Stop panicking, she told herself firmly. Torre Abbey Gardens was a public place. It would be daytime. What could happen? The worst thing, in Emma’s thinking, was that Caroline would tell Fleur that Seth wasn’t her father and then Fleur would really have something to hate Emma for – she’d never believe that Emma didn’t know that, would she?
‘Oh, there’s something else in here, Ma,’ Fleur said.
Oh, is there? It’s like Pandora’s flaming box, isn’t it?
‘And another note.’
Emma watched as Fleur read the note and then began peeling back layers of tissue with the tips of her fingers as though she were unpeeling an onion, layer by layer, so as not to make her eyes water.
‘It’s a dress. And … and … the note says “I don’t see why you should have to wear home-made things. I never have. This is cooture”. Only she’s spelled couture wrongly – she’s put two o’s. I expect she wrote it in a hurry.’
Well, I don’t. She’s uneducated. And I’m turning into a snob. Memories of chastising Ruby for every little grammatical error were coming back to haunt her. She’d been privileged to have been born half French and to know two languages and to have been good at her lessons.
Fleur pulled the dress from its wrapping and shook out the creases and then held it against herself.
Cobalt blue fabric caught the mid-summer sun streaming in the window. Silk at a guess. Expensive. From where Emma was standing she couldn’t see a seller’s label on it. More than likely there wasn’t one because it was one Caroline herself had worn – if only once. A second-hand dress – albeit couture, which Emma could see this one most definitely was. Who, she wondered, had paid for it? Which lover?
And why am I being so spitefully suspicious of every motive?
Although, in her heart, Emma knew exactly what Caroline was doing – she was buying Fleur off. She was saying she could show Fleur a more elegant, a richer, a more exciting life than the one she had now.
And it’s my job to keep you safe. For you. For Seth. And for me.
Emma left Fleur sitting on the couch entranced by her presents and went through to her atelier to find Stella Martin’s telephone number – the one at the nurses’ home where she shared a room with a girl called Betty.
‘Can I speak to Stella Martin if she’s there, please? If not, can I leave a message to be passed on?’ Emma said the second the telephone was answered.
‘Who’s calling?’ the female voice on the other end of the telephone said.
‘Emma Jago. I’m a … a friend of Stella’s.’
‘Oh, yes, I remember Stella talking about you. You’re the lady who’s making her wedding dress, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Well, Mrs Jago, I’m Betty, and I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you. Stella was taken ill a week or so ago. She’s still in hospital. As a patient.’
‘Ill? What’s wrong with her?’
And to be still in hospital all this time?
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.’
‘No, no, of course not. I understand. But can I visit Stella?’
‘You can. Visiting is from two until half past. She’s on Singer Ward.’
‘Will you tell her I’ve called? And that I’ll see her as soon as I can? Tomorrow, hopefully,’ Emma said.
She knew what it was like to be ill. She’d spent months recovering from pleurisy as a young girl in the home of the odious Mrs Phipps, her illness drawn out, no doubt, by Mrs Phipps’s lack of care and appropriating the food good, kind Dr Shaw had had sent for Emma’s recovery.
‘Of course I will. But I’ve really got to go now, Mrs Jago. I’m on duty in …’ there was pause and Emma guessed she was checking the time, ‘ … fifteen minutes.
Goodbye,’ Betty said, and the telephone line died.
What luck to have caught Betty before she left the nurses’ home. Emma’s mind was a flurry of all the things she had to do now before going to visit Stella tomorrow. She had a hem to take up for a lady who lived further down Cleveland Road. And supper to prepare for her and Fleur before she went out. Then she’d need to leave early so she could buy something to take to Stella – flowers and fruit, and maybe something lovely for her bath if she was allowed to have one. Emma hurried back to the kitchen to prepare some vegetables for the following day.
But one thing was certain, she wouldn’t be able to ask Stella to meet her in Torre Abbey Gardens on Wednesday as cover for her covert spying on Fleur. But thinking about it now, spying on Fleur wasn’t such a good idea. If Fleur were to see her it could drive the wedge that was starting to push into their relationship, even further in.
And then the telephone rang.
