Page 148 of The Stranger in Room Six

‘Err –’

‘Ciao! My name is Isabella. I have seen the online photographs from the 1940s of your Mabel Marchmont. I believe I am her great-granddaughter.’

My heart skips a beat. ‘Her great-granddaughter? Can you prove that?’

‘Well, I have copies of the same photographs, and also a small piece of lace my grandfather has had since he was adopted.’

‘Lace,’ I repeat excitedly, remembering what Mabel had told me. ‘Could you hold on a minute?’

I run to get Mabel. Something tells me that the caller is genuine.

109

Mabel

Mabel can’t quite believe what this woman is telling her.

‘You’re my great-granddaughter?’ she says over and over again. ‘But how is my Antonio?’

‘He is good. I live near him in Italy.’

‘But how? Where?’

‘I will tell you all, my bisnonna, when I arrive.’

‘Bisnonna? What does that mean?’

She laughs merrily. ‘It is Italian for great-grandmother.’

Mabel’s head is spinning. ‘You are coming here?’

‘But of course. If you would like me to.’

‘Yes! Yes, I would. Please. Be quick. I need to see you before it is too late.’

Sunnyside Home for the Young at Heart is waiting. News has got around. A room is made up for Isabella in the visitors’ wing. Mabel spends hours putting on her make-up and trying on different clothes. Belinda is on duty so she helps with this task, although Mabel barely talks to her. If it wasn’t for the fact that it takes her for ever to get dressed on her own nowadays and that there are not enough staff to go round, she wouldn’t have had Belinda in the room. The air is tight.

And then there’s a knock on her door.

‘Please open it,’ she tells Harry, her heart thumping so hard that it rings in her ears.

A tall, olive-skinned woman stands there. She is pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair.

‘My bisnonna,’ she cries, running to Mabel.

But Mabel’s eyes are on the man.

‘Antonio!’ she cries out. ‘My love. I knew you were still alive. At last, you have come to find me!’

110

Of course, the man in the wheelchair is her son, rather than her old lover, Mabel tells herself after hearing Isabella’s story. She had been confused on the phone when she’d asked her great-granddaughter how Antonio was, because both father and son had the same names.

When she thinks about it, the figures would never have added up. Her beau Antonio had been ten years older than her, which would have made him almost 110 by now. Possible, perhaps, but not likely. Her son, who is now in his eighties, looks just like his father. Yet he is staring at her as if he has no idea who she is.

‘My grandfather – or nonno as we say – has dementia,’ Isabella says. ‘He understands things sometimes, but not often.’

Mabel swallows the lump in her throat. How cruel that they should find each other too late.