Secrets of the Singer Girls (38 page)

Vera’s body seemed to move of its own accord and for a moment, she wondered if she might just pass out cold on the floor.

‘Police have already informed us it was an unexploded bomb,’ the doctor went on. ‘Probably left over from the Blitz. Bomb-disposal units have worked tirelessly in this area
since then, but I suppose they can’t get them all.’ His voice trailed off as he paused at the entrance to a private room. ‘I’ll give you some time alone, Miss . . .
?’

‘Shadwell,’ she replied. She could hear her own voice, yet it sounded queer to her ears. ‘I’m her . . . Well, I’m her big sister, and if you don’t mind, I
should like to get in there now and see her.’

But once inside the room with the door closed firmly behind her, Vera knew the time for lies was over. No more tiptoeing around in the past. The bomb had blown a gaping hole through her
secrets.

Vera took a cautious step towards her bed. Daisy’s beautiful dark hair was fanned out over the white pillow, but her face . . . Vera stifled a sob. Oh, her beautiful face. The skin was
still and cold, like alabaster, and her green eyes were open, staring vacantly at the ceiling.

The awful stillness in the room turned Vera’s heart over. ‘Daisy, can you hear me?’ she whispered, touching her cheek softly.

With an agonizing rasp, Daisy painstakingly turned her head towards Vera’s.

‘Vera,’ she croaked, slowly stretching her fingers across the sheet and lacing them through Vera’s. It seemed to take every ounce of her strength to move her hand, and her
breath was painfully shallow.

Vera fixed her eyes on Daisy’s, but something about the way she stared back cloaked her in dread. She was having trouble focusing, and her eyes seemed to be growing cloudier by the
second.

‘Please stay with me, love,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s so important you hear what I have to say.’

There was no turning back and in that moment Vera hated herself more than she could ever have imagined.

‘I’ve not been honest with you, Daisy, you see.’ She trembled. ‘I have to tell you something. I did have my baby. I had her, sweetheart. She never died. Oh, Frank tried
to kick my baby from me, but he never succeeded. I should have told you, I know, but I was scared. I’ve been a fool, you see, a silly, scared, selfish fool all my life, and I’m not
proud of the lies.’

Pausing, she scanned Daisy’s face for any flicker of emotion, but there was nothing, just the dreadful rasp of her breath as her eyelids flickered opened and shut.

Cold, hard fear clamped Vera’s heart. She was losing her.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ she urged. ‘Can you ever forgive me? I should have been a mother to you, not a controlling sister . . . I should have told you. All
those times during the Blitz I hid away at home, I was scared of being underground with you, scared of what I might say or do if you were harmed. You’re the most precious thing in my life,
you see . . .’

Vera was speaking faster now, her confession reduced to a frantic jumble.

Daisy’s mouth opened slowly, struggling to form words through her pale lips. Vera leaned in close.

‘Hope, find her . . .’

The effort of uttering those words seemed to use up what last shred of life Daisy had left in her body. Her chest sank, and her eyelashes flickered.

‘What’s that, my darling?’ Vera pleaded, rubbing Daisy’s cold hand in hers. ‘What did you say? Tell me!’

Daisy lay as still as a stone.

‘Please, sweetheart, talk to me,’ Vera begged. But in her heart she knew. Daisy was gone.

In a trance, Vera kicked off her shoes and gently climbed up onto the bed next to her. Scooping her cold body into her arms, she curled herself around her, and only then could she let the tears
come. She wanted to take Daisy back into her body, back into her womb. Reclaim all the lost years. And there she remained, stroking and rocking Daisy’s body in her arms, crying until she
thought her heart might just break in two.

The door swung open and a nurse bustled in, stopping in her tracks when she spotted Vera.

‘And who on earth might you be?’ she spluttered.

‘I’m her mother,’ Vera whispered for the first time.

Vera stayed with her daughter’s body until the doctor came in and gently informed her it was time for Daisy to be taken down to the morgue. Leaving Daisy behind in the
hospital was the hardest thing she had ever had to do in her life. She hadn’t been aware of anything going on around her. Not Archie’s arrival, him gently prising her from Daisy’s
bedside, or her legs buckling as he led Vera back out through the packed waiting room. Nothing permeated the intense layer of grief that had settled over her.