‘Can you answer that?’ Emma called out to Fleur, hoping she was somewhere within earshot.
‘Will do,’ Fleur answered loudly and cheerfully, obviously still over the moon with her dress from Caroline and all the fashion magazines.
Emma heard the echo of Fleur’s heels clicking on the hall tiles as she ran to answer the telephone. The ringing stopped as Fleur picked it up, but she was too far away for Emma to hear what she was saying.
But she heard Fleur laugh. And why shouldn’t she? She strained to catch even a word of Fleur’s side of the conversation so she could try and guess who she was speaking to. She prayed it wasn’t Caroline. Perhaps she ought to have wiped her hands and taken the call herself? But what with the news of Stella and the presents Caroline had given Fleur, Emma’s mind was in a whirl.
As soon as these potatoes are peeled, I’ll go and see who Fleur was laughing with on the telephone. Damn! She caught her thumb on the sharp point of the potato peeler. Just a nick. She stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked hard on the globule of blood. But it did little to stem the flow, so she ran her thumb under the cold tap and at last the bleeding stopped.
‘Fleur?’ Emma called.
‘In here.’
Fleur’s voice was coming from the sitting room and Emma found her perched on the arm of a chair flicking through one of the fashion magazines that Caroline had given her. She didn’t look up when Emma came into the room and Emma tried not to mind because wasn’t there a big pile of magazines in her atelier for Fleur to look at if she wanted to?
‘Ma? What have you done? You’re dripping blood everywhere!’
Emma stared at her thumb. The exertion of walking from the kitchen to the sitting room must have started it bleeding again.
‘So I am. I cut my thumb peeling potatoes. Who was on the telephone?’ Emma asked, knowing her voice had risen with her question.
‘Not Caroline, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
Good. Although I think I’m in danger of becoming paranoid every time the telephone rings.
‘I wasn’t thinking any such thing,’ Emma said, pressing hard against her cut with the forefinger of her other hand. ‘I was just asking. It could have been a client wanting to make an appointment.’
‘Well, it wasn’t. It was Paolo.’
Paolo. Good. Not Caroline.
‘That’s nice. Are you seeing him?’
‘Yes. His pa wants me to help in the ice cream parlour while Paolo does deliveries. Tomorrow afternoon. He’s going to pay me. I’ll be earning money. Aren’t you pleased?’
Pleased? Well, of course Emma was pleased that Fleur realised money had to be earned.
‘And I’m invited to supper,’ Fleur said, when Emma was slow to answer her question.
‘Oh, that’s nice.’ Emma was more than happy that Fleur had Paolo to talk to about the appearance of Caroline in her life if she needed to. ‘I’ll come and collect you.’
But not go in. It would be too awkward having to make conversation with Eduardo now she’d told him there was no chance of them becoming a couple. And there was the danger he might think she’d changed her mind about their relationship and was open to invitations to go out somewhere if she were to go in.
A slow smile spread across Fleur’s face. ‘Yes,�
� she said. ‘Why not?’
Good. That will mean I won’t have to rush back from seeing Stella and can look around the shops in Torquay. And I’ll know where Fleur is. With Paolo. In the ice cream parlour.
One more day when she could be certain where Fleur was – safe. But after that – what then?
‘Oh, and …’ Fleur said. ‘I’m not sure what I should be calling you now.’ She waved a hand over the dress and the underwear Caroline had given her. ‘After all this. Ma? Emma? What do I call you? I’m confused. But it doesn’t seem right after I’ve been given all these gifts by my real mother to be calling you Ma, does it?’
Doesn’t it?
‘I’m going to have to leave that decision up to you, Fleur,’ Emma said. ‘But whatever happens, you will always be my daughter.’
And then, before she broke down completely with the emotion of it all she left the room.
‘Stella?’ Emma’s voice was a whisper and she didn’t want to believe that the woman lying, eyes closed, looking so grey, so ill, was who the nurse who’d shown her into the private room had said she was.
Stella’s eyes opened slowly.
‘Oh, hello, Emma.’ Stella smiled and Emma was heartened to see there was brightness in her eyes. ‘I’m in a mess, aren’t I?’
