she had always loved the gentle rhythm of a thunderstorm and chose instead to blow out her candle and open her curtains so that she could watch the rain whip against the pane.
It was moments like this, faced with nature, when Margaret felt most like the wild girl she had been in the years when she had known Nigel. Before she had grown into the elegant young lady her father demanded she be. She felt at one with the wild side of nature, always more alive in a storm or on the edge of a cliff. She thought wistfully as she looked at the pouring rain that it had been some time since she had gone to the cliffs. They seemed strange and foreign when viewed separately from the people she knew and loved.
She was beginning to drift off to sleep at last when she heard a sound. It was something like a cry, but softer, more of a whimper, and it was just outside her door. At first she thought she’d imagined the sound in conjunction with the violent storm outside. But then the wind abated and she heard it again, just beneath the crack of the door, a quiet sob.
Margaret climbed out of bed and padded quietly on bare feet to look out into the hall. When she opened the door she found a tiny white shape curled up at her feet, quivering. The shape moved, and Poppy’s pale face peered up at Margaret in the darkness.
“What is wrong?” Margaret began, but before she could enquire further, the little figure darted past her into the room and scrambled into Margaret’s bed, slipping under the covers and disappearing entirely from view. Margaret was stunned. Poppy had never approached her in all their time together. Certainly not in such a vulnerable way.
She closed the door quietly and climbed back into bed, close to the girl but not touching her. She thought of what Mrs Tarrow had said and knew that it would be important to be near her, even if she was angry. She spoke quietly after a moment, interrupting the child’s soft sobs.
“Are you frightened of the storm?” she asked into the darkness.
The girl’s answer was both shocking and endearing. She crawled over beneath the blankets and tucked herself up against Margaret’s side, her head on Margaret’s chest, her little fingers clinging to her nightgown as though to a lifeline at sea. Margaret’s heart seized within her at the feeling of the child’s tiny body shivering in fear beside her.
“It’s all right,” she said, tightening her arms around the girl. “It’s all right, I’m here. Nothing is going to happen to you, I promise.”
They sat together like that for a long time, nothing but the sound of the rain all around them and the occasional flash of lightning. Each rumble of thunder brought a tightening of the girl’s fists on Margaret’s nightgown. But eventually, the thunder lessened and the shaking stopped. Margaret thought that Poppy had fallen asleep. But then she heard the child’s soft, voice speaking in the quiet room.
“Are you my new mama?”
It was a startling question from the same girl who had been hurling her anger out at the world in every behaviour imaginable, and Margaret took a moment to respond. She thought about what she had learned that very day and realised with a start that she understood what Poppy had been trying to communicate.
The little tantrums were all Poppy could do. Hurling her hands in the air and screaming until the world around had suffered as she had, until she knew she was understood and not alone.
Margaret ran her hand over the little’s girl’s dirty, tangled hair.
“You can call me Aunt Margaret,” she said quietly. “I’m not your mama, but I knew and loved your mama very much. She was so special, Poppy. She cared about you very much, and she wanted me to take care of you.”
There was another clap of thunder, and the frightened girl buried her head in Margaret’s side. After a long moment, she raised it again, her voice shaking. “I don’t want to be alone. Do you have to be my mama to keep me?”
Margaret understood with a sickening jolt of realisation that all along Poppy had been torn between what she needed – companionship and comfort and belonging – and what she considered to be a betrayal of her mother’s memory. She hugged the girl close. “I don’t have to be your mama to keep you,” she said