Letters to the Lost (44 page)

And then after that I have an interview! It’s for a job my case worker at the hostel found out about, in a dry cleaner’s of all places. I can’t say the prospect thrills me much but I haven’t heard anything about all the other jobs I’ve applied for, so I guess I can’t be too fussy.

Wish me luck!

Jess x

The library had become a sort of home from home. She had got into a routine of going there every morning, partly to get out of the hostel, but also to exchange emails with Dan and continue their quest to find Stella. In the long computer room she had a favourite machine; the one at the end, which was beside a radiator and had a view over the little park and the bench where she’d eaten her sausage roll all those weeks ago.

It was weird to reflect how far she’d come since then. It had got worse before it got better, but finally she felt cautiously optimistic that her life was heading in the right direction. She had somewhere to live; choices, independence, purpose. All good. But without Will Holt she would have had none of those things, and she would have liked the chance to say thank you. And for him to see her when her hair wasn’t plastered to her head with grease and she wasn’t wearing a paper sack.

She gazed out over the stretch of grass. Beneath a tree there were daffodils, and an image of the cards they made at school for Mother’s Day flashed into her head; three-dimensional ones, with bits cut from egg boxes for the daffodil’s trumpet. Of course, she used to make hers for Gran, without thinking twice about it, but she suddenly recalled with startling clarity a girl called Jacey Reed asking her why she didn’t have a mum. Jess remembered the yellow paint, thick as egg yolk, the satisfaction of stroking it onto the cardboard trumpet. ‘She buggered off, didn’t she?’ she’d replied, and subsequently spent her playtime sitting outside the head’s office for swearing. Fifteen years later her indignation at the injustice was as vivid as on that long ago March day. She’d only been repeating what she’d heard Gran say.

Feelings, she thought, gazing out into the sharp-edged morning. They’re all stored up inside us, like in some kind of freezer that keeps them fresh for years. Like Dan, at ninety, still loving Stella.

Hey Jess – great to get your message. Today’s a big day! I’ll be thinking of you.

That’s great that you went to King’s Oak – I really appreciate you taking the time and the trouble. Your discovery about Charles Thorne’s name is pretty significant, I’d say. That explains why I’ve had no luck finding him online.

My lawyers are still working on the house. It seems like the place where the paperwork was stored was damaged by fire from an incendiary bomb in 1945, which is why no one over your side of the Atlantic knew who owned it. Right now it seems that the council have taken charge. My lawyer has sent over copies of the paperwork from the initial sale – not much by today’s standards, but hopefully enough to prove ownership. I transferred the property into Stella’s name in September ’44. I was back home then, and still writing to her pretty much every week. I never got a reply, but I remember telling her in one of the letters that while she kept the house I’d keep hoping. If she sold it, I’d know it was the end of the line. My lawyer thinks that if she can’t be found it’s pretty straightforward to get the property deeds reverted to me. But like everything, it takes time. And of course, we ARE going to find her, right?!

The new drug is great. I mean, not a miracle cure or anything, but I feel like my grip on life has grown stronger. That could just as easily be talking to you though. Hope is better than any drug.

Good luck with the singing and the interview – knock ’em dead kid!

Dan x

Jess typed a quick reply.

I’ll do my best – will tell you later how everything went! I’m coming back this evening to look through the marriage records again. It was pretty hopeless before without Stella’s maiden name, but how many Maurice Charles Thornes can there be?

J x

She logged out and picked up her bag. Over the past weeks she’d grown close to Dan Rosinski; amazingly close, considering they’d never even met. The man she talked to by email was the same gentle, unassuming, courageous person whose voice had haunted her in the letters. His story had given her something to focus on while her own life was in a mess. She felt privileged that he had shared it with her.

She also, from time to time, felt very anxious.

Supposing she let him down? Supposing she just couldn’t find Stella Thorne, or discover what had happened to her before Dan’s illness got the better of him? It was leukaemia, he’d told her. He could fight it for a little while longer, but it would beat him in the end. The thought of saying goodbye to him was bad enough, but saying goodbye without having helped him close the circle was unbearable.