‘But you’ll be well soon, I know it.’
‘How’s Fleur?’ Stella asked. ‘Is she coming to terms with the news about her birth?’
‘I like to think so. But it’s early days. She’s meeting Caroline alone for the first time tomorrow.’ A shiver of unease snaked its way up Emma’s spine at the thought.
‘And you’re anxious about that?’ Stella said.
‘Yes. But I haven’t come here to talk about my concerns or Fleur’s.’
Talking to Stella for a while would take her mind off Fleur. And Caroline. And …
‘You can, you know. I’ll be happy to listen. It will take my mind off other things.’
Stella reached for Emma’s hand. How thin her hand was. Claw-like – all bone and raised blue veins, like rivers on a map. Were they feeding her in here? Emma wished she’d brought something more substantial than a few grapes and a small bar of Cadbury’s milk chocolate now. And the flowers she’d brought – purple stocks – were hardly likely to help Stella put on weight, were they?
‘So, that’s both of us in the same boat?’ Emma smiled. ‘Things we should be talking about and thinking about but don’t want to for the moment. When I spoke to your friend in the nurses’ home she wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. You don’t have to tell me if it’s, well … women’s things.’
‘Why shouldn’t I tell you? You’re a woman. We have the same things.’
Without even a smidgeon of self-pity Stella told Emma how influenza had turned to pneumonia, and how – at the beginning – the doctors had been unsure what exactly was wrong with her. How they’d suspected she might be pregnant and had examined her. Found things in her womb that shouldn’t have been there and she’d been given a hysterectomy.
What trust she’s putting in me, telling me all this, Emma thought.
‘So,’ Stella finished. ‘My dream of becoming a mother has flown out of the window.’
Emma clapped a hand in front of her mouth even though, again, there was no self-pity in Stella’s voice – it was almost clinical. Only a few minutes ago Stella had said – ‘Why shouldn’t I tell you? You’re a woman. We have the same things.’ She couldn’t have known how accurate that statement was and how much they had both dreamed of having a child of their own one day.
‘I’m sorry,’ Emma said. ‘Truly sorry.’
To break down now in front of Stella and tell her about her own dreams of having a child of her own would do Stella no good at all. Emma turned and walked towards the window. Stella’s room was on the third floor looking out over Torquay’s grand Victorian villas down towards the sea – a strip of pewter merging with a slate sky on the horizon today. She bit the insides of her cheeks to stop her tears coming, a trick which usually worked, but which was taking longer now. She swallowed. She couldn’t stay here forever staring out of the window.
‘I’m sorry,’ Emma said. ‘That was rude of me.’
‘I don’t think so. I think you have a sadness, too. I know now that Fleur isn’t your child. I assumed you and your husband wanted one together? Yes?’
‘Very much. Despite our best efforts it didn’t happen.’
‘Best efforts can be good.’ Stella smiled. And then the smile slipped. ‘So I’m told.’
‘Is there something else?’
Stella pulled herself to a sitting position, struggling to set the pillows more comfortably behind her, so Emma helped, then pulled a chair closer to the bed and sat down.
‘My fiancé seems to have got cold feet. He’s hardly visited at all. I know his business is flourishing and he has to make the deliveries himself until the lad who works for him is proficient enough at driving to do it. I expect he’s busy but …’ Stella stopped speaking. Shrugged her shoulders, the boniness of them poking through the shawl she had draped over them.
‘Running a business by oneself is time-consuming,’ Emma said. ‘I ran a bakery before I went to Canada and now my dressmaking business here and I know how hard it can be. He could be telling the truth.’
Emma had no idea why she was defending a man she didn’t know and who wasn’t visiting his sick fiancée as he ought. He should be making time for that, shouldn’t he?
Stella twisted her engagement ring around and around her finger.
‘This is in danger of falling off,’ she said. ‘The jeweller it was bought from said opals are considered bad luck as a betrothal ring and I’m beginning to think he might be right.’
‘No!’ Emma said. ‘Don’t think like that. Men can be very thoughtless around illness. When my mama had her miscarriages my papa used to go for long walks by himself when really all she wanted was for him to put his arms around her and hold her.’
