by Emily Gunnis
‘What you doin’ creeping round ’ere, love?’ he asked in a thick Cockney accent.
‘I wasn’t creeping. I came over because I saw a light on and wanted to see if there was anyone about.’
‘Why’s that then?’ He took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke in her direction as he walked towards her. Despite the steel fence between them, she felt a wave of panic, but smiled again and leant in.
‘Because I want to see inside that house before it’s torn down. Can I bum a smoke?’
‘There’s a lot of people been interested in that house lately, since them priest’s remains were found.’ He handed her a cigarette and lit it with a lighter through a break in the fence.
‘Thanks. Yeah, I saw it in the paper. It’s the reason I’m here.’
The key to lying, Sam always found, was to keep it simple and as close to the truth as possible. She reached into her bag and pulled out Ivy’s letter, holding it up so he could see the faded pages and dated handwriting.
‘My grandad died very recently and I found this in his belongings. I think it was written by his mother and I believe he was born here. When I read last night that they were tearing the house down, I just wanted to come and see the place where he spent the first weeks of his life. If any of the nuns who looked after him are still alive, it would be nice to thank them.’ Her voice wobbled. It hadn’t been her intention to talk about the man who’d been like a father to her.
The man sniggered. ‘Thank them? That’s a first.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Sam, squinting up at him in the low winter sun.
‘You’re not from the press, are you?’ he said, taking a drag on his cigarette.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘They were millin’ round ’ere for a while, but they’ve had the inquest now. The demolition order’s finally through. This house is comin’ down in two days and there ain’t nothing anyone can do to stop it.’
‘But they still need you to sleep here every night? That must be rough, it’s freezing.’
‘Yep, the new houses are a million apiece, so they’re not taking any chances. Can’t wait to get the hell out of here.’
‘I bet. I’m Sam, by the way. It’s nice to meet you.’ She reached her hand through the fence, and the man paused before taking it.
‘Andy. So, Sam, if I show you around, you gonna have a drink with me tonight?’ He took a drag on his cigarette, his stare not leaving her face.
Sam forced a smile. ‘Are you celebrating your birthday?’
Andy glanced down at his T-shirt. ‘I am if you are.’ He hesitated, then cocked his head towards the building. ‘Come on in then, can’t do any harm.’
As the heavy oak door of St Margaret’s slammed behind them, Sam paused in the grand entrance hall, which was dominated by a sweeping staircase. The trapped dust danced in the early spring sunlight that was now pouring through the faded stained-glass windows at the top of the staircase. She noticed a broken sign lying on the chipped black and white tiles. Squatting down, she brushed the dust away.
Dear Lord, may the fallen find their way back to you through the strength of their prayers and hard work.
St Margaret’s, Preston, Sisters of Mercy
She pictured the staircase gleaming, the heavily pregnant girls polishing frantically while the nuns stood over them. Nuns who were infamously the face of the mother-and-baby homes, providing a service to Catholic families who wanted to turn a blind eye to what went on, whole communities relieved to wash their hands of it. It felt to Sam like an image from centuries past, not just one generation.
‘Look in ’ere, love.’
She was so deep in thought, she’d almost forgotten her guide. Broken glass from one of the windows crunched under her feet as she walked to a doorway and looked in at a huge room flooded with light from two vaulted windows. Oversized ceramic sinks lined the walls, and a large mangle lay on its side in the middle of the blackened floor. She stood in the doorway and imagined the ghosts of decades past drowning in thick steam, wiping their hair from their faces with the backs of their hands, washing stained sheets at the sinks and guiding tablecloths through the mangle.
A crucifix dominated the back wall and a moth-eaten tapestry hung above the sinks. Goose bumps rose on her arms as she read the intricately stitched words.
O MOST MERCIFUL JESUS, lover of Souls,
I beseech Thee, by the agony of Thy most Sacred Heart,
and by the sorrows of Thine Immaculate Mother,
wash clean in Thy Blood the sinners of the whole world
who are to die this day.
