She tries to imagine how it would have been nearly thirty years before. How much has changed? Different decor, uniforms, treatments and equipment. The nurses might have worn hats and capes. The doctors might all have been male. She sets the scene for the day she arrived: staff making a fuss of her, poking and prodding, checking her health, looking for clues. Interested parties: journalists and photographers. A whirl and a fuss for the baby in blue.
In the car park, she wanders, hands in her pockets. She visualises the foster parents, perhaps a social worker, Sofía and other nurses crowding round to say goodbye. She thinks about the unexplained woman. Did Ruth know that story? Had she thought it mysterious too?
Marina takes her thoughts to a nearby cafe – a dreary place with grey-looking walls and sticky tables. She orders coffee and then uses the payphone at the counter. She calls Ruth, who answers quickly.
‘Marina,’ she exclaims. ‘I’ve just this minute put down the phone to Aunt Lydia. Tell me your ears were burning.’
‘My ears were burning. What did you say about me?’
‘I said you were finding your fortune in London.’
‘Like Dick Whittington.’
‘Exactly.’ There is a pause. She speaks more seriously. ‘So, how are things?’
‘They’re good.’ Marina transfers the receiver to the other ear. ‘How’s Aunt Lydia?’
‘Fine. She’s thinking of going on a cruise. How odd is that?’
‘Did you say that to her?’
‘Yes, I did. I said organised holidays are for lazy people.’
Marina laughs. Lydia is Ruth’s sister and the two of them are like chalk and cheese.
‘How’s the house?’
‘It’s . . .’ Marina stops. Disturbing, uncomfortable? Oddly like home?
‘It must be strange,’ says Ruth carefully.
‘I suppose it is.’
There is a silence. Marina can hear Ruth breathing on the end of the line. ‘Have you seen Sofía?’
‘Yes, actually.’ Pause. ‘That’s why I’m calling. I wanted to ask you about something she said.’
‘Right.’ Again, that cautious note.
‘She mentioned a woman who turned up unannounced at the ward they put me in. She said the incident was noted, but never followed up. The thing is this woman was there again on the day that my foster parents took me away.’
Ruth clears her throat. She speaks slowly, spacing out her words. ‘Sofía never mentioned it.’
Marina senses a but coming. She leans with her back against the counter. A couple are seated by the window. The woman is heavily pregnant. Marina pushes the receiver against her ear and looks away.
‘But . . .’ Ruth stops and Marina pictures her, fiddling with the beads around her neck. ‘There was an occasion when something similar happened.’
Marina straightens. ‘What was that?’
‘I never mentioned it before because I thought it was a flight of fancy. I was nervous, jumpy. We’d only had you for a few months . . .’
‘Yeah. Go on.’
‘It was at your christening. I hadn’t wanted one, as you know. Your dad persuaded me and I agreed on condition we also had a naming ceremony.’
Marina has photos of both occasions. A vicar, a church, a font. A marquee in a field near Stonehenge.
‘Like I said, I was nervous.’
‘But why?’
‘I suppose I thought that someone would suddenly appear and accuse us of kidnap.’ Ruth gives a laugh. ‘Silly, I know. We’d done everything correctly, gone through all the checks, signed the right papers, but still, it was early days.’
Marina is quiet, listening.
‘We had guests. Friends, family, neighbours. It was a private affair. Right at the end of the service, as we were walking out, I noticed a woman sitting at the back of the church. She was . . . different somehow.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can’t properly explain. It was the way she was looking and not looking.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Neither do I, really. I mentioned it to your dad, but you know what he’s like. He thought I was being whimsical.’
‘What was she like?’
‘It was a bit of a blur. I remember she wore a coat and hat. I guess it covered her up. Maybe that’s what I meant about looking and not looking. She was obviously there for a reason, and perhaps she’d just got the wrong time or place – but it seemed as though she didn’t want to be seen, or something. But I didn’t really think anything of it at the time. I was preoccupied with you, and making sure I thanked people for coming.’
