The memory of that basement sits somewhere in Harriet’s mind like a sunken stone. The silent babies, their skin and bones, the hollow look in their eyes. That’s how a human baby looks at you when they’ve been treated like an animal.
She turns to Ellie and is overcome by a feeling she hadn’t expected. Being here with her daughter has brought the life she lived – before she was her daughter – into pin-sharp focus. Harriet questions whether the passage of time has made her feel like this, if she’s become soft in her old age. But this doesn’t feel like a softening. It feels like the opposite.
She is suddenly struggling to deal with the idea that her daughter lived in a place in which nobody would protect her. It makes a wave of maternal rage rise up and make her fists close, her face begin to fill up. She pushes it back, wonders what has come over her, swallows whatever is lodged in her throat.
Harriet doesn’t look at her daughter for fear of unleashing a torrent of emotion that it is beyond her ability to stem. Instead she slides her hand across the seat and takes her daughter’s. She squeezes it once, then again, tighter. Her eyes remain fixed on the back of the driver’s head, aware that Ellie is now looking at her. When Harriet finally turns she silently makes the same promise she’s repeated many times: I’m going to keep you safe. No matter what.
They turn the corner and there it is.
The orphanage is now derelict. It closed years ago and stands rotting behind tall iron gates, bound together with thick, rusting chains and several large padlocks. As Andrei clicks off the engine, Harriet feels the tension in Ellie’s body radiating through her fingers. She wonders if this was as bad an idea as it suddenly feels. It certainly hadn’t been on the original itinerary. To Harriet, it had felt like a step too far.
But they’d taken breakfast that morning with Andrei, in a café in one of the grand old buildings that had been confiscated by the communist government in the mid-twentieth century, abandoned, then repurposed. They sat among a vivacious crowd, surrounded by the aroma of roasting coffee and sweet cakes, as Ellie had asked: ‘How far away is it?’
‘The orphanage?’ Andrei said, to which she nodded. ‘It’s a little way away, in Sector Three. About twenty minutes.’
‘That close?’ she murmured, lowering her coffee. ‘Do you think… maybe we could go there?’
Now, Ellie clicks open the door of the car. She steps out onto the pavement into bright, sharp sunshine. Then she pauses, slides her hands into the pockets of her dress and slowly approaches the railing. Numerous windows are smashed in. The odd item of furniture is abandoned outside. Birds circle above in eerie silence. They and the overgrown thickets in front of the steps are the only signs of life in a place that is, essentially, dead. Ellie watches, her features still and unreadable. She is irradiated with emotion, her lips swollen. She swallows hard.
But they don’t stay for long. There isn’t really much to see, though Harriet wonders what’s behind those splintered doors now. If the cots are still there, decaying like the rest of the place.
‘Hey,’ Andrei says eventually. ‘I’ve got an idea, Ellie. I think you should come and meet someone.’
It takes about fifteen minutes to reach the one-storey, brick-built house he wanted them to see. It’s on the edge of a village, surrounded by farmland. When Andrei knocks on the door, it’s opened by a young woman with a baby about a year old perched on her hip. She’s strikingly beautiful, in a plum-coloured T-shirt, hair swept into a loose bun. She greets Andrei like he’s a long-lost uncle, with cries of delighted surprise.
They talk in Romanian, faster than Harriet can keep up with, before Andrei turns to Ellie and says, ‘Mihai, the boy I was telling you about, is out playing football. We can go and say hello in a minute, but Ana-Maria would love to offer you some tea and cherry cake first. She made it this morning.’
It’s a clean, pretty house, with bright and modern décor that has the odd traditional flourish – lace curtains on the windows, woven throws on the sofa.
‘Come, sit,’ she says, as they are invited to gather around a table. They are presented with slices of cake and drink tea, making conversation as Andrei translates. Ana-Maria is a foster mother. She and her husband Florin have taken on three children so far, the most recent being Mihai.
She tells them, via Andrei, that he’d been born into extreme poverty and had been living in an institution since he was two, when his mother died. His father handed him over to the state so he could go and work abroad. Efforts to place him with other members of his extended family proved fruitless and, until four months ago, he had been living in a large state-run orphanage. While this was an immense improvement on the old institutions, it was still big, impersonal and he’d been brutally bullied by the older boys.
As Ana-Maria talks, Andrei explains to Ellie that his transition to family life hasn’t been without its problems – ‘he is just not used to living like this,’ Andrei says. ‘But she says he has settled in well under the circumstances. I think he’s going to have a bright future here.’
They go outside after the refreshments and Ana-Maria calls out to the end of the street, where three boys are playing football. ‘Mihai!’
Prising him away from his game is not easy, but eventually he bounds over, arriving in front of them out of breath and with his forehead glistening with sweat. Ana-Maria ruffles his hair and says something that makes laughter burst out of him and rise like a balloon in the wind.
