The Girl in the Letter

by Emily Gunnis

  No answer. Immediately she felt a rush of irritation. She tugged her jacket straight and took a breath. She had made a promise to herself to stay calm. She didn’t know Annabel’s side of the story and she needed to hear it before she got herself in a state. She hadn’t slept, it had already been a very difficult morning, and she needed to stay composed. She reached out her finger, and pressed the bell again. This time she heard movement from inside. ‘Hold on a minute,’ said a familiar voice. Kitty clasped her hands in front of her and waited.

  When the door opened, Annabel had a smile on her face. Almost immediately, recognition dawned in her eyes and her expression changed. Kitty waited patiently for the fake niceties to kick in, her foot already slightly across the threshold in case Annabel tried to slam the door shut.

  ‘My goodness, Kitty, I didn’t know . . . I mean, I didn’t expect to see you here,’ said Annabel, slowly wiping what looked like flour from her hands onto her apron and turning a deep shade of red. ‘It’s been such a long time.’

  She looked dreadful, thought Kitty. Her skin was pale and her enormous clothes hugged the fat bloating from every crease of her skin. Despite the fact that Kitty was six years her senior, Annabel looked ten years older than her. She must have put on forty pounds since Kitty had last seen her, almost fifty years ago. Her hair was greasy and scraped back from her round, lined face, and she stood awkwardly as if her hip or leg was hurting her. Kitty stared at her, anger simmering at the thought of her lazy, ineffectual life. Why did Annabel care so little about what had happened to her own mother? Why had it been up to Kitty to make it right? She felt a knot of rage in her stomach, pulsing, ready to explode.

  ‘Well, are you going to invite me in?’

  Annabel glanced along the corridor, then down to Kitty’s foot positioned just across the doorway. Kitty waited, her hands clenched in front of her. Her chest tightened as the anger intensified. Annabel’s dithering indecision was as infuriating as ever. Kitty wanted to slap her. Although she had suspected that Annabel wouldn’t be pleased to see her, there had still been the tiniest flame of hope that despite everything that had happened between them, there was still love there. That after all they had shared, and all Kitty had done for her, their friendship would prevail. Clearly not.

  As Annabel continued to dither, Kitty heard voices coming along the corridor and stepped forward so that she was over the threshold. ‘Let me in, Annabel, for God’s sake,’ she hissed.

  Nana stepped back, wincing as her hip jarred. Kitty wafted past, the distinctive smell of Chanel No. 5 catching in the back of Nana’s throat and making her gag. She closed her eyes, praying Emma wouldn’t appear; as she hobbled past the little girl’s room, she pulled the door closed quietly, her hands shaking on the handle as she did so.

  When Kitty reached the lounge, she stopped and scanned the room, a look of disdain on her face. The television was on, the daytime television presenters carrying on in their usual sycophantic fashion. The gas fire was ablaze, but the room was cold, and newspapers, blankets and children’s toys littered the floor. Nana stood in the doorway behind her in silence, her mind racing, too overwhelmed to manage fake niceties. She had to get Kitty out before Emma woke up.

  ‘How can I help you, Kitty?’ she asked, moving from one foot to the other. Her hip was throbbing mercilessly. She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Sam had phoned at six, and said she would be home by eleven; it was now past midday. Surely she couldn’t be much longer. It was a miracle Emma was having a nap – she rarely did any more – but she was poorly and had been up in the night. Sleep, my angel, please sleep.

  ‘I see you’ve fulfilled your potential,’ said Kitty, looking around at the array of newspaper cuttings and photographs.

  ‘It’s home and I like it,’ said Nana. ‘What do you want, Kitty?’ Her voice shook slightly, but as Kitty turned back to her, she looked her firmly in the eye.

  Kitty flicked her head and crossed her arms. ‘Why have you been talking to your granddaughter about me?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Nana, looking over at the phone by her rocking chair. ‘I haven’t spoken a word to her about any of it. She found Ivy’s letters.’

  ‘Because you left them somewhere for her to find,’ said Kitty, moving closer. ‘Have you been back to see Maude?’

  ‘No. I have moved on, and you should too,’ said Nana, leaning against the chair next to her.

