Read The Secrets We Left Behind Online
Authors: Susan Elliot Wright
The Secrets We Left Behind (35 page)
Finally, halfway through September, the case was dropped. Jen said they’d decided it ‘wasn’t in the public interest’ to prosecute, given that the circumstances were
exceptional, and that so many years had passed during which I’d been ‘a good citizen and to all intents and purposes, an exemplary mother’. Jen has been great. Right from the
start she was cautiously optimistic, partly because I’d been so young when it all happened, but also because she felt that I may well have saved Hannah from a failing care system. I wish that
was more how Hannah saw it.
When Jen told me the charges had been dropped, it barely registered. I felt so tired that I hardly had the energy to thank her. Odd, isn’t it? Before all this came to light, I didn’t
seem to have a minute to myself, what with work, shopping and cooking for Duncan and myself, walking Monty twice a day, helping Hannah with Toby; now I have so little to do and yet I’m
shattered most of the time.
I hated Scott when he showed up last Christmas. Over these last few months, I’ve often wondered what my life would be like now if he’d stayed in New Zealand and never made contact.
Would I have told the truth at some point anyway? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Hannah would have shamed me into it; I’ve thought a lot about how forcefully she believes in Toby’s right to
know the truth about how he came to be born. Or maybe I wouldn’t ever have owned up; maybe I’d have remained a selfish coward for the rest of my life. At least I’d still have my
daughter. I don’t hate Scott any more, and it’s a shame he was never able to visit Eve’s grave because he’d have found some peace in knowing where she was, I think.
*
We tried to make a go of it after we left Hastings, Scott and I. We ended up in south-east London, living above Freeman, Hardy and Willis in Catford
.
Scott managed to get
some evening shifts at the pub round the corner and I worked days in the shop downstairs, trudging back up three flights at the end of the day, exhausted and smelling of shoes. I think I always
knew it was never going to work long-term. I could never take Eve’s place in his eyes; we were a false family. But we struggled on for eight months, until the day of the newspaper report.
Body Found in Seaside House.
I was in the launderette at the time, waiting for the dryer cycle to finish and thinking about how that clean, soapy smell reminded me of wash days when I was little and my mum would have the
old twin-tub bubbling away in the corner. Then I flicked through the paper and I saw the headline at the bottom of page 5. My insides contracted and I went hot and cold at the same time, as though
I was going to faint. Sometimes, even now, I still get that feeling when I smell that soapy, laundry smell. I remember clearly the rising sense of anger I felt when I read the report. I was angry
that it was on page 5 – this was Eve they were talking about, not some lonely old tramp who nobody cared about; it should have been on the front page. There weren’t many details, just
that the body was female, five foot four, and aged between twenty and thirty years. That was it. There would be a postmortem the following week and anyone with any information should get in
touch.
I hated that they’d said the house was derelict; it wasn’t derelict, just a bit run-down. It had been our home, a proper, comfortable, loving home. It turned out that the landlord,
who’d lived in Sweden, had died and left the house to his nephew. The nephew had come to England to have a look at what he’d inherited and had found Eve where we’d left her eight
months earlier. There was nothing in the paper about Hannah at that point.
Scott walked out that same night. He couldn’t handle it any more, he told me, partly because he feared the knock on the door at any moment, and partly because he couldn’t bear the
fact that I’d taken her name. At the time, I thought it was the obvious, most sensible thing to do, but he said he would never, ever be able to call me Eve, and it would be best if we never
made contact again. I reluctantly agreed. The funny thing was, although I thought I’d miss him, once he’d actually left I didn’t miss him at all. I had Hannah, and I realised
that, now Eve was gone, she was all I wanted.
The missing-baby stories hit the papers a week or so later. There were a few more details about Eve, but not many. Dental records hadn’t been any use – I remember her telling me she
hadn’t been to a dentist since she was about six. She had lovely teeth, incredibly healthy, and Hannah has inherited that from her, I’m happy to say. Hannah still only has one filling,
whereas I had a mouthful of mercury by the age of twelve.
There were repeated appeals for information, but after a terrifying month or so, other events dominated the news; the story gradually faded into the background and I was able to get on with life
without constantly looking over my shoulder.
