Secrets Read online

  The woman’s black hair was loose now, and it was so long it reached her waist. She was wearing a dressing-gown that was so threadbare it looked ready to fall apart.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Adele replied. Her stomach still ached a bit, and her face felt sore, but apart from that she was all right.

  ‘My Alf’s going off to work now,’ Mrs Patterson said. ‘You snuggle down for a bit longer and I’ll make you a cup of tea after I’ve given Lily her bottle. We’ll have a little chat then too.’

  Adele stayed where she was for a very long time, pretending to sleep while she watched and listened to the Pattersons. She saw how Mrs Patterson kissed her husband goodbye and gave him his sandwiches. How she fed baby Lily and then bathed her in the kitchen sink. Lily’s wet nappy stank, but it was nice to hear her gurgling and splashing in the water. Then Michael and Tommy got up, and their mother made them toast and a cup of tea.

  There was a cosiness about the family’s routine that Adele had never experienced herself. Mrs Patterson patted her children’s heads and bottoms affectionately, she even kissed their cheeks for no real reason, and she answered the boys’ questions in a quiet, calm manner. Adele was used to her mother snarling at her.

  ‘How about a cup of tea now?’ Mrs Patterson asked when the boys had gone off to their room to get dressed. Baby Lily was put on the floor to play with some wooden blocks, and she shuffled about on her bottom.

  Adele got up cautiously, very aware that Pamela’s nightdress was far too short, and she hadn’t thought to bring any clothes down with her.

  Mrs Patterson must have read her thoughts. ‘We’ll go up later and get you some things. I heard your dad leave for work earlier. That’s a good sign, at least he isn’t brooding.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll change his mind about me,’ Adele said, assuming Mrs Patterson meant that he wasn’t brooding about her. ‘You see, he isn’t my dad, Mum said so last night.’

  Mrs Patterson put her hands on her hips and made a stern face. ‘She said a great many daft things by all accounts, but she couldn’t help it, love. She was beside herself.’

  ‘It must be true, Dad said it too, to the doctor,’ Adele said in a small voice, hanging her head with the shame of it. ‘Mum’s been saying lots of nasty things like that lately. She said she tried to get rid of me and it was the only reason she married Dad. She even wanted to kill me last night.’

  Mrs Patterson fell silent, and Adele knew it was because she didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to go to an orphanage, won’t I?’ Adele said after watching the older woman busying herself making the tea for a few minutes. ‘There isn’t anywhere else.’

  All at once she found herself enveloped in a warm hug. ‘You poor love,’ Mrs Patterson exclaimed, clutching her to her plump chest which smelled of baby and toast. ‘This is an awful business, but maybe after your mum’s had a rest in hospital things will get better.’

  Adele liked the hug, it made her feel safe and wanted, something she hadn’t really felt before. Yet all the same she thought she must warn this kind woman just how Rose Talbot felt about her elder daughter.

  ‘I don’t think she’ll want me, not even when she’s better,’ she began. It took her some time to explain just how bad things had been since Pamela’s death, and that even before that, her mother had been indifferent towards her. ‘So you see,’ she finished up, ‘there’s no point in me hoping that when she’s better everything will be all right.’

  It seemed an interminable day to Adele. Mrs Patterson decided it wasn’t a good idea to go back to the flat to get some clothes, so she gave Adele a sort of overall of hers to wear. It was red and white check and nearly as broad as it was long, but with a belt tied round, it didn’t look much different to a dressing-gown. Adele tried to take her mind off what was likely to happen to her by helping around the flat, but her aching stomach kept reminding her. When she caught a glimpse of herself in Mrs Patterson’s bedroom mirror she began to cry again, for her eye was going black and the scar on her cheek looked horrible.

  Finally it was seven o’clock and Dr Biggs arrived, but Jim still hadn’t come home.

  ‘He’ll have gone to the pub,’ Adele admitted.

  Dr Biggs sighed and looked at Mrs Patterson who had the kind of look that said ‘I expected as much.’ She beckoned for the doctor to come into the front bedroom with her, pointedly closing the door behind them.

