Secrets (7 page)

There was nothing but a few old letters inside, but as she scooped them up, intending to put them into the dressing-table drawer, she suddenly remembered that the doctor had been asking whether they had any relatives.

She flicked through the letters, but they all seemed to be from the same person and addressed to her father. She opened one and saw it was from his sister in Manchester. Disappointed, she bundled them all up together, but as a few fell off the pile and she bent to retrieve them, she noticed one in quite different handwriting which was addressed to Miss Rose Harris, her mother’s maiden name.

The envelope had turned a yellowish-brown with age, and it wasn’t even sent to this address. But as she held it in her hand looking at it, she suddenly recalled Mrs Patterson’s words earlier: ‘
I think she grew up in Sussex, by the sea
.’

This letter was addressed to Curlew Cottage, Winchelsea Beach, nr Rye, Sussex.

As her mother had never mentioned her parents, Adele thought they must be dead, but she was curious about who this letter was from and pulled it out of the envelope. It was from someone in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, dated 8 July 1915.

‘
Dear Rose
,’ she read.

I was so thrilled to hear from you after all this time. I missed you terribly after you left, and all the girls ask if I’ve had any news of you. I suppose it is a bit dull living right out in the country, but then it’s dull everywhere when all people can talk about is the war. Lots of the girls at school have lost their fathers and brothers, I’m glad my father doesn’t have to go and that I haven’t got brothers old enough. I hope your father keeps safe.

Does your mother make you knit socks and scarves? Mine does. I’m sick of grey wool. We were playing tennis this afternoon and Muriel Stepford said she was going to try and become a nurse. She said it was because she feels so sorry for all those wounded soldiers, but we all think she’s afraid she’ll be left on the shelf as there’s so few men of her age left here.

Write soon, and tell me about what you do all day. Do you really keep chickens and grow vegetables, or was that a joke? I can’t imagine you getting your hands dirty.

All my best wishes,

Alice

Adele read the letter three times, intrigued because it was a tiny glimpse of her mother’s past she knew nothing of. Was this girl Alice a good friend? Had her mother and her parents moved away from Tunbridge Wells because of the war? Could her grandparents still be living in Curlew Cottage now?

It was written sixteen years ago, four years before she was born, but as she didn’t know exactly how old her mother was, she couldn’t even guess at the age of her grandparents.

But she’d heard the doctor say he was going to ask Jim about family, so she put it back with the other letters and filled the suitcase with her things. Then she left the flat, closing the door behind her.

The following morning, as church bells were ringing for the Sunday morning service, Dr Biggs returned. He came in to the Pattersons’ for a little while, asked Adele how she was feeling, and said he’d contacted the hospital where her mother had been taken, and that she was much calmer.

‘How long do you think they will keep her there?’ Mrs Patterson asked.

‘I don’t know at this stage,’ Dr Biggs replied guardedly. ‘Now, I’ll just go up and see Mr Talbot.’

The doctor wasn’t very long with her father, and when he came back down he looked flushed and annoyed.

‘Run along outside in the yard with the boys,’ Mrs Patterson said, giving Adele a little shove on the behind towards the door.

Adele went, but not right outside. She just closed the door through to the living room and waited outside it. She wanted to know what her father had said to make the doctor angry.

She didn’t have long to wait. The doctor fairly exploded. ‘That man is so dense, I might as well have talked to a brick wall,’ he said. ‘He is adamant Adele isn’t his child. He said he met her mother when she was pregnant and he can prove it because he was still in France until then.’

‘But by marrying Rose, surely that makes him responsible for Adele, whoever her real father was?’ Mrs Patterson said.

‘Technically yes. But you know the expression “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”,’ the doctor replied. ‘How can I walk away leaving such a young girl in the hands of someone so full of anger and spite? Anything could happen.’

‘What are we going to do then?’ Mrs Patterson asked.