She was frowning as she made her way through the library’s reading room, so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the chair that had been left sticking out slightly from beneath a table, just enough for her to stub her toe on its leg as she passed. She gasped and dropped her bag, gritting her teeth against the pain. And the embarrassment; around her, people at other tables raised their heads and stared. Feeling foolish she sank down onto the chair to gather up her scattered belongings.

There was a newspaper on the table and she glanced at it, trying to look nonchalant as she waited for her blush to evaporate. But it didn’t. It intensified as she read the front page, until it felt like her whole head was alight.

DAWN RAID BUSTS DRUGS GANG. Five appear in court.

Below the headline there were a series of photographs of the accused.

RINGLEADER:
Darren Michael Hodgson
,
26, of Elephant and Castle is charged with fifteen counts of supplying Class A drugs and four counts of possession with intent to supply.

Dodge’s face glared straight at her, wearing an expression that suggested his arrest was her fault and he’d make sure she paid for it.

Except he couldn’t, she thought dazedly, stumbling to her feet. Not now he was in police custody with no bail and looking at a very long prison sentence. If he was found guilty, of course, but he would be, she had no doubt about that. Dodge had screwed too many people over to inspire much loyalty. There would be people queuing up to get into the witness box and see him sent down.

It was almost too much to take in, but as she left the library she smiled with disproportionate warmth at the man who held the door open for her, and walked to work without once looking over her shoulder.

The phone was ringing.

On and on and on and on, the bell seeming to get shriller and louder and more insistent with every ring. Will buried his head under the pillows and wrapped them tightly over his ears to block out the sound.

It would be Ansell again, no doubt. He’d rung yesterday too, approximately a minute and a half after Will had put down the phone from explaining to Bex that the doctor had signed him off work for two weeks. ‘Stress?’ Ansell had bellowed down the phone. ‘Fucking tell me about it! Paying members of staff to arse about in bed all day while the rest of us have to do their share of the work –
that’s
fucking
stressful
.’ Will had hung up without listening to any more, but it had taken him two hours to stop shaking.

The doctor had prescribed antidepressants. ‘Just a mild one, to get you feeling more like yourself again.’ If there had been pills to make him feel like someone else – Simon for example – he’d have downed them like sweeties, but since he wasn’t sure that feeling like himself was a good thing he hadn’t taken one yet. It seemed like a final admission of defeat.

The phone stopped ringing. Cautiously he sat up, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes as the brightness of the day made them sting and smart. The red digits of his clock radio showed that it was 10.26 a.m. Last night he’d lain awake in the small hours, staring through the gloom at the stain on the ceiling while the contents of his brain churned frantically, like a washing machine stuck on the spin cycle. Eventually he’d got up and sat in the dark sitting room with his laptop, staring at the screen with unblinking eyes and filling the vortex in his head with the search for Stella.

It was pathetic really. He’d scoured every record he could access and scribbled down dates and snippets of information, filling sheets of paper with illegible scrawl and scattering Post-it notes around him like showers of confetti. He’d made a list of Charles Thorne’s incumbencies, and trawled the internet for his name in the appropriate local newspaper archives. He had discovered that he’d awarded the prizes in the Stoke Green dog show in 1949 and held a special Coronation service of thanksgiving in St John’s church, Bristol in 1953. He’d even turned up a picture of him – a lean man with hollow cheeks and pale hair – shaking hands with the Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1956. But of Stella and Daisy there was nothing. Like ghosts, they remained just out of sight, beyond his reach. It had been getting light by the time he’d finally given up and stumbled back to bed, exhausted and numb with failure. But waking up now to the glare of another day he saw clearly that it didn’t matter. It wasn’t important. It wasn’t really Stella Thorne he wanted to find. It was Jess.

35

1944

Sunlight lay in watery diamonds across the green linoleum floor.

It was warm, sitting beside the window, though the nurse who had brought her pills came in rubbing her hands and saying how nippy it was outside.

The trees weren’t green any more, but orange. Red. Yellow.