  ‘Our dad goes down the pub too,’ Tommy said, looking up from drawing moustaches on people in an old magazine.

  Adele had known the Patterson boys from birth and liked them a great deal, even if they were funny-looking with pale faces, sticking-up black hair and scabby knees. As she had always taken Tommy to school with Pamela, she knew him best – he was cheeky, noisy and sometimes a bit rough, but lovable too. He had done his best to make her laugh today; even his remark about his dad going to the pub was intended to make her feel better. But Adele couldn’t really respond, she was straining her ears to hear what Mrs Patterson and the doctor were talking about.

  Meanwhile both adults were doing their best to keep their voices down.

  ‘I’ll have to make a report to the authorities,’ the doctor said sadly. ‘I suspect Jim’s got no intention of taking care of Adele, and we can’t let it go on and on. Is there any other family? Grandparents, aunts or uncles?’

  ‘Jim’s got a sister somewhere up north,’ Annie replied. ‘But he never sees her. If Rose’s got any family they’ve never been here.’

  ‘No parents?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Mrs Patterson replied. ‘She grew up in Sussex, by the sea, that’s all I know.’

  ‘I’ll ask Jim when I get hold of him,’ the doctor said. ‘If her parents are still alive, maybe they’ll help out.’

  ‘I hope so. It grieves me to think of that sweet girl going to an orphanage,’ Annie Patterson said, and her voice had a kind of break in it as though she was crying.

  ‘I’ll write a note for Jim, and Adele can leave it upstairs for him while she gets some clothes.’

  ‘I doubt he can even read,’ Annie said scornfully. ‘He’s not the full shilling, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Dr Biggs agreed. His wife had informed him of that last night. She heard all the gossip in the neighbourhood. According to what she’d been told, Jim’s family, the Talbots, had been a notorious family in Somers Town back in the early 1900s, the boys all villains and thugs, the girls tarts, and the parents even worse. Jim was the youngest of eight, and generally known to be backward. He joined up in 1917 when he was eighteen, and it was assumed he must have been killed in France, as at least three of his brothers had been, for he didn’t return. His parents and the two younger sisters who were still living at home died in the flu epidemic of 1919.

  Everyone was astounded when Jim Talbot suddenly turned up again in Somers Town four years later. Not only because he had survived the war which had taken so many of the young men in the area, but he came back with a pretty, well-bred wife and a four-year-old daughter too. They were even more astounded when he managed to hold down a job at a wood yard, and they discovered that his wife wasn’t a slut as his mother and sisters had been.

  In the light of what Dr Biggs had heard the previous night, it seemed likely that Rose Talbot only married Jim as a last resort, because she was carrying another man’s child. He thought that years of living with a man she didn’t love, in considerably reduced circumstances compared to what she was used to, had caused a huge resentment towards Adele to grow.

  Dr Biggs couldn’t find very much sympathy for Rose, who had no right to blame an innocent child for her mistakes or misfortune. But he did feel a little for Jim, for he had been up against it from birth. No doubt he’d consulted his workmates today, and they’d all encouraged him to reject Adele. Perhaps he also thought of it as a way of showing Rose he was tired of being her provider and doormat.

  ‘I’ll write a note anyway,’ he said. ‘But I’ll co
me round again in the morning and try to catch Jim.’

  Adele walked up the stairs very reluctantly, the note from Dr Biggs in her hand. She was scared of going into the flat, it was only going to make her think about her mother with the knife again. As her dad hadn’t come back to speak to Dr Biggs it was clear he didn’t care what happened to her. She wished it was she, not Pamela, who was dead.

  As she opened the door of the flat and turned on the light, Adele felt sick. The saucepans and broken plates were still on the floor, and there was a bloodstain on the tablecloth, along with the knife. It smelled nasty too, of drink, cigarettes, her dad’s sweat and socks. She wanted to run right out and never come back again, but she steeled herself to go into her bedroom and collect her things.

