The Silent Tide (52 page)

Emily

On Monday Emily paused on the way up the central staircase at Fortnum & Mason to take in the scene. It was Lorna who had suggested meeting for tea. Emily rarely had cause to come here, but she loved the dark wood fittings, the feel of old-fashioned luxury, the exquisite boxes of biscuits and sweets, the rich aroma of ground coffees and chocolate all around. Hanging down from the ceiling into the atrium was a mobile: hundreds of tiny lions and unicorns on dazzling threads. Emily looked up to see Lorna waving to her over the rail on the floor above and hurried up the stairs to meet her.

‘I haven’t been here for years,’ Lorna told her after they’d been shown to a table in the ice-cream bar. ‘It’s different now, of course, but still lovely. I’ve bought Mother some special tea. She’s always complaining that tea doesn’t taste the same as it used to. This is the one she used to like best. I expect she’ll still complain, you know.’

‘I expect she will!’ Emily agreed, laughing easily with Lorna. Isabel’s daughter seemed different these days, more lively, less diffident. Jacqueline might be diminishing, but Lorna was expanding into her space. She was dressed more smartly today, still a Liberty-print blouse but a tailored jacket and skirt with it, and prettier shoes. A triple string of pearls gleamed softly above her collarbone.

When the waitress returned, Emily asked for peppermint tea, but Lorna said, ‘Would it be awfully indulgent to have ice cream?’

‘Of course not!’ Emily was amused by her guilty expression. When the ice cream came, all covered in strawberry syrup and nuts, she enjoyed the sight of Lorna eating it like a small girl out on a treat.

‘It’s always been a weakness of mine,’ Lorna sighed and slid another spoonful into her mouth.

Emily was still wondering why she had been invited here, when Lorna laid down her spoon, checked her watch and leaned across the table confidingly.

‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve invited Lydia along. And there’s someone I’d like you to meet.’

‘Lydia. That would be lovely – I haven’t seen her for ages. But who . . . ?’

‘There’s something I need to tell you about first. Or show you, rather. Hang on, I don’t want to get it covered in ice cream.’ Lorna pushed her sundae dish away, and delved in her handbag. She brought out a package in a white envelope.

‘It’s the most extraordinary thing,’ Lorna confided. ‘I can’t really make it out.’

‘What is it?’ Emily asked, her gaze fixed on the envelope.

‘I need to explain. You know Granny’s old glory-hole, the room beyond the box room she used to keep locked?’

‘Yes.’ Emily remembered Isabel’s fascination with the room, and what she had found in it. ‘Is it still full of your grandmother’s clothes?’

Lorna shook her head. ‘After Daddy died, Mother got a vintage clothes expert in. The woman paid an awful lot for them – because of the good condition, she said. No, it’s something else. Recently Mother said she had found a few things of Isabel’s there she felt I should have. This necklace was one.’ She fingered the pearls.

‘They’re gorgeous.’ Emily was a little shocked that Jacqueline hadn’t even given her Isabel’s pearls before. It had taken the recent events to soften the old woman’s stance.

‘She also gave me this,’ Lorna said, passing over the envelope. ‘Look at the name on the front.’

Emily took it from her and stared hard at the handwriting, which was foreign and ornate. It was not easy to make out the words, apart from
Stone House
and at the bottom,
l’Angleterre.
The stamp, too, was French, but old, priced in francs instead of euros, though the date of postage had faded beyond legibility. The name on the front was harder to read: probably
Morton,
possibly
Madame.

‘Madame J. Morton,’ Emily guessed aloud. ‘Or it is an L?’

‘You don’t know either?’ Lorna said, and Emily saw her relief. ‘It was sent in nineteen eighty-five, soon after I got married, you’ll see when you look inside. Mother claims she opened it by accident. I . . . I wasn’t sure whether to believe her, but if you’re not sure either . . .’

‘It could be a J,’ Emily said, turning the envelope over. There was a return address on the flap, in Paris,
deuxième Arrondissement.
‘What’s in it?’

‘I’ll show you.’ Taking it back, Lorna drew out some papers and photographs and laid them on the table.

‘I don’t know what to make of it all,’ she said. ‘I wondered what you thought. Here’s the covering letter.’ She unfolded a fragile page. ‘It’s in French, of course, but Lydia knows a bit of French so we’ve worked out what it says. It’s from a Madame Eleanor Sorel.’ She slid the letter between them, and they pored over it together.