  ‘I don’t have that luxury. One of us had to do something, and you deserted me.’

  ‘I didn’t desert you, Kitty. We were kids, we grew apart.’

  ‘You turned your back on me when it mattered most. They’re tearing St Margaret’s down tomorrow; if it wasn’t for me, they would all have got away with what they did.’

  ‘What do you mean, Kitty?’

  ‘You’ve always been a coward. They killed your mother, they killed my sister. Why should they die warm and contented in their beds?’

  Nana started to feel frightened. ‘Kitty, please, Sam will be back in a minute, we can all talk about this. You’re right, I’m a coward. I’ve always been too afraid, but now that you’re here, we can tell her, we can help you.’

  ‘You don’t care about me. You abandoned me like they all did. I looked after you, I loved you.’

  ‘I loved you too, Kitty. But you made it so hard. I didn’t want to live my life full of hate.’

  Nana walked around the chair and sat on it. She was short of breath, and struggling. She looked over to Kitty, tears in her eyes. ‘I’m not well, Kitty, my heart isn’t strong.’

  ‘Your heart is weak because you are weak.’

  Emma appeared in the doorway behind Kitty, and the room started to spin. Nana felt a pain in her arm. ‘Don’t hurt her, Kitty, please don’t hurt her.’

  ‘Ah, so now you care,’ said Kitty, standing over her.

  Nana was slumped in her chair, the colour in her cheeks completely gone. Emma rushed to put her arms around her.

  ‘Nana’s just tired.’ Kitty smiled at the little girl. ‘Shall we go out and let her sleep? We can play hide-and-seek. Would you like that?’

  Emma nodded. Kitty took her hand and the two of them left the apartment, closing the door behind them.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Monday 6 February 2017

  Elvira Cannon pulled up outside St Margaret’s, switched off the engine and turned to the little girl sitting in the back seat.

  ‘Do you want to see where Nana was born?’ she said.

  Emma pulled the lollipop from her mouth and nodded. Elvira climbed out of the car and opened the little girl’s door, then walked round to the boot and took out a petrol can and a torch, before locking the car and taking Emma’s hand.

  It was two o’clock and the light was already fading as they pushed their way through the hole in the fence. Elvira could see two men chatting over by the house.

  ‘Shall we play hide-and-seek?’ she said to the little girl by her side.

  Emma nodded, looking up at her with her big blue eyes. Her hair was strawberry blond, much less red than Sam’s and Ivy’s. Ivy was fading, her light was going out. Soon she would be completely forgotten. They all would.

  ‘I’ll count to ten and you hide behind one of those big stones,’ whispered Elvira, looking over to the men, who were still deep in conversation. ‘One, two, three . . .’

  The little girl ran towards the biggest gravestone, giggling, as Elvira lugged the can of petrol along, looking for the trapdoor that led to the house. Eventually she found it, kicking away the undergrowth and placing the heavy canister beside it. She pulled the key from her pocket and fitted it into the lock. It was stiff at first, full of earth and debris, which she had to pull at with her fingers. But eventually it turned – clunk – and she pulled up the trap door that hadn’t been opened in decades. The smell emitting from the tunnel below her made her turn her head away. When she looked back she saw Emma, sticking her head out from behind a gravestone, waving to get her attention.

&n
bsp; The image of her chilled her blood; it was a freezing cold afternoon, the fading light just as it had been on that day in 1959 when she had first caught Kitty’s attention.

  Sixty years later and she was still trapped in that moment. She felt just as desperate, just as lonely, just the same. Nothing she did was ever going to change the wretchedness.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Sunday 15 February 1959

  Elvira Cannon crouched behind the headstone in the graveyard of Preston church and watched the girl in the red duffel coat with the same face as hers.

  She knew she didn’t have long, that soon the girl would leave again on the bus and then her chance would be gone. She had been waiting in the snow all day, after hiding in the outhouse for two nights; she knew she couldn’t last much longer. She couldn’t feel her feet or hands and she was so hungry that her belly had stopped begging her for food.

