by Hannah Emery
The postcards are in a neat little tower, stored in a way that Grace wouldn’t have expected of her mother, who was always so haphazard in all matters of life. The first, with a picture of a Gondola on the front and a browned back, is stamped with the date: August 1979, when the twins would have been a few months old. The handwriting is rounded and neat.
I still love you, Lou
Grace takes the next postcard, a picture of a sunset on a beach in Mallorca. She turns it over gently. June 1980.
I still love you, Lou
The next is September 1981: a collage of Welsh castles. The years following are all dull illustrations of English cities: bridges, lakes, mountains.
I still love you, Lou
Grace pulls the duvet around her tighter. She flicks over each postcard to see the same.
On the front of one of the postcards is a nostalgic picture of Blackpool: a colourful promenade shining with people, green trams, seafood stalls, The Pleasure Beach, a man holding some donkeys. Grace smiles a little. Blackpool is so different now. She flips the postcard over, knowing what will be written, and jolting as she realises that it isn’t as she expected.
The postcard is blank.
The address is that of Rose House. The faded date is April 1995, only weeks before Grace and Elsie’s sixteenth birthday.
Weeks before their mother disappeared.
Grace thinks for a moment, before placing the postcards into a neat pile again. The memory of her mother’s ashen face as she stared at what had obviously been this blank postcard for hours on end comes back to Grace and floats forlornly in her mind. She shakes her head to rid herself of the memory, and takes the last postcard from the pile. This one is from Blackpool too, but looks much older than the others. It’s a picture of the North Pier, with its little ticket booth and the grand arch overhead advertising some long-forgotten show. Grace turns it over quickly. She can’t look at North Pier without her nightmares of fire and fear flooding into her mind.
There’s a spidery scrawl, faded with time.
‘Come back. I am your future. You cannot change what is meant to be,’ it says.
As Grace reads the postcard, Eliot flashes into her mind. Lace, daisies, champagne. She examines the date stamp. 1st April 1948. The day her mother was born. The address is somewhere in Yorkshire. Grace frowns as she stares at the postmark. She had thought her mother always lived in Blackpool. She thought that her mother had always been her mother: distant, anxious, full of love that she somehow didn’t quite manage to transmit to the twins through her dreamy smiles and preoccupied head strokes. Now, it feels like she took more secrets than ever away with her, that she was somebody else entirely before the twins were born. Grace pulls another box, the one containing her mother’s old things, towards her. She opens it slowly and takes out the first few items: the old red toothbrush, the clothes and dolls. She tips out the rest of the box’s contents onto the floor of the lounge. There are a couple more cardigans, and a sealed white envelope, addressed to Grace’s grandmother, Rose. On the back, there is a return address. It had been delivered from the same address in Yorkshire as the postcard dated 1948, but this one is dated September 1960. Grace stares at the surname of the sender, which is the same as her own.
Dr William Ash
Grace hesitates for a second. She notices that the envelope has some kind of stain on it, rather like dried blood. She shudders, and pulls the duvet around her. Then she tears the envelope open.
In it, is another postcard. Grace barely sees the imposing photograph of Blackpool Tower on the front as she flips it over to inspect the back, her mind racing. She heard Louisa mention Rose briefly as she was growing up. Rose has always been present in Rose House, simply because of her name. But Grace doesn’t know anything about her. She fingers the yellowed card, noticing that the address on the postcard is to the same Yorkshire address and wondering why it had been sealed up, posted to Blackpool and left unread. She stares down at it, unable to believe that she might have been the only person to read it since it was sent.
The names and addresses of the recipient and sender on the envelope are written with a confident carelessness: looped, fast, and clever. The writing on the back is different. It is more laboured, square and littered with errors.
It’s too late now. You have come back, but it’s too late. You chose comfort over love, money over me. Our daughter will have my gift. She will see what should be and what will be. She must use it wisely.
Grace thinks of her mother wandering out of the house on her daughters’ sixteenth birthday, in search of someone or something she had lost. She thinks of how her mother kept this envelope sealed for all those years, as though Rose might come back from the dead to claim it, when really, the advice that it contained was meant for Louisa. Grace looks at the envelope now: torn, discarded, silver in the moonlight that creeps under the doorway and through the curtains of Rose House.
Grace shivers and puts the all of postcards back, except the last one addressed to Rose, which she tucks under her arm. She wanders out into the kitchen, flicking on all the lights as she goes, the white duvet dragging along the floor behind her like a wedding dress. She pours herself some water and looks at the green display on the oven.
It’s midnight.
She picks up the phone from its cradle on the windowsill.
‘Hi. It’s me.’
The next morning, as the twins eat cereal that tastes a little stale to Grace, and then drive to the shop together in Elsie’s vintage racing green Mini, Grace is quiet. She wants to tell Elsie about the postcards, but she knows she needs time to tell her properly, and that first thing in the morning, when they are both drowsy and irritable, is not the best time. So Grace decides to tell Elsie later. Later, they will both be able to talk properly.