Over the years since then, I have thought of myself so surely and completely as Hannah’s mother that in moments of half-consciousness, moments between dreams and waking, I almost fancy I
could describe the sensation of giving birth to her. I heard her heartbeat and felt her movements while she was still inside Eve; I watched her enter this world and I touched her, talked to her
before she even took a breath; I helped her to breathe. I even, God forgive me, put her to my empty breast that first day of her life.
I love her as Eve loved her, and she could not be more fully mine.
I go out to post the letter as soon as I’ve showered and dressed, but before I have breakfast. I prefer to make a special trip. After my fingers release their grip on the
envelope and I hear the satisfying ‘thwack’ as it lands on top of the other letters in the post box, I wonder, as I do every time, if she’ll read this one. At least they
haven’t come back with ‘Return to sender’ scrawled over the envelope. Maybe she puts them straight in the bin, but I hold on to the fact that she hasn’t asked me to stop
writing. The letters were Estelle’s idea. She’s been wonderful, Estelle has. She’s constantly reassuring me, telling me not to give up hope. Hannah will come round eventually, she
says, and so will Duncan. ‘Because, deep down, they love you very much, you see. You must just allow them a little time to adjust.’
We’ve met for coffee a few times now, Duncan and I, although he’s still living at his brother’s. We’ve talked a little more in the last couple of months and we’ve a
long way to go yet, but our meetings last a bit longer each time. Last Sunday, we spent the whole morning in the coffee shop like we used to. The only difference is that we used to sit in
companionable silence, occasionally reading bits out of the paper to each other; but this time we spent the morning engaged in awkward, slightly anxious conversation. Hannah is much better now, he
assured me, and she’s coping really well with Toby. But she’s not ready to see me yet. He looked at me. ‘The thing is— ’ I saw the slight verbal stumble as he stopped
himself from calling me Eve. ‘The thing is, she understands why you did what you did – everyone does; Christ, you weren’t even seventeen years old. But what she can’t get
over is the fact that you lied about it for so long, and especially that you lied to
us.’
He looked down at the untouched Danish pastry on his plate. ‘And I don’t know what
I can say to her to change her mind, because to be honest, that’s what I’ve struggled with most myself.’ He sighed deeply and rested his chin in his hand, his eyes still cast
down.
‘Does she read my letters, do you think?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I’d like to be able to tell you that she does, but it’s something I can’t ask her.’ He looked at me. ‘You understand, don’t
you?’
I nodded. Duncan and Hannah have become even closer as a result of all this, which makes me as near to happy as I can possibly be.
Estelle says she thinks Hannah is softening; apparently she listens now when Estelle talks about me, and they even had a conversation about my plan to take an Open University course. I’m
not sure what in yet, but I have become aware quite suddenly of how huge the past is, and how tiny the future. Estelle laughs at me, but not unkindly. She says I’m far too young to be
thinking that way.
I don’t know what I’d have done without Estelle these past six months. Obviously Duncan had to explain why he’d moved in with John, and at first, he just told her that
we’d split up and he couldn’t say why. She was devastated, apparently, but she kept on at Duncan to tell her what had happened. He was worried about what the shock of it all might do to
her, but she convinced him that not knowing was worse and that it was making her ill, so in the end, he told her. She
was
shocked, she told me afterwards, but, as she’d made clear to
Duncan, you got rather used to shocks by the time you reached her age, and as far as she was concerned, there was no point in making more of a drama out of it than it already was.
Once I knew he’d told her, I wrote her a letter, quite a long one, as it turned out, because as I started to write, I realised I’d been longing to talk about Eve for years. I told
Estelle about how kind Eve had been to me and about how much I’d loved her. I found myself explaining what had happened to her family, and then I wrote about the lovely things she used to
make, what she looked like, the unusual colour of her eyes and the gypsy-style clothes she used to wear. I found myself spilling out everything I remembered about Eve, as if by conjuring up all
these details I was trying to bring her back; to make her live again.
I finished by trying to explain why I persuaded Scott that we should take Hannah and flee, how I was terrified I’d never see her again, and that although I knew now that things probably
wouldn’t have been as bad for us as I thought they’d be, there was no way of knowing that at the time. I added a PS asking Estelle to forgive my outpouring and saying that I hoped I
could still visit her, no matter what happened between Duncan and me.