‘Right,’ says Marina slowly. ‘And nothing else happened?’
‘Well.’ Ruth pauses. ‘The thing is, I thought I saw her again. Or should I say something similar happened. It was twenty years later, so I couldn’t be sure it was the same woman.’
Marina feels a sliding sensation. ‘When was it exactly?’
‘At your graduation ceremony.’ Ruth gives a short laugh. ‘I know what you’re thinking. It’s stupid, isn’t it?’
Marina rubs her forehead. ‘Did you speak to her?’
‘No. It was a crowded room. By the time I decided to approach her, she’d gone.’
Marina closes her eyes. Why hadn’t Ruth told her this before? ‘Did you talk about it to Dad that time?’
‘No. It was silly. Honestly, Marina, I decided it was a coincidence and that it couldn’t possibly have been the same woman. I put it out of my head. At least I tried to. Your saying what you said about Sofía . . . Well, I suppose it brought it back.’
A week passes. Marina stops exploring London and focuses on the house. She paces the dusty hall gauging its length and width as if long forgotten secrets will be revealed through mathematics. She examines the alcove on her hands and knees, considering the angle of the door, calculating how many seconds it would have taken to come in and leave the baby. It would have been risky, she thinks. Either of the tenants in Flat 2, Eileen or Leonard, could have come out and discovered her – or the landlord for that matter, Kenneth Quip. She peers at the post boxes as if they might hold the key to the past. None of them have locks. The box belonging to Giovanni Gaetti in Flat 1 is so full the flap hangs open.
She climbs the stairs, holding the bannister, imagining the people who have touched it before. Sometimes regret stirs and sweeps through her like the breath of a ghost. Mostly, though, the atmosphere is still, the stairway dark and claustrophobic. The air is musty with an underlying rottenness, the scent of damp and decaying wood.
From Mrs Hyde’s flat on the first floor, she hears a rhythmic thumping – the sound of an iron on an ironing board. Marina has noticed people coming and going, carrying bags of laundry. The radio plays, or perhaps it’s the TV. Songs of praise or evening services, hymns and chants and sermons in low voices.
On Eva’s floor, she stands on the small square of landing. The dark wood floorboards creak; there’s the sound of the piano, followed by light footsteps. She cannot resist the urge and knocks again. There’s no answer although Marina is certain Eva is inside.
She ventures through the door that leads to the attic. The stairway is narrow and dusty and she moves slowly, brushing her fingers against the cobwebbed walls, emerging into unexpected light. The room has a neglected smell like the rest of the house, and bare, splintered floorboards, but large windows are set into the roof and, despite the clutter, there is space. According to the estate agent, the loft is communal. It’s a place where tenants can store whatever they like. Marina suspects it hasn’t been cleared for years.
Boxes are piled high. She opens some of them and finds rubbish: damaged kitchen utensils, broken toys. There are other discarded items scattered around too: a vacuum cleaner, a faded footstool, a portable TV, trunks of old books. Marina roots through and finds a mixture of the classics, volumes of poetry and detective novels.
The books are second-hand with names and dates written at the front. Some have a note wr
itten in pencil: Not to be sold. She flicks through a book about the suffragettes and recalls one of the articles she read that mentioned Thomas Littleton being a bookseller. Maybe he’d owned a shop locally.
Battered orange crates are stacked against one wall and there’s an old chest of drawers that contains dried-up paintbrushes. She takes a crate, turns it over and sits. From this angle, she notices that several paintings have been slotted behind the chest. Curious, she pulls them out. Sunflowers and sunsets, a Van Gogh-style depiction of a starry night, an unfinished sketch of a woman in a cloak with hands clasped in prayer. She stares at these, her mind fizzing, wondering who painted them. They are good, she thinks, examining the details, the bright yellows and blues.
There’s a tapping sound above and she glances up to see birds on the roof. Clouds scoot past and she has a sense of time hurtling by at great speed. Dizzily she steadies herself, looks down, touches the daubs of paint on the floorboards, their colours muted by the years. The artist worked here, she realises.
