Secrets of a charmed lif.., p.24
Secrets of a Charmed Life, page 24
“His . . . mother?” Emmy said. A nervous mother cleaning up her son’s mistakes? Her grandmother?
He looked at Emmy as if she were daft. “His wife.”
The way he said it made her feel ugly and valueless. A pariah.
Emmy’s hand was still on the doorknob as she vacillated between leaving and staying.
“She wants a word,” Mr. Bowker said again, and it was obvious he’d been told to see that Emmy stayed and waited for the car to come for her.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” she blurted.
The man’s hard features softened the tiniest bit. He had not been paid to look out for Emmy’s interests, clearly, but a sliver of compassion for her was now etched on his face.
“You said you had some questions,” Mr. Bowker said. “If you really want the answers, stay for the car. If you don’t, leave. I will tell her I couldn’t make you stay.”
Emmy wanted so much for someone to tell her what to do. She should have brought Charlotte with her. It was her damnable pride that made her tell Charlotte she didn’t need her. But Charlotte wasn’t there. There was only herself, the lawyer, and his tight-lipped secretary.
“Would you stay, if you were me?” Emmy finally asked, a challenge in her tone.
He shook his head, almost as if to shake away the entirety of all the messes people made when they let their desires run amok. “Honestly, I’d take the check and leave.”
Mrs. Thorne was not happy about this situation. That was clear.
“I never knew his name until you sent me that letter,” Emmy said, her throat thickening with childlike sadness.
“She never knew about you until she saw his will.”
It hurt Emmy to hear him say it that way. She felt at fault for having survived childbirth and taken her first breath.
But she was sure Mr. Bowker didn’t include himself among the unaware. He had known about her. He had drawn up the will.
“Why not?” Emmy asked.
“You seem a reasonably smart girl. I am sure you can guess.”
Emmy didn’t want to guess. She wanted the truth. She took her hand off the doorknob and let the door swish closed.
She took a seat in one of the chairs and smoothed her skirt.
“When did he die, Mr. Bowker?”
Emmy expected the man to say a year ago or six months ago or even on Remembrance Day, three months before.
She did not expect him to say that Henry Thorne had died on September 8, 1940, in the basement of the Sharington Crescent Hotel, his arms wrapped around her mother.
Thirty-one
AT first Emmy refused to believe that her mother and Henry Thorne had been together in that hotel. That was impossible. If that was true, then it was also true that on the night Emmy was conceived, he hadn’t been some passing teenage acquaintance that Mum had slept with after having had too many drinks. He wasn’t a person Mum had long put out of her mind as she had led Emmy to believe.
Mum had had a relationship with him. A continuous one. A secret one. Emmy now thought of Mum in those few minutes before she left Emmy at the flat, the last time Emmy saw her. She was going to Henry Thorne for help. She had said they needed someone with connections. Someone with money to help them find Julia. When Emmy had offered to do whatever Mum was willing to do to get what they needed, Mum had laughed in a sad, funny way because she was going to Henry Thorne for help.
Emmy’s father.
And she didn’t even tell her.
“How—how long did they . . . How long were they . . .” But Emmy couldn’t find the words to phrase so delicate and private a question.
Mr. Bowker gave a mirthless chuckle. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Emmy shook her head.
“On and off since the day you were born. Your mother was a sixteen-year-old maid in your father’s house. He was twice her age and unhappily married. When she ended up pregnant, he put her up in a flat across the river. Paid for the doctor, the hospital. Paid for your nappies and your blankets and your sitters. Found her new jobs when she needed them and got her out of jams when she got herself in them.”
The air in the room felt warm with his indignation.
Or maybe it was just hers.
“Because he had to hide what he’d done to stay out of jail and keep his fortune and reputation?” Emmy said, hotly.
“Because he thought he loved her.”
Emmy was stunned into silence.
Before she could summon words to ask him what he meant by that, the door opened, and an older man in a black suit and cap stepped inside.
“I’m here for Miss Emmeline Downtree,” he said.
Mr. Bowker nodded to the world that waited outside the open door. “Watch your step, Miss Downtree.” And then he pivoted to return to his office.
Emmy walked numbly to the sleek black car waiting curbside. The driver helped her inside, but Emmy would later not remember whether he said anything to her, nor which streets they drove down before he turned into the curved driveway of a stately home that was as large as the entire row of flats in Whitechapel. The gray-stoned mansion was four stories high, trimmed in white. Miniature topiaries lined the walkway to the massive front door.
The driver parked the car and then came around to Emmy’s side to assist her out. He motioned toward the wide steps that led to the entrance. The front door swung open, and a maid in a navy blue dress and white lace apron appeared on the threshold.
“If you will follow me, please,” she said. Emmy took the steps slowly and then entered a marble-tiled foyer. Gilded mirrors and picture frames hung on walls that seemed endless.
The maid showed her into a room that appeared to be a study or library. Books lined the walls. Leather sofas and chairs were set about in cozy groupings. A fire danced in the grate and wherever there weren’t books or leather, there was gleaming mahogany.