Lorna said, ‘We reckon it says, “These documents enclosed were found amongst the belongings of my friend Mademoiselle Vivienne Stern, who I am sad to relate died recently after a short illness. It is directed that they be sent to Mademoiselle Lorna Morton, who may comprehend their significance”.’

Emily nodded. The handwriting wasn’t very clear and her French not all that good, but Lorna’s translation seemed plausible.

Next, Lorna passed her a photograph. It was of two elegantly dressed women, past their youth, but only just, sitting at a table outside a café. They laughed as they posed for the camera. The colour had faded, but the smaller woman definitely looked familiar. Lorna picked out another of her, older this time, thin and ill-looking, standing arm-in-arm with a very French-looking man in a suit in front of a cathedral. She looked to see
Rome, 1976
scribbled on the back in an English hand. There was a postcard addressed to
Dear V
and signed
I
, extolling the virtues of the food in Sicily and referring to someone called ‘Raoul’, and finally an Order of Service dated 22 November 1976. It was for the funeral of ‘Isabel Lewis’.

‘Isabel,’ Emily whispered, hardly believing her eyes.
‘Isabel.’

‘I know,’ Lorna said, her eyes round and solemn. ‘Of course, the surname was her mother and Penelope’s family name.’

‘But Isabel died – I mean, she died in nineteen fifty-three!’

‘So we’ve always believed, but they never found a body, remember.’

‘No, but I still don’t understand.’

‘Nor do I, Emily.’

Emily looked at the envelope again. ‘Jacqueline – I can see how she might have opened this, thinking it was for her . . . But she didn’t show it to anyone?’

‘She says she didn’t even show it to Hugh. I don’t think she could cope with it. Didn’t want to stir everything up again. That’s what she says, anyway. Part of her has always refused to accept it. After she read it she put it all away and dismissed it from her mind.’

‘Oh my goodness! If Isabel was still alive, that would have meant . . .’ Emily stopped.

‘What?’

‘No, it’s tactless. Sorry.’

‘You mean that if my mother had still been alive, it would have made my father a bigamist and his and Jacqueline’s marriage invalid?’

‘Yes.’

‘Funnily enough, she didn’t spell that out to me.’ Lorna started packing the items back into the envelope. ‘We must remember that Jacqueline never felt that she was quite as loved by my father as Isabel was. Oh, she was valuable to him, of course, and he was immensely fond of her, relied on her utterly. I dread to think how he’d have coped if she’d died before he did. But a deep, passionate love? No, I think he always grieved for Isabel.’

Emily thought there might be some truth in this. Jacqueline had been the one he’d turned to when he’d lost the other women he’d loved: his pale first love, Anne, then his mother, then Isabel. Jacqueline had been his tower of strength. It had been a good marriage, but perhaps Jacqueline felt jealous of Isabel still. She remembered what Jacqueline had said about Hugh’s remorse after Isabel was believed dead. He wouldn’t have been the first man to have put the first wife whom he’d betrayed on a pedestal after he lost her. And now, extraordinarily, it seemed that she might not have died after all.

‘How can you find out more?’ she asked now.

‘I don’t know,’ Lorna replied. ‘I’m still getting used to the idea. The packet was sent twenty-seven years ago. Is there anyone left who’d know anything?’ She sighed then said, more animated, ‘I looked up Vivienne Stern on the internet. There’s lots about her. She was a very successful scientist. Based in Paris but worked a lot in America, too. That made me wonder, how would Isabel have earned her living?’

‘I’ll bet it was books.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised, you know,’ Lorna said and they smiled at one another.

Suddenly, something across the room caught Lorna’s attention. ‘Oh, they’re here!’ she cried, jumping up.

Emily turned to see Lydia’s neat figure coming towards them and behind her followed a willowy girl with long dark-red hair and a creamy complexion. Lorna greeted each of them with an enthusiastic hug.

‘Emily how lovely to see you,’ Lydia said, leaning to kiss her. 'Emily, may I introduce my granddaughter, Olivia?'

'Hello,' Olivia murmured, looking up shyly from under thick lashes. She was very lovely, a girl on the cusp of womanhood.

'Olivia's mother Cassie is my goddaughter,' Lorna explained eagerly.

'I know-you're the one who likes reading!' Emily cried, remembering Lorna buying the fantasy paperbacks.

