by Emily Gunnis
‘Over the next few years, she came up rather fast on the inside lane, eventually pitching the idea of her own show, and “The Cannonball” was born. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this term, it is Kitty’s skill at relaxing her interviewee and then throwing in her own unique brand of grenade. I thought I knew research until I met Kitty. She knows things about her guests not even their spouses know. Overnight she became a national treasure and I am incredibly proud to have been part of this wonderful roller-coaster ride for over thirty years. Kitty, you are kind and generous and will never be forgotten. I am proud to call you a friend.’
As dinner was served, Kitty made her way through the tables, greeting guests as she went, flattering them with compliments on their appearance and with talk of their lesser-known achievements, as was her speciality.
As she reached her seat, she felt her phone buzz in her jacket pocket. Rachel was texting her to let her know she was five minutes away with her dress. Kitty swiftly tapped out a reply.
Don’t worry about the dress, darling, I’m fine now. You must be shattered. Head home. Night night. Xx
Chapter Three
Saturday 4 February 2017
The lift was broken again. Sam climbed the steps of the Whitehawk Estate stairwell two at a time and let herself into Nana’s flat where she and Emma were staying after storming out during a particularly bad row with Ben two months before.
‘Nana?’ she whispered, catching her breath from the climb.
No reply. She crept along the brown swirly carpet into the lounge, where the gas fire was ablaze. Nana was asleep in the rocking chair with Emma curled up on the sofa under a blanket. The lighting was dim and the familiar smell of baking made Sam feel instantly at home. Pictures covered every inch of wall and windowsill: of Nana and Grandad on their camping adventures, Emma naked and building sandcastles with her grandad, but most were embarrassing photographs of a much younger Sam, in which she resembled a knobbly-kneed, toothless Mick Hucknall.
As she trod carefully over piles of crossword puzzle books and newspapers, abandoned cups of cold tea, colouring pencils and half-eaten rice cakes, her eye fell on a handwritten letter on the floor next to where Nana’s arm hung, as if she had fallen asleep while she was reading it.
Something about the faded sloping writing and the aged cream paper immediately caught her attention, but as she leant in closer to read it, Nana opened her eyes and smiled. Sam smiled back at her, amused that Nana’s glasses were propped on the end of her nose and another pair were tucked into her white hair.
‘Hello, darling, how are you?’ Nana asked sleepily, her soft blue eyes wrinkling at the corners.
Sam felt a wave of comfort at the sight of her two favourite girls. Nana, as usual, looked absolutely beautiful in a lilac dress and white cardigan she had knitted herself in front of endless Poirot reruns. Her hair was twisted on top of her head, and though it was a cold February day, her lined face was flushed with colour. Her beaming smile disguised the fact that she had dragged her painful hip out in the freezing rain to collect a tired four-year-old, then fed and entertained her and got her to sleep. Sam suddenly felt a rush of irritation at Ben.
‘Oh Nana, you should have told me the lift was out of order again. I could have got some food in at least and brought it home.’ She kissed them both on their foreheads.
‘It’s fine, darling, we had a lovely time. Emma helped me up the steps. She’s such a good girl, Sammy; she’s a credit to you and Ben, she really is.’
‘Well, I’m sorry Ben offloaded her on to you. I’m not happy with him.’
‘He had an interview,’ said Nana, looking fondly at Emma.
‘On a Saturday?’ said Sam frowning.
Nana shrugged, ‘He said something about it being for a restaurant chain. You should be excited for him.’
Sam shook her head. ‘I just don’t know what’s going on with us any more . . . Is there a pot of tea on the go?’ Nana nodded and Sam headed into the kitchen. ‘Did she go off okay?’ she called.
‘Eventually, though it was quite a late one, I’m afraid. She wanted to wait up for you. I tried to persuade her to get into bed, but she fell asleep here. You must be exhausted, darling.’
Sam returned with two mugs, which she placed on the coffee table. ‘I got an exclusive for one of the nationals, so I guess it was worth it.’ She sank back onto the sofa next to Emma, resting her hand on the child’s back as it rose and fell to the rhythm of her contented breathing.
