Page 72 of The Midnight Carousel

As she leaves the glass skyscraper housing the offices of Silver Kingdom Inc.

, Maisie smiles at the pretty receptionist whose name always deserts her.

‘See you Monday,’ she says. She hails a cab, which is quite the achievement along Fifth Avenue on a Friday afternoon, and lets her head rest against worn leather.

Once she might have walked, but these days her joints would complain too much.

‘Greenwich Village, please.’

The driver eyes Maisie through the rearview mirror. ‘Where are you from, lady?’

Always the same question. To Maisie, at least, never to Milo or to Joanna or to the grandchildren with their pale skin, as though they’ve always belonged here. It amazes Maisie that, after all this time, her colour still sets her apart.

‘Illinois.’

‘I mean before America.’

‘England.’

He looks dubious, but Maisie stopped justifying herself to anyone, particularly strangers, long ago, so she doesn’t elaborate.

He doesn’t need to know that her roots are firmly anchored in the ancient soil of England, that she’s been blown by the winds of America and France, and blood from another continent runs through her veins– a continent with languages, cultural traditions and points of reference so unlike her own that, when finally people from India were permitted to settle here, she discovered they were as much strangers to her as if they’d grown up on the moon.

Maisie recalls what Mrs Papadopoulos once told her: Where you come from isn’t a place, it’s your heart.

And that’s all anyone needs in common, isn’t it?

‘Have you ever been back?’ he asks.

‘Of course– in fact I enjoyed tea at Buckingham Palace just last month,’ she jokes.

Truth be told, Maisie has never returned to the country of her birth.

Once or twice, she contemplated doing so.

To see, touch and smell England once more would be a dream come true, but a large part of her fears that the changes would be too much to bear.

Perhaps the meadows aren’t as green as she remembers, or the sound of larks singing at twilight isn’t quite as sweet.

More importantly, it would have brought Maisie within spitting distance of the life she once lived in Paris, stirring up the old heartache.

There hasn’t been a third husband. Though Maisie has dated other men over the years, nothing was ever serious or long-lasting.

She tells herself it’s because she was too busy being both mother and father to her children, and with work.

Truthfully, though, Maisie has never really moved on from her first true love.

Her mind drifts to him now, to those storm grey eyes and their time together, which was all too brief.

The driver leaves Maisie to her thoughts as the cab stop-starts, stop-starts the two miles to the pier.

She ends up in her usual spot: a small bistro with a view of the little funfair reflecting off the gently lapping waters.

This is her favourite part of the day, the no man’s land between lunch and dinner, when usually she has the place to herself.

This afternoon, however, someone else is already sitting at the best table.

The elderly gentleman stands when he spots Maisie approaching. He is small and slight with twinkling eyes.

‘Maisie,’ he says. ‘Dear Maisie.’

She is immediately struck by his accent, the idiosyncratic melody of the Essex coastline which slipped away from Maisie long ago. Beaming, he opens his arms wide. As she sinks into his embrace, it feels like she’s come home.

‘Tommy,’ she whispers.

She had put out feelers years ago to try to find him.

Thinking he might have stayed on Canvey, she wrote to the island’s tavern and church and shops to ask for any information they might have on him, with no success.

Then Time ran a piece entitled ‘Smashing through the Glass Ceiling: The End of Men in Power?’, which featured Maisie, amongst a handful of other businesswomen.

She thought it funny at the time because she’s still the only woman in most meetings, and is often mistaken for the tea lady, so not that much has changed.

But Tommy had seen a copy, recognizing her name, the details of her early life and even the photograph– or so he claimed– and he called Silver Kingdom’s offices the very same day.

Time moves backwards as they stand hugging. They are the two children who ran free along the banks of Canvey Estuary, heaved buckets of cockles, chased wild rabbits, blessed dead squirrels and crabs and swans, steered Mr Sixpence’s tiny boat between craggy rocks, planned their escape.

Eventually, they let go and sit at the table. The pink-haired waitress arrives to take their order, and, while they wait for the drinks to appear, Tommy reaches for Maisie’s hand. His is knobbled by arthritis; hers is covered with dark brown blotches.

