The House Across the Street Read online

  ‘So why did you think you needed to be responsible for a total stranger?’

  ‘Oh, Katy, you of all people know why some of us look out for the weaker ones. You did it all the time at school. Anyway, I couldn’t see her. There were a handful of couples necking, but no Hilda. Of course, I didn’t know her name then. So I asked a bloke I knew if he’d seen a girl in a pink dress, and he said she’d gone down the lane with a civilian. I hadn’t seen any civilian men in the hall, so I just had a feeling I’d better go and look for her.’

  ‘But you were too late, the deed had been done?’

  ‘Yes, tragically. She was several hundred yards away from the hall, in the woods, lying on the ground crying. The rest you know.’

  ‘It’s the rest I don’t understand. I get why she was scared to go to the police – let’s face it, they don’t have much compassion for women – and I get why you took her home. But Mum is not Miss Personality, so why get permanently involved?’

  Albert gave her a long, hard, disapproving look.

  ‘Why did Charles search for you? You’d only had one date with him,’ he retorted. ‘What was so special about you?’

  Katy felt ashamed then, and couldn’t reply.

  ‘The truth is, I fell for Hilda that night. Okay, maybe it was mainly sympathy, but not all. And something else took over. I met up with her three times before I was shipped out to North Africa; at each meeting I became more and more certain she was the one. Obviously, I had to be very careful with her – she had been through something terrible – but she was warm and funny, and she wanted to put what had happened behind her. I told her I loved her in a letter just before I left England.

  ‘When she found out she was expecting, she sent me a Dear John saying that, as fond as she was of me, and despite feeling indebted to me for my kindness, she didn’t want to ruin my life. I was shocked, but there was no way I was going to abandon her, and I wrote and told her so.

  ‘She was so brave all through her pregnancy; her letters to me were warm, she didn’t whinge about her situation, and she worked right up until two days before you were born, too. She had the bombing in Southampton to contend with, and then having to move into a grubby little room when you were born, the only place she could get. She had no money, her friends from work had disappeared like smoke, but the moment she held you in her arms she loved you. I’ve still got the letters she wrote to me at that time. She stressed that although she’d like me in her life, she didn’t want to tie me down, and I owed her nothing. But when I got some home leave and saw her again, I knew I wanted to marry her. It was just love, I wanted both of you, forever.’

  ‘But she was such a cow. Have you forgotten, Dad, that you said you were going to leave her?’

  ‘No, I haven’t forgotten. But nearly losing you changed things and made me realize what is important and what isn’t. It was keeping the secret about you that soured her, even made her a little mad. Can you imagine having something like that gnawing away at you?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Katy agreed reluctantly.

  ‘I should have been the strong one and told you the truth years ago. But Katy, when is the right time to tell such things? A child who knows nothing about sex wouldn’t understand, and the older a child gets the more difficult it becomes. Look at how you’ve reacted today. You nearly died at the hands of a madman, yet you are horrified by this and cannot trust the two people who love you the most.’

  ‘What did you expect? That I’d say okay, Dad, so you aren’t my dad, mine’s some filthy pervert who ruined my mum’s life. Was I supposed to cuddle Mum and say it doesn’t matter that she lied to me for twenty years?’

  Albert sighed deeply with frustration. ‘I think you should consider what you would do if Reilly had raped you and now you were pregnant. I know he didn’t, and you aren’t pregnant, but what if?

  ‘Your mother and I would, of course, take care of you. We could probably get you an abortion in a private clinic, or maybe suggest adoption. But it is far more likely we would persuade you to stay here so we could bring up the baby together. But Hilda didn’t get any of those options. Maybe, at the back of her mind, she thought I only married her because I felt sorry for her. But that isn’t true. I loved her then and I love her now.’

  The bedroom door opened, and there was Hilda. It was clear from her expression that she’d heard what her husband had said.

