her face; ‘It’s funny how things turn out. I never thought I’d argue with my daughter. I used to get in trouble when I was young—I always felt different from my parents. I loved them, of course, but I’m not sure they knew quite what to make of me. I thought I knew best and didn’t listen to a word they said.’
Laurel smiled faintly, unsure where the conversation was headed, but glad her insides were no longer roiling like hot lava.
‘We’re similar, you and I,’ her mother continued. ‘I expect that’s why I’m so anxious you shouldn’t make the same mistakes I did.’
‘I’m not making a mistake, though.’ Laurel had sat up tall against her pillows. ‘Can’t you see that? I want to be an actress—drama school is the perfect place for someone like me.’
‘Laurel—’
‘Imagine you were seventeen, Ma, and your whole life was ahead of you. Can you think of anywhere else you’d rather go than London?’ It was the wrong thing to say—Ma had never shown the least interest in going up to London.
There was a pause and a blackbird called to his friends out-side. ‘No,’ Dorothy had said eventually, softly and a little sadly as she reached to stroke the ends of Laurel’s hair. ‘No, I don’t suppose I can.’
It struck Laurel now, that even then she’d been too self-absorbed to wonder or ask what her mother was actually like at seventeen, what it was she’d longed for, and what mistakes she’d made that she was so anxious her daughter should not repeat.
Laurel held up the book Rose had given her and said, more shakily than she’d have liked, ‘It’s strange to see something of hers from before, isn’t it?’
‘Before what?’
‘Before us. Before this place. Before she was our mother. Just imag- ine—when she was given this book, when that photograph with Vivien was taken, she had no idea that we were out there somewhere waiting to exist.’
‘No wonder she’s beaming in the photo.’
Laurel didn’t laugh. ‘Do you ever think about her, Rose?’
‘About Mummy? Of course—’
‘Not about Ma, I mean that young woman. She was a different person back then, with a whole other life we know nothing about. Do you ever wonder about her, about what she wanted, how she felt about things—’ Laurel sneaked a glance at her sister—‘the sorts of secrets she kept?’
Rose smiled uncertainly and Laurel shook her head. ‘Don’t mind me. I’m a bit maudlin tonight. It’s being back here, I guess. The old room.’ She forced a cheeriness she didn’t feel. ‘Remember the way Iris used to snore?’
Rose laughed. ‘Worse than Daddy, wasn’t she? I wonder if she’s improved.’
‘I expect we’re about to find out. You heading to bed now?’
‘I thought I’d take a bath before the others finish up and I lose the mirror to Daphne.’ She lowered her voice and lifted the skin above one eye. ‘Has she … ?’
‘It would appear so.’
Rose pulled a face that said, ‘Aren’t people strange?’ and closed the door behind her.
Laurel’s smile fell as her sister’s footsteps retreated down the corridor. She turned to watch the night sky. The bathroom door clicked shut and the water pipes began to whistle in the wall behind her.
Fifty years ago, Laurel told a distant patch of stars, my mother killed a man. She called it self-defence, but I saw it. She raised the knife and brought it down and the man fell backwards onto the ground where the grass was worn and the violets were flowering. She knew him, she was frightened, and I’ve no idea why.
It suddenly seemed to Laurel that all the absence in her own life, every loss and sadness, every nightmare in the dark, every unexplained melancholy, took the shadowy form of the same unanswered question; something that had been there since she was sixteen years old—her mother’s unspoken secret.
‘Who are you, Dorothy?’ she said beneath her breath, ‘Who were you, before you became Ma?’
Seven
The Coventry—London train, 1938
DOROTHY SMITHAM was seventeen years old when she knew for certain she’d been stolen as a baby. It was the only explanation. The truth came to her, clear as day, on a Saturday morning around eleven as she watched her father roll his pencil between his fingers, run his tongue slowly over his bottom lip, and then mark down in his small black notebook the precise amount (4s) he’d paid the taxi driver to deliver the family and their trunk to the station. The list and its creation would occupy him for the better part