  Her body shaking from the freezing cold taking hold of every part of her, she waited until the little girl was looking over in her direction, then poked her head out from behind the headstone and beckoned her over.

  At first she didn’t know if she had seen her. She darted back into her hiding place, unable to control her panicked breathing, terrified that she would be spotted by someone other than her twin. Then through the silence she heard the crunch of snow, footsteps coming closer and closer and eventually stopping in the space next to her.

  Her instinct had been to grab her. Grab her and run, fast, behind the church and across the fields beyond it, to the outhouse that backed onto the grounds of St Margaret’s.

  When they were safely inside, they had stopped. Still holding hands, they had stared at each other, panting and trying to catch their breath.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Kitty, smiling gently as if she already knew.

  ‘I’m Elvira, I’m your twin,’ Elvira had said, returning Kitty’s smile though every part of her hurt.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Kitty. ‘How can that be?’

  ‘We were born at St Margaret’s. Our father took you home and I was adopted but they sent me back. Do you have any food?’ Elvira asked.

  Kitty reached into the pocket of her red coat, and pulled out the shiny green apple she had been saving for the bus home. ‘Here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Elvira, her eyes lighting up as if it were a table full of food. She snatched it and sat on the floor to eat it hungrily.

  Kitty looked down at her sister’s shaking, grime-covered body. Her feet, in open-toed sandals, were white from the cold. She was dressed in brown overalls, and her arms looked as if the blood inside them had turned to ice.

  Kitty took off her coat. ‘Here, put this on.’

  Elvira finished the apple and took the coat, sliding her arms into the sleeves and tying up the toggles. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

  Kitty instantly felt the absence of her coat and hugged her arms around her body. She peered out through a crack in the outhouse. The light was going; it was nearly dark. For the first time, she started to feel nervous. The bus would have left by now and she would be stuck out in the countryside at night. She hadn’t left her father a note; she hadn’t seen the point. She had thought she would be home before he got back from the hospital.

  ‘Does my father know about you?’ she said, crouching down next to Elvira and beginning to tremble slightly herself from the cold.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Elvira.

  ‘We have to get home,’ said Kitty, standing up and taking her twin’s hand. ‘It’s nearly dark.’

  ‘I can’t go out there again, they’ll kill me.’ Elvira pulled her hand away from Kitty’s and pushed herself backwards as if her sister was going to drag her out against her will.

  ‘Kill you? What do you mean?’ Kitty stood staring down at the sister she’d had no idea existed without a clue what to do next. She couldn’t process what was happening; she felt scared and overwhelmed. ‘I know, I’ll go and get my father and we’ll come back for you,’ she said, stepping back towards the door they’d come in through.

  ‘No! Please don’t leave me,’ Elvira begged.

  ‘I need to go now, before it gets too late. My father will be worrying,’ said Kitty. ‘It will be fine, he will help you.’

  Elvira pulled herself up on her knees and grabbed Kitty’s hand. ‘Something bad will happen to you and you won’t come back.’

  ‘Nothing bad will happen to me,’ said Kitty, her voice shaking.

  ‘It will, something bad will happen because I’m bad.’ She had started to cry then, collapsed on the floor, and Kitty had sat down next to her and put her arms around her.

  Eventually, after an hour or two had passed, Elvira had let Kitty go. She was too weak to fight any more. She had made Kitty promise that if she wasn’t there when she came back with her father, she would use the key to the tunnels in the graveyard at St Margaret’s and come and find her.

  ‘Don’t cry out, promise me you won’t cry out.’

  ‘I promise,’ Kitty had said, so cold she couldn’t feel her hands when Elvira took them.

  Elvira waited all night for Kitty to return, and then finally, knowing something was wrong, she had left the shelter of the outhouse and ventured out into the breaking dawn in Kitty’s red coat.

  She could still remember the fear flooding her veins, her blood on fire with adrenaline. She had run as fast as her frozen feet would take her towards the church – the direction Kitty would have gone in to catch a bus back home and get help. Something had happened to her, she knew it. She would have been back by now if she had made it home.

