Page 105 of The Stranger in Room Six
Although her stomach was rumbling with emptiness, she could barely eat for grief. ‘I would suggest you sat in the kitchen with me, love,’ said Cook, ‘but your aunt wouldn’t be pleased if she came down to find you there.’
‘It’s all right, thank you,’ Mabel said numbly. ‘I’m not hungry anyway.’
She spent that afternoon walking in the woods or sitting on the private beach, trying to keep away from people. A couple of times she tried to sing her and Antonio’s special song. But the tune would not come out.
‘Does anyone know I had a baby?’ she asked Cook later that day when her aunt was safely out of the house and no one else was around.
‘Lady Clarissa told everyone you needed a break inCornwall because you were so anxious about your father. If anyone does suspect, they won’t say anything for fear of your aunt. As a landowner, she still carries a lot of weight around here, despite everything that happened with the Colonel.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Mabel.
‘Let’s just say that although the police didn’t arrest Lady Clarissa, there are still quite a few who think she knew what the Colonel was up to. When the war is over, she may well be brought to account.’
‘Brought to account?’
‘I have said enough already. Now, I hope you don’t mind but I thought you could do with some company of your own age. So I asked Frannie if she’d like to come up to see you.’
‘But she’ll be with her family. Anyway, she won’t want to.’
‘Actually, love, I think you’ll find she will.’
When her friend arrived that afternoon, Mabel flung her arms around her. To her relief, Frannie did the same. ‘I had a baby,’ she sobbed, ‘and my aunt gave him away.’
‘My mam and I wondered if something like that had happened,’ muttered Frannie, stroking her friend’s hair. ‘You poor thing.’
After that, Frannie came to sit with her every day after her work was done, sometimes walking with her down to the sea.
‘I wish I knew where Antonio had been sent,’ Mabel would say again and again as if the refrain might bring him back. ‘I don’t understand why he hasn’t contacted me.’
‘Some men are like that,’ her friend responded sagely. ‘My mam says that war gives them an excuse.’
Was that true? Antonio had seemed so genuine, but maybe she had been too naive. Perhaps he simply didn’t love her any more. Perhaps he never had.
72
1944
Spring had arrived. Her son would be sitting up by now. Maybe crawling someday soon. The thought broke her heart.
Mabel had taken to spending more and more time at the cottage with Frannie. Fortunately, her aunt didn’t seem to notice, constantly ‘busy’ in the library. Indeed, she seemed so obsessed with ‘paperwork’ that she hardly mentioned the Colonel. ‘Some folk do that when they’re grieving,’ commented Cook. ‘It’s the shock. They need to do something practical.’
On one occasion when Mabel went in, she saw her aunt tearing up documents that had fallen out of a file. Rushing to pick them up, Mabel saw that one was headed ‘Confidential’. ‘Leave that alone, girl. Haven’t you caused me enough trouble?’
There were also some photographs, she noticed, but her aunt was tearing those into tiny fragments, making it impossible to see who they were of.
‘She doesn’t seem to care how wicked she’s been,’ said Mabel to Frannie’s mother. ‘How could she make me sign the adoption papers when I was in no fit state to do so?’
‘I know, love, it’s unimaginably cruel,’ she replied, giving Mabel a big motherly hug.
That afternoon, as Mabel walked back to the Old Rectory, she saw a large black car outside. It didn’t look dissimilar to the car that had come to take little Antonio away from her inMousehole. Perhaps they were bringing her son back to her! Breaking out into a run, she tore up to the front door, only to hear raised voices coming from the library.
It was her father! She would have known his voice anywhere. So he was back, released from the POW camp. He was alive!
But it sounded as though he was having a terrible argument with her aunt. ‘Let me get this right. My daughter had a child and you made her give it up for adoption?’
‘It was the best thing, George.’
‘Don’t you have a heart? Don’t you remember –’
