‘No, lad .?.?. It’s the baby .?.?. sh-she’s gone,’ his mother informed him as tears ran in rivers down her cheeks.
Bertie looked stricken, but pulling himself together he snatched up his coat and within seconds the front door banged behind him as he raced off to fetch the doctor, praying that his mother was wrong with every step he took.
Thankfully the doctor was at breakfast when Bertie appeared breathless on his doorstep and he went back with him immediately to the house overlooking the sea.
‘I’m so very sorry,’ he said eventually when he’d examined the child. ‘To be honest with you, her heart being so bad, I did fear this.’
Abi was sitting as if she had been turned to stone. She hadn’t shed so much as a single tear and he wrote out a prescription for Bertie to take to the apothecary. ‘It’s something to help her,’ he explained. ‘She’s clearly in shock. And perhaps while you’re out you might ask the undertaker to call?’
‘Of course.’ Bertie himself was shaking uncontrollably as he tried to take it in and the happy future he had planned for them all disappeared like mist in the morning.
The rest of the morning passed in a blur. Soon after the doctor had left, the undertaker arrived to take Grace’s tiny body to the chapel of rest and to organise her funeral. It was decided that she would be buried in the pretty little graveyard of the church that Mrs M and Bertie attended and the service would take place in three days’ time. Then he too was gone and still Abi sat staring from the window, seemingly in a place where no one could reach her, dry-eyed and silent.
Throughout the day either Bertie or Mrs M were with her constantly but she didn’t even seem to know they were there.
‘She needs to cry,’ Mrs M whispered to her son worriedly. ‘It doesn’t do any good at all to bottle everything up like that.’ She had plied her with endless cups of tea and coffee and tasty titbits to try to get her to eat and drink but everything went back to the kitchen untouched, and as darkness fell the kindly woman was at a loss as to know what to do.
‘Perhaps we should give her some space?’ Bertie suggested, his eyes tight on the girl he loved as he gripped her hand.
His mother nodded and after planting a gentle kiss on Abi’s cheek and telling her that they would be there if she needed them, they quietly left the room and dejectedly made their way down to the kitchen. They both knew there would be no point in going to bed, neither of them would sleep, so Mrs M made yet another large pot of tea, and they sat miserably at the kitchen table.
It was well after midnight when Mrs M suddenly looked up and frowned. ‘Did you hear something?’ She cocked her ear. ‘I thought I heard the front door shut just then.’
Bertie shrugged, his eyes gritty from lack of sleep and red from weeping. ‘No, I didn’t, but I think I’ll just go up and check on Abi again.’ He had been up and down the stairs a dozen times at least, but each time he had found her in the same position, staring from the window.
Wearily he mounted the steps once more and quietly opened Abi’s door, and then his heart skipped a beat. She wasn’t there.
He flew back to the kitchen. ‘She isn’t in her room. It must have been her you heard going through the front door, but where would she go at this time in the morning?’ Without even waiting for an answer, he rushed along the hall and through the front door, pausing on the step to look up and down the street but there was no sign of her. And then as he looked ahead to the beach, he glimpsed someone dressed in white heading towards the sea. Without stopping to think he started to run and sure enough he saw a figure knee-deep in the waves that were crashing on the shore.
‘Abi!STOP!’ His heart was pounding now but his steps didn’t slow and he ran as if his life depended on it, but by the time he reached the sea, the water was past Abi’s waist and her nightgown was floating about her.
He plunged in, oblivious to the cold water that took his breath away and somehow a few seconds later he managed to grab her.
‘Getoffme! I want to be with my baby!’ She began to pound at him with her fists and they fell beneath the waves, but he dragged her back up to the surface, coughing and spluttering as she continued to fight him.
Slowly and painfully, he hauled her back to the damp sand where she collapsed in a heap.
‘You should have let me die,’ she shouted. ‘It’s all my fault Grace is dead. I don’t deserve to live!’
Appalled, Bertie stared at her. ‘What do you mean – it’s your fault?’
As she looked up at him he saw the raw pain in her eyes and his heart broke afresh for her. ‘Don’t you understand? She was conceived in sin, a bastard! And I didn’t want her. I used to wish I could have a miscarriage. I even considered getting rid of her at one stage but I was too much of a coward to go through with it. That’s why God has taken her, because I’m wicked. I didn’t deserve to have her!’
‘Ah, but all that changed when you saw her, didn’t it?’ She was shivering uncontrollably now and he drew her into his arms and gentled the wet hair from her face. ‘No mother could have loved her child more than you loved her. God isn’t punishing you; she had a bad heart, Abi. We knew from the start but we were praying for a miracle.’
She blinked up at him as if she could hardly take in what he was saying and suddenly she began to cry, great gulping sobs that shook her slight frame.
‘That’s it, cry it all out,’ he soothed as she sobbed against his chest. ‘And then we’ll get you home and into some dry clothes before you catch cold.’
Three days later Grace was laid to rest. Only Mrs M, Bertie and Abi attended the short but sweet service and when they turned to leave the tiny grave Abi left a piece of her heart there with her little daughter. She had had her for such a very brief time but she knew that she would never forget her. They went back to the house where Abi stood once again silently staring from the window.
‘You know .?.?. what I asked you a while ago still stands,’ Bertie told her as he stood close behind her. ‘I love you, Abi, and I would be honoured if you would agree to become my wife.’
She turned to face him and her hand rose to stroke his cheek gently. ‘You’re a good man, Bertie,’ she said softly. ‘And I just might take you up on that offer one day. But first there are things I have to do.’
When he raised a questioning eyebrow she went on. ‘I realise now that I’ve been a very selfish person. I ran away to London when my father left us with no thought of what would become of my mother and then I fell in love with Hugo. All I cared about was wearing pretty gowns and getting what I wanted, doing what I wanted. When I got into trouble my aunt saved the day when she sent me here to you and your mother. But my poor mother doesn’t even know that for a very brief time she had a little granddaughter.’
‘But surely she doesn’t need to know?’
