Half a mile later, Harry pulled the van off the main road and along a narrow bumpy track that climbed up the slopes of DoddWood. The brooding, muscular flank of Mount Skiddaw loomed over them. It was so unspoilt, it was like stepping back in time. Joyce half expected to see Beatrix Potter striding past her in old clogs and a shawl, stick in hand. She recalled that the reclusive writer had been drawn to this land to recover from the grief of losing her fiancé.
‘This place is in the middle of nowhere,’ Harry grumbled, changing gear and coaxing the old travelling library up the potholed lane. Finally, he pulled into a small clearing in the woods and Joyce inhaled. Sitting in a puddle of early evening light sat a fairy-tale cottage.
Rose Cottage was a small workers’ cottage with a slate roof and ivy-smothered walls. A crooked red gate led directly out of the garden and up a bluebell-lined path into the woods beyond. Pale pink roses cascaded over the cottage’s front door and tiny windows.
They got out of the library van and stretched, then listened to the soft calling of a cuckoo in the woods beyond.
‘Hear that?’ said Harry. ‘Either a message from the spirit world, or a sign of new life, depending on who you believe.’
Joyce clutched Dorotha’s notebook in one hand, and Harry’s hand in the other. She realised in that moment how incredibly nervous she was, but there was no turning back now.
The front door opened. Oscar appeared on the doorstep.
‘Welcome to Rose Cottage,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming all this way. Do come in.’
26
Dorotha
Lake Bassenthwaite, spring 1975
Dorotha thought her heart was about to burst through the paper walls of her chest. She wondered whether she should ask Gabriele to help her out of her wheelchair and onto the chintz settee, but it was too late now, for Joyce was walking in and letting her eyes adjust to the watery-green light in the living room.
Joyce. Her dear Joyce was actually here!
The ivy-smothered windows kept out natural light, so an old oil lamp, a little like the one’d they’d had in the ghetto, sputtered out a thin flame.
Dorotha had waited thirty years for this moment; running and then hiding in the comforting embrace of this wild land to battle her demons.
As Joyce walked in, Dorotha saw her take in the wheelchair and the tray next to the settee covered in pills and bottles. A thousand questions flew into the space between them as Joyce paused, disbelief etched on her face. And then she ran towards Dorotha, collapsing to her knees and moaning.
‘Dorotha . . . Dorotha, it’s you.’
She clasped her face in her trembling hands. ‘Is it really you?’
Dorotha could only nod, speechless. Joyce’s hair – once the colour of lemons and sunshine – was faded silver, but the hesitant, gentle voice hadn’t changed, and she still smelt of lavender talc and old books.
Joyce leaned forwards, past the arms of her wheelchair, and hugged Dorotha so fiercely it knocked the breath from her body. She had feared recrimination, anger, maybe even a slap, but all she felt in that embrace was pure, unconditional love, and that was more demolishing than any blow.
Oscar coughed. ‘Dorotha, would you like Gabriele and me to stay or leave?’ For the first time, Dorotha became aware of the room. Joyce’s companion, her husband Dorotha supposed, looked to her as well.
‘I think, if it’s all right by you, Joyce, you could all stay? Oscar, you can help fill in some gaps.’
Joyce nodded, stupefied as she slumped into the nearest sofa to Dorotha.
‘I’ll make us some tea,’ Gabriele said. ‘Please, let me take your coat, and won’t you sit down,’ she said to Joyce’s husband.
Harry sat down protectively next to Joyce, placing a hand on her knee.
‘Thanks,bubbeleh,’ Oscar said, patting Gabriele lovingly on the arm as she passed.
Joyce stared at Gabriele as she left, vaguely seeming to recognise her, before turning back to Dorotha.
‘How?’ Joyce asked, bewildered. ‘Your name was on the transport list to Auschwitz-Birkenau. We... we all thought you were dead.’ She stumbled on the words, all the while staring at Dorotha like she was a ghost. Which, actually, in many ways, Dorotha was.
‘I never went to Auschwitz,’ Dorotha admitted. The name felt like poison on her lips. ‘I swapped identities with my dear friend, Ruth Mordkowicz. She’d been chosen to stay behind in the clear-up squad. I suggested we trade places so she could stay with her mother, Rebecca. There’s not been a single day in the last thirty-one years that I haven’t regretted that decision.’
‘But why?’ Joyce gasped. ‘If you hadn’t, then surely Gabriele would’ve died? I assume that lovely young woman fetching the tea is the same Gabriele you wrote about in your diary.’
