‘Don’t be a martyr,’ Jack warned. ‘Don’t dump me just so you can feel like you’ve done something to make amends.’
That was exactly what I was doing, I realised. I was punishing myself. But it was the only thing I could think of to do.
‘I have to,’ I said quietly. ‘I don’t know what else to do. I need to sort this out and you going to New York is an opportunity.’
‘So what, we just don’t speak?’
‘I guess not,’ I said. ‘Four months, you said?’
He nodded. ‘That’s a long time,’ he said. ‘I don’t want this, Helena. I want to be with you, helping you, supporting you.’
He leant his head against mine and I closed my eyes.
‘I just want you with me.’
‘It’s only a few months,’ I said, trying to be strong. I knew this was the right thing to do, even if it didn’t feel that way. ‘And then, maybe, when you come back, things will be better and maybe we’ll still like each other.
I tried to smile again but this time I found I couldn’t do it.
‘Or maybe you’ll have met someone else,’ I said. ‘That’s a chance I’m going to have to take.’
‘I’m not going to meet anyone else,’ Jack said. ‘I’ve met you.’
‘I’m going to go,’ I said.
Jack followed me to the front door and I opened it. He took my hand and kissed it, like a prince in a fairy story.
‘For what it’s worth,’ he said. ‘I think you’re doing the wrong thing. I love you, Helena. I think you love me too. And I’m going to miss you a lot.’
I cried all the way home.
Chapter 46
Helena
August 2018
Listlessly I scrolled down the showbiz website, pretending I wasn’t interested in what it had to say, while all the time scanning the stories for any mention of Jack. He was back in New York already, it seemed. And there were rumours he was heading to LA to do a pilot for another TV show that was tipped to be huge. I wondered if he’d move out to the States permanently. It seemed inevitable.
I jumped as my doorbell rang.
‘Use your key,’ I shouted, carrying on scrolling. ‘I’m busy.’
A sharp knock on the window made me look up. Miranda stood there, scowling. Her arms full with a large box.
‘Helena, let me in,’ she mouthed through the glass.
Sighing, I threw back the blanket I’d been sitting under, and padded through to the front door. I opened it, and without bothering to say hello, I slunk back into the living room and took up my position under the blanket again.
‘Hi, Miranda, so nice to see you. Your hair looks great,’ Miranda sang as she came into the room.
‘Hi, Miranda,’ I said. I didn’t bother looking at her hair. It always looked great.
‘Why are you in your pyjamas?’ Miranda said, putting the box down on the floor. ‘It’s the afternoon. Where’s Dora?’
‘She’s with Greg,’ I said. ‘Again. And I don’t have a job, remember? So I’m not going anywhere.’
Miranda looked at me in disgust. ‘You are such a drama llama,’ she said. ‘It’s Saturday, so you wouldn’t be at work anyway. And aren’t you back in the office on Monday?’
I ignored her and went back to my scrolling.
‘Are you looking for pictures of Jack again?’
‘No,’ I lied, shutting the laptop. ‘I was working, actually.’
‘Really?’
I caved immediately. ‘Yes, I was looking for pictures of Jack.’
‘Anything?’
‘No.’
‘Right, well, let’s get on, shall we?’
I stared at her. ‘Get on with what?’
‘Operation Closure.’
I threw back the blanket again and stood up. ‘Miranda,’ I said. ‘I really appreciate you coming round to cheer me up. But I am sad, and missing Dora, and worrying about Lil, and I’m enjoying wallowing in my own weird way. So please, go away and let me wear my pyjamas and look for photos of my ex-boyfriend online.’
Miranda grinned. ‘Nope,’ she said. ‘I’ve got something for you. Two things, actually. Shall I put the kettle on?’
Rolling my eyes, I followed her into the kitchen.
‘Any biscuits?’ she said, as she bustled about filling the kettle and getting mugs out of the cupboard.
‘I ate them all.’