They made her think of the scent of woodsmoke, so vividly that it overlaid the smell of carbolic and urine that pervaded the hospital. She recalled lying in front of the fire in the little house in Greenfields Lane, as Dan’s fingers trailed lazily over the ridges of her ribs.

She turned her face towards the window and closed her eyes so the sun glowed through the lids, shutting out the nurse. Shutting out now. Shutting out everything but the memory of him.

*

Nancy came. Her face loomed through the fog in Stella’s brain, and her mouth moved but the sound was all distorted, like a gramophone that needed winding.

‘Can you hear me, Stell? Christ Almighty, what have they done to you?’

Stella wanted to ask the same thing. Nancy’s face was all wrong. Her mouth was too big, and one eye had almost disappeared in a pad of spongy flesh.
Indecent acts.
She opened her mouth to try to explain but the words were glued to her tongue. Nancy leaned in closer through the fog, so that Stella could see through the layers of powder to the purple bruise beneath.

‘Listen to me, Stell. I need your help. I don’t know who else to turn to. Do you understand?’

Stella nodded. Nancy was holding her hands, but they felt like they were a long way away, like her arms were six feet long. The pills always did that. Made things feel distant. Detached. It was good.

‘I need somewhere to stay. I can’t go back to the flat. I need somewhere that Len won’t find me.’

The hospital ward was like the dormitory at school: beds in rows, lockers beside them, noises all through the night. There wasn’t a bed free for Nancy, but perhaps they could find one, or make someone swap – maybe that woman at the end who moaned all the time. Nancy moved in closer, enveloping Stella in her miasma of perfume and cigarettes. Her voice was low and urgent.

‘I’m in trouble, Stell. Big trouble, and it’s not Len’s. I thought he’d never know, but . . .’ She made a funny little sound that should have been a laugh but wasn’t. ‘How was I to know he’d had the mumps when he was a kid? I thought he’d kill me. I think he still might if he gets the chance.’

She made a jerky movement and the silk scarf around her neck – one of Len’s many gifts – fell away enough for Stella to see the bruising on her throat, like fingerprints from a dirty hand. In its tomb of stone Stella’s heart gave a feeble beat of pity and her faraway fingers tightened on Nancy’s.

‘You can stay here. It’s safe.’

Nancy laughed properly then; a high, wild laugh like the one the red-haired woman in the bed opposite did whenever she saw anyone else crying. Nancy’s hand flew up to touch her mouth, her eye, and Stella found her fingers were clutching at thin air.

‘Bleeding ’ell, Stella – no! No. That’s not what I meant.’

Stella was tired. Outside it was raining. She watched the water running down the glass, like it had run down Dan’s face on the day he’d come back to find her. He’d held his jacket over her and Daisy, and sheltered them with his body.

‘. . . I mean, it’s just sitting there empty, ain’t it? I could look after the place, keep it nice. And then, when you get out of here we could be there together – you and me, just like the old days.’

Nancy was looking at her expectantly, though Stella didn’t know what for. Her face wobbled and stretched in front of her, as if it was trapped inside a soap bubble. Then, with a jolt, the meaning of what she was saying sank in and the bubble burst.

‘My house. You want to have my house—’

‘Not to
have
it, silly. Borrow it for a little while, until you’ve sorted things out with Charles and you’re ready to live in it yourself. And then, just for a little while maybe we could live in it together, while you get your strength back. So you wouldn’t have to be on your own.’

Nancy’s hand was cool on her forehead, smoothing the hair away from her face. It was nice to be touched like that. No one ever touched her here. Her skin cried out for it. Stella closed her eyes so she could concentrate on the feeling, but something was needling at her, stopping her enjoying it, like a splinter lodged in her brain. Her eyes flew open as she located it and picked it out.

‘A baby. You’ll have a
baby
—’

‘All right, all right,’ Nancy hissed. ‘No need to shout it out so everyone knows I’m in bother, is there?’ She withdrew her hand and smoothed her skirt primly over her knees. Darting an uneasy glance around the ward she went on in a low voice. ‘Anyway, I only said I’m
having
one. Never mentioned nothing about keeping it, did I? So can I stay in your little love nest or not?’