She rang me the very next day. Of course I could still visit; in fact, would I like to come the following afternoon? ‘And, darling,’ she said in a low voice, ‘I have to ask,
although it’s a little delicate. . . what should I call you now? Would you prefer we stick with Eve or are you going back to Joanna?’
*
When Estelle opened the door the next day, the first thing she did was to put her arms around me. How was I coping, she wanted to know? Were the police treating me kindly?
Duncan is her son, so of course she was upset that he was upset, but she has never judged me. ‘Nobody has the right to judge,’ she told me as we sat drinking tea in her sitting room
with the late spring sunshine flooding in through the picture window. ‘No one can possibly know what they would have done in a similar situation, you see. And after all’s said and done,
you lost your dearest friend, didn’t you? It’s clear from your letter that you missed her terribly; heavens, you still do, and all these years you’ve had no one to talk to about
it.’ At which point I nodded and then crumpled, and Estelle handed me tissues and parted my hand while I cried.
The odd thing was, now everything was out, the person I most wanted to talk to about Eve was Hannah. ‘Well then,’ Estelle suggested, ‘why don’t you write to her? Not by
way of explanation – from what Duncan has told me, you’ve already explained very fully – and I think you were so brave to do so.’ She smiled and laid her hand on my arm.
‘But if you’re certain that you would like her to know more about . . . good Lord, I don’t know how to refer to . . . your friend—’
‘It’s okay, you can say
her mother;
or just
Eve
.’
‘Eve.’ She nodded, looking a little uncomfortable. ‘I shall try not to get confused, but you must forgive me if I make a slip.’
I’d told her to call me Jo from now on, but she’d known me as Eve for such a long time it was clearly going to be difficult.
‘Now, where were we? Ah yes, writing to Hannah. I’m sure she would be most grateful for any little detail you can tell her about her . . . her mother. And you see, you can make clear
to her at the start that no reply is expected.’ At this, she looked over the top of her glasses at me in that slightly stern way she has, as if to underline what she’d just said.
I nodded. ‘That’s a good idea. If she knows I don’t expect an answer, she can read what I’ve written without feeling pressurised.’
I wrote the first letter that very evening. I didn’t want to scare her so I kept it brief:
My darling Hannah
You do not need to reply to this, although of course I hope you will read it. I want to tell you some of the things I remember about your mother. I think you’ll
be interested in her, and especially in the things you and she have in common. It was Grandma who suggested I write it all down, and I thought that was a good idea, so I’ve decided to
try and do a letter each week. You may not feel ready to read them now, but at least you’ll be able to keep them so you have them for the future. More to follow!
All my love always,
Mum
I haven’t said this to Estelle, but although I truly don’t want Hannah to feel pressurised, I find myself constantly checking my texts and emails, constantly waiting
for the post. I can’t let myself even consider the possibility that this silence will last for ever, so I tell myself that she will read my letters, that there will be a reply; one day.
My darling Hannah
I wanted to tell you how proud your mother would be of you. You’re like her in many ways. Like you, your mother felt that there were many non-conventional ways
in which we could heal ourselves and others. Back then, we didn’t know much about acupuncture and reflexology, but these are exactly the sort of things your mother was interested in,
and she would have approved very much of what you and Marcus do.
I know the two of you are keen on aromatherapy, too. Well, I think you get that from your mother. We didn’t call it that in those days, but she believed that
certain scents had powerful effects, sometimes as a physical cure – oil of cloves dabbed onto an aching tooth; a eucalyptus inhalation for a cold; lavender oil for burns. And sometimes,
she’d use a scent to lift your mood. If she noticed I was feeling sad – my mum had died quite recently, remember – I’d go into my room to find she’d sprinkled my
bedclothes with rose water. I don’t know whether it was actually the scent of roses or whether it was her thoughtfulness, but I always felt better afterwards. Once, when she was
pregnant with you, she decided to try and make her own rose water. She sent Scott and me out in the middle of the night to nick roses from the neighbours – she said she was fed up with
seeing all the rose petals on the ground going to waste. Anyway, God knows how we didn’t get caught, because all the rose bushes were in people’s back gardens, so we had to climb
over fences to get to them. We came back covered in scratches with a carrier bag full of rose heads, which Eve then tried to turn into rose water. Somehow, she ended up with six bottles of
something that smelled like it had come from a drain. She was cross with herself at first – it was unusual for her to get things wrong – but then she saw the funny side.