‘Lucky I brought some more then,’ she said, pulling a packet of chocolate hobnobs out of her bag with all the flourish of Paul Daniels cutting Debbie McGee in half.
‘While I’m doing the tea, why don’t you read this?’ she added, handing me an envelope.
I gave her a puzzled look and slipped my finger under the flap to open it. It was a letter, handwritten, which never happened any more.
‘Is this from Lil?’
Miranda nodded. ‘Read it.’
I started to scan the letter and Miranda screeched. ‘Out loud, for heaven’s sake. I’ve managed to resist steaming it open, for a whole week. Would you bloody well read it out loud?’
‘Dear Helena,’ I read.
‘I must apologise, my dear, for the way I treated you when you came to visit. I was shocked and upset that you’d uncovered my secrets. But I was wrong to ask you to leave, and please know I didn’t mean it when I said I never wanted to see you again.’
Miranda smiled at me, and I felt a weight lift from my shoulders.
‘My friend Hugh, the actorrrrr …’
I paused and looked up from the letter.
‘She has totally written actorrrrr with five Rs,’ I said.
We both chuckled and the weight lifted a bit more.
‘My friend Hugh the actor once told me that keeping secrets causes them to fester and I can see now that he is right. Far better to have things out in the open.’
Miranda nodded. ‘I agree with that,’ she said.
‘I’ve been happy in my life. Though not as happy as I might have been if things had been different. But I don’t regret anything I’ve done and I hope you understand why I acted as I did.’
‘And so, my dear, I send you this box full of odds and ends that I have collected over the years. I believe it might explain some things. I also have an inkling that your father was behind you researching my time during the war. If I’m right, then I think he needs to see what’s in this box too. Though perhaps not yet.
‘Please come and see me soon, and bring Dora, and her ponies.’
I reached out and took Miranda’s hand.
‘I remain your adoring aunt, Lilian.’
I burst into tears while Miranda grinned.
‘She’s the best,’ she said. ‘Tea’s up.’
She handed me a mug, and with the biscuits under her arm led the way back to the living room, where I sat down, still sniffing. Miranda picked up the box she’d brought with her, and put it on the sofa in between us.
‘I went down to see Lil last weekend,’ she said. ‘She gave me this to give to you. With very strict instructions that we were to open it together and I wasn’t to peek before you saw it.’
‘Have you peeked?’
‘No!’ Miranda sounded outraged. Then she gave me a sheepish grin. ‘Well, I opened it, but when I saw what was inside I shut it again and didn’t rummage. We need to do it together.’
‘So this is the odds and sods?’
‘Have a look.’
I studied the box. It was an old hat box with a twisted cord handle. I couldn’t remember ever seeing Lil wearing a hat that would have come in a box like this. Gently, I eased the lid up and peered underneath. The box smelled musty and old. There were a few papers, and photographs, and even newspaper clippings inside.
I looked up at Miranda in confusion. ‘What is this?’
‘No idea,’ she said, looking as bewildered as I felt. ‘Shall we go through it?’
I suddenly felt nervous but Miranda reached inside the box and pulled out a photograph. ‘Look, this is Dad when he was small,’
she said, handing it to me. ‘With Grandma Ruth.’
Dad, who looked to be about five years old in the photograph, was sitting on Grandma’s lap, a toy aeroplane clutched in his little fat fingers.
‘I wonder if that’s the aeroplane Lil gave him?’ I said. ‘The one he told me about.’
I laid the photograph on the coffee table and reached into the box myself. This time I found a photo of a young Lil in uniform, arm in arm with two women about the same age. They were all laughing and they looked very carefree. Behind them was a plane and I wondered if they’d been about to fly away together when the picture was taken.
‘Flora and Annie, I bet,’ I said to Miranda, showing her.
‘God, they were so young,’ she said. ‘Look at this one – must have been when Lil joined up.’
She showed me the picture she held, of Lil in uniform again, but this time posing for a formal photograph.
‘She was beautiful,’ I said. She was, though her expression was guarded and she wasn’t smiling at the camera.