Above the fireplace was a portrait of a man who seemed vaguely familiar to her, seated next to a slightly plump woman who stood next to him with her arm around his shoulder. On his other side was a boy, about twelve, with his forearm draped over the back of his father’s chair. The man in the portrait looked like Emmy. Or rather, she looked like him.
Henry Thorne.
Her father.
For several long moments Emmy just stood there and stared at the man who had fathered her. She didn’t hear footfalls from behind. There was just suddenly a voice.
“Miss Downtree.”
Emmy startled, and turned to see the woman in the portrait, older now.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Agnes Thorne. Won’t you sit down?” The woman’s tone was cool, as though her words had been carved of ice.
Emmy took the chair Agnes Thorne offered her, and the woman sat down opposite, smoothing her wool skirt. Her brown hair held tints of gray, but her complexion was flawless, her lips full and red, and the pearls at her neck and ears luminescent. She was not beautiful, but she had a commanding air, a gracefulness born of a lifetime of privilege. Emmy caught a whiff of the woman’s perfume. It smelled like something from another world altogether.
The world of the wealthy.
A tea tray was set between them. Agnes lifted the pot. “Tea?”
“Yes, thank you.”
The woman poured and then handed Emmy a cup without so much as a tremble in her fingers.
“I want it to be clear between us that the check you were given is the end of the road.” She spooned sugar—something Emmy hadn’t seen in months and months—into her cup and stirred. “There will be no more after this.”
“Pardon?”
Agnes laid the spoon carefully on the saucer that held her cup. “Your connection to this family—however small it may be—is done after this. We will not hear from you again. Is that understood?”
Blood rushed to Emmy’s cheeks as humiliation bloomed inside her. She fought to stay in control and not let this woman see her shame. Emmy needed answers. She deserved answers.
“No. It’s not understood, actually. I have a few questions.”
The woman looked up, surprised. And instantly furious. “You are not in a position to ask questions, Miss Downtree. You have my husband’s money. I suggest you take it and leave.”
“Why did it take four and a half years for me to learn that my father is dead?” Emmy asked.
Agnes sniffed, put her cup down, and stood. “I thought we could have a civilized conversation regarding this. But I see now that we cannot. You will not get another shilling from me. Not a one.”
Emmy was not leaving. Not yet. She stayed seated. “I don’t want anything of yours—you can be sure of that. I just want a few answers. Why did it take four and a half years for me to learn that my father is dead?”
The woman sat back down slowly. “It’s wartime. Very hard to locate people. You are no longer living at your last-known address. We couldn’t find you.”
She was being untruthful; Emmy felt sure of it. “You didn’t try to find me, did you?”
Agnes Thorne crossed one leg over the other. “Be careful whom you accuse of lying, Miss Downtree.”
Emmy saw hurt in the woman’s eyes when she said this. And it occurred to Emmy that this woman had been lied to for years. Henry Thorne had carried on his affair with Mum up until the day they both died. And this woman had never known. Emmy felt a strange and instant kinship with Agnes Thorne. Emmy had been lied to as well, about the very same thing.
“I didn’t know who he was,” Emmy said, her heart aching for the two of them in a way that astounded her. “Mum never said a word. I didn’t even know she was still seeing him.”
“Don’t you dare say a word about it,” Agnes said, enunciating the first three words as if they were arrows. “Not a word!”
“But I didn’t! I knew nothing.”
The woman’s chest was heaving as she locked her gaze on Emmy, her eyes wild with anger. “How could you not know? Do you think I am silly enough to believe you didn’t know where your clothes came from? And your food? And the rent for your flat? And every toy you got for Christmas! I’ve seen the hidden ledgers, Miss Downtree. I know exactly how much money he wasted on you and your whore of a mother all those years. He paid for it all. So don’t you tell me you didn’t know!”
Emmy’s mouth was open but no sound came out. She had no words to sling back in retaliation. She felt as though she had been tarred and feathered, right there in that beautiful room with its expensive furnishings.
The whore’s daughter.
Agnes Thorne could see that she had Emmy now, defenseless, in her grip. She leaned forward. “I don’t know how you found out about the will, but I am telling you, I am finished with you. You go to the press with this and I will spend every penny I have making your life as miserable as you’ve made mine.”
“I didn’t . . . I never . . . I was sent a letter informing me that I had money coming to me,” Emmy finally sputtered.
“Liar.”
“I swear it’s true!”
“You lie!”
“I didn’t even know his name until I got this letter. I didn’t know anything!”
Agnes Thorne was at the ready to denounce Emmy when a voice broke through the heated exchange.
“She’s telling the truth, Mother.”
Emmy turned toward the sound of the voice. A young man, perhaps a little younger than she was, stood in the doorway. He was the boy in the portrait, grown up.
“Colin!” Agnes sputtered. “What did you do?”
The man came into the room. Emmy could see that he favored his mother in looks. But his eyes were not full of hatred and disgust.
“I did what I told you I was going to do when I turned eighteen. I told Mr. Bowker to find her. That money is hers. Dad left it to her.”
