The rain will probably try and rob her mother’s hat of any shape, but she wants to put up a fight against the damp. She knows her mother must look her best, that they all need her to get this job. She overheard her mother and uncle discussing it. Her mother had ended up reassuring the big man as he shifted from foot to foot. She had said she knew he couldn’t do more for them, she was grateful for what he and the family had done. He mustn’t worry. She’d said she was happy to look for work, and if work meant she had to go away, so be it. They would manage.
After his visit, her mother was unusually quiet and had not even tried to swat at the boys when they came in singing. She just kept looking at them, saying very little.
That evening, the priest calls to talk to her mother about the boys, but she does not want to overhear that conversation. Nonetheless, sitting on the stairs with her sister, she can make out the shape of her mother’s whispers if not the precise words.
While her mother’s words are indistinct, the priest’s are clearer. But then he is a man who would never hear a pin drop.
‘It’s for the best. The nuns will look after them.’
Not wanting to hear more, she takes her sister to the park at the end of the road to feed the ducks.
They at least seem to like the rain.
Chapter 19
Emma
Cowslips & Buttercups
Sleep does not come easily, and she wakes again at 2.23 a.m. Giving up, she gets out of bed and pulls an old jumper over her pyjamas, then heads for the kitchen. She puts the kettle on and sits down on the flattened cushion of her kitchen chair before reopening her laptop. She clicks on the next link in her list of female crew.
And there she is.
A photograph.
The recognition is instantaneous.
Emma sits frozen, staring at the screen. She has the sense of looking down on herself– registering her own shock, her bemusement.
Where on earth does she know her from? She can’t place her exactly, but she cannot shake the feeling she has seen her before. She can’t put a name to what she feels, but she acknowledges it for what it is– more than just familiarity. It is a connection.
She gazes intently at the face before her. The woman seems to be, what– twenty-three? Twenty-four? Her hair is tucked up beneath a white cap. It is a black and white photograph– what colour was her hair? Brown? Or maybe auburn? It looks like one curl is about to escape.
Emma is aware of her eyes straining, as if by looking harder she will find the answers. She wants to turn to someone and say, ‘Look! Can you believe it?’
Emma reaches out and touches the face on the screen. ‘We’ve never met before, have we, but Iknowyou.’
She recalls theTitanicdocumentary and the formal tribute of lilies cast out into the Atlantic. She is not at all sure that this girl likes lilies. When she looks into her face and thinks of a rebellious curl escaping from her cap, it conjures up the delicate tangle of cowslips and buttercups. Perhaps she was a country girl at heart?
A sudden downpour makes Emma look up at the window. But now she is flushed, warmed– insulated against the rain. Why does she feel such a strong connection with this girl? Is this the connection she has been looking for?
‘But I don’t believe in things like this.’ She says this out loud to see if it helps.
The silence presses in on her and Emma closes her eyes. Her mind goes where it always does. She opens her eyes a fraction, the kitchen barely in focus. Her tiredness and an odd light-headedness blur the edges of her vision. She thinks of all the times Will sat on the chair by the Aga, mug in hand. She doesn’t want the forty-three-year-old Will, the husband who died in her arms– she thinks that would break her. She blurs her vision more and conjures up the younger man, makes him mid-thirties. Lean, almost skinny from all that exercise, but a nice face. An open, familiar face.
‘Can you believe it?’ she whispers.
He looks up from the article he is reading on his phone. ‘Believe what?’
She almost answers–believe in you– but forces herself to frame a new question. ‘Look, this face. I know it from somewhere.’
Will doesn’t move from where she has placed him, but she knows he sees what she sees. ‘Where d’you know her from?’
She almost laughs. Wants to say, ‘Well, if I knew that I wouldn’t be having an imaginary conversation with my dead husband.’
When he raises eyebrows at her, quizzical, grinning, she does say this.
Will’s laugh is immediate, a mix between a bark and a chortle.