‘Well done, darling. Does that mean you’ll finally get your name up in lights?’ Nana shifted in her chair.
‘No, the staff on the nationals get the bylines, but it all helps to build up my portfolio. I don’t think you’ve ever missed a word I’ve written, have you?’ Sam eyed the piles of newspapers around her.
‘Of course not,’ said Nana. ‘I’m incredibly proud of you, my darling.’
‘I’m glad someone is. Ben resents me so much he can barely look at me at the moment.’ Sam took a gulp of tea.
‘You’ll be fine. It’s difficult for you young girls, trying to juggle everything. It looked like your generation were being handed it all. I think you were just being handed a big pile of steaming shit.’
Sam let out the bellowing laugh Ben used to love, covering her mouth so as not to wake Emma.
‘Anyway . . .’ she said, reaching into her bag and handing Nana a small parcel and a huge box of chocolates. ‘Happy birthday, Nana.’
‘Oh, you naughty girl, what have you gone and done?’ laughed Nana playfully, lifting out a silver charm bracelet with the number 60 and the initials S, A and E hanging from it along with a little silver teapot and a butterfly. Her eyes welled up. ‘All my favourite things,’ she said, blowing her granddaughter a kiss. ‘That’s beautiful, my darling, thank you.’
‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for your first birthday without Grandad. I’ll take you out to dinner next week, I promise.’
‘Don’t be silly. You’re here now, and I had Emma. Anyway, Grandad was here in spirit. Do you know what I found today?’
‘What?’ Sam reached for a slice of malt loaf.
‘Emma dropped a toy down the side of our bed, and when I was retrieving it, I found a big dent in the wall.’
Sam frowned. ‘Do I want to know about a big dent in the wall by yours and Grandad’s bed?’
Nana let out a giggle. ‘It was there because Grandad used to listen to the wireless in the next room. He’d have it on so loud that I used to bang my walking stick against the bedroom wall.’ She took a moment to compose herself before continuing. ‘After he died, I used to put it on full volume just so I could pretend he was still there. You think you’d only miss the good bits about a person, but you miss everything.’
Sam smiled at Nana and blew her a kiss. Aged seventy-five when he died, Grandad was fifteen years older than Nana and when she had wandered into his antique shop one fateful, rainy Sunday afternoon in the autumn of 1980 it had been love at first sight. He had swept her off her feet and they had soon become inseparable, marrying at Brighton Registry Office only a year later. Grandad had proved to be Nana’s rock throughout her life, not least when they received a phone call from Social Services to notify them that Christina, Nana’s only child, from whom she was estranged, had died and that she had a twelve-year-old granddaughter they had never met. Grandad had embraced Sam as if she were his own, and the three of them had existed in their happy bubble until it had burst thirteen years later with the news that Grandad had inoperable lung cancer.
Nana wiped her eyes with Grandad’s handkerchief.
‘What’s that?’ said Sam, pointing to the letter on the floor. ‘It looks like you were reading it before I came home.’
Nana glanced down. She seemed to pause for a moment before picking the pages up. ‘It’s a letter, darling.’
‘Who is it from?’
‘I’m not sure. I found it in Grandad’s paperwork.’ She eased herself out of her chair.
/> ‘It looks interesting. Can I see it?’ said Sam.
Nana hesitated, glancing down at the pages in her hand, then passed them across.
‘Are you okay, Nana?’ said Sam.
‘Fine darling, just tired,’ replied Nana, walking away. ‘Nature calls. Back in a min.’
Sam carefully smoothed out the two thin pieces of yellowing paper. They were both covered with perfectly spaced lines of neat and purposeful handwriting in black ink; the date at the top read 12 September 1956.
My love,
I am fearful that I have not heard from you. All my anxieties have been confirmed. I am three months pregnant. It is too late for anything to be done; it is God’s will that our baby be born.
‘I think I’m going to have to go to bed, darling,’ said Nana, returning to the room and snapping Sam back into the present. ‘Emma looks so peaceful on the sofa; shall we leave her there?’
Sam glanced at her sleeping daughter and then back at the letter. ‘It’s from a young girl to her lover, telling him she’s pregnant. She sounds really frightened.’ Nana began tidying up around her. ‘Why would Grandad have a letter like this?’
