She wheeled her up to one of the remaining great stone arches and watched as Constance leaned forward in the chair, resting her hand on the fine stone masonry for a moment. Her lips were moving as though she were speaking to someone, and Isabel thought she heard her say she was sorry but she couldn’t be sure. They certainly didn’t build ‘em like that anymore, she mused marvelling at how the walls of the abbey had stood the test of time. She stood silently alongside Constance. This was her afternoon, and she’d reveal why they were here when she was good and ready. There was no point rushing her, Isabel knew, watching out the corner of her eye as Constance closed hers briefly, continuing to press her hand to the wall as though it were communicating with her.
The seconds ticked by and a middle-aged man in outdoor wear with a camera slung around his neck gave them a wary smile. They must make an odd sight, Isabel thought. She tried to convey in the smile she sent his way that they were perfectly normal. At last Constance let her arm fall back to her lap and opened her eyes blinking against the sunshine as she came back from wherever it was she’d been. She pointed Isabel over to a sun-stippled patch of grass a short distance from the other visitors milling about, and Isabel’s stomach lurched. The time had come to learn the truth of what had transpired between Ginny and Constance all those years ago. She steered them over to the spot in the sun.
Chapter 40
Isabel sat down on the grass stretching her legs out in front of her. She was too distracted to admire the beautiful setting, and for want of something to do with her hands she plucked a few daisies. Her fingers were thumbs as she tried to make a chain from the dainty flowers waiting for Constance to talk. Constance watched her for a moment. It was an echo from the past, she thought thinking of the daisy chain and promise Henry had made her.
‘I used to come here on a Sunday with Henry, my beau, when I was a young girl. He was in the Canadian Airforce, and we were engaged, well, unofficially,’ Constance said after a while, gazing into the distance as though she could see him standing just beyond the ruins, waiting for her. ‘We’d borrow bicycles from the girls at Puckpool Camp where he was stationed and cycle here. It was the folly where we first met, but it was these ruins that became our place. It was here I fell in love properly with him.’
Isabel pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them as she sat with her head tilted to hear better as Constance’s sad love story began to unfold. She felt as though she were an observer to their romance, hovering on the periphery of their intimate conversations as she listened to Constance. She wasn’t to know that it was the first time in over seventy years that Constance had spoken of Henry and how he’d died. It was only when her nose began to run as she heard how he’d been killed protecting one of his countrymen by a bomb dropped on what was now Sea Vistas, that Isabel realized she was crying. It was so much sadness for someone so young to go through, she thought wiping the tears away with the back of her hand.
Constance finished talking, and reached into the pocket of her tunic. Isabel thought she was fetching her a tissue to blow her nose on, but instead, she produced a folded piece of paper. That it was old was evident in the discolouration of the paper, and Isabel took her hand away watching as she held it to her chest for a moment, her lips moving silently before passing it to Isabel.
She blinked against the afternoon’s bright sunshine wishing she’d thought to bring her sunglasses as she read the typed words in front of her. It took her a few beats to digest that the paper Constance had handed her was a birth certificate for Ginny’s son—Edward Henry Downer, born on the twenty-second of October 1944 in Salisbury. The space next to where his father’s name should be was blank, but it was what was typed next to ‘Mother’ that Isabel couldn’t make sense of. It was Constance Mary Downer.
‘Why’s your name on Ginny’s son’s birth certificate?’ She looked up at Constance puzzled.
‘Teddy wasn’t her son; he was mine.’
Isabel’s eyes widened, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Ginny’s baby was stillborn, and I was pregnant when Henry died. It was deemed that her adopting my baby was the perfect solution to the mess I found myself in.’ Constance looked away before her tears could brim over and turned her gaze to the shimmering waters in the distance. Her verdant surrounds seemed to tilt on their axis as the mist descended and she found herself back in another time.
͠
1944
It didn’t matter that Constance loved Henry, the words sounded hollow to her parents despite their fondness for him. By dying, he’d left it up to them to pick up the pieces he’d left behind and make things right.
She felt the tiny fluttering of life growing inside her for the first time the day her mother told her the local vicar would be consulted on the quiet, of course, as to what their options were. The tremulous leap she felt in her belly took her by surprise as did the realisation that this baby was part of her, not what had been done to her. It was a shock to understand that there was a very real chance she would love this child with