  ‘You haven’t drunk your tea or eaten your sandwiches, Katy. If you think a hunger strike will make me feel worse than I already do, you are wrong. I couldn’t feel any worse. But don’t blame your father; everything he did was for love. I just hope that one day we’ll be in church to see you marry a man with such fine qualities.’

  She turned on her heels then and went back downstairs. Katy felt she’d just had her face slapped.

  ‘Well, Katy?’ Albert moved to sit beside her on the bed. ‘Are you through with hating me?’

  Katy hung her head. ‘I couldn’t hate you. As Mum pointed out, you were the hero. And I will admit there would never have been a time to tell me this when it wouldn’t have been painful. I want you to be my father.’

  ‘I am, my darling,’ he said, drawing her into his arms. ‘In all the important ways. Let me tell you something. At the end of the war, countless men came home from the fighting to find a child at home who wasn’t theirs. The vast majority accepted that child. They knew that war makes people do extraordinary things; maybe some of the men had turned to another woman while they were away, and they knew how lonely and scared their wives must have been. But, above all, the child of that union is innocent of everything. It deserves to be accepted and loved. From the first moment I held you in my arms, I loved you. Nothing you’ve ever done or said has changed that. I just wish that I’d made Hilda tell you this years ago – not just for you, but for her. A huge wrong was done to her that night in Aldershot, and she’s carried the blame inside her for twenty-four years. Be the bigger person now, Katy, and free her of that guilt?’

  Katy stayed sobbing in his arms for some time. Her anger and hurt were gone now; they couldn’t survive when she was being held by such a wonderful man.

  Eventually, she sat up, blew her nose and dried her eyes. Then she ate the sandwiches.

  Albert lifted one eyebrow questioningly.

  ‘I can’t tackle Mum on an empty stomach,’ she said.

  Katy trundled the wheelchair into the sitting room, where her mother was waiting. With the curtains drawn and a fire lit, it felt warm and cosy, as it always had.

  She hoisted herself out of the chair and on to the sofa, beside her mother. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, you didn’t deserve me to be so nasty to you. I should’ve put myself in your shoes.’

  Hilda smiled weakly and held out her small, thin hand to take her daughter’s. ‘When you went missing, I feared the same had happened to you, but that he would kill you afterwards. I became paralysed with fear. I couldn’t telephone anyone, or visit your father, I couldn’t even eat. I knew I must appear to be uncaring, but it was the exact opposite. But thankfully that monster didn’t rape you or manage to kill you. Suddenly I could breathe again, and I resolved that I must tell you about my past.’

  ‘I understand, Mum.’ Kate let her mother embrace her. ‘You have issues with showing affection, not just because of what happened that night in 1940, but because of your childhood. But I also understand now that all the baking, making lovely meals and keeping the house spotless is your way of showing your love for all of us. You can let up on that a bit now, just sit and chat, laugh with me and Dad. When Charles comes to visit, try to smile more.’

  Hilda smoothed Katy’s hair back from her face and smiled. This time it lit up her eyes.

  ‘I think I finally understand just how lucky I’ve been,’ she admitted. ‘Shall we let it all go now?’

  Katy nodded. She felt that if she said one more word, she might start to cry again.

  21

  ‘Is it alright for Charles to come this weekend for my birthda
y?’ Katy asked her mother on Friday afternoon. ‘I said I’d ring him back if it wasn’t.’

  ‘Of course it is, dear,’ Hilda beamed. ‘It will be lovely for him, the weather is improving by the day. Spring is finally here.’

  A week had passed since the startling family revelations and during that time Katy had become much calmer, more mobile, and her facial bruises were finally disappearing. Only yesterday Hilda had wheeled her down to the hairdresser’s so she could have a badly needed trim, wash and blow dry. They had passed her old firm of solicitors and dropped in briefly to say hello. It had been good to see her old workmates, and she got offers of a night out from some of the younger ones. Katy had laughed and said she wasn’t going anywhere until she was out of plaster and could dance again.