‘I don’t know, Sam. It was probably in one of the bits of antique furniture from his shop.’
Sam turned carefully to the second page and read the signature at the end. ‘Are there any more letters from this girl Ivy, do you know?’ she asked.
Nana paused for a minute, then turned away. ‘I’m not sure, possibly.’ She went out to the kitchen, and Sam heard the clatter of plates in the sink.
She continued to read. ‘This poor girl, it sounds like her family are furious. They’re planning to send her away to a place called St Margaret’s to have her baby. I didn’t know that happened here, did you? I thought it was just in Ireland. She sounds heartbroken. She’s pleading for this person, whoever he is, to come back and marry her.’
‘The fifties wasn’t a good time to be an unmarried mother,’ said Nana, sighing heavily. ‘I must go to bed now, darling, sorry.’
‘You don’t think it was a letter to Grandad? I mean, obviously from before he met you?’
Nana glared at her. ‘No, Samantha, I don’t. Could I please not be interrogated about this now?’
Sam felt her cheeks flush red, ‘Of course. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. I’ve got my work head on. I’m really sorry, Nana.’
‘It’s okay, darling, I’m just shattered. Grandad owned that antique shop for most of his life, you know, and he was always finding trinkets and letters from other people’s lives stuffed in the drawers of desks and dressing tables; they were insights into people’s lives that we pored over for hours sometimes. I was just missing him a lot today, so I buried myself in his paraphernalia.’
‘Of course. I’m sorry again for working late and you having to look after Emma, and missing your birthday and having to stay with you . . . I’m just sorry for being born, basically.’
‘Well, I’m not, I’d be lost without you.’ Nana kissed both Sam and Emma, then disappeared down the corridor.
Sam picked Emma up and carried her into her room. She lowered her into the little bed and switched on the night light. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, before creeping out as quietly as possible.
Back in the living room, she fired up her laptop and brought up Google, typing in ‘St Margaret’s baby home Sussex’. A black-and-white picture of a Victorian Gothic mansion appeared on the screen. She examined the image for a while, noting two nuns in full habit in the grounds. The caption under the photograph read: St Margaret’s Convent for unmarried mothers, Preston, January 1969.
As she read the history of the mother-and-baby home, and stories of women who over the years had tried to trace babies they were forced to give up for adoption, she found herself shocked to the core. Infertile couples, it seemed, had had nowhere to turn before IVF and were willing to pay a lot of money for a baby right up until the mid seventies, when St Margaret’s closed its doors.
She thought of Emma curled up peacefully in the next room. The idea of anyone taking her by force seemed impossible. But as she pored over Ivy’s letter and the accounts of dozens of women, it became clear to her that if she herself had fallen pregnant in 1956, as an unmarried woman she would have been thrown out on the street by her family, and St Margaret’s would have been her only option.
She carried on scrolling through the results, and realised that the same headline kept reappearing. In the end, she gave it her full attention. MISSING PRIEST’S REMAINS FOUND ON BUILDING SITE OF FORMER MOTHER-AND-BABY HOME. She scanned the article, which had appeared in The Times just the previous week. Court finds on Father Benjamin’s death in derelict Victorian manor.
Intrigued, she went back to the letter.
Dr Jacobson is going to speak to Father Benjamin at church on Sunday about sending me away soon. I think it will be a matter of days before it is decided. I do not know what to think or do. Please, my darling, I beg of you, I will make you happy and we will be a family. Please come for me quickly. I’m frightened for the future.
‘Father Benjamin,’ Sam said out loud, glancing back up to the article on her screen. She checked the byline and picked up her mobile.
‘Hey, Carl, it’s Sam. You on lates this week?’ She could hear the late-shifters at work down the line, and the vague sound of Murray shouting in the background. No one could rest until the nationals were finally put to bed or Murray lost his voice – whichever happened first.
‘Do you know who covered the inquest last week of a priest from Preston in Sussex called Father Benjamin? Went missing in 2000 and his remains were found in 2016 on a building site.’ She poured herself more tea and curled her legs underneath her.