Agnes seemed to deflate before Emmy. Where a minute earlier there had been a fiery warrior, now there was a beggar woman. The change in her was that remarkable.
“Colin, how could you do such a thing?”
Emmy could feel the pain behind her words, the sense of betrayal.
“Because it was the right thing to do. You know it is.”
The man turned to Emmy and put out his hand. She shook it slowly and with little enthusiasm, she was still so astonished. “I’m Colin Thorne. Your half brother.”
Agnes winced and turned her face away, as though she could no longer bear the sight of Emmy in her house.
Emmy looked from one to the other, from the half brother she didn’t know she had who’d risked his mother’s wrath to see that she was paid in full, to the wronged woman who’d learned too late that her husband had been unfaithful to her. And then there was Emmy in the middle, the whore’s daughter. The ignorant child who couldn’t see where the good things her mother had had came from, or rather, who chose not to.
Emmeline.
The girl she used to be.
She reached into her handbag, and closed her fingers around the check that had been made out to Emmeline Downtree.
Emmy pulled it out, laid it on the table by her teacup, and stood.
She started to walk away from the man who wanted her compensated and the woman who wished she had never been born. It was several seconds before either one of them realized Emmy was leaving them and their money.
Colin came after her. “Wait, Miss Downtree! Wait.”
But Emmy did not wait.
“Miss Downtree!”
Her hand was at the door when Colin reached her. He had the envelope in his hand.
“It’s yours. He wanted you to have it.”
Emmy looked at the envelope. Such a thin little thing to have caused such grief today.
“But that’s not what I wanted,” she said.
And she left him standing there with the envelope in his hand, his fingers covering the word Emmeline scrawled across the front in Mr. Bowker’s practiced script.
Thirty-two
OUTSIDE the Thorne mansion, the driver stood next to the vehicle as if he’d been told Emmy would only be a short while.
He snapped to action when Emmy emerged from the house and opened the car door for her. Emmy would have walked away from that place on her own two legs, but she had no idea where she was. She got inside.
“Paddington, miss?” the driver said when he was also back inside the vehicle.
Emmy did not want to go back to Thistle House right then. Not as Emmeline, and that was who she firmly was as she stepped out of the Thorne home slathered in recriminations. She wanted more than anything to go to Primrose and fall asleep on the heap of bridal gowns, and never open her eyes again.
She wanted to wake up in the arms of the angels and have them tell her she was worthy of love—to give it and to have it given to her.
But there was no place like that in London. Not for her.
Except perhaps . . .
“The Savoy,” she said.
Thirty minutes later, Emmy was inside the lobby of the hotel where she used to go every Monday on her campaign to find London’s orphans. Mac wasn’t there; it was only midafternoon. He was no doubt in the underground studio at Broadcasting House, working dials and switches as someone leaned over a microphone and described the advance of the Allies across Germany.
She settled into a chair to wait for him.
Emmy was not aware she had fallen asleep until Mac was bending over her, gently shaking her awake and murmuring her name.
When Emmy opened her eyes, she saw a woman standing behind Mac, her hand on his arm, and the utter despair of that singular moment was nearly the end of her. But then the woman walked away, clearly having spied the party she was looking for. Mac was now alone.
“Is it really you?” Emmy said.
He laughed. “I was about to ask you the same thing. What are you doing here?”
Emmy stood and threw her arms around his neck and held him tight. It took him a moment to respond in kind, but then his arms were around her as well. She did not want to start crying into his shirt collar but she did, and once the seal was broken, the tears would not stop coming.
Mac cupped the back of her head in his hand and drew her closer. “Isabel. Is it about Julia?”
She shook her head.
Emmy wanted to tell him why she was suddenly at the Savoy, in tears, and wrapped in his embrace. But to repeat every ugly thing Agnes Thorne had said to her and about her, and relive it, held no appeal. Besides, that was Emmeline’s story, not Isabel’s.
“I just had a really terrible day. Awful.” Emmy pulled away and he immediately handed her a handkerchief. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You’re in London,” he said, and it was a question that wasn’t a question.
“There was someone I needed to see. It couldn’t be helped.”
He studied her. “And it didn’t go well?”
“No. It didn’t.”
“Sure you don’t want to talk about it?” he asked.
“Quite sure.”
“Can I take you to dinner, then?”
“Will your girlfriend mind?” Emmy said, handing him his handkerchief and making no attempt to hide her disdain.
He laughed. “She’s just a friend who’s a girl, Isabel.”
“Will there be a stiff drink?” Emmy wanted to drown the word whore, whore, whore, which kept echoing like a clanging bell in her head. Drown it in drink.
“Uh. Sure.” Mac gave her his arm and they started to walk toward the lobby doors.
“You look beautiful when you cry, by the way,” he said.
Emmy leaned into him as they stepped into the early evening. Surely there would be no air raids tonight. Germany had nothing left to send up into the air.
“I don’t like it when I cry,” she said. “Makes me feel weak.”