‘I shall have to get a care order. There’s nothing else for it, Annie. Rose is mentally ill, I can’t even say she will recover. Besides, maybe it’s for the best in the long term – I suspect the child has been badly treated for many years. If I get her away from here now she’ll be better off.’

‘Did you ask Jim if there were any grandparents?’

‘Yes, but he knows nothing about them. He said Rose had fallen out with her mother long before he met her, and she has had no contact with her since.’

Lily began wailing loudly at that point, shutting out anything further said by the adults. Adele waited nervously for Lily to stop crying, but she went on and on, drowning everything.

Adele went back into the living room a little later. Dr Biggs smiled at her. ‘I was just telling Mrs Patterson I thought it best if you stay home from school for a couple of days until that eye gets better,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you don’t want anyone asking you questions about it, do you?’

Adele looked from him to Mrs Patterson, sensing they had planned something between them. She wondered why adults told children off for being deceitful when they themselves were all the time.

Chapter Four

As Adele ate her porridge the following morning, Mrs Patterson was tying Tommy’s tie for him.

‘It’s high time a big boy like you learned to do it yourself,’ she said, giving him a playful cuff on the ear.

‘I like you doing it,’ Tommy retorted, and reached out to tickle his mother under the chin, making her laugh.

The affectionate exchange made a lump come up in Adele’s throat. In the last two days she’d seen many such little expressions of love between the members of this family, and each one was a sad reminder that she’d never experienced such affection from either of her parents. She had come to the conclusion that the fault must be hers, for after all they’d managed to show affection for Pamela.

‘Is Adele taking me to school?’ Tommy asked once his tie was tied.

‘Of course not,’ Mrs Patterson said, glancing over at Adele who was still sitting at the table. Adele had stopped taking him after Pamela was killed. ‘Why should she? You’re a big boy now.’

Tommy looked beseechingly at Adele. ‘Please?’

‘Adele isn’t quite right yet,’ his mother said briskly. ‘She needs rest.’

‘I don’t,’ Adele said, getting up. She was touched Tommy wanted her with him. ‘I’d like to take him.’

Mrs Patterson hesitated.

‘Please? I’d like to go out,’ Adele pleaded.

‘All right then,’ Mrs Patterson agreed. ‘But come straight back, the doctor said you were to rest.’

*

Adele hadn’t considered that walking Tommy to school would bring back such vivid memories of Pamela. Tommy behaved just the way he always had, one minute running along with one foot in the gutter, the other on the pavement, the next swooping back to her, arms outstretched, pretending to be an aeroplane. Pamela had always held Adele’s hand and complained that Tommy showed them up. Adele missed that little hand in hers, the scornful look on her sister’s face, and the way she would break into giggles when Tommy pulled faces at her.

The primary school was a big old soot-blackened building of three storeys, the infants’ classes on one side, the juniors’ on the other, with separate entrances and playgrounds.

‘See you at dinner-time,’ Tommy said before running in through the gates.

Adele stood for a moment, watching through the railings as he was swallowed up by a throng of small boys. The junior girls were gathering on the far side of the playground, and for a brief moment she found herself automatically looking for Pamela amongst them.

It was fear of such reminders of her sister which had stopped her taking Tommy to school after Pamela’s death. Yet although it felt very strange to be here once again, hearing the same old deafening noise of two hundred or more children all shouting at once, it was also oddly comforting. While she could see boys play-fighting and girls skipping about holding hands, just as they always had, she felt a kind of continuity of life going on regardless of Pamela’s death.

She remembered the first day her little sister was due to go up to the junior school. She was really scared, asking Adele on the way there if it was true that the bigger children pushed the new ones’ faces into the lavatory bowls. Adele promised her that it was just a silly story to frighten new children, and that anyway she’d be there in the top class to see no harm came to Pamela.