Her gaze falls again on the boxes of books and she remembers the bookshop she spotted. What was it called? Crystal’s Books. Is it worth checking out? Marina stands and as she does, a bird lifts from the roof and wheels through the sky.
Crystal’s Books is bright and modern. It’s a narrow space, seeming larger thanks to a combination of mirrors, lamps and light-coloured walls. Incense burns. The pale wood shelves are packed neatly. There are nods to the past: a display of old-fashioned signs and a line of black and white photos on one wall. A grandfather clock stands silently at the far end. Through a low doorway she can see stairs up to a second floor. A slim woman in jeans, with curly red hair, stands at the top of a stepladder, slotting books into spaces.
‘Two ticks,’ she calls when she spots Marina.
‘No hurry.’ Marina is a little disappointed. She would have liked to have been greeted by a Dickens character: a hunched old man who might or might not be Thomas Littleton. She wanders to the far end of the shop to a shelf labelled Myths and Legends.
‘Looking for anything in particular?’ asks the woman, climbing down from the ladder.
‘Not especially.’
‘Shout if you need me.’ She brushes down her jeans. In her fifties, perhaps, she wears a russet shirt that sets off the flames of her hair.
Marina picks out a book on burial grounds and stone circles which is perfect for Ruth. She browses the rest of the shop contemplating a gift for David and settles on a biography of Jacqueline du Pré.
At the counter, the woman is reading what appears to be a manuscript.
‘It’s a sideline,’ she says when she sees Marina looking. ‘I teach creative writing.’ She gestures to the floor above. ‘We give lessons in the upstairs room, literacy classes too.’
‘You sound busy.’
‘Not enough money in books alone, unfortunately. Mind you, the literacy is a community project. We’re always looking for volunteers if you’re interested. Free tea and biscuits.’
Marina smiles at her warmth.
‘I’m Crystal by the way, in case you haven’t guessed.’
‘Marina.’ No need to hide her name here.
Crystal rings up the books on the till, pausing to examine the cover of the one Marina picked out for Ruth. ‘This looks interesting.’
‘It’s for my mother.’
‘Lucky her. There’s more like this. I can search them out if you want. Are you local?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wonderful. New to the area?’
‘Yes, I’ve just moved into a shared house. I used to be a teacher actually – French and German.’
‘Is that right? I’ve been thinking about providing language classes. Interested?’
‘Sorry. I’ve got no plans to teach again. I’m editing.’
‘Editing?’ Crystal waves the manuscript at her. ‘Perfect.’
Marina laughs. Crystal reminds her of Ruth. They’re both persistent. Ruth used to convince her to do things – swimming in the sea, making a cake, abseiling – from the simple to the daring, persuading by stealth, dropping advice, building Marina’s confidence.
She agrees to at least consider Crystal’s teaching proposition. Then, on the way out, she glances at the wall display. Next to the black and white photos, there’s a montage of postcards arranged in a glass frame. The photos show south London through the decades. There’s a picture of Streatham High Road complete with buses and shops and an advert for John Bull. And another with a group of young people in suits and short skirts dancing in a club.
An old-fashioned sign hangs alongside. Marina reads:
THOMAS LITTLETON BOOKSELLER
BOOKS BOUGHT AND SOLD
RARE AND SECOND HAND
Her stomach flips. Her instincts were right. The tenant from Flat 4 once owned this shop. She glances at Crystal who is absorbed in the manuscript, her lips moving as she reads. Marina hesitates before she calls across. ‘How long have you owned the shop?’
Crystal frowns, thinking. ‘Let’s see, we bought it in the early seventies – that’s my ex-husband and me. Cheap as chips, which was great for us, not so much for the owner.’ She nods across at the sign.
‘What happened to him?’
‘He died.’ She picks up a paperweight and balances it on the palm of her hand. ‘We got everything – every book, pen and trinket. Some things we hung onto, like those photos, for authenticity, you know, a homage to the past, but generally it took a lot of work to get rid of it all.’