PART THREE
Chapter Seventeen
Rose, 1948
Rose lumbered along Blackpool’s promenade in the chilly March breeze. The people around her shouted and laughed with the freedom of their spring holidays, but the way in which their arms were clutched tightly around their coats betrayed the hostile breeze. Rose wasn’t cold: she was always, always too warm these days. As she moved towards the south of the promenade, she gazed at the fairground rides and the green trams and the stalls selling oysters and mussels. She looked up at the new maze of packed roller coasters that whirred over The Pleasure Beach, at the wide row of grand hotels. She squinted against the pummelling of sand in the wind to try and see if the little door from all those years ago was still there.
All of Rose’s friends, if they felt they were in trouble, went to church. But church, with its high-beamed ceilings and glowing stained glass, made Rose nervous. It made her think of her wedding day.
Rose had married her husband six years before. It was rather an embarrassing story, really: he had been her doctor. She had only seen him three times before he asked her out, which was strange, as he was a very quiet man, not the type who would be expected to marry one of his patients. Rose had fallen on an uneven path near to her house and her ankle had soon ballooned up to twice its size. Rose wasn’t going to go to the doctor, but her mother had insisted. He was new to the area, Rose’s mother said, ever so good and old money rich.
‘That’s sprained,’ were her husband’s first words to her.
‘Oh,’ was Rose’s first word to him.
She had hobbled out of his little white room, oblivious to the strand of her life that had just been pulled loose.
It was weeks later, after a check on Rose’s ankle, that the doctor became somebody real, somebody who asked if she would like to have tea with him on Saturday afternoon.
‘We could drive over to Harrogate,’ he suggested, ‘and go to Betty’s.’
It didn’t occur to Rose to say no. He was a doctor, after all.
After Betty’s, and a walk around Harrogate, the doctor asked Rose to marry him. She looked up at him as he waited patiently for her answer, and saw that his eyes were a beautiful sha
de of green. Then she looked at his suit, which was dark grey, expensive and well fitted to his tall, wide frame.
‘Yes,’ she said, and he took her hand.
The night Rose accepted the proposal, she sat up in bed until the early hours, simply thinking. She thought about the boy with the purple eyes in Blackpool, and the gift that he was meant to have given her all those years ago. She thought about her wedding, and her wedding night, and felt sick and shivery all of a sudden. She sat cross-legged and bent over so that she could look closely at the ankle that she had sprained. It was matte again now, not shiny with anger, and the skin was looser: she was able to pinch it between her fingers, and did so a few times, just because she could. Eventually, Rose had lay back and tried to sleep. But for some time, she thought about how strange it was that her ankle appeared as though nothing had ever happened, and yet the rest of her life would always be changed because of it.
When Rose’s wedding day came, she said her vows and wore a pretty veil, but knew deep down that this was not the life she was meant to be living. The life she was meant to be living was in Blackpool. Her gift was in Blackpool.
Every summer, Rose and her husband holidayed in Blackpool with Rose’s parents. Every summer, Rose lay stiff in her bed at The Fortuna Hotel, tense with memories of crackling excitement and magic and fortunes. Every summer, she gazed into the crowds, searching for those purple eyes, held back by marital ties so strong she could almost see them.
Every summer, except one.
It was to be a typical holiday, and Rose expected nothing from it. But then her husband had fallen ill the day before they were due to depart, amidst piles of dresses and ties and dancing shoes.
‘I will stay at home, with you,’ Rose suggested to her husband in the morning, in a small voice. She knew that returning to Blackpool without her husband could only mean one thing.
‘You shall do no such thing,’ he had replied.
And so off to Blackpool with her parents Rose went, her husband waving her off gaily before sneezing into his soggy blue handkerchief and leaving Rose free to roam the beach at night. Her parents were old now and didn’t want to dance or have a small drink after their dinner or go and see shows. They were both in their single beds by 8 p.m., wheezing from the change of air. On the first night, Rose lay in her own bed, wide awake, the scent of her home lingering on her nightdress, making her turn her head into her stark, odourless pillow. The sounds of pleasure rose from downstairs: glasses tinkling, guests laughing and shouting merrily to each other. So the second night, Rose thought she would join them. She sat alone in the hotel bar, a glass of white wine on the table in front of her. But it was no different, really, apart from the sounds of joy were right there instead of floating up from beneath her room: she could see couples and friends having fun, making the most of their holidays, making the most of being in love.
On the third night, Rose put on her favourite lavender dress, spritzed herself with Evening in Paris, and walked down the grand staircase of the Fortuna to the foyer and out into the balmy summer evening. The gulls were quiet, the lapping tide far away, the streets quieter than Rose had expected. She crossed the road, her eyes locked on the horizon beyond, which glittered with hope and magic.
When she reached the sand, Rose took off her shoes, wanting to feel the cool, soft sand beneath her. There was only one figure on the beach, and she walked slowly and certainly towards it. The gift she had dreamt of for so many years was luminous in her mind: no longer an image of a puppy, a hair ribbon, a book or a doll, but something more thrilling and exotic.
‘It’s been so many years,’ the figure said as Rose reached him. He was a man now: a broad, strong, brooding man. She could see in the bright moonlight that his hair was the colour of oil, the purple of his eyes had deepened over time and his smile was still clever and captivating.
