Page 82 of The Stranger in Room Six

Spring had arrived. Her son would be sitting up by now. Maybe crawling someday soon. The thought broke her heart.

Mabel had taken to spending more and more time at the cottage with Frannie.

Fortunately, her aunt didn’t seem to notice, constantly ‘busy’ in the library.

Indeed, she seemed so obsessed with ‘paperwork’ that she hardly mentioned the Colonel.

‘Some folk do that when they’re grieving,’ commented Cook.

‘It’s the shock. They need to do something practical. ’

On one occasion when Mabel went in, she saw her aunt tearing up documents that had fallen out of a file. Rushing to pick them up, Mabel saw that one was headed ‘Confidential’. ‘Leave that alone, girl. Haven’t you caused me enough trouble?’

There were also some photographs, she noticed, but her aunt was tearing those into tiny fragments, making it impossible to see who they were of.

‘She doesn’t seem to care how wicked she’s been,’ said Mabel to Frannie’s mother. ‘How could she make me sign the adoption papers when I was in no fit state to do so?’

‘I know, love, it’s unimaginably cruel,’ she replied, giving Mabel a big motherly hug.

That afternoon, as Mabel walked back to the Old Rectory, she saw a large black car outside.

It didn’t look dissimilar to the car that had come to take little Antonio away from her in Mousehole.

Perhaps they were bringing her son back to her!

Breaking out into a run, she tore up to the front door, only to hear raised voices coming from the library.

It was her father! She would have known his voice anywhere. So he was back, released from the POW camp. He was alive!

But it sounded as though he was having a terrible argument with her aunt. ‘Let me get this right. My daughter had a child and you made her give it up for adoption?’

‘It was the best thing, George.’

‘Don’t you have a heart? Don’t you remember –’

She cut in. ‘That’s exactly why I did it.’

‘My poor little girl,’ he shouted. ‘What in the name of God have you put her through?’

Mabel could not wait any longer.

Turning the stiff library doorknob, she flew into the room and into his arms. ‘Papa!’ she cried. ‘You’re safe!’

As she hugged him, she could feel his bones under his coat.

Eventually, he stepped back, facing her as if he too could not believe that she was there. ‘A sympathetic guard helped me to escape. However, it took me time to get here.’

‘I heard you talking about my baby. Please find him for me,’ she begged.

Her father looked grim. ‘The documents have been signed. There is nothing that I or anyone else can do. You will have to be brave, my darling, although I do believe that it is time you learned something else about our family.’

‘No,’ said Clarissa, tugging his arm. ‘You can’t do this, George.’

He shrugged her off in a rough manner that didn’t belong to the Papa Mabel knew. ‘It should have been told long ago.’

‘What should have?’ she asked, scared.

Papa’s mouth tightened. ‘When your aunt was your age, she found she was expecting a baby herself.’

‘Who were you married to?’ asked Mabel.

Her aunt turned away, her face pale.

‘That’s just it,’ thundered Papa. ‘You weren’t married, were you Clarissa?’

‘No, because I was still in love with you.’

‘You knew perfectly well that we were over by then,’ he snapped. ‘My heart belonged to your sister.’

Shocked, Mabel interrupted. ‘But you were in love with my aunt before you married Mama?’

Her father went red. ‘It was a brief infatuation.’

‘Not on my part,’ snapped back Clarissa.

‘You recovered enough to find someone else and carry his child.’

‘You had married my sister,’ whispered Clarissa. ‘I was hurt. But if we’re going to come clean about what happened, you should tell Mabel the whole truth.’

‘What whole truth, Papa?’

‘Papa?’ snorted Clarissa. ‘Ha!’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Mabel confused.

Her father put his hands over his face for a minute.

‘I think you’d better sit down, darling.

’ He took the chair next to her and sighed.

‘When your aunt revealed she was pregnant, she also said that the man in question was not willing to marry her. So your grandparents sent her away to give birth. They then suggested we should adopt you. That way we could keep the child – you – in the family. Clarissa agreed.’

‘I had no choice,’ said her aunt bitterly.

‘So you’re not my real father?’ gasped Mabel. ‘And Mama was not my real mother?’

‘It makes no difference. I can promise you that we loved you as our own, especially as it then took us several years to conceive Annabel. We were so happy that you could have a sister.’

He tried to hold her, but his embrace did not feel the same.

‘Who was my father?’ she asked in a small voice.

They stopped still. Silent.

Then Aunt Clarissa opened her mouth and suddenly Mabel knew what she was going to say before the words came out.

‘Jonty,’ she said. ‘It was Jonty.’