'Yes, Mummy is always calling me a bookworm,' Olivia said, smiling.

'Shall we all sit down?' Lorna suggested.

After they'd ordered, Lorna told Lydia, 'I've been showing Emily the package from Paris.'

'What did you think of it, Emily?' Lydia asked in a serious tone.

"If it is the same Isabel as ours, it's absolutely extraordinary,' Emily replied. 'But what do you make of Jacqueline keeping it from you and Lorna all these years?'

'It's unforgivable,' Lydia growled, her face darkening. 'No, I'm sorry, Lorna, but it is.'

'It is, I suppose,' Lorna said. 'But I think she was-I don't know, frightened.'

'I can imagine the whole thing being overwhelming,' Emily said. She was touched by how forgiving Lorna was of her stepmother. 'Assuming in the first place that she understood the significance of the material.'

'Of course she would have,' Lydia said. 'Nothing would escape Jacqueline.'

Olivia glanced from one to the other, consternation in her big brown eyes. 'Who are you all talking about?' she asked her grandmother. Emily was finding it difficult to think of Lydia, so recently retired, being a grandmother.

'Oh, Isabel again, darling,' Lydia said, and Olivia nodded. She was clearly used to these conversations. A phone chimed in her handbag and she took it out and began texting while the grownups talked.

'Not even to mention it to Hugh,' Lydia grumbled. 'That woman is the limit.'

'She IS the limit,' Lorna said, 'but I think I understand her. And, I've thought about this a lot, Lydia-maybe my mother didn't want to be found?'

Lydia stared at Lorna for a moment in amazement then murmured, 'I hadn't considered that. You may be right.'

Emily thought Lorna was right, but didn't like to say anything to come between the two women, still grieving over the loss of Isabel all those years ago. Perhaps the mystery would never be solved. How could Isabel have escaped the flood, for a start? And what made her change her mind and not return to her family? There were still so many questions unanswered.

'We could go to Paris and look for her grave,' Lorna was telling Lydia now. 'I'd like to do that. I should be angry with her, you know, but for some reason I'm not. Perhaps it's because I feel I understand her. But we need to be prepared for the fact that we may never learn all the answers.'

'One day the two of you should write a book about it,' Olivia said brightly, putting away her phone.

'Maybe,' Lydia said gently. Ah, your ice cream's coming.'

Whilst Olivia ate ice cream and the others sipped tea, Lydia told Emily, 'I especially wanted you to meet Olivia, as she has something to ask.'

'Oh yes," Olivia laid down her spoon and licked her lips. 'It's to do with school. I'm in sixth form college now and we've been told to get work experience. I so much want to do something with books and reading and-'

'Would it be a real nuisance, Emily,' Lydia broke in, 'to take her for a week or two? Show her the ropes? She's very good with people.'

'I'll do anything,' Olivia cried, her eyes sparkling.

Emily, watching her, smiled and thought of the miracle of the thread that connected the nineteen year old Isabel and young Olivia now. She couldn't work out the family relationship easily, but Isabel being Penelope's daughter and Olivia, Lydia's granddaughter, they must be some sort of cousins, and there was something about Olivia's looks that reminded her of the black-and-white photographs of Isabel. Those large eyes, the intelligence, the eagerness.

'I'm sure we could sort out something,' she said, smiling at the girl. 'You'd have to do a lot of reading, mind.'

'That would be amazing,' Olivia whispered and Emily laughed at this lovely fresh enthusiasm.

That very evening, on the bus home from work, Emily's Blackberry plinked softly. Matthew's name came up on the screen. A text. She opened it, hardly daring to breathe.

Emily

They agreed to meet in the café of a bookshop in the Charing Cross Road the following evening, but although she’d been thinking about it all day, at the last moment Emily had to deal with a crisis at the office and consequently rushed into the shop fifteen minutes late, hoping for once that Matthew wasn’t on time.

But he was, sitting alone at a table, engrossed in a book, and for a moment her courage faltered. He was wearing glasses, which he never used to, nerdy black-framed ones that lent him a serious air, and his hair was shorter. Then he ran his hand across the nape of his neck in a familiar gesture, and in this and the rapt concentration as he read, as though the words played music in his mind, she knew he was her own dear Matthew and she was filled with longing. Just then he glanced round, and on seeing her stood up too quickly, snatching off his spectacles and almost knocking his book to the floor.