‘Well, I’m not going to have one of those now, am I?’ Stella said.
‘No. I’m sorry. Not that I’d wish a miscarriage on anyone but you know what I mean.’
‘I do.’ Stella smiled. ‘Have you ever thought of marrying again?’
Emma flinched, surprised at Stella’s question.
‘Are you seeing someone?’ Stella went on.
‘There was someone – an Italian, Eduardo Cascarini – who had hopes that we might marry,’ Emma said quickly, wondering why Stella seemed so eager to know. ‘You met him at Fleur’s birthday tea. He was very kind but I don’t love him. I’ve told him I don’t want to see him any more. We don’t have the same vision for our futures.’
‘But if you met someone and fell in love? Might you marry again?’
Only with Matthew. And he’s hardly likely to materialise out of thin air if I snap my fingers, is he?
Should she confide in Stella about Matthew? Should she?
A bell rang somewhere not far away.
‘End of visiting time,’ Stella said.
‘I’ll come again as soon as I can. We can talk trousseau. I’ll get some fabric samples to show you. It will be something to look forward to. When you’re well.’
Emma knew she was gabbling, trying to say as much as she could in the few seconds they had left together before she was shown the door.
‘I like to think so,’ Stella said.
‘I do, too,’ Emma said. ‘And not just because it will earn me money making it. I hope your fiancé comes to see you soon.’ She bent to kiss Stella on the cheek. ‘I’m glad we’re friends.’
‘I hope we always will be,’ Stella said.
Chapter Sixteen
Fleur wore the dress Caroline had given her for her birthday to go and meet her … mother. How odd it felt, thinking of Caroline as her mother. The dress fitted like a glove. She’d changed into it after her ma had left to go and see Stella Martin at the hospital. And how easy that had been, telling her ma that it was Paolo who had teleph
oned yesterday, when it hadn’t been. It was Caroline who had rung. Usually her ma could tell when she was lying – although Fleur didn’t have the first idea how – but she hadn’t this time. And what a gift she’d given Fleur by asking if she was seeing Paolo. Yes. Why not? Which wasn’t the truth but it wasn’t exactly a lie either – she would be seeing Paolo sometime. Just not today.
How, Fleur wondered, had she not questioned the fact that she was taller than Emma by a good four inches, and was finer-boned? Well … she had questioned it a time or two back in Canada after her pa had died, but her ma had always said that her pa had been tall. But built like a tree! And I’m fine-boned. Like Caroline, she realised. Even now Fleur could remember how it felt to climb up into a chair and sit on her pa’s lap, have him wrap his arms around her and hold her tight. She remembered remarking once – she’d have been about seven or eight years old at the time – that her pa’s forearm was bigger around than her thigh. And he’d laughed. Sometimes, before she fell asleep when she lay there thinking about her life with her pa, about Canada and all the friends she’d left behind there, and about Caroline now making a re-appearance in it, she could hear that laugh in her head. And see his coal black hair. At least she had that of him.
She didn’t like the thought that her pa had taken someone else into his bed before he’d married Emma. But she had to accept that he had. And that she was the result. She’d had a few weeks to think about it now. She’d talked it all over with Paolo and he was of the opinion that she should be grateful for the life that Emma had given her if Caroline had dumped her – as she’d admitted she had – on the table in Emma’s bakery.
Emma had kissed her goodbye not ten minutes ago as she’d left to go and visit Stella Martin. And now Fleur was on her way to meet Caroline – without Emma playing chaperone. How powerful it had felt to say yes she would meet her, or no she wouldn’t. And at what time. And where.
Fleur had suggested Victoria Park for her first meeting – alone – with Caroline. There was a bandstand with seats in it and a little stream running along in front. Behind, across an expanse of grass, there was a large ornamental pond with a bridge running across the middle. After they’d talked, it was Fleur’s plan to suggest going to the Igloo, an ice cream parlour in Torbay Road that wasn’t a patch on Paolo’s father’s over in Torquay, but she wanted to see if Caroline would agree readily to pay for the most expensive ice cream sundae on the menu. Emma wouldn’t, she knew that.
Emma and Her Daughter Page 21