma thought, seeing the surprise in Caroline’s eyes. A mouth full of tea, she could hardly protest, could she?

  ‘Why, when you turned up at our house on my birthday, didn’t you bring me a present then? Seeing as you knew it was my birthday.’

  Emma almost stopped breathing. What would Caroline say? The truth – that it wasn’t actually Fleur’s birthday? She was born in September? That the birth certificate Seth had been given was a forgery?

  ‘I wanted to see you first. See how you’d grown. If you were as tall as I am. Your colouring.’ Caroline’s words came out pat. If she’d made them all up on the spur of the moment then she was a better actress than Emma had given her credit for. ‘I see you have your father’s colouring, not mine. But you’re tall. Like me.’

  And taller than I am. After Seth’s death Fleur had started to grow like a weed. Emma had been forever letting down hems of dresses and coats, or making new ones. Fleur had often joked that she was going to be at least a foot taller than Emma and Emma’s response had always been, ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Your pa was tall.’ Fleur had been happy with that. Until now.

  ‘And another thing I want to know,’ Fleur said, ‘is why you never sent me anything for all my other birthdays. Not even a card on July the sixteenth before now.’

  ‘I didn’t know where you were living,’ Caroline said. ‘Your father moved and left no forwarding address with anyone.’

  Yes, and you were the reason for that. You and Miles. Only Seth’s trusted friend, Olly Underwood, and the bank manager – Seth had kept an account in England to collect the peppercorn rent for Shingle Cottage – had known how to contact him. And Ruby – Ruby had known.

  ‘Ma says you dumped me on a table amongst all the cooking things. Is that true?’

  Ma, not Emma. She’s still thinking of me as her mother. Emma’s heart thumped in her chest – anxiety mixed with excitement at Fleur calling her Ma still.

  ‘Yes. I didn’t know what else to do at the time.’

  Caroline glanced at Emma as she spoke – just for the briefest of moments – before making eye contact with Fleur again.

  ‘I don’t know how a mother could leave her child with another woman,’ Fleur said. ‘Do you, Ma?’

  Fleur wants me on her side! Emma could barely breathe now. Or speak.

  ‘Your ma, as you call her, has never had a child to know whether she would or wouldn’t leave that child,’ Caroline said, before Emma could find her voice.

  Emma winced at her words. Caroline was only guessing that Emma had never had a child – she couldn’t have known for certain. And what if Emma had had a child and lost it? How cruel her words would have been then.

  But not for the want of trying to have a child, Emma thought.

  ‘Pa always said I was everything to him. He didn’t need another child.’

  Yes, Seth had said that. It was one of the things she and Seth had agreed upon to say when Fleur got old enough to question why she had no brothers and sisters. Emma was heartened now that Fleur had remembered his words and was – in a roundabout way even if she didn’t realise it herself – letting Caroline know she’d been loved and cared for.

  Emma’s heart was in her mouth now. Was Caroline about to tell Fleur that Seth wasn’t her father – Miles was?

  ‘You are very special,’ Caroline said.

  The creep!

  ‘So special,’ Caroline went on, ‘that I’d like to take you back to America with me. I want to show you off to all my friends so they can see what a beautiful daughter I have. I’ll be sailing on the eighteenth of August. From Liverpool. Do say you’ll come. And I hope you will because I’ve already booked your passage.’

  Once Caroline got Fleur to America what would she tell her then, without Emma around to cushion the blow? How long will it take for Caroline to poison Fleur against me?

  And then, as though sealing the deal, Caroline said, ‘I’m in films. Wouldn’t you want to be part of all that?’

  ‘Films?’ Fleur replied. ‘Like Clara Bow, and … oh, how exciting!’ Fleur clapped her hands together. But then she looked serious again. ‘I don’t know anything about acting.’

  ‘Neither did I to begin with,’ Caroline told her. ‘But I met a director at a party and he took me under his wing. He paid for me to go to classes to learn the rudiments of acting. And dancing. He—’

  ‘Dancing?’ Fleur interrupted.