If it should please Thy Majesty to send me a suffering this day
in exchange for the grace I ask for this soul, then it too
shall please me very much, and I thank Thee,
Most Sweet Jesus,
Shepherd and Lover of Souls; I thank Thee for this
opportunity to give mercy in thanksgiving for all the mercies
Thou hast shown me. Amen.
‘This place is nuts,’ said Sam. ‘It feels like the girls are still trapped in here.’
‘You’ve got no idea, love.’ Andy leant in so close she could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath.
‘So do you know if any of the nuns are still alive?’ She turned away.
‘You ain’t answered my question yet.’
‘Which question is that?’ She was unsure if the rising nausea she felt was due to Andy or the haunting room.
‘About having a drink with me tonight.’
She smiled and peered down the hallway. ‘What’s down here?’
‘A dining hall, nothin’ in it now.’ He looked at his watch. ‘To be honest, they cleared everything out for the demolition. I doubt you’re gonna find nothin’.’
‘And what’s in there?’ Sam nodded to a dark wooden door.
Andy remained silent, so she crossed the hall to open it, brushing past him to enter when he didn’t move. In stark contrast to the laundry, the small room felt claustrophobic, the dark wooden panels absorbing the scant light a small window let in. A mahogany desk was pushed up to the wall in the corner and there was a large gilded portrait of a nun in full habit resting on it. The woman’s long face was expressionless, her lips narrow, and when Sam propped the picture up, her emotionless eyes appeared to follow her around the room. A plaque at the base of the frame told her the woman was ‘Mother Carlin, Mother Superior, 1945–1965.’
‘Do you know if she’s still alive?’ Sam gestured to the portrait. ‘Mother Carlin?’
‘I know there’s a couple of the nuns from here living in an old people’s home down the road. But I couldn’t tell you their names. Listen, we can’t be too long, love. The build manager’s due in soon.’
‘Sure, sorry. Let’s go.’ She scanned the room one last time, then turned towards the door. As she did so, her heel caught on a small catch slightly raised from the floor. She stopped abruptly. ‘What’s that?’
Andy shrugged, pulling a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it. Sam crouched down, slid her finger through the catch and pulled. It was stiff, but after a couple of goes a trapdoor started to lift, letting out a loud creak that echoed through the empty room. She stepped back to examine the opening.
‘What do you think it’s for?’ She glanced up at Andy.
‘What’s it look like?’ He blew smoke across the damp room.
Sam felt a wave of nausea as she realised the space was just big enough for a person, a young girl perhaps. Roughly five foot by three, it resembled a coffin. She suddenly felt paralysed, picturing herself locked in the darkness for hours, in a space so small she couldn’t move, where she would have time to reflect and learn her lesson thoroughly. And as Andy gestured for her to leave, she heard the faint sound of a girl crying. It was a moment before she realised that it was her.
Her chest felt constricted as he pulled her by the arm along the corridor, back past the laundry, where she imagined she saw the girls
motionless at their sinks, watching her. When they reached the front door, she staggered out into the fresh air, gasping for breath.
‘You all right, love?’ Andy let go of her arm.
‘I’m sorry, I just need a minute. That place is too much.’ She waved away the cigarette he offered her.
‘Like I said, you’ve got no idea. The sooner they raze the place to the ground, the better. Probably best if you get out of here now.’
Sam took deep breaths, nodding. She had no idea why she was having such an emotional reaction to Ivy’s plight, but in the stifling atmosphere of the house, she had felt the suffering of all the girls incarcerated there. Coupled with Father Benjamin’s death and Kitty Cannon’s potential link to him, her instincts were screaming out to her that this was a story she needed to run with.
If Mother Carlin was still alive, she had to find her. But first she needed to know exactly why Kitty Cannon had attended Father Benjamin’s inquest. She would put in a call to Cannon’s press office just to test the water. If she got any reaction at all at the mention of St Margaret’s, she’d know she was onto something. Then it was just a case of getting one of the nuns to spill the beans on Cannon’s link to St Margaret’s and she’d have her way in.