‘I knew I’d find you one day,’ Tommy says, looking very pleased with himself. ‘That article about you couldn’t have been more helpful.’ He smiles. ‘It seems you’ve had an interesting life, lived in a lot of places. That must have been nice.’

She squeezes his hand.

‘Looking back, it does seem that way, doesn’t it? But do you know, Tommy, mainly I always moved as a reaction to something. Going to America, leaving France. I would have stayed in Paris forever…’ Her voice tapers out.

She had loved that city, the sophistication, the glamour and culture, but it was too painful to live there without Laurent, and one month after the funeral she had packed up and gone to Joliet, as she had originally planned.

Leaving Amélie was a wrench, but the girl had her mother, and they still keep in touch to this day.

Laurent’s daughter became a sculptress, and is a grandmother to two boys herself now.

‘Well, you made the best of it, did well for yourself, which is more than most can say,’ Tommy answers. ‘I always knew you had it in you.’

An instinct for survival is what Maisie holds within herself.

In the thick of her grief at losing Laurent, she had funnelled all her energy into making a success of a new project on returning to America.

It didn’t take long for her friends from her time at Fairweather House to rally around, as though she had never been away.

Deciding that she didn’t want to deal with funfairs– or carousels– ever again, they started with ice-cream manufacturing, which blossomed into a conglomerate of foodstuffs.

They make canned fruit, soup, frozen peas and TV dinners, and every one of them has reaped millions.

Peggy Mae purchased the finest mansion in any southern state; Robert and Clara opened a chain of hotels; Eric travelled the world with a young man he was sweet on; Mrs Papadopoulos and her husband settled on a vast ranch in Illinois.

As for Arnold, he followed Maisie to New York when the business was incorporated and became an influential patron of the performing arts.

Now Maisie dips in and out of meetings when the mood takes her, having handed over the reins to Milo many moons ago.

Her boy has no recollection of James, no memories of waiting for Papa, his face squashed against the window, and is no better off than Joanna, who never even met her father.

Laurent would have been proud of their child, not only because she’s pursued a successful career as a biochemist but because of her kindness and dry sense of humour, which she gets from him.

She squeezes Tommy’s hand again. ‘We’ve both done very well for ourselves. We survived the Sixpences.’

Tommy nods his head from side to side, as if he’s weighing up this statement.

‘I’m not sure I would’ve, to be honest, not without you.

’ His eyes turn misty, as though he is also reliving the moment they were separated.

‘But three days after you left, someone wrote a letter to the authorities about the poor conditions at the Sixpences’, and the pair of them were arrested.

The place was closed down,’ he explains.

‘The matron at the orphanage said the complaint came from a lady who was connected to some rich gentleman with a title. To be frank, I don’t think anyone would’ve taken much notice otherwise. ’

Maisie inhales sharply. Is he talking about Aunty Mabel? She feels grateful to the woman who saved her from the Sixpences, after having resented her for such a long time.

‘What happened to you after that?’ she asks.

‘I’m a Barnardo’s boy,’ he replies. ‘I was taken to the orphanage that day. It was a strict place but fifty times better than the shack– I was fed and clothed and kept warm, which was a blessing. And they trained me up and put me into service at fourteen.’ He stares into thin air for a second.

‘After the war, I became an omnibus driver, then worked my way up to a manager for London Transport.’

Tommy has been okay all this time. After decades of imagining the worst, she no longer need worry. Maisie feels a lump in her throat.

‘It’s all right, Maisie, it’s all right,’ he says gently, sensing her upset.

‘I met my wife, Ada, early on. We’ve got four children.

Funnily enough, our youngest granddaughter, Cecilia, has just been given the role of second dancer in the English National Ballet’s Swan Lake . ’ He grins. ‘Like my imaginary mother.’

She knows Tommy is trying to cheer her up. Smiling through the tears, she thinks of her own daughter, no nonsense and practical, just like Laurent.

‘Well, my Joanna would never contemplate taking tea with a talking dolphin,’ she replies, recalling one of her own made-up tales about her mother.

They both laugh. No one else would understand how these stories sustained them through the worst.

‘Did you ever meet your real parents?’ he asks.

Maisie shakes her head.

‘Me neither,’ he says quietly.