Page 89 of The Stranger in Room Six

When peace was finally declared, it seemed unreal and too late. So much damage had been done, not just to the landscape but to the hearts and souls of everyone all over the world.

Mabel showed her face at the village VE-day party in May but left early to pack.

‘You’re still going to Italy?’ asked Frannie.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I have to see if Antonio’s still alive and tell him about his son.’

‘Good luck,’ said Frannie. ‘I’m leaving too.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I want to go to London. Live a bit. The war has shown me that I need to widen my eyes a bit more.’

Part of Mabel wondered if this had anything to do with those rumours about Frannie’s involvement in Clarissa’s death.

‘Good luck,’ she said.

‘You too,’ Frannie said, hugging Mabel warmly.

‘Thank you,’ said Mabel, a lump in her throat. Frannie had been such an important part of her life since coming down here. How would she manage without her?

‘Promise me you’ll come back to the Old Rectory one day?’

Frannie seemed to contemplate the question for a bit. ‘I can’t be certain of that. But I can promise something else.’

Then she spat on her finger.

‘Do the same,’ she said to Mabel. ‘Now rub your finger against mine. It’s a pledge that we’ll always be friends.’

They hugged again, then Mabel stood and watched Frannie walk away, until she disappeared from sight.

Mabel had butterflies in her chest as she took the train to London, then another train to Dover, followed by a boat and then another train all the way through France on to Italy.

It meant changing trains several times and, once, the carriage was full of people speaking in languages she didn’t understand. Some were laughing, some silent, some weeping. Some well dressed. Some in rags. Perhaps they were refugees.

Naturally, she gave some of the food she bought on the way to children in her carriage.

Always children. On one occasion, a woman came through with a baby in her arms and began to feed it.

Mabel couldn’t keep her eyes away. Eventually she could bear it no longer and moved into another compartment.

She had fed Antonio like that before he’d been torn away from her.

How devastating it must have been for him to be given to another woman without milk in her breast.

Eventually, she reached the station that, according to her Baedeker Guide, was the nearest to Antonio’s village.

With the help of a phrasebook plus a few words Antonio had taught her, such as destra or destro for ‘right’ and sinistra or sinistro for ‘left’, plus dove for ‘where’, she managed to communicate with the stationmaster, who told her to wait in the dusty town for another bus.

By this time, she had been travelling for five days and four nights. Mabel was aware that she was smelly and dishevelled. What would Antonio think of her? What if he didn’t love her any more? What would he say when she told him they’d had a son who had been taken away?

Eventually, the bus stopped. The driver indicated that this was the place. Mabel stood and stared. There was not one building left standing; just low, open-to-the-sky walls that appeared to have once been part of houses.

No. This couldn’t be right.

‘My husband came from here,’ she said in what she hoped was understandable Italian from the phrasebook.

‘Andati tutti,’ he kept saying.

Mabel consulted her phrasebook: They are all gone. Her eyes filled with tears.

Poor, poor Antonio. What must he have thought when he returned home to find his town razed to the ground? Had he lost his mother and his father and his sisters? Please God, no. Where would he have gone after he saw these terrible sights?

It was hopeless. She would never find him. Just as she would never find their son.

‘You have come on a fool’s journey, Mabel Marchmont,’ she told herself. ‘Go home and help Cook get the house ready for people who need it. Do some good instead of harking after the past.’

It was the only way to go on.

Now

Belinda nods. ‘I’ve learned that too. When life is tough, if you can make it better for others, somehow it helps you feel better too.’

‘You help me by listening,’ says Mabel. ‘I wasn’t sure I’d feel like that at first. But you do. You may have killed your husband but in my view, you’re a good, honest woman.’

‘Honest?’ Belinda blushes with shame. ‘How can you say that when I’ve told you – the owner of this home – that I got a fake DBS certificate.’

‘I was rather disturbed about that,’ admits Mabel. ‘But I didn’t say anything at the time because I could see why you did it. I might have done the same in your position. Besides, sometimes there’s a fine line between right and wrong.’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ says Belinda quietly.

Silence falls between the two women. Both want to say more. Both wish they hadn’t said anything at all.