‘I thought you were going to be in India,’ Rose teased, her voice different somehow now that she was talking to him: lighter and louder.
‘Oh, I lived the life of an Indian king for a while, but it wasn’t for me,’ he said, his electric finger tracing the veins that twisted beneath her wrist and along the underside of her arm. ‘My life is here, by the sea, waiting for you to come back.’
‘Me? You have been thinking of me for all this time?’ Rose asked, suddenly hot.
‘If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be thinking of anything. I would be ash,’ he said, looking over to North Pier. Rose followed his gaze. It was the same as it had been when she had visited as a little girl. The pretty little ticket booth and the grand arch over the pier still advertised the same production that had been running when Rose had first visited Blackpool, all those years ago. If Rose squinted towards the end of the pier, she could see that the Indian Pavilion was still missing; devoured by flames and never to be replaced. If she breathed in deeply, she could still smell smoke and fire and fear.
‘Stay with me,’ he said to Rose. ‘We have so much to talk about. I could make you happy here. You are not happy with that doctor. He’s kind and rich, but that’s not enough, Rose.’
Rose didn’t answer for a while. Phantom smoke lingered in her nostrils and stung her eyes. The thrill of seeing this man, of his tough skin and bitter breath and soft lips, made a tingling sensation surge through her whole body. She turned to him.
‘How do you know my husband is a doctor?’
‘I know everything about you, Rose.’
‘You know everything? You know what’s going to happen to me?’
The boy looked straight at Rose, a stare so rare and piercing that it made Rose jolt backwards a little on the midnight sand.
‘No. I only know what should happen to you. You should be with me, and laugh, and travel the world, and know real love. But you must make the right choice, Rose.’
Rose had kissed him then, and tasted his words. She had seen her future as clearly as a burning white star in the sky.
Now, as Rose fought her way against the Blackpool wind, her belly as round as a beach ball, she remembered the choice she had made. She closed her eyes for a second, picturing that tiny shadowy room that had ignited the rest of Rose’s life. When she opened them again, she saw that the handwritten sign that had been etched in Rose’s mind since she was eleven years old was gone. But the blue door was still there. She broke out into a run, despite her ripe, round belly, and burst through the door.
Gypsy Sarah looked up from her cluttered table as Rose suddenly appeared in the room. Her hair was dark brown, where it had once been grey, and her skin was white and smooth. It was as though she was becoming younger, not older. She smiled her crooked smile and bared three brown teeth that gathered like tombstones on one side of her mouth.
‘Well, hello again, Rose,’ she said.
Rose heaved herself and her belly into the velvet clad chair opposite the fortune teller.
‘I found the boy you told me about, all those years ago,’ Rose began slowly. There was so much to tell; so much for Gypsy Sarah to repair.
Gypsy Sarah nodded towards Rose’s unborn child. ‘So I see.’
‘You told me he would give me a gift,’ Rose’s head fell into her hands, and she moaned softly as she smelt the smells of all those years ago: lavender and burning wood and raw meat.
‘And he did give you a gift, Rose. He gave you the gift of a new life.’
‘Yes, but now I’m afraid. I’m afraid that I will lose my big house and my husband. My husband will know the truth! He must know that the baby can’t be his. We haven’t had those kind of—’ a ferocious blush roared over Rose’s face ‘relations for a very long time. I don’t know what to do about it.’
Gypsy Sarah cackled, phlegm rattling violently in her throat and threatening to spill from her lips.
‘You are worried about losing your big house before your husband? Did you list those things in order of importance?’
Rose flushed crimson again. ‘No.’
‘I think, Rose, that you need to find the boy
with the purple eyes. He is a man now,’ Gypsy Sarah prodded Rose’s belly with a blackened finger, ‘as he has proven. He will take care of you.’
Rose thought of the night in Blackpool last year that had made her body and mind bloom with colours and sensations she had never thought possible. Then she thought of her wardrobe filled with expensive dresses and her soft, warm bed. She didn’t even know where the real father of her child lived, but she doubted that he could offer her what she would have to leave behind.
‘Be brave,’ Gypsy Sarah said. ‘The boy with the purple eyes wants you, and he wants his child. The choice is yours, and yours only.’
Rose nodded, and stepped out onto the promenade. It had started to rain, and Rose had left her umbrella at home in its stand. Rain and salt soaked through her best court shoes, her stockings and her skin, making her bones cool and damp.
When the baby was born, slipping from between Rose’s thighs and bringing with it a raw sting and a flush of scarlet slime, Rose wondered what her husband would make of this new little purple person, all wrinkles and skin. She knew that he wouldn’t ever feel the heavy ache of love, or the slice of eternal worry that she felt from the moment she found out she was going to have her very own child. She wondered if he would feel anything at all.
He came into the room when Rose’s face had been wiped and her bloodied bed linen had been whisked away. The baby was nuzzled into Rose’s body, and her husband had to crouch awkwardly to bend and see it.
Rose tried to read his face, to see if he was as astounded as her at the sleek black hair on the baby’s head, or the fact that she had perfectly formed little hands that looked as though they were made of pink porcelain.