Josef wouldn’t be able to reply to my letter, of course. I would just have to trust that on the next new moon, arrangements would be put in place for me to join whoever was being picked up from the beach south of Lannion.
To wait a whole month to see Jack again seemed like an eternity. I told myself I was lucky to be in a place that was safe and familiar. In the meantime, I tried to make myself useful at the convent. Part of the building housed an infirmary, where twenty-five elderly invalids who had no family were cared for by the nuns. I asked if I could help with the work there.
My days began to fall into the same pattern they had followed in the Congo, rising early to go to chapel, eating a silent meal in the refectory, then going to the infirmary. The passing hours were punctuated by the bell summoning me to prayers at regular intervals.
At the end of my first full week at the convent, Mère de Saint-Philippe summoned me to her office. Her pale blue eyes had a Mona Lisa look about them.
“Vous vous êtes très bien intégrée ici, ma fille.” You have fit in very well here, my daughter.
I was glad she thought so.
“The sisters have told me what a lovely singing voice you have,” she went on in French. “You sing with such confidence—even in Latin.” She was looking straight into my eyes. I felt as if she could see inside my head, see me squirming. I knew then that I couldn’t go on pretending. She had guessed my secret.
I dropped my head, unable to bear the searchlight gaze. “J’aurais d? vous le dire. J’ai été nonne.” I should have told you. I used to be a nun.
She murmured something I didn’t catch. Then she asked me why I hadn’t wanted to tell her.
“I . . . I was ashamed,” I mumbled in French. “You’ve been so kind . . .” Suddenly it all came tumbling out. The row with my father over Dan, the dream of nursing in Africa, the pain of rescuing the twins and then being separated from them, the attack on the Brabantia and the chance of a new life in Cornwall.
“You were on your way back to Ireland, to your motherhouse?”
“Yes. But I didn’t want to go—I knew that, even before the ship was hit.”
“Do they know what happened to you?”
I stared at my feet. There was no hint of accusation in her voice, nothing judgmental in what she had said. But under her gaze I felt like an utter hypocrite. I thought about the things I’d said to Jack—how I’d berated him for not owning up to being Ned’s father. How could I have done that when I hadn’t even had the guts to tell the nuns in Dublin that I’d survived the shipwreck?
“I accuse myself of dishonesty, Reverend Mother.” Even in French, the words had such familiarity. I had slipped back into the discipline of the mea culpa without even realizing it. My face burned with humiliation. I was expecting a penance to be pronounced—foolish, as I was no longer a nun. But what she said to me was quite different from that. She asked me if I’d lost my faith.
I tried to swallow down the choking feeling in my throat. “N . . . no—I’ve never stopped believing.”
“Do you think that God sent you to Cornwall?”
“I . . . I don’t know . . .” I faltered. “I told myself that he wouldn’t have saved me from drowning unless he had some other purpose for me. I prayed for guidance. And . . . then I was asked to do this secret work.”
She was silent for a moment. I wondered if she was praying, too: for the right words for someone who had rejected everything she represented. “You have many fine qualities,” she said at last. “You are courageous. You put your own life at risk to keep that young woman safe. And you are kind and caring—the sisters at the infirmary have seen that. But you will never be at peace with yourself until you put right the wrong you have done.”
Tears pricked the back of my eyes. “How can I do that? They think I’m dead.” I knew in my heart that even if it had been physically possible—if a ship had magically appeared in Lannion harbor, willing and able to transport me to Ireland—I would have said no. I would have begged them to take me to Cornwall instead.
“If you wish, I will write to the Mother Superior in Dublin when you have left us. I will lay out the facts as you have related them to me. I’ll tell her to expect a letter from you in due course.”
“Th . . . that would be . . .” My voice died, overcome by her compassion.
“It would be the first step,” she said. “What happens after that will be up to you.”