Carl was shouting to be heard over the clatter of night cleaners in the office. ‘Give me a minute and I’ll bring it up. Father Benjamin . . . rings a bell . . . Okay, here we go. Kevin covered it, it made all the nationals. Priest died at the site of a disused convent, St Margaret’s. Verdict: accidental death. Slade Homes are pulling the place down and turning it into a posh development, but the inquest held it all up. Slade must have been pissed because I saw a local news feature saying it’s already taken well over a decade to get the graveyard moved and planning through.’
‘I wonder what Father Benjamin was doing there. What happened to him?’ said Sam.
‘No idea. I remember Kevin was more interested in the fact that Kitty Cannon was at the inquest.’
‘Who?’ Sam could barely hear him over the sound of the vacuum cleaner.
‘You know, Kitty Cannon, the talk show host.’
‘You’re kidding me.’ Sam sat up.
‘Yeah. Upset, apparently; she snuck out before the verdict.’
‘Why the hell was Kitty Cannon at the inquest of an elderly priest from Preston?’ Sam walked over to the window to get better reception on her phone, her heart beating faster. If she could get an exclusive with someone as high-profile as Kitty Cannon, it might be enough to get her through the door at one of the nationals. She’d been treading the carpets at Southern News for too long. Since Emma had been born, she hadn’t been able to put in the sort of hours she had in the past, and Murray seemed determined to keep her down. She still pulled blinders on nearly every story she was given, just as she had done with Jane Connors that day, but she was constantly overlooked for promotion. She needed to start earning some decent money; much as she loved Nana, she and Emma desperately needed to find a place of their own. She knew Murray had a day of dull stories lined up for her tomorrow, but her shift didn’t start until ten, and she was pretty sure she could have a dig into Kitty Cannon and St Margaret’s in her own time.
‘Not a clue. Kevin spoke to Murray about it – he thought there might be a story there – but he didn’t get any pictures, and Cannon’s office said it wasn’t her. That was the end of that.’
‘So he just dropped it? That’s weird. Did she know this Father Benjamin?’ Sam pulled her notebook from her bag and began sc
ribbling.
‘I’ve no idea. It’s not really in the public interest, Sam. She wasn’t doing anything illegal, so there were no grounds to pursue it.’
‘But . . . Is Kevin there? Can I talk to him?’
‘Nope, he was on earlies. Look, sorry, Murray’s shouting at me. Gotta go.’
‘Okay, thanks,’ said Sam to the silent phone.
She glanced over to the article on her laptop screen, then turned to a fresh page in her notebook and wrote Father Benjamin on the first line.
Then she picked up the letter in her lap and started reading again.
Chapter Four
Wednesday 12 September 1956
Ivy Jenkins sat on the edge of her bed, her fingernails digging deep into her knees, as Uncle Frank’s voice travelled up through the floorboards. She’d heard Dr Jacobson arrive, the doorbell sending a bolt of fear through her body, and had opened her bedroom door just enough to watch her mother rush along the faded brown hall carpet to greet him. She had strained to hear the exchange, her mother’s voice flustered and breathless as she fluttered around Dr Jacobson nervously.
‘Good evening, Doctor, thank you so much for coming.’
Ivy had barely heard her mother speak since they had visited Dr Jacobson earlier in the week. She had sat staring at the doctor, watching his lips move as the words came out and sped across the room towards her like bullets from a gun. Wanting to stop that split second she had left of her eighteen years of innocence before the world as she knew it changed for ever.
‘Well, Ivy,’ he had said after he’d examined her and she’d been told to sit on the chair next to his desk, ‘the reason you’ve been feeling unwell is because you’re going to have a baby.’
Mother had gasped, and held a gloved hand up to her mouth. In that moment of pure shock, Ivy had reached for her other hand, but her mother had pulled it away.
After that, Mother had spoken only to Dr Jacobson, asking him what they were to do. What would the neighbours say? Did he know that Ivy wasn’t married? Dr Jacobson had replied that if the father of Ivy’s baby wasn’t prepared to marry her, there was one other option. He said he would need to talk it through with them, and that he would come over to their house on Wednesday evening. After that, during the long bus ride home, and for the three days since, Mother had barely said a word.