She looked at her watch: 7.30 a.m. Still two and a half hours before she needed to be at her desk. If she hurried, she might even be able to track down Mother Carlin now. She looked at Andy. ‘I’d like to buy you a drink tonight to say thank you for your trouble. And if you can remember the name of that old people’s home, I’ll make it two.’
Chapter Nine
Sunday 5 February 2017
Richard looked up at the clock, which told him they were only halfway through their session, then back at Kitty. His hands were clammy as he clasped them together and hooked them round his crossed leg. ‘What happened when you came out of the church?’
‘I stood for a little while by myself while the adults around me chatted. I was just about to walk to the bus stop. And then I saw her.’ Kitty’s voice broke and she paused.
Richard took a deep breath. ‘It’s okay, Kitty, take your time.’
She cleared her throat, and bit her lip. ‘She was hiding behind one of the gravestones, signalling to me.’ Kitty stood and replaced the snow globe on the bookshelf from where she had picked it up.
‘Did you realise straight away it was your sister?’ He didn’t look at her when he spoke, keeping his eyes fixed on her empty chair as if in a daze.
‘No. I could tell she was my age but I didn’t know who she was. On any other day I might have thought she wanted to play a game with me, but I was very upset about my mother so it troubled me straight away. Somehow I knew something was very wrong.’ She paused again. ‘I looked around to check it was me whose attention she was trying to get. I thought I was imagining her; that maybe she was a ghost. Then she put her finger up to her lips so I would know to be quiet and beckoned me over.’
‘And you went?’ said Richard quietly.
‘Yes. Nobody was looking at me. People ignored children much more then, and of course my parents weren’t there.’ Kitty walked back over to the balcony doors and glanced over at Richard. He was hunched over, looking uncomfortable. She turned her attention to the garden again.
‘And what did she say when you got to her?’ said Richard.
Kitty could still see her sister’s face as she approached. Despite the smudges of dirt, the knots in her hair and the oversized brown overalls, it was like looking in the mirror. She had glanced down at the girl’s open-toed sandals and her bare arms and had instinctively taken off her own coat and wrapped it round her. Her sister was shaking as she reached out her hand, and Kitty had taken it.
‘She didn’t say anything when I first got to her. We ran to the outhouse. We stayed there all night; she was too scared to move. She told me her name was Elvira and that she’d escaped from St Margaret’s. She been out in the snow for hours, waiting in the graveyard for me since the morning service. I knew my father would be desperately worried, but she wouldn’t let me leave and get help. She just kept saying, “They’ll kill me if they find me. They’ll kill me.” ’ Kitty’s voice wavered again and she crossed her arms, hugging herself as she looked out of the window. ‘She was so tired and hungry. I just wanted to help her, but she wouldn’t let me go.’
‘But you did go for help in the end?’ said Richard, finally looking up.
‘Yes, eventually she let me go, on one condition. She made me promise not to call out. She said that if I did, they’d find us. Then she showed me the key that she’d used to escape. She pulled out a loose brick in the wall of the outhouse and slotted the key behind it. She said if I came back and she was gone, my father and I should use it to open the trapdoor in the graveyard because it would be the only way to find her.’
‘And did you use it?’ said Richard quietly.
Kitty turned and looked at him. He glanced away and reached out with a shaking hand for his water. ‘No. Father Benjamin said she was dead. But what if she wasn’t, what if he was lying? I should have gone back. I could have saved her.’
‘Have you ever been back to St Margaret’s, Kitty?’ said Richard, his shoulders hunched, his jaw clenched.
She shook her head slowly.
‘Do you think the key could still be there? Is that what you think your dream is telling you?’