Back at home, Archie sat Vera down in a chair and placed a strong mug of tea in front of her.

‘Here you go, love,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve made myself up a bed on the living-room floor; you can have my bedroom until we can rent the new house. Landlord says next week
should be fine. But there’s all the time in the world to be thinking about that. We better, well . . .’ His voice broke off and Vera could see he was struggling not to cry. ‘We
better sort Daisy’s funeral out first, and I’m afraid I’ve more bad news . . . There’s no easy way to say this, Vera, but the warden’s found your father’s body.
He was trapped under a piece of masonry in the backyard. I shouldn’t think he’d have felt much pain. The warden reckons he would have been killed outright.’

Vera shrugged.

‘Don’t you care?’ he asked, visibly shocked. ‘I know he was cruel, but he was your flesh and blood, and now he’s dead.’

‘There’s a lot you don’t know about that man,’ she blazed suddenly, turning to face her confused fiancé. ‘I may as well tell you. I’ve had a gutful of
secrets and lies. That’s all my life has been until now. I don’t expect you shall still want to marry me after you hear what I’ve got to tell you, but from now on, for the memory
of Daisy, I have to be honest.’

And so, between great heart-wrenching sobs, Vera found herself spilling out the whole story, about her mother’s death in the fire, her father running and leaving them all to burn, and how
Vera escaped, but her affair with the older married doctor left her pregnant.

Up until this point, Archie had been listening in incredulous silence, but when Vera described how her father had attempted to kick her baby from her, he shook his head and started to weep.

‘No, Vera,’ he cried, placing his head in his hands. ‘I can’t stand to think of you suffering.’

‘Listen to me, Archie,’ she begged. ‘You need to hear this. I gave birth, aged sixteen, at a mothers’ home, similar to the one Daisy stayed in, so you see, I felt every
bit of Daisy’s shame. I know what it’s like to be judged as a so-called sinner. I was all alone in the world apart from Matron, who took me under her wing.’

‘So you had the baby. But what did you do? Give her away?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Vera replied. ‘I gave away the right to call myself “Mum”. It was agreed, between Matron, myself and my father, that I couldn’t
possibly raise her as my own. Can you ever imagine the scandal? So I, or rather Frank, decided that it would be easier all round if he pretended to be her father and I her elder sister.’

Archie’s mouth fell open. ‘Daisy?’ he gasped. ‘Daisy is your daughter?

‘Was,’ she corrected, her voice hollow. ‘Daisy was my daughter. And not a day of her eighteen years did I not long to tell her the truth.’

She fingered the gold half-heart necklace at her breast. The other half was round the neck of her daughter in the morgue.

‘With the little bit of money Mum had managed to put by and left for me after her death, I bought this for me and a matching one for Daisy. I figured that if I couldn’t tell the
world we were connected, I could at least show it.’

‘But how did he get away with it?’ Archie breathed.

‘It was easy really,’ Vera shrugged. ‘We had to move after the fire anyway. So as soon as I was discharged, we moved from Whitechapel to Bethnal Green, where nobody knew us,
and Dad cobbled together some cock-and-bull story about how Daisy was a miracle baby and how Mum died in the fire shortly after having her. Why would you disbelieve it? I was so young it never
crossed anyone’s mind she could actually be mine.

‘When we moved into Tavern Street, he even invited the neighbours round, played the part of the grieving husband to perfection. “Daisy’s mother, God rest her soul, was a
wonderful woman. This little girl is all I have left of her,” he told them.

‘“Poor soul,” I heard them mutter as they left. “And his wife dying so soon after childbirth like that, a tragedy.”

Watching his charade, I felt such hatred and anger towards him, and myself for going along with it. To this day, I don’t think that anger has ever really left me.’

‘So when did you . . . ?’ Archie went to ask, but instead his voice trailed off.

‘Realize it was a mistake?’ she replied. ‘Almost immediately. But once it was decided, it was too late to go back. I only agreed as it meant at least being able to keep Daisy
near, but Frank just used it against me. He loved knowing the secret – it gave him the upper hand, and he never lost an opportunity to twist the knife. As Daisy grew up, he used it to drive a
wedge between us. He got a kick out of it, I suppose.’

‘Such cruelty,’ Archie breathed, shaking his head in disbelief.