With all my love,
Mum
Dearest Hannah
I’ve remembered another thing you and your mother have in common. It’s the way you turn the pages down to mark your place in the book you’re reading.
I used to get told off for doing that at school, but Eve said she liked to see books with turned-down pages, or even with written notes in the margins; she said it showed that the reader had
loved the story and the characters, rather than caring too much about the actual book. I remember one time, your mother was reading Wuthering Heights. She’d read it before, but I
hadn’t, and she was raving about it. It was one of her favourite books, I think, that and Jane Eyre. Anyway, I asked her if I could read it when she’d finished, and she just
looked at me, said, ‘Yes,’ then tore her copy in two and handed me the first half. She said it would be better if I started reading it straight away then we could chat about it
while we were both reading it. It was only a battered copy she’d bought at a jumble sale for 5p, but what she did still shocked me. She told me off for being shocked –
‘Books are only things,’ she’d say. ‘It’s what they make you feel that’s important.’
You liked Wuthering Heights too, didn’t you? Do you remember that copy you had when you did it for GCSE? You kept dropping it in the bath and drying it out on
the radiator, and in the end, it was almost twice the thickness it should have been. But you didn’t want another copy, you said you liked the water stains!
You know, there’s something about Catherine Earnshaw that is very much like you, and like your mother. I’m not talking about the selfish, spoilt side of
Catherine’s character, but the way she loves the outdoors, the fresh air and the wild, open moors. You’ve always been the same, ever since you were little. And it’s a bit
like how Eve used to feel about the sea. Never happier than when she was in it or near to it.
My love always,
Mum
My dearest Hannah
I know I’ve already told you what a good, kind person your mother was, but I thought you might like to know about a rather lovely gift she once made for me. I
think I told you how, when I first arrived in London from Newquay just after my mum died, I spent a few nights in a hostel and another girl who was staying there stole a cameo brooch that had
belonged to my mother? Well, I told Eve about that, and she knew how upset I was to have lost the brooch. Anyway, she obviously remembered it, because not long before you were born, she told
me she had a present for me – an advance ‘thank you for helping me with the baby present’ she called it.
It was a pendant, a cameo she’d made herself out of shell fragments. She’d used dark blue razor shells for the background and white, cream and pinkish
shells for the woman’s head. It looked great, but it wasn’t so much how it looked that made such an impression on me, it was the amount of work she’d put in. The thought
that she would spend so much of her own time, would go to so much trouble for me, well, it just really made me feel special. I wish I could have done something similar for Eve. There were
only three and a half years between us, but it made a difference. I took a lot of things for granted and it was only much later that it occurred to me that, if Eve’s little gestures had
meant so much to me, then a similar gesture from me would have meant a great deal to Eve. But by the time that very simple truth had dawned on me, it was too late.
I’m so sorry that I don’t still have the pendant to pass on to you, but sadly, it was one of the things I couldn’t find when your father and I left
the house.
With my deepest love,
Mum
Darling Hannah
Briefly, I enclose the only items I have that belonged to your mother. I apologise for not sending these before, but it was only as I wrote the last letter that I
remembered these things and where I’d hidden them. In my last letter, I told you about the shell cameo your mother made for me; she was always an artistic person. Not exceptionally
talented, but extremely competent and fairly committed. She’d always been creative apparently, and when she was about ten years old, not long before her mum died, she made a collage out
of postage stamps and sent it to Blue Peter. It was a cameo, oddly enough: a woman’s head in pinks and creams on a darker background. They loved it and sent her a Blue Peter badge
– this was a much-coveted item in those days! She kept it in a crocheted bag along with a few photos of when she was much younger – one with some schoolfriends, one of a cat I
assume she’d owned at some point, and one of her with both her parents – your grandparents. I enclose these and hope you’ll be pleased to have them as another small
connection to your mother.
I left your mother with a connection to you, too. I’ve been trying to decide whether to tell you this and I’m still not sure whether it’s appropriate
or not, but anyway: Just before your father and I left the house we each said goodbye to Eve, and I cut a tiny lock of your hair, which I placed on her chest. I wanted her to have something
of you.
With love,
Mum