“May I come in?” she asked. She had Rose’s clear blue eyes, Oliver’s thick dark hair, such a very pretty girl, or woman, I should say—she was twenty-five years old by then.
She said she knew who I was, that I was the woman who’d brought Hannah up, the woman whose husband and son Hannah had murdered. She told me she was living in France now, scraping by as a waitress in a hotel.
Of course I invited her in, and we sat together in my kitchen. “Do your parents know where you are?” I asked. I had seen Rose briefly after the fire, before I moved up here, so I knew how desperate she was to find her daughter still, though I hadn’t spoken to her since, not once in seven years.
Emily hesitated, and looked down at her hands. “No,” she said eventually. “I haven’t spoken to them since I left.”
“Aren’t you going to see them? Aren’t you going to tell them where you are? That you’re okay?”
She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “I miss them all so much,” she said. “But I felt I couldn’t go back, not after what my father did. I can’t go back and pretend it never happened, that I don’t know about Hannah, that I don’t know how he gave away his own baby. I couldn’t live with it, keeping their awful secret for them, letting my brothers grow up not knowing they had a half sister somewhere.”
I nodded. After a moment I said, “Why are you here, Emily? Why have you come to see me after all this time?”
“Because . . .” She glanced down and when I followed her eyes to the curve of her belly, the penny dropped.
“You’re pregnant,” I said.
She gazed at me with those beautiful blue eyes. “I was going to stay away. But it doesn’t feel right now. I want my family to know I have a child.” She began to cry.
“Then go to them,” I said.
“I want the truth, Beth,” she replied. “I have to know.”
“Know what?” I asked, playing for time, because I suddenly knew what she was going to ask me.
She hesitated; then she looked me full in the face and said, “Hannah told me that my mother pushed Nadia. That she murdered her. Is it true?”
“Murdered her?” I echoed. “Why do you think that?”
“Hannah told me. She was so certain. So absolutely convinced of it. I need to know if it’s true, if my mother really did it. Because if she is capable of such a horrible, vile thing, then I know I can never go back, I never want to see her again.”
I stared back at her for a long moment. And I still don’t know what made me say it, only that I was still overwhelmed with resentment and pain. I’d lost my family, and I admit I did blame Rose. It was all her fault that Toby and Doug were dead. Why should I lie for her? Why should I tell Emily her mother was innocent, let them be reunited, rebuild their perfect, charmed life, when mine was in tatters, when I had nothing left? I’d asked Rose for help once and she’d walked away—why should I help her now? So I said it. I told her the truth: I looked Emily in the eye and said, “Yes, it’s true.”
She gasped, her face drained of color. “It is?”
I wanted to take it back then and there, because I saw suddenly that Emily hadn’t really believed it, that she couldn’t believe her mother really had done such a wicked thing. I saw that she’d wanted me to tell her that of course her mother was innocent, so she could go back to her family, build bridges with her father, carry on with her life, and in a few seconds I’d just taken that all away. “Emily,” I said, “go and see your parents. They love you—whatever else, they love you very much. Go and see them. I’ve lost my family—don’t lose yours.”
But she turned away from me. “I can’t.”
“But where will you go? What will you do? Are you still with your baby’s father?”
She shook her head. “We split up,” she said quietly. “He’s not interested. I don’t know what I’ll do now. I got friendly with a girl from Glasgow last summer—I still have her address. Maybe I’ll look her up, try to get a job up there.”
“Will you be all right?”
She looked at me sadly. “I guess I’ll find out.” She wiped her eyes. “Never tell them, Beth. Do you promise me that? Never tell my mother you saw me today.”
“I promise,” I said.
She nodded, and we looked at each other for a moment more before she got up and left, closing the front door softly behind her.
I often think of her, and wonder where she is now, what happened to her. I like to think that she has her own family somewhere, a happy life, in Scotland maybe.
Perhaps I should tell Rose; she still thinks her daughter is dead, another of Hannah’s victims. Telling her the truth would be the right thing to do. But then I think of that day in the kitchen, all those years ago, how she wouldn’t help me when I begged her to, after all I’d done for her. I warned her what Hannah was like, but she left me to it. And now Rose has come out of it all, the trial, everything, completely free of blame. Revenge is a strong word, but perhaps it’s a kind of justice for what she did, to Nadia, and