We leafed through the box and found all the pictures – which were mostly of Dad. There was one of Dad as a chubby baby, and regular ones of him growing up. Each with the date written on the back in Ruth’s handwriting.
‘Keeping her up to date,’ I muttered, laying them out in order on the coffee table.
‘Looks like it,’ Miranda agreed.
She rummaged about some more, and found a few folded concert programmes from Dad’s early days as a performer. There were school concerts and some church recitals. Again, Grandma Ruth had written on some of them.
‘Beautiful performance,’ she’d jotted along the top of one. ‘Biggest round of applause of the evening,’ she’d written on another.
My eyes filled with tears. ‘Grandma Ruth was such a lovely person,’ I said, showing Miranda the programmes.
She nodded, equally teary-eyed. ‘I think from all this, it definitely looks like Dad is Lil’s son,’ she said, sniffing. ‘I can’t see why else she’d have all this stuff.’
‘Any clues about his father?’
I leaned over so I could see inside the box. ‘All that’s left are a few more concert programmes and some newspaper cuttings,’ I said. ‘Nothing romantic.’
‘No cinema ticket stubs or love notes?’
I shook my head. ‘Just these.’ I pulled out the bundle of programmes and yellowed cuttings, which were tied together with string. ‘These are from recitals Lil did when she was young,’ I said. ‘Ooh and look, there’s a write-up from the local paper.’
Carefully, I unfolded the soft newspaper page and smoothed it out. It showed Lil, at about fourteen, sitting on a piano stool with her hair in a long plait down her back. Standing next to her, was an older man – in his late twenties or early thirties – with swarthy good looks. He had his hand on Lil’s shoulder and he was smiling down at her.
‘Pianist Lilian Miles, fourteen, has been chosen to represent Kent schools at a county music masterclass later this year,’ I read out. ‘Lilian, pictured with her proud piano teacher Ian Mayhew, will travel to London to perform at Westminster Hall.’
‘Impressive,’ said Miranda. She reached out and took another cutting, spreading it out as I had done. ‘Oh, this is from after the war,’ she said, scanning it. ‘Oh heavens, oh, Helena, look …’
She held out the cutting and I took it. It was a report from a court case from the 1950s. Ian Mayhew was accused of raping one of his pupils.
‘Oh shit,’ I said.
Miranda looked grim. ‘I know.’
‘But hang on, this isn’t Lil,’ I said, reading on. ‘This girl was fifteen in 1953. Lil was older than that.’
‘Helena,’ said Miranda gently. ‘Do you think Lil kept this cutting for a reason?’
‘Because she knew this Mayhew fellow?’ I said.
Miranda shook her head.
‘Because he did the same to her?’ I said, realisation dawning. ‘Oh no.’
I looked more carefully at the clipping, scouring the picture of Ian Mayhew for any resemblance to Dad. ‘He must have been injured in the war,’ I said. ‘Look, he’s got scars on his face in the later photo.’
Miranda shrugged. ‘Hard to feel sympathy.’
‘Did he go to prison?’ I asked. ‘What are the other cuttings?’
Miranda was ahead of me, unfolding the small pieces of updates on the case, and then finally a bigger story.
‘Here,’ she said, giving it to me.
I read the piece quickly and then looked up at Miranda.
‘He killed himself when he was found guilty,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘What a coward.’
‘Justice of a sort, I suppose,’ Miranda said. ‘How awful.’
I felt a wave of guilt and disgust and sorrow all at once. ‘No wonder she didn’t want me poking about in her life,’ I said. ‘No wonder she just wanted to forget it all. This wasn’t some teen romance; it was rape.’
Miranda looked grim. ‘Grooming, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Only I can’t imagine they called it that then.’
I shuddered. ‘She was just a kid. If Dora …’
‘Don’t,’ said Miranda, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘Please, don’t.’
We were both quiet for a while, leafing through the newspaper cuttings and thinking.
