Page 109 of The Stranger in Room Six
‘But I am not your daughter.’
‘Your words are breaking my heart. Youaremy daughter. You always will be.’
‘But what do I call you now?’
‘Papa,’ he said. ‘Always Papa.’ Then he held her again. ‘I will be back. I promise you. Remember that I love you. Your mother loved you too. I am not talking of the wicked, cold woman in the library. I am talking about the woman who raised you. Who loved you. Who constantly told me how lucky she was. You must believe me. Please.’
‘I’ll try,’ choked Mabel.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll return as soon as I am allowed.’
Slowly, Mabel closed the door without waiting to wave him off. Instead, she ran up to her room and opened the locket around her neck. Slowly with her finger, she tracedthe face of the woman whom she’d thought was her mother. ‘I will always see you as my mama,’ she whispered.
Then she looked at the photo of Clarissa. Part of her wanted to rip it up. But something stopped her. So instead, she shut the locket firmly with a click. If only she could do the same with the past.
74
‘So you know,’ said Cook quietly when she went down into the kitchen.
‘You knew too?’ asked Mabel.
‘Some suspected but no one said anything. But that was in the old days. The war is changing everything. People are more accepting of women who have babies out of wedlock.’
‘Including me?’ whispered Mabel.
‘Including you, love,’ she said, giving Mabel a floury hug.
At dinner that night, the table was empty. ‘Your aunt is in her bedroom,’ said Cook. ‘She has asked me to give you her apologies.’
Your aunt. It seemed as though everyone else was going to continue this pretence.
Thank goodness Clarissa was not present. Mabel did not know how she could possibly have a normal conversation with her after this. She lay awake all night, tossing and turning. Thinking back over her life. Remembering her mother who was not her mother, calling her ‘special’ again and again. About her little baby, Antonio, whose own adoptive mother was perhaps also calling him ‘special’ that very second.
Outside, the wind was whipping up. Branches were falling. At one point, there was a particularly loud crack as though a tree had fallen.
At 5 a.m., still unable to sleep, she got up and went down to the library. Reading often helped her sleep but she couldn’t think what to turn to at a time like this. A book was sticking out from the others as though it had recently beenread and then replaced unevenly; Mabel pulled it out and flicked through it.
It was written in a foreign language that Mabel didn’t recognize. She was reasonably fluent in French thanks to her governess in London, but this was different. Then her blood chilled as she took in the printing details on the frontispiece. There was one word there that she did recognize:Berlin.
As she held the book in her hands, a photograph fluttered out. Mabel gasped at a younger Clarissa, standing alongside the Colonel and a tall, imposing man with a moustache. There were others next to them, waving placards saying ‘Make Britain Great Again’. Then she turned it over. There, in her aunt’s writing, were the words ‘Our first march with Oswald Mosley.’
Wasn’t he the leader of the British fascists? The man who openly supported Hitler before the war? So, her aunt had been involved after all.
The following morning, the breakfast table was empty.
‘Where’s my aunt?’ she asked.
Cook looked concerned. ‘I don’t know. She’s not in her room. I went up with a cup of tea earlier.’
She couldn’t be walking the dogs either. They were in the kennels, on their hind legs, barking. Clearly they hadn’t even been out.
‘I’ll see if she’s in the gardens,’ said Mabel.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Cook. ‘You take the route to the tennis courts and I’ll head for the stables. Maybe the groom has seen her.’ The ‘garden’ was so vast that it would take all day for one person to search it.
Mabel had almost reached the courts when she heard the scream.
Running as fast as she could, she followed the yell to the lavender bank. Cook was bent double, standing over whatlooked like a pile of red rags. Then she realized it was a body, drenched in blood.