‘But I can’t let him take all the blame, you know, Archie,’ she replied. ‘The older Daisy got, the more I tried to control her. All I could think was that if she knew I
was her mother, she’d respect me more, but she was a stubborn little thing.’

‘Wonder where she got that from?’ Archie smiled softly.

Vera shot him a wry look. ‘I was too eaten up with bitterness and regret, and I let that infect our relationship,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t give her the love and affection
she really needed. Too busy boiling my nets and whitening the doorstep to reach out and give her a cuddle. I’ve stayed in touch with Matron, you know. Every Sunday without fail, I’ve
gone up to visit her. It’s the only place where I’ve been able to feel like me. Madness, isn’t it?’ She trailed off. ‘I’m afraid I failed her, Archie.
Miserably.’

‘But don’t you see?’ Archie protested. ‘You were looking out for her, and you came through for her when she needed you most. When she had baby Hope, you supported her
like a real mother would. How many women round here would have turned her out on the street? She may not have had a mother in name, but she never wanted for the love of one.’

‘I suppose so,’ Vera replied. Suddenly, she felt so very, very tired. This war was savage. It had shattered her. Stripped her of everything . . . No, not quite everything.

Daisy’s last words came flying back to her.

‘She asked me to find Hope, you know.’

Vera looked deep into Archie’s eyes, searching to see if the ramifications of Daisy’s deathbed request had sunk in: that he had gleaned the full meaning of what was being asked of
him.

‘She wanted me to find her daughter, Archie,’ she repeated. ‘But I don’t know that I’m strong enough, or even that it’s possible, without your support, that
is . . .’

Vera waited with bated breath while Archie paced the bedroom. Finally, he stopped and turned to face her, the tiny gas lamp casting shadows on his face.

‘I’m an old man now, Vera – forty-five. Many would say too old to be a father to a newborn.’

‘I understand.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a lot to ask of you.’

‘But since when did I care what others thought?’ he replied.

Vera looked up in surprise. ‘You mean . . . ?’ She had never seen Archie look more determined.

Absolutely. I know it will be a tough road to travel, what with us being older parents, Hope’s colour, the question of her background . . . But hang it all, I don’t see why if we
marry immediately, we can’t at least try. I think we owe that much to Daisy at least.’

Vera felt her blood race and tears cloud her eyes. ‘Really, Archie? You’d put yourself through all that for me?’ she cried in disbelief. ‘After everything I’ve just
told you?’

‘Vera, I would move heaven and earth for you. Surely you must know that by now?’ he said despairingly. ‘I love you, and I would do anything to make you happy. I know your
father destroyed your trust in men, but I will never let you down. God’s honest truth. But just one thing I am adamant on, Vera,’ Archie added firmly. ‘We must contact Robert. I
know he agreed with the decision for Hope to be given away for adoption, but his feelings may change on hearing about Daisy’s death. He may even have family back in America who could raise
the little girl. Besides, he has a right to know. He struck me as a decent enough fella, and he clearly thought the world of your Daisy.’

Vera wiped her eyes and sat bolt upright on the bed. ‘Of course. You’re right, Archie. We must.’ She reached out for his hand and threaded her fingers through his. ‘Thank
you.’

Archie said nothing, just gently lifted Vera’s hand to his lips to kiss.

‘Oh, and, Archie, I will learn to trust you,’ she murmured.

‘Yes, you will,’ he said softly. ‘You can’t crumble now. I’m going to be right here by your side every step of the way, but your granddaughter is relying on
you.’

Hearing the word ‘granddaughter’ sounded so strange to Vera’s ears, but somewhere deep inside, it stirred an emotion. Archie was right. It was time to bring her granddaughter
home.

‘This certainly is an unusual situation, Mrs Gladstone,’ said the matron of the local authority orphanage. ‘We’ve never had a baby claimed in such a
manner before. Usually illegitimate children are absorbed into the extended family from birth, so as to make it as seamless as possible for all concerned.’ The matron checked the files laid
out before her. ‘Hope is three and a half months old now,’ she said. ‘And what of the baby’s father and his position in all this?’

Vera sat on the edge of her chair and gripped Archie’s hand tightly. From the moment she had followed the matron down the long, carbolic-scented corridor, her heart had been in her mouth.
That Hope, whom she had never even laid eyes on, should be so close was giving her palpitations.