‘No, of course not.’
‘I think you should.’
‘I think you should mind your own beeswax,’ I said only half-joking. Val made a face at me.
‘This whole thing’s about not leaving it too late to say the things that matter,’ she pointed out. ‘And here’s you, doing exactly that.’
I scowled at her, knowing she was right.
‘What do you know so far?’ Joyce said, clearly wanting us to stop bickering. ‘Start from the beginning.’
I settled back in my chair. ‘Elsie was a nurse here, before the war and then through the Blitz. But she disappears from records, around the time of the bomb that hit this building.’
‘She wasn’t killed in the bomb?’ Mr Yin frowned.
I shook my head. ‘Her employment record says she left the hospital in 1941 and we couldn’t find a death certificate.’
‘Was the building badly damaged?’
‘Part of it. Where the new wing is now. Lots of the patients were moved to other hospitals nearby and many of the staff went too.’ I took a breath. ‘And that’s when Elsie must have left.’
‘But you don’t know where she went?’
I shook my head.
‘Was she reported missing?’ Joyce asked.
‘No, not as far as I know. But I don’t think she had much family.’ I bit my lip. ‘She had a brother who died in the war.’
‘And what about her chap? The one who saved the seagull?’ Val leaned forward. ‘What have you found out about him?’
‘Bits and bobs,’ I said. I filled them in on Harry and how he’d gone to Ireland at the end of the war. For some reason I didn’t mention the odd writing in the back of the book. The messages saying “kill me” and the sad note begging “Mammy” not to cry. I felt like I would be betraying Elsie by sharing those, though I didn’t really know why.
‘Why Ireland?’ Val said, jolting me out of my thoughts.
I shrugged. ‘We wondered if Elsie had gone there during the Blitz and he’d gone to be with her at the end of the war.’ I screwed my nose up. ‘Could she have travelled anywhere though, in that time?’
‘Ireland was neutral in the war,’ Val said. ‘I’m not sure how easy it would have been to get there though.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ I was a bit ashamed of how little I had known about the war. ‘Anyway, Finn was going to look Harry up on some Irish genealogy sites. See if he could find his death certificate.’
‘You could look him up.’
‘I don’t know how.’
Joyce gave me a look that suggested she was terribly disappointed in me. ‘Have you never watchedWho Do You Think You Are?on the television?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve never really been interested in history before now.’
She snorted. ‘It’s all online. Where’s your phone? Give it here.’
Obediently I handed it over and she took it then gave it back to me straightaway. ‘It’s far too fiddly for me, you do it. Search for Irish death certificates.’
I typed it in the search bar. ‘There are a few sites,’ I said, showing the others.
‘Just pick the top one,’ Val said impatiently.
I did as I was told. ‘I have to make an account.’