He and Andrei begin to chat. Harriet can’t follow as much as she’d like, but eventually, Andrei turns to Ellie and says: ‘I’m explaining to him that you were eight years old – just like him – when you left an orphanage. I told him that you were very glad indeed to be able to find a family. He says he feels the same.’
‘I suddenly wish I’d relearnt more Romanian,’ Ellie smiles awkwardly.
‘What do you want to ask him?’ Andrei shrugs. ‘I can translate.’
She turns to the little boy. ‘I can tell that you enjoy being here. But what is it you like best?’
Andrei asks him the question, then chuckles heartily when he gives his answer.
‘The first thing he said was “the food”,’ he grins. ‘But he also says he likes the friends he has made. Most of all though, he likes his new parents. He says that when his mother put her arms around him, he knew he had found the happiest place on earth.’
Chapter 71
Ellie
We head to the Cis¸migiu Gardens after lunch, which is where we’ve arranged to meet. This was the purpose of the whole trip. It’s what finally persuaded me that I really had to come to Romania. I knew, after all that had happened, that to stay away was no longer an option – and this certainty only grew in intensity the more times I read Tabitha’s letter.
I’ve been thinking of this afternoon for weeks, playing out every detail of it in my head, in my dreams, imagining exactly what I’ll say. But now I’m here, words have emptied from my head and all I can do is drift along with Mum by my side, looking out for the bridge where we’ve agreed to wait.
The air is warm around my shoulders and the gardens are an oasis, with statues of distinguished Romanian writers standing amidst carpets of colourful flowers and the kidney-shaped boating lake. It’s a romantic landscape, with gently rolling grass, picturesque architecture and all the trimmings of an English-style garden.
We’ve arrived early. This wasn’t on purpose, but even when I tried to slow myself down I couldn’t. Now we’re here, the minutes pass slowly. I can only find distraction in the plants, of which there are plenty to document and photograph amidst the hidden paths that lead to the ruins of an old monastery. Mum and I chat as we walk and my nerves reveal themselves in my babbling.
‘I read about this park before we came,’ I tell her. ‘Apparently when it opened in the nineteenth century, exotic plants were brought from botanical gardens in Vienna and thirty thousand trees were imported from the mountains.’
‘That’s a heck of a lot of trees,’ she
says.
‘Well, you can never have too many of those.’
The bridge is made of stone and dappled with lichen, spanning the entire stretch of the lake. We stumble upon it almost by accident. But by now it’s nearly 3pm and I’d rather be early than late. I let my eyes drift over the linden and chestnut trees that rise above the shallows and a spray of glittering sunlight from the fountain.
Our steps slow automatically as we walk to the mid-point of the bridge and lean on it to look into the water, at our reflections and the stretching, blue sky behind. There are a few seconds of stillness, before a gust of warm wind raises the hair around my shoulders and I lift my head in time to see a little girl skipping onto the end of the bridge.
She looks directly at me and I feel something crack open in my chest. A tiny gasp escapes from my lips. Every feature of her face is a mirror image of Tabitha’s at that same age, refracted in several small ways. She has the same long legs. That sloping forehead. She isn’t thin like Tabitha though. She’s strong and robust, her cheeks slightly rounded and full of colour.
Mum’s hand touches my elbow and a prickle behind my eyes runs all the way down my back and across my arms.
I nod. I’m all right. I think I’m all right. Am I? I swallow back the lump in my throat, force emotion down into my chest.
Then someone is calling out a name: Daniela.
The little girl is starting to skip away in the direction from which she came and my eyes follow like I’m watching a will-o’-the-wisp.
It’s then that I see her.
A woman with open arms. With dark hair framed by soft copper highlights and a patterned scarf at her neck. With fierce eyes and a defiant curl of her lips. My hand is automatically at my mouth because I never planned to cry and I don’t want to and yet now what else is there to do? Because Tabitha is right here, in front of me.
Even from a distance, she looks better than I was expecting. Although the surgery was nearly six months ago, the prognosis remained unclear for weeks afterwards and I was convinced from everything her husband told me that she wouldn’t survive.
Although you could not describe her as a vision of health, she insisted in her last email that she was past the worst of it. ‘There’s always reason for optimism, dear Elena. You and I must grasp hold of that above everything else.’
The little girl trips and I feel my chest brace. She stumbles forward and tries to catch herself but is soon on her hands and knees, howling. Tabitha rushes to her and stoops to assess the damage, kissing away tears. Eventually, the girl nods and her mother wraps an arm around her waist to lift her back onto two feet. Then Tabitha looks up.
When she sees me, every feature of her face blossoms into a smile. She slips her hand into her little girl’s and takes two breaths before beginning to walk towards us. Mum and I start to approach too. But after my first steps, even a few extra seconds apart feel too long. I break into a run and so does she.
