Page 126 of The Stranger in Room Six
Mabel went straight to bed – something she never did during the day. All she wanted to do was put the covers over her and sob, but then she thought of Harry. She briefed the staff as quickly as she could and got on the train to London to see her brother.
‘I am the head of the Marchmonts now,’ she told herself. It was a strange feeling. She didn’t feel old enough at forty to be at the top of the tree; Papa’s death, for some reason, made it feel as though her mother and Annabel were drifting further and further away in her memories.
Papa had been her rock. He had been trying, through his connections, to track down her son but it seemed impossible. The adoption society had closed down and she didn’t know the name of his adoptive parents. Their only hope was that he might findherone day, but although Mabel lived in hope of a letter or phone call, it never came.
Meanwhile, she had long given up hope when it came to her lover. As a prisoner of war, Antonio would have been released some time ago. If he truly cared, he would have found her by now.
By the time Mabel reached her seventies, Harry had achieved his ambition of becoming a Cabinet minister. His next ambition was to become prime minister one day – a goal she was sure he would achieve. Her own little brother!
But her excitement was cut short when she broke her hip a week later, tripping on the staircase. It was enough for Harry to declare that she couldn’t continue the way she was.
‘I’m not going into a home,’ she told Harry firmly when they discussed the ‘options’. ‘This placeismy home.’
‘Of course it is,’ said Harry. ‘But I have an idea. Why not turn it into a residential and nursing home? You can be the first resident!’
‘Oh my dearest, I’m not sure. It would be such a huge project! We’d need to change so much in the house to make it accessible.’
‘We’re going to need to do that for you, anyway,’ he pointed out gently.
‘There will be so many rules and regulations to follow.’
‘We can find the right people to help us.’
‘What about staff?’
‘We’ll go through agencies and word of mouth to find the best.’ Harry’s eyes were shining. ‘Think about it, Mabel. You’ll be able to stay in your own home and be looked after, without giving up the business. We’ll make sure it’s the crème de la crème of care by the sea.’
‘I don’t think we’ve got the money to do this and we might not be able to get a grant.’
‘I’m happy to use some of Dad’s money if you like and be an investor. He’d have liked that.’
The idea was beginning to grow on her. ‘But I want it to be a happy place for everyone,’ said Mabel. ‘We need a cheerful name. How about … Sunnyside?’
‘Sunnyside Home for the Young at Heart,’ finished Harry, hugging her. ‘It’s perfect.’
Although Mabel couldn’t admit it, she hoped it would dispel any of the evil left by Clarissa and the Colonel. She still felt sick to the core when she thought of the things that had taken place here during the war, and what would happen if anyone found out.
Within a month of opening, the home was full. One of their first residents was a lovely man who was visited regularly by his equally kind daughter, Anne. Their surname was Marples. ‘A bit like Miss Marple, the detective,’ they joked.
She could not have been happier.
If only she’d known what lay ahead.
88
Belinda
Mabel’s suggestion that I find outwhyKaren had an affair with my husband, is haunting my mind.
People don’t always act in the way you might think.
I’d presumed that my husband’s mistress was just a foolish young woman who saw an older man and, with him, security. For Gerald, on the other hand, it must have been sex. Is that my fault? He’d never turned me on, not after Imran. Yet it takes two to tango and two to stray. It also takes two to talk about marital problems, which is something Gerald and I had never done; perhaps because we were too scared of the inevitable outcome.
I will only rest when I know more about what happened between them. Then, I’ll be able to heal, or at least make sense of it all. I’m just hoping she can tell me. Karen might have dementia, but she still has her cognitive moments. I discovered that the day that I met her at Sunnyside.
The private detective I’d hired had sent me a photograph of her. It looked like a passport shot, her hard eyes staring out at me. This was a woman who didn’t care about breaking up a family to get a wealthy man. I have no doubt that’s why she got pregnant – to seal their relationship further and give him no choice but to financially support her. ‘You knew exactly what you were doing,’ I said to the photo. ‘Didn’t you?’
On my first day here, I was put on breakfast duty and given the list of residents expected in the dining room.Karen’s name, I saw with a jump of both excitement and fear, was on it.
