Page 85 of The Stranger in Room Six
‘Thank you, but you keep that money for yourself.’
‘Why are you being so kind to me?’ Mabel asked, her eyes wet with gratitude.
‘I have children myself. I don’t like to think of a younggirl like you being on your own. Do you want to call your mother?’
Mabel shook her head. ‘She … She died.’
‘So that’s the loss you were crying about. You poor, poor girl. You can tell me more later if you want, or not at all. The most important thing is that we get you back into a warm home after this journey. Let’s go, shall we?’
55
Now
Back in her room at Sunnyside, Mabel has gone frighteningly pale and her hands are shaking. ‘I want to go home,’ she whispers to Belinda. ‘Take me back. Now. Before the bombs start again. We need to go to the shelter.’
Belinda rings the alarm. Around her, Mabel can hear voices panicking.
‘Her blood pressure is up.’
‘We need to calm her down.’
‘You and I, Belinda,’ whispers Mabel. ‘We both loved and lost, didn’t we?’
‘What’s she talking about?’
‘She must be rambling,’ says Belinda.
‘No I’m not …’
Then Mabel feels a small prick and drifts back into the past again.
56
1943
Beryl’s sister was called Olive. She was a taller, thinner and more angular version of Mabel’s rescuer and did not seem at all put out by a stranger coming to stay. In fact, both women seemed to find it a relief that there was someone else to ease the obvious tension between them.
‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’ asked Olive as she led her to a pretty room in the eaves of the cottage. There was a blue-and-pink chintz bedspread, a pink rug, a sweet little dressing table and, of course, the standard blackout curtains.
‘I used to have a baby sister,’ said Mabel quietly. ‘She was killed along with my mother when a bomb fell on our house in London.’
Olive gasped. ‘Oh love, I’m so sorry.’
‘I just keep thinking of Cook’s sister in Penzance,’ said Mabel tearfully.
‘Was that who Lady Clarissa had arranged for you to stay with?’
She nodded.
‘It’s tragic,’ said Olive with tears in her eyes.
Fortunately, Beryl’s sister was sensitive enough not to ask any more questions. Instead, she took a towel out of a pine chest of drawers and showed her where the bathroom was. ‘We take it in turns. There’s a chamber pot under the bed.’
Mabel thought briefly of the five large bathrooms in the Old Rectory, which had been icy cold in winter.
‘Thank you. I cannot believe you’ve been kind enough to take in a stranger.’
‘It’s what we do in the war,’ Olive replied.