‘Why did that happen?’
‘It was a complicated situation. No one to inherit or something.’ She puts her head on one side. ‘Although there was a sister, I recall. I think she kept the shop shut up for several years. I can’t remember exactly what happened. Something to do with the will. My ex dealt with that side of things. I wasn’t financially adept, not then. I had to learn after he ran off with our savings, though. So many years ago. God, time goes quickly.’
Marina agrees. The present becomes the past in a moment.
13
Eva
January 1992
Eva remembers many things about her childhood.
She remembers birthdays – her mother icing a cake, wrapping her presents in gold paper, which she reused every year. They went to the pictures, or to the ice rink, or for a picnic on the common. They sat on a blanket and ate sandwiches and Eva would listen to her mother talk.
She said it was important to remember the past in case people forgot – and then she would tell Eva the story of how her family had been rounded up and taken to a concentration camp, but how she had been smuggled out of the country and sent to England on her own. She would describe the Jewish orphanage where she had stayed before a family had taken her in, and the happy times she had had with them, growing up an only child, but loved by her adoptive parents. She would say how she had met Eva’s father, her beautiful face lighting up at the memory of that moment, at a wedding, when their eyes had met across a crowded room. How awkward they both had been. How tentatively they had danced. How quickly they had fallen in love. Two people finding a connection through bleak memories and hopefulness.
Recalling her own past now, Eva remembers scraps and leftovers. She remembers her mother watching her eat and then scraping the saucepan or Eva’s plate. She remembers carbolic soap and cold water, mended clothes and blackened shoes, men calling them names, boys throwing stones.
Her mother had a strong, beautiful face. She played a piano which Eva’s father had bought second-hand and then restored. She gave music lessons to children. She was a dressmaker too, making clothes for wealthy women who would sweep up the stairs to their door. Eva remembers these women standing in their underwear, while her mother, with pins in her mouth, knelt at their feet.
Eva remembers many things.
What she can’t remember is her father – at least, not beyond a soft face and a kind voice. Or her mother’s miscarriage, even though she knows she witnessed it.
; What she can’t remember with any clarity is anything before the age of about three or four. Although there are blurs. Images that dance about in time. Impressions. Faceless people. When she tries to recall the details, all she gets is the same precarious sensation as if she’s teetering at the top of a great height. Sometimes, she stands at the window, like she does now, touching the glass. What would it be like to fall, to open the window and lean until she drops and the decision has been taken from her? Perhaps in those split seconds before she hit the ground, the blanks in her head would be filled.
The new tenant is walking towards the house. She is hunched inside her furry coat with her hair loose about her shoulders. Head bent, one hand is in a pocket, the other swinging her bag. She reaches the house and disappears inside.
The door of the house opposite opens and a man and his son appear. The boy is small, five or six. They are holding hands and the boy sets off, feet together, jumping down the steps. Eva leans forward, watching them as they reach the bottom laughing. She eases the window open so that she can hear their voices. A wind has come up. It runs through the maple tree below and slips through the gap of the window and into Eva’s room. Chilled, she wraps her thin arms around her body.
Eva closes her eyes. A memory is coming.
She is Little Eva. A piano is playing. Her mother is performing Chopin, but she is weeping as she plays, all the sadness of her life pouring through her fingers. Little Eva cannot bear her mother’s sorrow so she slips out of the flat and down the stairs.
What next?
She sits on a step with her chin in her hands. She has bare feet and a purple dress that swirls around her legs when she runs.
A woman appears and takes her hand. Together they climb back up the stairs all the way to the top. Little Eva is jumping, two feet together, in the way that children do. Who is the woman? Is it her mother come down to fetch her? What next?
The scent of roses.
Eva blinks and the memory disappears.
14
Marina
January 1992
The estate agent is close to the Tube station. Marina enters and Wayne jumps up from his desk and hurries to greet her.
The Hiding Place Page 10