  She didn’t have much to collect, just her best Sunday skirt and jumper, one clean vest, school blouse, knickers and pair of socks, her shoes and gym slip. She was about to put her things in her school satchel when she remembered there was a small suitcase on the top of the wardrobe in her parents’ room.

  Their bedroom stank even worse than the living room, and the bed wasn’t made. There were more bloodstains on the pillows, she supposed from the cut on her dad’s cheek. She stood there at the dressing-table looking at herself in the mirror for a moment.

  She looked awful, she thought, it was no wonder no one wanted her. Even before she got the black eye and the scar on her cheek she hadn’t been pretty. Dull, straggly, biscuit-coloured hair, sallow skin, even her eyes weren’t a proper colour like brown or blue, they were a greenish colour that Mum had once said was like canal water.

  It was no wonder her mum was angry that her pretty daughter got killed instead of the plain one.

  Pulling up the bedroom chair, Adele climbed on to it to reach the suitcase, and as she lifted it down she saw it was covered in a thick blanket of dust. She put it on the bed and wiped it off with the edge of the bedspread.

  There was nothing but a few old letters inside, but as she scooped them up, intending to put them into the dressing-table drawer, she suddenly remembered that the doctor had been asking whether they had any relatives.

  She flicked through the letters, but they all seemed to be from the same person and addressed to her father. She opened one and saw it was from his sister in Manchester. Disappointed, she bundled them all up together, but as a few fell off the pile and she bent to retrieve them, she noticed one in quite different handwriting which was addressed to Miss Rose Harris, her mother’s maiden name.

  The envelope had turned a yellowish-brown with age, and it wasn’t even sent to this address. But as she held it in her hand looking at it, she suddenly recalled Mrs Patterson’s words earlier: ‘I think she grew up in Sussex, by the sea.’

  This letter was addressed to Curlew Cottage, Winchelsea Beach, nr Rye, Sussex.

  As her mother had never mentioned her parents, Adele thought they must be dead, but she was curious about who this letter was from and pulled it out of the envelope. It was from someone in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, dated 8 July 1915.

  ‘Dear Rose,’ she read.

  I was so thrilled to hear from you after all this time. I missed you terribly after you left, and all the girls ask if I’ve had any news of you. I suppose it is a bit dull living right out in the country, but then it’s dull everywhere when all people can talk about is the war. Lots of the girls at school have lost their fathers and brothers, I’m glad my father doesn’t have to go and that I haven’t got brothers old enough. I hope your father keeps safe.

  Does your mother make you knit socks and scarves? Mine does. I’m sick of grey wool. We were playing tennis this afternoon and Muriel Stepford said she was going to try and become a nurse. She said it was because she feels so sorry for all those wounded soldiers, but we all think she’s afraid she’ll be left on the shelf as there’s so few men of her age left here.

  Write soon, and tell me about what you do all day. Do you really keep chickens and grow vegetables, or was that a joke? I can’t imagine you getting your hands dirty.

  All my best wishes,

  Alice

  Adele read the letter three times, intrigued because it was a tiny glimpse of her mother’s past she knew nothing of. Was this girl Alice a good friend? Had her mother and her parents moved away from Tunbridge Wells because of the war? Could her grandparents still be living in Curlew Cottage now?

  It was written sixteen years ago, four years before she was born, but as she didn’t know exactly how old her mother was, she couldn’t even guess at the age of her grandparents.

  But she’d heard the doctor say he was going to ask Jim about family, so she put it back with the other letters and filled the suitcase with her things. Then she left the flat, closing the door behind her.

  The following morning, as church bells were ringing for the Sunday morning service, Dr Biggs returned. He came in to the Pattersons’ for a little while, asked Adele how she was feeling, and said he’d contacted the hospital where her mother had been taken, and that she was much calmer.

  ‘How long do you think they will keep her there?’ Mrs Patterson asked.

  ‘I don’t know at this stage,’ Dr Biggs replied guardedly. ‘Now, I’ll just go up and see Mr Talbot.’

  The doctor wasn’t very long with her father, and when he came back down he looked flushed and annoyed.