‘Poor, poor Lil,’ I said, thinking about the little girl with the long plait in the photograph we’d found. ‘Think how frightened she must have been when she found out she was pregnant.’
‘And poor Dad,’ Miranda said. ‘To have a rapist as a father.’
‘Should we tell him?’
‘Lil said in the letter we could take the box to him,’ Miranda told me.
‘She said not yet,’ I reminded her. ‘I think we need to make things right first. Don’t you?’
Miranda spread her hands in a helpless gesture. ‘We can’t make this right,’ she said. ‘How can we ever make this right?’
‘Easier, then,’ I said. ‘We’ll make it easier. Better somehow.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ I said.
Chapter 47
Lilian
August 1944
Rose had most definitely won, I thought a month later as I reflected on everything that happened. In the battle between us, which I hadn’t even known about, she was the victor. And I was left with nothing.
I opened my locker door and peeled off the photograph of Ruth, Bobby and Robert. I was packing my things to leave. I had, as I’d predicted, been discharged.
It could have been worse, I supposed. Rose had given her testimony against me in my court martial, just as she’d threatened.
She’d calmly and clearly told the judge advocate what she thought she’d overheard when I met Mary, just as she’d told Flight Captain Roberts. She said I’d organised a network of back-street abortionists who I called on to help women in trouble. It chilled me how close she’d got to the truth. But when she was questioned about this she admitted she had absolutely no proof.
When it was my turn to speak, I admitted arranging a termination for Mary. I said she was my friend and that she’d turned to me in a time of trouble. I said I’d used a contact I’d made on another trip to Lincolnshire, and that I wasn’t sure who the woman who’d performed the procedure was. I lied that I’d never done anything like it before and that I never planned to do it again.
And fortunately I was believed.
I was charged with contravening standing orders, a sort of wishy-washy offence that meant I’d done something wrong that didn’t really break any actual laws. And I was found guilty and dishonourably discharged from the ATA.
So, I was going. I’d been up to Scotland to say goodbye to Ruth and Robert, and I’d used one of my contacts to pull some strings and get me passage on a ship heading for New York. If I made it across the ocean safely, I was planning to find some jazz clubs that might take me on so that I could rebuild my life. The Allies were pushing back into Europe an
d for the first time it seemed like there would be an end to the war. I thought I’d ride out the last months over the Atlantic. Maybe I would come back, maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I’d go to Paris, or Rome, or Australia. The world was my oyster.
I slammed my locker door shut and jumped to see Flora and Annie standing there.
‘You weren’t going to sneak off without saying goodbye, were you?’ Flora said.
I shook my head, even though that was exactly what I’d planned to do.
‘She was,’ said Annie, grinning.
‘Lil, we’ve got a plan but we need to know you’re all right with it,’ Flora said. ‘Can we walk?’
Arm in arm, with me in the middle, we strolled to the very edge of the airfield and began to follow the perimeter fence.
‘We’ve been talking,’ Annie began. ‘We’re really proud of everything we’ve done here.’
‘Me too,’ I said.
‘And we want you to know how proud of you we are.’
I stopped walking and looked at them both in turn. ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘I will cry.’
Annie tightened her grip on my arm. ‘You started this,’ she said. ‘And now you’ve given up everything so we can carry on.’
On my other side, Flora squeezed me in affection. ‘You should know what a brave, clever, inspirational woman you are.’
I swallowed a sob. ‘I’m not brave,’ I whispered. ‘I’m bloody terrified most of the time. I’d never have done all this without you, girls.’
‘We will keep going, as best we can, just the two of us,’ Annie said. ‘We’ve been working it out. It might be that we can’t help as many women as we want, but we can do some good.’
‘And when the war is over, we’re thinking we might organise ourselves properly. I’ve been talking to some people about it,’ Flora added.
I smiled at them both. Such brilliant, bold women that I was proud to call my friends.
‘I’ll help,’ I said, all my plans for my new life in America forgotten. ‘I won’t be in New York forever. I’ll come back and I’ll help.’
The Hidden Women Page 25