Adele was proud to have such a pretty sister. Even when Pamela lost her two front teeth she was still cuter and more endearing than any other girl in her class. She could see her now, skipping in the playground, her neat blonde plaits bouncing up and down as she jumped. Some of the girls in her class distanced themselves entirely from their younger siblings, but not Adele – she went out of her way to show off Pamela.

Last September, when Adele had to go on up to the secondary school, it was Pamela’s turn to ask her sister if she was scared. ‘I’ll come with you if you like,’ she volunteered as they walked down the road together. ‘I’ll tell all the big girls they’ve got to be nice to you, just like you did for me.’

Adele had laughed, it was funny to think of a little eight-year-old imagining she could boss big girls around. Yet Pamela’s concern for her had made her less frightened to start at the secondary school.

She stood for some little while watching the children playing, wondering if someone would come to take her away today. While in one way she wanted to be taken, for it would mean the end of anxiety, a new start, the greater part of her was very scared. She could only liken it to starting at the secondary school, but at least there she’d known other children from the junior school. Many of them lived just a few doors away. Wherever they took her now, everyone was going to be a stranger.

‘Are they coming for me today?’ Adele suddenly blurted out as she helped Mrs Patterson peg some clothes on the line in the back yard. They had had a cup of tea together when she returned from the walk to Tommy’s school and she’d sensed by the way Annie couldn’t relax, jumping up from her chair every few minutes and tidying things, that something was up.

She saw an expression flit across the woman’s face, and knew she was about to tell her a lie.

‘I know some one
is
coming,’ she said, looking hard at her. ‘I just want to know if it’s today.’

Annie Patterson had always liked Adele, right from the first day the Talbots moved in upstairs. It was raining hard that day, Jim and Rose were struggling to get their stuff upstairs, and Pamela, who was a newborn baby then, was screaming her lungs off. Annie had volunteered to take both the children in while the couple got themselves straightened out. She had only just discovered she was pregnant herself, with Tommy, so she was interested in children.

Even at four, going on five, Adele was a funny little thing, suspiciously well behaved, with an almost eerie adult manner. ‘Mummy gets very tired,’ she said soon after Annie had lifted the baby out of her pram to soothe her. ‘I rock the pram for her a lot, but little Pammy doesn’t like that much, she wants Mummy to cuddle her.’

Annie remembered how she asked Adele what she thought of her new little sister.

‘She’s nice when she’s not crying,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘When she learns to walk I’ll take her out all the time and Mummy can have some rest.’

That was just how it turned out too. By the time Adele was six she was pushing her little sister down the road in a pushchair. Annie recalled watching her from the front room window, and wondering how any mother could trust so young a child with a toddler. While it was true most of the other families in the street used their older children as nursemaids for the younger ones, Rose seemed too well bred to be so careless.

But Annie soon found that there was something about Adele which inspired trust. When Annie was expecting Michael, she let Adele take Tommy out along with Pamela to the park so she could put her feet up. She always welcomed the girl coming in to see him as she would read to him, play games and generally entertain him. She was a real little mother and very bright.

Many times over the years Annie had seen Adele with bruises, but she was such a good kid it never occurred to her then that she got them from her mother. It was only in the last two or three years that Annie had become suspicious. She noticed how much nicer Pamela’s clothes were than Adele’s, and Pamela looked plump and healthy too, while Adele was as skinny as a rake with an almost permanent cold. She often saw Rose holding Pamela’s hand as they walked down the road, and it struck her that Rose never went out with Adele at all. Never once in eight years had she ever seen Rose kiss her elder daughter, give her a cuddle or even an affectionate pat on the head. Yet she’d seen her do all that to Pamela.

Now Annie was ashamed of herself. Not only had she let Adele down by not acting on her instincts a long time ago, now she was doing it again by conspiring with Dr Biggs about the welfare person coming to take her away.

She looked into the child’s strange eyes and knew she couldn’t lie to her ‘Yes, my lovely,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Someone will be coming today.’

‘Am I going to an orphanage?’ Adele asked.