Kitty could still feel the enormity of the night as she ventured out into it. The black hole that lay ahead of her, full of the sound of owls in the trees and rustling creatures in the undergrowth. As she ran, tripping and falling in the dark, she felt as if the cold was a person, pulling her back, slowing her down, trying to take her prisoner. She began to lose sensation in her face and hands, and thoughts of her father came vividly to her: wrapping her up in the coat that Elvira was wearing now; doing up her toggles; smiling at her as he pulled on her bobble hat.
‘I thought I knew the way, back to the church, to the road. I thought my father would be out looking for me. But it was so dark, I couldn’t see anything. I was terrified. I looked for the road for a long time, but I was starting to get dizzy. I’d fallen, I was cold and wet and so frightened. I was only eight, I tried to go back to Elvira, but I couldn’t find her either. So I did what she’d begged me not to do. I shouted for help.’
Kitty looked down at her hands as the tiny tear next to her fingernail turned to a small stream of blood. As she dragged the red trail around the tip of her finger, she could hear the clink of cutlery on her plate as her father paced in front of the kitchen window of their tiny unheated house. She had watched him intently as he pulled back the net curtain every few seconds to glance down the narrow overgrown path. She could taste the cheap, gristly meat from the stew some well-meaning neighbour had made to feed them both while her mother was in hospital. She had only been home from hospital herself for a few days, after they had found her near to death in the ditch into which she had fallen trying to get help for her sister. The twin sister who less than a fortnight ago she hadn’t even known existed.
‘Eat up, Kitty, it’s late,’ her father had said, pulling her plate away and scraping the remains into the bin.
Kitty had looked up at the clock: ten to seven, nearly an hour before her bedtime.
‘What’s the matter, Daddy?’ she had asked quietly.
‘Enough questions, Kitty,’ he had snapped. ‘It’s time for bed.’ He had rushed her up the stairs and into her nightie, turning out the light and disappearing without asking if she needed taking out to the toilet in the yard. She could hear him tidying up, the clattering of plates, the crashing of cutlery into the drawer. Then finally a knock at the door.
She had sat up in bed, lowered her feet onto the cold floorboards and crept across the creaking floor of her bedroom. Slowly and carefully she had pulled the door open as far as she dared, to reveal Father Benjamin standing on the faded blue rug in the hallway.
‘Come through, Father.’ Kitty had watched the two men walk towards
the lounge and disappear inside, a loud click echoing up the stairs as the door was shut firmly behind them.
‘Do you know how your sister came to be at St Margaret’s?’ said Richard, pulling Kitty back to the present.
‘My mother was ill for most of her life with kidney failure, and I think my father sought solace in another woman. I suspect we were both born at St Margaret’s and that our mother probably died in childbirth.’ Kitty closed her eyes and rubbed them. ‘Then for some reason, my father took only me home with him.’
Richard cleared his throat. ‘You weren’t angry that he chose to leave Elvira behind?’
Kitty looked at him, ‘I doubt my mother gave him a choice.’
Richard paused before speaking. ‘Okay, but I need to make sure you’ve thought through your feelings towards your father in all this. You’ve told me that he had an affair, and that this woman, your birth mother, probably died in childbirth. And that your father chose to take just one of you home, but that you harbour no ill will towards him for what happened to Elvira.’
Kitty glared at him. ‘My mother was a very ill woman; there’s no way my father could have coped with twins. He thought Elvira would be adopted, that she would be happy.’
‘But why do you think he chose you?’ said Richard. ‘Obviously it was life-changing and tragic for Elvira, but in many ways it was as hard for you. What a burden to carry through your whole life. You are not to blame for any of this, Kitty.’
‘But my father is, is that what you’re saying?’ Her reflection in the glass stared back at her, and she reached out and touched it gently with the tips of her fingers. She could still hear her father’s voice through the lounge door all those years ago.
‘She was my child, Father, I had a right to know she had been returned to St Margaret’s.’
Kitty’s hand shook as it ran down the banister. She had tiptoed down each step trying desperately not to wake the sleeping floorboards. When she reached the bottom, her heart was throbbing so much it hurt. The two men’s voices were as clear as if she were in the room with them.