  She shot Emma a glance – don’t tell me off for interrupting like you usually do, please, the glance said. Emma was desperate to warn Fleur against being influenced by Caroline’s words – true or false. But all Emma could do was resign herself to listening to Caroline bragging – and possibly lying – about her film career. And she hoped with all her heart that Fleur wouldn’t be seduced by it all.

  Not now. Not ever.

  ‘A holiday, Ma. It could be like a holiday.’

  Fleur unwrapped Caroline’s present to her the second they got back to Romer Lodge. Underwear. Lots and lots of very expensive, very frilly underwear. Fleur was delighted with it although Emma knew it wasn’t new because there were no price tags or makers’ labels hanging from it. Caroline’s cast-offs without a doubt. ‘Tarts’ underwear’ had been the words on Emma’s lips but she’d dared not voice them.

  ‘I doubt Caroline would see it like that. She would want you to earn your keep sooner or later.’

  ‘Films? Didn’t you hear her mentioning that?’ Fleur’s voice oozed sarcasm, which Emma chose to ignore.

  Oh, yes, I heard.

  ‘Fleur, I know it all sounds like a dream but I doubt you’ll be given the role of leading lady right away.’

  ‘Stop pouring cold water on the idea, Ma. I want to go.’

  And I don’t want you to. And your pa wouldn’t have wanted you to either.

  Emma reached for the Western Morning News on the arm of the couch. She’d bought it with the idea of putting an advertisement in for her dressmaking business.

  Quickly she turned the pages.

  ‘Here. Look. Dartington Hall. It’s a college. Music, art, and drama. Enrolment—’

  ‘Dartington Hall? Where’s that? In England I suppose?’

  ‘Of course, England. It’s just outside Totnes. You said yourself you know nothing about acting and if you were to take this course you could see whether or not you like it. And then there’s art. There are some photographs here of students’ art work. Your pa—’

  ‘That’s blackmail, Ma. Saying Pa would want me to take art.’


  ‘You might at least show some respect and consider it. And I might remind you that you’re a minor, Fleur. You can’t go to America without my permission.’

  Which wasn’t strictly true. Emma had never officially adopted Fleur as her daughter. If Caroline took legal advice then in all probability she would be allowed to take Fleur to America. And Emma only had Caroline’s word for it that the birth certificate she’d left the day she’d dumped baby Fleur was a forgery. Caroline had yet to come up with the real one, if indeed it existed.

  And Fleur did not – yet – know any of this.

  ‘Well, I’m going to meet her again,’ Fleur said. ‘There’s a note here. See.’

  Fleur waggled a scrap of paper at Emma. But when Emma went to take it, Fleur clutched it to her. ‘I’m old enough to decide whether I want to do that.’

  Yes. She was. Emma herself had made a lot of life-changing decisions before her seventeenth birthday – almost all of them had been for the good.

  ‘What does it say?’ Emma asked. Her mouth had gone dry but she had a smile fixed to her face so firmly her jaw ached with the effort of it. She ran her tongue around her lips to moisten them.

  ‘Wednesday. In Torre Abbey Gardens. Four o’clock. There’s a café nearby and … oh …’ Fleur had discarded the note and was scrabbling about in the bottom of the box. ‘She’s put in some magazines. Film magazines, Ma.’ Fleur picked one up and began to flick through it. ‘I wonder if she’s in one of them?’

  Emma would have bet her last halfpenny that she was and that that’s why she’d put them in the box with the underwear. Another little carrot to dangle in front of Fleur to get her to go to America with her.

  But uppermost in Emma’s mind was Wednesday. How could she engineer to be in Torre Abbey Gardens on Wednesday? At four o’clock. Her list of friends and acquaintances was still so small. Ruby? Ruby would go in arms flailing ready to kill on Emma’s behalf if Caroline did anything to hurt Fleur, Emma knew that. But she’d have to bring the children with her because Tom’s mother wasn’t well and wouldn’t be able to look after them. No, she’d have to discount Ruby as an accomplice. Stella Martin, then? She could fabricate a visit to the haberdasher to look at fastenings and fixings for the headdress, couldn’t she? If Stella was off duty. Emma prayed that she would be.