  She saw that Gloria’s shop had been sold. A sign on the window said it was under new ownership and closed for refurbishment, but the girls in the solicitors’ office had said they’d met the new owner. She was one of Gloria’s old suppliers, and had a similar personality.

  But the main development during the past week was that Ed Reilly had finally admitted his crimes to the police. Along with setting the fire that killed Gloria and her daughter, and attempting to kill Edna, he also admitted that he had had a relationship with Margaret Foster, which began when she was still in Hampstead, then was briefly revived when she moved to the village near Eastbourne. However, he insisted he hadn’t hurt her, or abducted her and her children, and he had no idea where she was now.

  This information had come from Michael Bonham. Katy was anticipating the police would be visiting her again before long to tie up any loose ends. But for now she was excited because Charles was coming for the weekend.

  ‘I’ll go and make up the bed in the spare room and put a hot-water bottle in it so it’s aired,’ Hilda said that evening. ‘It will be so nice to meet him properly at last.’

  ‘Just don’t be too pushy,’ Katy warned her. ‘I know I really like him, but we have only had one date so far. So it isn’t a big romance.’

  Hilda smiled, as if she knew otherwise.

  She had been like a different person since revealing her secret: jolly, chatty, smiley, and with none of the old displays of nervous hand-wringing, or cleaning incessantly. There had been a couple of wet days earlier in the week, and she and Katy had sat in the living room going over a box of old family photographs and putting them in albums.

  Looking at pictures of the family when she and Rob were little brought back many happy memories, and it was quite startling to see that before Hilda began getting very thin, she had been pert and pretty, just as Albert had said.

  ‘You were about twelve when I started becoming nervy and losing weight,’ Hilda admitted. ‘I remember putting on a summer dress one day and being shocked that it was far too big. I got into the habit of always keeping a cardigan on, as my arms were scrawny, and I never put on a swimsuit ever again. You know Albert was always on at me to go to the doctor’s, but the more he did, the crosser I got. I suppose I was scared the doctor would question me.’

  ‘Well, by this summer we are going to fatten you up and you will put on a swimsuit.’ Katy picked up one black-and-white snapshot of her mother paddling with both children. Hilda was slender, but with a lovely shape. It must have been taken in the summer of 1946, because Albert had been demobbed and had taken the picture. ‘You can be like that again!’

  Hilda laughed. ‘Oh, look at that awful costume. It was all ruched up with elastic and when you went in the water it filled up. I had to press myself all the way down as I came out the sea.’

  ‘I had one like that, too,’ Katy remembered and rifled through the old pictures till she found it. ‘It was bright red, and I thought it was wonderful, so much better than the knitted one I had before.’

  The photographs from 1953 onwards showed Hilda’s escalating problem. In one taken at the Coronation Day street party it looked as if Hilda was almost in tears.

  ‘There was a woman living along the road then called Alice Manders,’ Hilda explained. ‘She kept remarking that day how different you and Rob were. She even hinted that perhaps I’d been “naughty” during the war. She spoiled the whole day for me, and I just seemed to get worse and worse from then on.’

  ‘I found you crying in the kitchen that evening,’ Katy recalled. ‘You claimed you’d got something in your eye. I knew that wasn’t true and I thought you were disappointed in me because I’d shown you up by being greedy and eating far too many cakes.’

  ‘How could you even have thought that? The sugar rationing was stopped for the Coronation, and all of us mothers were thrilled to see our kids tucking into the kind of party food we’d almost forgotten existed. I made about two hundred butterfly cakes for that party, not to mention ten big trifles.’

  It was so nice to finally be forging a real relationship with her mother, to find the softer, more thoughtful side of her, and – even more surprising – her sense of fun. Taking Katy out in the wheelchair, Hilda had run while pushing her, and at times had laughingly threatened to let go of the handles.

  Mealtimes were no longer fraught with tension as her mother banged pots around. Once, Katy had rarely watched television in the evenings with her parents, because Hilda was like the censor, disapproving of anything even slightly risqué. Now she laughed at comedies, almost as if her formerly non-existent sense of humour had finally come back to her. She didn’t even baulk at slightly blue jokes.

