The last piece, p.27
The Last Piece, page 27
Norman stood up too, and offered a hand to Marnie. It seemed so formal, but Marnie looked at him gratefully and took his hand in hers.
‘It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Norman,’ she said.
‘Likewise,’ said Norman, and then took a couple of steps back so that Cecily could take his place.
Tears trickled down Cecily’s cheeks, but she smiled at Marnie. ‘I just want you to know that I have always had four daughters, not three,’ she said. ‘I am honoured to have you as my child and you will stay in my heart forever. Just as you have always been.’
Then, before Marnie had time to step away, she threw her arms around her. Marnie stood there stiffly and unresponsive for a moment, but then Cecily felt her raise her arms and wrap them around her in a tight squeeze. The dogs, for once, were still.
6
Cecily struggled up the steps into the house with four bags of groceries. It would have made much more sense to take two trips from the car but instead she had gathered them all up at once and attempted just one. She pushed the door handle down with her elbow and just managed to carry herself and the bags over the threshold before she dropped one. There was an ominous thud. That would be the chocolate spread for Hugo’s birthday cake hitting the floor. Felicity had said she would just buy a cake like everyone else did, but Cecily was having none of it. No grandchild of hers was having a party with a shop-bought cake, not whilst she was breathing.
She opened the bag and peered nervously inside but everything seemed to be intact. Then she carried them one at a time through to the kitchen. The others were all arriving at three o’ clock so that gave her plenty of time to get the cake assembled and decorated.
Each time they hosted one of these gatherings for a grandchild’s birthday, Cecily worried that it would be the last time, that jelly and ice cream and party games at their grandma’s house wouldn’t be sophisticated enough and that she would be rejected for the bright lights of the bowling arcade or the swimming pool. But each time they seemed to come back for more. And now there was Tamsin, too. She hadn’t even had her first birthday yet. There would be plenty more Nightingale family birthday parties to come.
But none with Marnie. It had been two months since they had said goodbye for what looked as if it would be the final time. Cecily had wept on the train home, not caring who saw her, with Norman’s arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders. For weeks she hoped that Marnie might change her mind, get back in touch and arrange to come and try again, but in her heart she knew that that wouldn’t happen. There was no place in Marnie’s life for her or her family.
There was a place in Cecily’s life for Marnie, however. Cecily still thought of her daughter often, but now she had real details to help her imaginings. She could picture Marnie in her mind’s eye, could visualise the flat, how she lived. She no longer had to imagine the best, or the worst.
But she also knew something else. Marnie was happy. She had Sofia and her dogs and their life together. And whilst knowing that wasn’t the same as having her firstborn in her life, it certainly made their separation easier to bear.
Norman wasn’t in the kitchen, so she made her way into the sitting room. She found him kneeling on the floor, the contents of the hoover bag on the carpet in front of him.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ she asked as she took in the scene.
‘I finished the jigsaw,’ he said, his voice triumphant.
Cecily saw that there was indeed a complete picture of Monument Valley sitting on her table. Except for one piece of sky. The green baize of the mat shone through where there should have been cobalt blue.
‘There’s a piece missing,’ she said unnecessarily. ‘You’ve been doing that puzzle for over a year and all that time there was a bit missing. What a waste of time.’
Norman stood up, his hands grey and dusty. He shook his head.
‘It’s not been a waste of time,’ he said, taking her in his arms. She flinched a little as his dusty hands touched her dress, but then she relaxed into his embrace. ‘I have still had the pleasure of building it and we can see what it is even without that piece. It really doesn’t matter that it’s not there. In some ways I quite like it. Nothing’s ever quite perfect, is it? And now that I’ve finished, I can start a new one.’
‘Well, maybe if you worked a little bit quicker, bits wouldn’t go missing . . .’ she chided him gently. ‘And couldn’t you have put some newspaper down before you started that?’
‘No need. I’m just going to hoover it all back up again,’ said Norman with a wink.
‘You’d better get on with it then. The children will be here soon,’ said Cecily, and then she went back into the kitchen. The cake wouldn’t ice itself.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In 1968, the number of babies being placed for adoption in the UK reached its peak. When I read that I knew at once that I wanted to tell a story about it because those children are a similar age to me. I read a book published by The Children’s Society called Adoption, Search & Reunion: The Long-Term Experience of Adopted Adults by David Howe and Julia Feast, and was particularly interested in what motivated adopted people to get in touch with their birth families. We all have a view, I imagine, on what we think we would do if we were in that situation but, of course, there is far more riding on these decisions than just curiosity. And from these thought processes, Marnie and the Nightingale family emerged.
When researching what life would have been like for Cecily in a Mother and Baby Home, I found an MA project online (http://www.motherandbabyhomes.com/the-homes), which was written using interviews with a number of women who spent time in the homes, and this gave me a valuable insight into their day-to-day experiences.
Slightly less harrowing was the research I did into yoga retreats, and I am very grateful to Juliet Hammond who agreed to come with me to a retreat in Spain so that I wouldn’t be on my own. Then I simply superimposed our Spanish experience on to my own memories of Kefalonia. Isn’t the imagination a wonderful thing?
As ever, I would like to thank my wonderful editors Victoria Pepe and Celine Kelly for their wisdom and kind words, and to everyone at Amazon Publishing who work so hard to produce the final book.
Thanks also to my children, who have learned to deal with the many and varied vicissitudes of the novel-writing mother, and to my husband John, who is always there for me no matter what.
If you have enjoyed The Last Piece then please consider leaving me a review on Amazon or Goodreads, and if you would like to get in touch then visit my website (imogenclark.com) where you will find links to all my social media pages. Thank you for reading.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2017 Karen Ross Photography
Imogen Clark lives in Yorkshire, England, with her husband and children. Her first burning ambition was to be a solicitor, and so she read law at Manchester University and then worked for many years at a commercial law firm. After leaving her legal career behind to care for her four children, Imogen turned to her second love – books. She returned to university, studying part-time while the children were at school, and was awarded a BA in English literature with First Class Honours.
Her first three novels, Postcards from a Stranger, The Thing about Clare and Where the Story Starts, all reached the Number 1 spot in the UK Kindle charts, and her books have also been Number 1 in Australia and Germany. She has been shortlisted for the Contemporary Romantic Novel Award 2020. She is also the author of a Christmas novella, Postcards at Christmas, which is a sequel to Postcards from a Stranger.
Imogen loves sunshine and travel, and longs to live by the sea someday.
Imogen Clark, The Last Piece
