Page 28 of The Silent Sister

ELéNI

Eléni barged into her parents’ room. ‘Mamá, I’m slipping out to do some sketching down at Rock Park.’

Her mother sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at an open book. Flustered, she slammed the pages shut and pushed it behind her. Her face drained of colour. ‘Haven’t you heard of knocking?’ Cassia’s voice was unusually sharp.

‘Sorry. Bronwen said you were up here getting some peace and quiet after she nagged you to take her shopping to Credenford for shoes. Again.’

‘That’s fine, but you could have just shouted you were going out. Peace and quiet? There’s never any of that with you two.’

Without looking Eléni in the eye, her mother stood to put her book away in the drawer under the wardrobe. When she turned away, Eléni spotted a blue envelope left on the bedspread. She snatched it and put it in her pocket. Just what’s so serious you’ve got to hide it away, Mamá?

Still puzzled at her mother’s reaction, Eléni left the house and walked down the hill and under the stone arch into the park.

They’d been living in Porth Gwyn for almost a year now.

Before that, the family had lived with her elderly great-aunt, Gwladys, in a smart area of Cardiff until she died just over two years ago.

It was her aunt who was given the credit for getting Eléni to speak as a little girl.

Eléni didn’t know why she hadn’t been able to speak — she wasn’t deaf, even though she’d had all the tests going.

When they’d lived in Porth Gwyn originally before Bronwen was born, she had vague memories of being taken to see the principal of the school for the deaf in the town.

Her mother had got a job there and they’d taught her to sign.

Another memory came back to her. She remembered her mother bursting into tears one evening when she’d collected her from Aunt Katerina, who’d looked after Eléni while Cassia had worked.

Whatever Katerina had told her, Eléni still remembered her mother’s words: ‘We can’t stay. We’ll have to leave. Again.’

Bronwen was seventeen now and it had been a long time ago.

Eléni had been too young at the time to know why they’d had to leave Porth Gwyn in such a hurry, but, judging from the way her mother had tried to hide the book earlier, it suggested she still might have secrets to hide.

Eléni found a bench and sat down. She felt for the paper in her pocket and opened the pale blue, translucent envelope edged in blue-and-red diagonals.

It was stamped Par Avion . She began to read the letter, which was written in Greek.

Fiscardo, Kefalonia

4 May 1955

Agapití Cassia,

It is as I feared. Yesterday I received a visit from a man who is looking for his niece.

Didn’t I ask you to be absolutely sure no one from her family had survived?

I told you it was wrong. He had been working in Australia when the earthquake happened and had to wait before he could return to his homeland.

Since he arrived back on the island, he has searched everywhere.

Someone in Argostoli told them a small girl was pulled from the rubble of the house where his parents and sister and brother-in-law lived. He’s being helped by...

Eléni couldn’t work out the rest of the sentence, so kept reading.

The reporter told him she was found barely alive but once she was released by the Red Cross, no one knows where she went or who she was with.

I don’t know how he knew to call here, but I think I have put him off with my lies. But it is just a matter of time before he comes to find her. Please, Cassia. Be careful.

Your loving sister,

Eugenia

Eléni’s pulse raced and she felt sick. So, her mother had a sister — her aunt.

She knew nothing about an earthquake, but could the little girl mentioned in the letter be her?

Why else would this Greek aunt write to her mother about it?

It was wrong, the woman said in the letter.

Cassia must have taken her away from Kefalonia without permission.

Stolen her. Eléni couldn’t believe what she was reading.

She was glad she could get the gist of the letter even though it was written in Greek lettering, but there was a part in the middle she wasn’t quite sure of.

Aargh! It was so frustrating! She wished she’d paid more attention to her reading and writing of Greek.

In view of the fact she hadn’t talked for so many years, her mother had always been so proud of her spoken Greek.

If this was true, it meant one thing — Cassia and Tom Beynon were not her birth parents.

Her birth parents had died in some earthquake or other on the Greek island of Kefalonia.

No wonder her mother never wanted to talk about her Greek background or wanted to visit Greece now that holidays abroad were becoming more common.

Why hadn’t they told her? Being adopted was nothing to be ashamed of.

Patsy Barnham was adopted. She’d known from the time she was a little girl.

Chosen , she’d said. Eléni stifled a sob.

‘But mine! They’ve let me live a lie for almost twenty years.

What have they got to hide?’ As she spoke aloud, tears spilled over and streamed down her cheeks.

‘Are you all right, bach ?’ A voice she recognised caused her to quickly wipe her cheeks on her sleeve.

‘Yes, thank you, Mr Morgan. Just some dust in my eyes. I’m off to do some sketching now.’

The fact she was crying and talking out loud to herself would get back to her parents, for sure. Reg Morgan was a big mate of her father’s. She could just imagine what he’d tell him: ‘Saw your lass down the park. Upset she was. Denied it, mind.’

Bidding the older man goodbye, she gathered up her sketchbook and made her way down to the part of the park near the river called Lovers’ Leap.

She sat on a rock overlooking the deep drop into the Ithon and wondered how many lovers had leaped to their deaths from that spot.

She’d never been in love. She’d had a couple of boyfriends in college, but no one she’d jump off a cliff for if it didn’t work out!

