Page 51 of Never Tear Us Apart

Chapter Forty-Nine

‘Thank you for your help,’ Stella says sometime later. We are sitting on the steps of Christina’s house, waiting for her to come back from the shelter. The street is twilight-purple, still quiet after the raid. Stella is smoking. ‘You were steady and strong. Why did you come?’

‘Christina told me where you were,’ I say.

Stella doesn’t respond; she simply shrugs, as though accepting this as enough of an answer.

And I know it’s because, for her, it is: she would have done exactly the same.

When I look at her profile, I see my father, a little of Kathryn and quite a lot of myself: the long, narrow roman nose and dimpled chin; the strong jaw-line and thick dark hair.

I inherited my mother’s pale complexion, but that’s all.

The rest of me is my father, from the shape and colour of my eyes to my enduring ability to hold a grudge.

I never knew Stella. I barely even know about her.

She died when my father was a child – that much I always understood, and it never mattered really, until now.

I’ve never known her, not even through his memories, and she never seemed real.

But now, I know that this brilliant, determined, compassionate woman will be killed just a few days from now, and behind her, she will leave a devastation that spans generations.

There is no one else in the whole of existence who can change that but me. Fear and fury pulse in my veins.

‘It’s hard to say this after what we have both just been through, but it’s important, Stella. I need you to listen.’

Stella takes a deep drag on her cigarette, shoots me a querying look.

‘I’m angry with you,’ I tell her.

‘Everyone always is,’ she says, with a shrug. ‘They want me in a hundred places with all the medicine in the world. But I can only ever be in one, and whatever I bring, it is never enough.’

‘No, that’s not why.’ I drop my head. I know this isn’t the right time.

After all, I just watched her do all she could for a young woman we both liked and cared for.

That was the best of Stella. Who am I to find fault with her now?

But there will never be a right time, and soon there will be no time at all, not for Stella.

‘I found David, alone and crying, at the other end of the island.’ I gesture in the vague direction of Mellie ? a. ‘You just left him. He’s five years old, and you left him all alone.’

Stella turns to look at me, her expression one of deep weariness. ‘Ah, I thought perhaps you were different,’ she says, dropping her cigarette stub and grinding it under her toe.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

‘I thought you British women were progressive. You do your bit, yes? Christina at the war room, you a journalist. I thought you understood my work is vital. Especially now.’

‘I do understand that,’ I say. ‘Not only do I understand it, but I admire you, more than you know. But . . . just to forget him, like a piece of unwanted baggage?’

‘I did not abandon him,’ Stella says, stamping out the stub of the cigarette.

‘We were in Mellie ? a to see a patient, the mother of a friend of David’s, when we had to leave quickly.

I got word Vittoria was very sick. We had to get back to Valletta.

So, we all get on the bus, all three of us.

But David – so like his father – he didn’t want to leave his friend there.

So we all get on the bus – he gets off again.

It was crowded. No one saw. I didn’t see him get off.

But he did, because he wanted to. And then he regretted it. Perhaps next time he will think twice.’

My mouth falls open in disbelief. ‘There was a raid – your five-year-old son was alone in the middle of a raid!’

‘And so was Vittoria,’ Stella says. ‘And a hundred other children. Young men burnt half to death or with their limbs torn off. Old women trapped under rubble. Which of these souls should I save first? You tell me. Where do I go first? Who do I let die? Or should I let all of them die because my son got off the bus?’

‘Vittoria died anyway,’ I say, and regret it at once.

‘She did.’ Stella lowers her eyes. ‘But at least I was there to ease her pain, as were you. I knew that David would be safe.’

‘How? He’s hardly more than a baby himself, and yet you drag him around the island with you, leaving him to take care of his sister, as if . . .’

‘As if I am a mother, doing her best for both her children in the middle of a war,’ Stella finishes for me.

‘Do you think I don’t know how this war harms him and my daughter?

Two years ago, he was a happy little toddler with a father and a mother and a sister on the way.

Now, his father is gone; his home is gone.

His mother must travel the island day and night to help the injured and the sick, when there is no one else.

I tried to leave him with a neighbour at first, but David will not be left, because he knows that one day his father left and never came home.

So, I take him with me. I take them both, wherever I go, so that we are always together – at least until my stubborn little boy forgets he is afraid and decides to get off a bus.

’ Stella’s shoulders drop. ‘At the end of each day, I believe that tomorrow will be the day I break, the day I cannot fight any longer. But at the beginning of each day, I make a promise to start again, to fight for my country and my people and for my children. To keep us together. As we are meant to be. You can think what you want of me, but I knew that David would be safe, because he is my son. And the people of Malta know me, and they know my son. I knew someone would take him to a shelter and bring him to me, and I was right, wasn’t I? ’

I nod.

People are starting to walk down the street, weary and sad in the aftermath of the raid.

‘I also knew that Vittoria would die alone and in pain if I got off the bus to go and fetch him. I made a decision – it’s one I can live with. If you can’t, then that is your problem.’

Christina comes around the corner with the children.

As soon as David sees his mother, he tugs free of her hand, racing into Stella’s arms. She scoops him up as he flings his arms around her neck, talking excitedly in Maltese.

Any trace that he was alone or abandoned seems forgotten as Stella hitches him onto her hip and Christina brings the little girl to her.

‘Here she is,’ Christina says, bouncing the baby as she walks. ‘Here’s Eugenie.’

The little girl’s eyes light up, and David scrambles down as Eugenie is passed into Stella’s arms. The love between them is almost palpable.

Stella isn’t a cold, neglectful mother – she’s a woman stretched almost to breaking point, who still manages to find love and compassion every day in the middle of relentless violence.

Then the words Kathryn said come back to me, suddenly perfectly clear: So tragic, poor Grandmama . Such a tragic loss so young. I think it broke your father’s heart for good.

‘Stella.’ She looks at me, defiant. ‘You are the most remarkable woman, but you need to know how important you are. Yes, to everyone you treat – but to your children, too, and to me. You can’t save the world.’

Stella lifts her chin and gives me a scathing look. ‘What kind of a mother would I be if I didn’t try to do just that?’