In the first moments of our uninhibited embrace, the oddest thoughts ricochet in my mind. Of how soft her hair is and how I think we might now be the exact same height, how she smells of apples and toothpaste – such a sweet, clean smell that comparing it with all I’d imagined makes a sob escape from my mouth. She pulls back and looks at me. ‘Don’t cry, dear Elena. This is the happiest of days.’
I nod and say, ‘It is,’ but now her own eyes are filling and she reaches out to touch my cheek. My breath catches, I just can’t help it. ‘It’s really you,’ she laughs, shaking her head.
‘Yes,’ is all I can say, ‘it really is.’
I’m faintly aware that we still haven’t done our introductions, nor even said hello. But, for now, all that matters is she and I, friends and survivors, laughing and crying under the whispering leaves of a weeping willow.
Author’s note and acknowledgements
As the section at the front of the book rightly says, this is a work of fiction. The character of Ellie, her story, personality and history are products of my imagination. Nevertheless, writing this book required a significant amount of contextual research about the Romania of thirty years ago, as well as today. For that, I had a lot of help along the way.
I’d first and foremost like to extend my enormous gratitude to the team at Hope and Homes for Children. Particular thanks go to those members of the organisation, both in the UK and in Romania, who were interviewed and read through the book before publication. The charity was started in 1994 at a kitchen table in Wiltshire belonging to two extraordinary people – Mark and Caroline Cook – who believed that every child had the right to grow up in a loving family.
It was a conversation I had with Mark that sparked the idea for Ellie’s backstory – even though at the time I was researching something completely different (which didn’t make the cut). For that, and for introducing me to the team at Hope and Homes for Children, I am truly grateful. Today, the charity operates in countries all over the world, working with governments to close down institutions and support the right of all children to grow up where they belong, with a family to love them. To help or find out more about their work, please visit www.hopeandhomes.org.
Much of my research into what it was like to be a child at one of the orphanages was compiled via a combination of news articles, historic footage and old television documentaries. But the most valuable of all forms of research always tends to come from talking to people. I’d like to extend my thanks to Alexandra Smart for sharing her thoughts and experiences with me, as well as her memories about being adopted and growing up in the UK.
For anyone interested in this subject, the documentary From Romania with Love is a powerful piece of film-making from 2013 and well worth a watch.
I read a lot about the life of a foreign correspondent before tackling Harriet’s story, but if this is an area that interests you, I’d recommend any of Kate Adie’s books. She writes so compellingly, with compassion, insight and terrific wit. Harriet is a very different character of course (and I’m certain Ms Adie would never approve of some of her actions), but if there is one area in which she definitely provided inspiration then it was in how much she clearly adored her fascinating job.
For help and advice on the treatment of agoraphobia and PTSD, thank you to Adele Murphy. For her advice on social media, thank you to Kelly Terranova (who you’ll find on Instagram as @kellyterranova_).
Thanks also to Emma Wraithmell’s dad for bidding in the annual CLIC Sargent charity auction so she could appear as a character in this book. I hope Emma didn’t mind becoming Lucy’s best friend and being whisked away with her family on holiday with her!
I’m continually grateful for the opportunity to grow and develop my skills as an author under the guidance of my agent Sheila Crowley. I am indebted to her for the opportunities she has steered my way and for her continued support, which is immense.
Thank you to the publishing team at Simon & Schuster for their commitment to me as an author, which began with my very first book (written as Jane Costello) and continues to this day. Special thanks go to my brilliant editor Clare Hey, Sara-Jade Virtue, Suzanne Baboneau, Polly Osborn, Genevieve Barrett and Alice Rodgers. Thanks also to my copyeditor, Elizabeth Dobson, who did a sterling job in helping me unpick and make sense of a particularly complex timeline.
Thank you to all the authors who have been such a source of support and friendship. There are too many of you to list, but I must give a special mention to Debbie Johnson, who always knows the right thing to say and still makes me laugh as much as she did when we were newspaper reporters in our early twenties.
Finally, as ever, a big thank you to the lovely lot that is my family: Mark, Otis, Lucas, Isaac and my mum and dad, Jean and Phil Wolstenholme.
About the Author
CATHERINE ISAAC was born in Liverpool and was a journalist before she became an author. She wrote her first novel, Bridesmaids, under the pseudonym Jane Costello and her eight subsequent books were all Sunday Times bestsellers.
You Me Everythi
ng was her first work writing as Catherine Isaac. Translation rights have been sold in twenty-four countries and a movie adaptation is in development by Lionsgate and Temple Hill. She lives in Liverpool with her husband Mark and three sons.
www.catherine-isaac.com
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@CatherineIsaac_
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www.SimonandSchuster.com.au/Authors/Catherine-Isaac
ALSO BY CATHERINE ISAAC
Messy, Wonderful Us
You Me Everything
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First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2021
Copyright © Catherine Isaac, 2021
The right of Catherine Isaac to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The World at My Feet Page 33