Eléni took out the letter from her pocket and read it again, trying hard to work out the section she’d missed the first time.

Could the one word be reporter? She made a guess.

He’s being helped by a reporter from..

. She thought hard about what the next Greek letters were.

W-A-L-E-S. Yes, that was it, she was sure.

The reporter who helped him was from Wales.

She checked the date on the letter — May 1955.

Bronwen wasn’t born until 1956, so could the man turning up have been a reporter and that’s what had caused her mother to leave Porth Gwyn?

Or perhaps a relative had come looking for her.

Yet her parents had never told her and had kept the secret all this time.

How could they? She was never going to forgive them.

She’d been living a lie for twenty years!

It was no good. Eléni wasn’t in the mood for sketching.

She would return home and have it out with her mother.

Her real parents may be dead, but she was determined to find out everything she could about who she really was.

Cassia and Tom Beynon owed her that much.

* * *

The walk through Porth Gwyn to her parents’ house on the outskirts of the market town helped to calm Eléni down.

It gave her time to reflect on her memories of the happy years growing up in Cardiff.

Her mother had kept house for Great Auntie Gwladys, and Eléni and the old lady had become firm friends.

She remembered the delight on her father’s face when he'd arrived home on leave from the Navy and she had spoken full sentences to him for the first time.

‘All down to Auntie Gwladys,’ her mamá had said. ‘They’re inseparable.’

Her father had retired from the Navy, and Eléni remembered how keen he’d been for the family to return to Mid-Wales. ‘It’s where I truly belong, cariad ,’ he’d told her. ‘And now I’ll have my three best girls with me.’

By that time, Great Auntie Gwladys had died and Eléni had finished her college course, so according to her father there’d been nothing to keep them in the smoke and bustle of the city.

The fact her sister had been uprooted at a vital time from her grammar school hadn’t seemed to bother anybody, including Bronwen herself.

She would have hated it, but Bronwen had just taken it in her stride.

Her sister had made new friends and seemed to be out all the time, whereas Eléni was happy to spend time with one good friend, Gabriella.

Her mother’s pale grey Morris Marina wasn’t in the drive when she arrived home. Eléni let herself into the house, empty apart from the presence of Lady, the family’s corgi.

She bent down to stroke her. ‘Hello, girl. That’s a good welcome for me, at least. I don’t suppose you’ll mind who I am.’

There was a note left for her on the kitchen table.

Eléni,

Have taken Bronwen to buy the platform shoes she wanted in Credenford. Yes, I know I’ve given in to her nagging. I’ve warned her if she falls and breaks an ankle, I’m not going to be the one taking her to Credenford Hospital.

Just heat up the corned beef hash for you and your baba if we’re not back before you want to eat.

Mamá x

P.S. Sorry about snapping earlier. Just tired.

The showdown Eléni had planned would have to wait.

Tipping a spoonful of instant Nescafé into her favourite mug, she made herself a coffee and took it up to her bedroom.

She couldn’t get the contents of the letter out of her head.

Sitting in front of the mirror on her dressing table, she wondered whether the face gazing back at her looked anything like one of her real parents.

They weren’t around to tell her, but she had an uncle.

Perhaps he could tell her. I may even look like him.

Is he still in Kefalonia? Is he still alive?

I have to know. She had so many questions.

It all started to make sense. She’d seen photos of Bronwen as a baby, but there were none of her.

She’d always wondered why she and Bronwen looked so different.

But it was the case in lots of families, wasn’t it?

She took after her mother with her Greek colouring — the olive skin and black glossy hair — whereas Bronwen looked so much like their father and his family.

‘Typical Celts,’ her auntie Gwladys had always said.

‘Fair skin, freckles and the blonde or copper-coloured hair.’ Yet it was more than that.

She’d always felt different. She’d reasoned it was because she didn’t — no, couldn’t — speak for all those years.

Bronwen was five years younger, yet had raced past her as far as speech was concerned.

In fact, she’d become Eléni’s spokesperson.

When they’d got older, Eléni had been known as the silent sister and Bronwen had been the ‘chopsy’ one.

Even when the words had come, Eléni had let her sister carry on, happy to remain in the background and just converse with a few close friends and within the family.

Now I find out we’re not even sisters. The silent sister who isn’t a sister at all!

Once she’d drunk her coffee, she slipped into her parents’ room with the intention of returning the letter. She reasoned her mamá and sister would not be back for hours. Bronwen could never make up her mind when she was out shopping, and her father was never home before six.

Eléni pulled out the drawer at the base of their wardrobe, expecting to see the book her mother had replaced.

It wasn’t there! More proof Cassia had secrets to hide.

Although she felt uncomfortable going through her mamá’s things, she had to find out more.

There was nothing in the chest of drawers, the rest of the wardrobe or the bedside cabinets.

I wonder, she thought. After moving the sheepskin rug away from the side of her parents’ bed, Eléni knelt down on the cushioned vinyl and placed her hand under the divan.

She slid the book out from under the bed.

It was a hardback journal. The words Cassia Beynon.

Wales 1954 onwards were written on the first page in her mother’s handwriting.

With her hands trembling, she returned to her own bedroom with the notebook. What secrets would she find inside?