  But as good as it was to have a much nicer mother, Katy still felt saddened to think Albert wasn’t her biological father. She wondered whether she should tell Rob next time he came home. Would he feel differently about her? She was sure not, as he was always so level-headed, but it did worry her.

  It was, of course, lovely to be at home now while she still had limited mobility. But she really wanted to get back to London, to have Jilly’s company, and of course to see more of Charles.

  She spoke to Jilly most nights on the phone. She was now going out with a chap called Guy who worked at the zoo, and burning to get a flat of her own, mainly because she admitted she wanted to go to bed with Guy. His landlord didn’t approve of lady guests, so they couldn’t go there. Jilly was due a few days off and intended to come home to Bexhill towards the end of next week. She made jokes about getting Katy drunk even if she was in a wheelchair.

  But seeing Charles again was scary. Really exciting on one level, but being stuck in a wheelchair made her look a bit pathetic and not at all sexy, so maybe once he saw her like that he’d go off her. So much had happened since their date, she couldn’t even be sure how she felt about him, either. It was all a bit of a fantasy, like he wasn’t real.

  She’d told Jilly her fears, but her friend had just laughed. ‘Go on with you, he’s bloody gorgeous. And all he wants is you.’

  Perhaps that was so; she just had to hope for the best.

  Charles arrived on Saturday morning, wearing the biggest smile and carrying a huge bouquet of spring flowers.

  Albert let him in and Katy wheeled herself to the doorway of the sitting room to greet him.

  ‘Jilly was right,’ she thought. ‘He is bloody gorgeous, and thank heaven I got my hair done and the bruises have faded.’ It didn’t hurt that she was wearing a new pink twinset her mother had bought her. She was forced to wear trousers to cover up the plaster, but at least her top half looked fresh and attractive.

  ‘Hello, Charles,’ she said and introduced him to her parents. He had spoken to both of them on the phone, but hadn’t met them in the flesh.

  ‘I’m so very pleased to meet you at last,’ he said as he kissed her mother’s cheek and shook her father’s hand. ‘You certainly went through hell in all this.’

  ‘The horror disappeared as soon as we knew Katy was alive,’ Albert said. ‘But as I understand it, that was mostly down to you and Jilly, not the police.’

  ‘Don’t let’s dwell on that,’ Katy said. ‘I think we’ve said all there is to say on the subject. Come on i
n, Charles, and sit down, you must be tired after the long drive.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Charles. I’ll put the flowers in water for Katy. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘That would be lovely, Mrs Speed,’ he said. ‘But the flowers are for you. Katy’s present is still in the car and will stay there till tomorrow.’ He gave the bouquet to Hilda, who blushed like a schoolgirl.

  As they sat in the sitting room, drinking tea and sampling some of her mother’s home-made shortbread, Katy wished her parents would disappear so she could just kiss Charles. She loved the way he looked at her mother, eyes bright with interest, the way his lips curled up at the corners as if secretly smiling. He was so undeniably well mannered. No doubt he was already wondering how he was going to get through a whole weekend of small talk. Yet he appeared completely engaged.

  ‘It’s such a lovely day, maybe we should get out in the fresh air?’ Katy ventured nervously. ‘I mean if you don’t mind pushing my wheelchair.’

  ‘Mind? I’d love to!’ He leapt to his feet. ‘Is it far to the sea?’

  ‘Not at all. But just make sure you are back for lunch at one,’ Hilda said.

  ‘I hope it’s not a big lunch, Mrs Speed, as I thought I’d take Katy out to dinner tonight – that is, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I made a reservation at the Grey Goose, in Battle. It’s very highly recommended.’

  ‘Very expensive, too,’ Hilda said, with just a tinge of her old waspish tone. ‘But I’m told the food is lovely.’

  Charles helped Katy on with her coat and into the wheelchair and smiled graciously as Albert opened the front door. Then he pushed her chair out, and said they’d be back for one.