letters. Her grandmother’s hands shook as she took them from her and peered at the writing on the first envelope.
“Who are they from, Grams?”
Her grandmother hesitated and when she spoke there was no mistaking the tremulous excitement in her voice. “I can manage from here, thank you, Eve.” Her lips set, unyielding as the seam of a clam.
It was a dismissal. Fair enough. Let her read them in peace; there wasn’t much privacy left to her these days. “How about I go and make some tea?” Eve asked.
Esther didn’t answer; she had already begun to read.
* * *
When Eve returned to the room, her grandmother was sitting very still, staring straight ahead, and Eve worried at first that something dreadful had happened. As she came closer, she saw that tears had tracked down the old lady’s sunken cheeks, leaving damp splotches on the front of her nightgown. She looked worn out, every one of her eighty-nine years showing in her expression, her defeated posture. “Are you okay, Grams?” Eve asked gently, perching on the bed next to her and taking her hand. It felt warm and birdlike in hers, thin skin covering fragile bone.
“I’m not entirely sure.” She held out the letters with her other hand. “But you might as well know the whole story. My unforgivable act.”
“Unforgivable? Really?” asked Eve softly, taking the pages from her, but keeping her eyes on her grandmother.
“I had another child. Two years after Teddy and before your mother. Samuel. He was a beautiful baby, but I’m afraid I was a terrible mother. I couldn’t seem to love him as I did Teddy. I thought there must be something dreadfully wrong with me, that I’d failed. Some days it was impossible to even rock him in my arms; I couldn’t bring myself to be near him, to touch him.”
“What happened to him?” Eve couldn’t help interrupting.
“One morning. The fifteenth of September. The leaves on the trees were turning . . . I remember, there was an orange and yellow carpet of them on the lawn in the back garden. I went into the nursery. Teddy was standing by Samuel’s cot; he’d been trying to wake his baby brother. It wasn’t until I got there and went to pick Samuel up that I realized he was cold. Stone cold.”
“Oh, Grams,” Eve’s hands flew to her mouth. “But that wasn’t your fault. It was SIDS, right, or something like that?”
Esther nodded. “But I was convinced that it was my fault, that I didn’t love him enough, that was why he died. After that, well, nothing else seemed terribly worthwhile anymore. I could hardly look after Teddy. Your grandfather was so worried about me, though it was a long time before I realized that.”
“Some women don’t always feel that rush of love for their child, even I know that, and it certainly doesn’t make you responsible.”
“But at the time I believed it was, you see. Part of me always has. I didn’t love him; I neglected him. And I was his mother.”
Eve reached across to hug her. “Hasn’t anyone told you that’s just not true?”
“Someone did, once.”
Eve thought awhile. “So that’s why Gramps took you to Little Embers?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s where the woman—Rachel—found the letters and the photo.”
“Yes.”
“But I still don’t understand why he did that. It seems so . . . I don’t know, so extreme I suppose.”
“I think he thought I’d gone completely mad. Barmy. It seems harsh now, especially to separate me from Teddy, but I imagine he was at his wits’ end. He was doing the only thing he could for me. And I did eventually get better. After a fashion.”
“How?”
“There was a doctor. That’s him in the photo. Dr. Richard Creswell.” Esther pointed to the tall, dark-haired man at the back of the group. “And some lovely chaps—all damaged by the war. They’d been through far worse than I had.”
“Are they the other people in the photo?” Rachel asked, picking it up from where it lay on the bed.
“There’s George, and Wilkie, and that was Robbie,” Esther’s voice cracked and she pointed to the fair-haired one of the bunch. Eve saw her gaze linger on him. “And Jean—Nurse Bardcombe, miserable so-and-so. She didn’t approve of me. One way or another we’d all suffered. Too much.”
“It was an asylum?” Eve asked.
“Not exactly.”
“You were locked up?”
“Not exactly.”
Eve looked at her disbelievingly. “Oh, Grams. How long were you there for?”
“Four months, three weeks, and two days.”
Eve was silent, considering the fact that her grams remembered to