in the hallway staring at her. They were on their own together. Julia had gone to do some shopping and Agnes had disappeared earlier. Lizzie didn’t want to waste a minute, so she would have to take her.
‘We have to go out, darling,’ she said hastily to Abigail, fetching their coats. As she did Lizzie allowed the realization to wash over her: she had found Annie. She was going to see her daughter again. It was hard to believe because this was something she had wanted for so long, an impossible dream. She hoped more than anything to be able to gather that little girl into her arms, to draw her into the space that had been left forever empty by the tiny baby she’d held so long ago.
Looking down at Abigail now, she thought how strange the world was. In front of her was a child who didn’t belong to her but was with her; out there was her own daughter who couldn’t be with her. Both of them holding a piece of Lizzie’s heart.
She quickly put on Abigail’s coat. They grabbed their gas masks, and off they went.
It wasn’t too far away to the address she had been given, and as they got off the bus, Lizzie’s heart was in her throat. This would have been hard enough as it was, but now that Jack was dead, it felt like she had no skin, no barrier, no fortitude to hold off any emotions she might be overwhelmed by. She held Abigail’s hand tightly, grateful for even that small feeling of reassurance.
Walking down the street, something about it felt familiar to her. She looked at the number on the piece of paper. Some of the houses in the road looked as if they had been bombed not long before, and though a lot of rubble was now cleared away, the homes were marked with the usual bomb damage.
Lizzie turned a corner in the street and started to speed up, counting the houses as she went. The house number she’d been given on the piece of paper was 78. But as she approached that number, a fearful realization started to twist in the pit of her stomach. She glanced down at the address and then double-checked the houses around it. But here it was in front of her – number 78, between 76 and 80. But instead of a neat terraced house like the ones either side, there was a gaping black hole, a pile of rubble where a home used to be, and behind it, the Anderson shelter was flattened. She put her hand to her mouth and gasped. She was too late; her daughter was gone.
Tears started to stream down her face, her heart felt as if it was being squeezed in a vice; Lizzie had missed her chance. She stood there, looking at the devastation, as though maybe her child was going to materialize from under a pile of bricks. Turned on its side was a little pram smashed almost flat and missing a wheel, and she wondered if it had been her daughter’s. This wasn’t how her journey was supposed to end. Lizzie had given her up for a better life, not to die in such a horrible way.
By her side Abigail seemed agitated, alert somehow, looking around her. Did she sense Lizzie’s pain? Did she sense how important this place was to her?
All at once, a voice broke into her thoughts.
‘Hello, there.’
Lizzie turned, wondering who it was.
‘How are you?’ continued the friendly voice.
Then she caught sight of someone. Lizzie realized an older woman was walking towards her and calling to her, but then she noticed she wasn’t looking at Lizzie, she was looking at Abigail.
‘Do you know her?’ asked Lizzie, following the woman’s gaze.
‘Of course I know her. That’s Abigail, my little granddaughter’s friend. How are you?’
Abigail’s eyes widened. She looked at Lizzie and then back at the older woman, as though trying to reconcile her two worlds.
‘I’m so glad to see she is okay. We’d thought the worst when her house was bombed. I’m so happy I was wrong,’ the woman continued, as if she believed Lizzie understood what she was talking about, whispering to Lizzie over Abigail’s head: ‘Sad about her grandma, wasn’t it? Are you a friend or part of Abigail’s family? I always thought she only had her gran.’
Lizzie’s brain was moving slowly, still deep in the grief of all of her loss, but she suddenly started to put the pieces