  ‘Run along outside in the yard with the boys,’ Mrs Patterson said, giving Adele a little shove on the behind towards the door.

  Adele went, but not right outside. She just closed the door through to the living room and waited outside it. She wanted to know what her father had said to make the doctor angry.

  She didn’t have long to wait. The doctor fairly exploded. ‘That man is so dense, I might as well have talked to a brick wall,’ he said. ‘He is adamant Adele isn’t his child. He said he met her mother when she was pregnant and he can prove it because he was still in France until then.’

  ‘But by marrying Rose, surely that makes him responsible for Adele, whoever her real father was?’ Mrs Patterson said.

  ‘Technically yes. But you know the expression “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”,’ the doctor replied. ‘How can I walk away leaving such a young girl in the hands of someone so full of anger and spite? Anything could happen.’

  ‘What are we going to do then?’ Mrs Patterson asked.

  ‘I shall have to get a care order. There’s nothing else for it, Annie. Rose is mentally ill, I can’t even say she will recover. Besides, maybe it’s for the best in the long term – I suspect the child has been badly treated for many years. If I get her away from here now she’ll be better off.’

  ‘Did you ask Jim if there were any grandparents?’

  ‘Yes, but he knows nothing about them. He said Rose had fallen out with her mother long before he met her, and she has had no contact with her since.’

  Lily began wailing loudly at that point, shutting out anything further said by the adults. Adele waited nervously for Lily to stop crying, but she went on and on, drowning everything.

  Adele went back into the living room a little later. Dr Biggs smiled at her. ‘I was just telling Mrs Patterson I thought it best if you stay home from school for a couple of days until that eye gets better,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you don’t want anyone asking you questions about it, do you?’

  Adele looked from him to Mrs Patterson, sensing they had planned something between them. She wondered why adults told children off for being deceitful when they themselves were all the time.

  Chapter Four

  As Adele ate her porridge the following morning, Mrs Patterson was tying Tommy’s tie for him.

  ‘It’s high time a big boy like you learned to do it yourself,’ she said, giving him a playful cuff on the ear.

  ‘I like you doing it,’ Tommy retorted, and reached out to tickle his mother under the chin, making her laugh.

  The affectionate exchange made a lump come up in Adele’s throat. In the last two day
s she’d seen many such little expressions of love between the members of this family, and each one was a sad reminder that she’d never experienced such affection from either of her parents. She had come to the conclusion that the fault must be hers, for after all they’d managed to show affection for Pamela.

  ‘Is Adele taking me to school?’ Tommy asked once his tie was tied.

  ‘Of course not,’ Mrs Patterson said, glancing over at Adele who was still sitting at the table. Adele had stopped taking him after Pamela was killed. ‘Why should she? You’re a big boy now.’

  Tommy looked beseechingly at Adele. ‘Please?’

  ‘Adele isn’t quite right yet,’ his mother said briskly. ‘She needs rest.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Adele said, getting up. She was touched Tommy wanted her with him. ‘I’d like to take him.’

  Mrs Patterson hesitated.

  ‘Please? I’d like to go out,’ Adele pleaded.

  ‘All right then,’ Mrs Patterson agreed. ‘But come straight back, the doctor said you were to rest.’

  Adele hadn’t considered that walking Tommy to school would bring back such vivid memories of Pamela. Tommy behaved just the way he always had, one minute running along with one foot in the gutter, the other on the pavement, the next swooping back to her, arms outstretched, pretending to be an aeroplane. Pamela had always held Adele’s hand and complained that Tommy showed them up. Adele missed that little hand in hers, the scornful look on her sister’s face, and the way she would break into giggles when Tommy pulled faces at her.

  The primary school was a big old soot-blackened building of three storeys, the infants’ classes on one side, the juniors’ on the other, with separate entrances and playgrounds.

  ‘See you at dinner-time,’ Tommy said before running in through the gates.

  Adele stood for a moment, watching through the railings as he was swallowed up by a throng of small boys. The junior girls were gathering on the far side of the playground, and for a brief moment she found herself automatically looking for Pamela amongst them.