‘They’re brilliant, aren’t they?’ Ethan said, looking at her with big sad eyes.
‘I’ve never seen them before,’ she whispered.
Her sister had perfectly captured the essence of her. Even at the time in their lives when they had been constantly bickering, these drawings revealed that deep down, Orla had seen her. Emer was curled like a cat on the beanbag, in the manner in which she’d always slept, but it was the studies of her looking out of the window which were so telling. Her expression one of a girl who never dared to dream.
That was why she’d chosen nursing. It had been safe, and she’d loved her training in the Mater Hospital in Dublin. Really had believed she was going to stay in Ireland forever. Her mam had always said she was a little homebody. But when their mam passed away, Orla had gone to teach English in Croatia and her dad had started seeing Sharon, Emer had felt completely at sea. She was still single, having never managed a proper relationship with anyone.
When Orla met Ethan crewing yachts along the coast of Croatia and curtailed her European trip to live with him in Boston, for the first time, Emer considered leaving Ireland despite the fact she was still at nursing college. Their mam had been born in New York to Irish parents, who’d moved back to Dublin soon after, but this meant both sisters had been able to get American passports before they were eighteen.
‘It’s a waste not to take advantage of it,’ Orla persuaded her. ‘After you finish your nursing degree, you can come for a month or two. Go home if you hate it.’
After graduating, Emer had got a job at the Mater Hospital in Dublin, worked there for a couple of years. But she’d missed Orla badly, and in the end had gone out to join her. She’d only been planning to work at Mass Gen for two or three years. Return to Ireland and pick up where she’d left off at the Mater. But then Orla got sick and Emer wanted to support her. She stayed through all the rounds of chemotherapy, and celebrated with Orla when she went into remission. They planned a trip to Mexico together for the November. But in August, Orla started feeling sick again. The cancer was back. This time it had spread to her lymph nodes. It was everywhere. In Emer’s mind, her sister’s cancer had been a black cloud which had never gone away, billowing toxic in Orla’s body.
It was also during August, at the worst time of her life, that Emer had first met Lars.
Had he been the one? As Emer continued to type, listening to Susannah read out Kate’s letters, she became immersed in the romantic aspirations of Susannah’s younger sister. Kate clearly believed in the one. Matthew was her true love, as she kept telling Susannah. But despite saying nothing to her, Emer could detect a tone in Susannah’s voice whenever Matthew was mentioned in one of Kate’s letters. It was clear Susannah had not liked Matthew. Did she blame him for her sister’s early death? What had happened to them?
15
Susannah
November 6th, 1958
Harvard, Cambridge
Dearest Katie,
Sorry I’ve missed our weekly letter exchange for two weeks. Back home on our island, I was always trying to make time go faster. How many long, boring walks did I take up and down Amherst Hill, staring out to sea and waiting for my life to start? Well, it has started at last and it’s going at such a speed.
You asked about the Whittard household in your last letter. Every day is busy in this family, but I am very happy in my little room in the eaves of their very big house. Katie, it’s an absolute mansion with such a big garden you can’t see the end of it! They are good people. Professor Whittard can be a little aloof, but he is after all a very clever man, and mostly his head is in all his theories and important calculations. Really, I can’t imagine. You know I am an historian and science has always confused me somewhat. The boys are boisterous, of course. Nathan is eight, and Joshua ten years old, but they are good boys and in the main do what they are told. They both love books and stories and I am enjoying reading them all our old classics at bedtime. Their favourite is The Call of the Wild. I was a little worried the story would be too adult for them, but the boys loved it. The idea of the story being told from the point of view of a dog really appealed to them. When I read it again, I was struck how the story mirrors all the research I have begun on European witch trials. Like Buck, the dog in The Call of the Wild, the women accused of witchcraft were those who didn’t fit in. They wanted to run with the wolves, Katie. But society (the other dogs) wished to destroy them.
My lecturer is from Norway and she’s a woman too! Her name is Hanna Anberg, and I think when I am her age I would like to be just like her. She wears these fabulous Norwegian sweaters with brightly coloured patterns on them. Oh, you would love them, Katie. I keep meaning to build up the courage to ask her what the patterns are called and where I might get one for you. Dr Anberg has studied all over the world. Norway, of course, but also she has studied at Oxford in England, and written a paper on Matthew Hopkins, who was a terrible witch-hunter at the time of the English Civil War. She also lived in Florence in Italy to research witch persecutions, in Munich in Germany, and in Edinburgh in Scotland. She’s a sort of witch