  She could picture the moment she saw it: Kitty’s black patent shoe lying abandoned on the frozen ground. She had stood staring at it, fearing that her sister had fallen, that she was hurt somewhere, unable to move. She had looked around desperately for any sign of her, and as she looked up towards St Margaret’s she saw Kitty’s second shoe, reflecting the light of the rising sun. It was then that it hit her.

  It hadn’t crossed her mind before that moment. But since Kitty had left her, no one had called her name. No one had come looking in the outhouse. No one had come because they thought they had found her. They had found Kitty in the night, wandering in the direction of St Margaret’s by mistake, and thought she was Elvira. Kitty had got lost, cried out in desperation for help and they had come running.

  Her body convulsing now, Elvira looked up at St Margaret’s in the morning light. If she went to the house now, Father Benjamin and Mother Carlin would realise their mistake and kill her to keep her quiet. She had to do what Kitty had set out to do. It was their only hope. She had to find their father and return with him to save her sister.

  Her feet numb and cracked, she put on Kitty’s shoes and began to run. Several times she slipped on the icy ground as she tried to get to the church. The last thing she remembered was seeing the cross on its roof through the mist. Not twenty feet away; she was nearly there. She was going to make it.

  And then she fell.

  Two days later, she had woken in hospital, the father she had never met asleep on the chair next to her bed, holding her hand.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Monday 6 February 2017

  The rear doors of the ambulance were open as Sam pulled up next to it in the car park of Nana’s estate. Nana was on a trolley, with a mask over her mouth.

  ‘Oh my God, Nana!’ Sam screamed, rushing to hold her hand as they lifted her into the ambulance. ‘What’s happened to her? Is she going to be okay?’

  ‘She’s suffered a small heart attack. She’s going to need surgery. Are you the lady that called the police?’ said the paramedic, hooking Nana up to the monitor inside the ambulance.

  ‘I’m her granddaughter. Where is the little girl who was with her? Is she up in the flat still?’ said Sam, trying not to panic.

  ‘I don’t know about that, you’d have to go up there. We need to leave now. If you’re not coming in the ambulance, can you step away, please.’

/>   Sam leapt from the ambulance and hurtled towards the stairs, taking them two at a time. She raced along the corridor towards the apartment she knew so well, where a policeman was standing at the door.

  ‘Emma!’ Sam yelled, dashing past him.

  ‘Hold on a minute, miss!’ said the man, as two police officers in the front room turned to look at her.

  ‘Where is she? Emma!’ Sam screamed, darting from room to room. ‘Where’s my daughter?’

  ‘Miss, I need you to calm down,’ said a policewoman, walking towards her. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m the granddaughter of the woman who lives here; she was looking after my daughter this morning. She must have been with her when she had her heart attack. Where is she?’ Sam rushed into the bedroom again, looking under the bed. ‘Emma?’

  ‘Okay, please can you tell me how old your daughter is?’ said the policewoman.

  ‘She’s four. Oh God, please let Ben have her. Please, God, please,’ said Sam, pulling her phone from her bag and dialling Ben’s number. She paced back and forth as the phone rang out.

  ‘Ben, it’s me, please can you call me back immediately. I need to know if you’ve got Emma. Nana’s had a heart attack in her flat and Emma’s not here. Call me.’

  ‘Is there a neighbour, anyone you know who might have your daughter?’ said the policewoman, watching Sam as she paced.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Oh God,’ said Sam as the phone inside her pocket began to ring. She answered it frantically. ‘Ben?’

  ‘Sam, it’s Fred, I’m at St Margaret’s. Kitty’s here and I think she’s got Emma. They’ve just gone through some kind of trapdoor in the graveyard, I’m going after them.’

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Monday 6 February 2017

  Fred put his phone away and switched on his torch. He was standing at the top of a flight of stone steps that disappeared down into the darkness. He had lifted the trapdoor as carefully as possible, easing his fingers under the heavy wrought-iron plate and pulling it up and over until it finally fell onto the undergrowth covering the graveyard floor. He had waited, listening hard for any sign of life other than his own panicked breathing, but could hear only dripping water and the trickle of a stream. He had leant forward, attempting to ascertain how far down the steps went, but was hit with a sharp, putrid smell that made him retch and stumble back.