‘This isn’t a hotel,’ she replied, vexed at my audacity to speak. ‘You’ll hear the bell for supper and you can follow the other women down to the hall.’ With that, she let go of my arm, unceremoniously shoved me into the room and slammed the door behind me.
I heard the key turn just as I slid down the wall, no longer able to stand.
I lay on the floor that night, as though climbing into bed would signal that I had accepted my fate. I must have fallen into an exhausted sleep at some point, because I woke to the sound of shrieks and whimpering coming from the other inmates. Or patients. Did it matter? I didn’t belong here and I had to break free. But how could a pregnant woman escape a place like this? It was physically impossible. I whispered Matthew’s name, over and over. He would come and find me, surely. Somehow. I knew he would. I couldn’t stay here.
‘Everything will look brighter in the morning,’ I told my little bump, but this time I didn’t believe it.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
MARTHA
The solicitors had sent over the contracts for signing. The sale had gone through quickly and after the bank and agent fees were paid, I was left with the guts of €20,000. The property market was booming again and I had sold at just the right time, according to the agent. I saw the figures on paper but couldn’t believe that it would actually be mine – in my bank account. I would be able to afford a full-time course in university, if I wanted it.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted. When you’ve always had nothing it’s hard to know how to react when a windfall comes your way. I needed more time to decide and, while I did, I wanted to stay in the one place where I had felt safe since leaving Shane: in Ha'penny Lane.
I took Madame Bowden her afternoon tea in the garden. She had been looking a bit pale of late and said the air would do her good.
‘Are you any good at card games?’
I groaned inwardly as she pulled a deck of cards from her pocket, as if by magic.
‘Other than snap?’
‘Your generation has no idea how to pass the time other than staring at your blasted phones.’
She was right. I had been staring at my phone a lot. Ever since I’d told Henry that I couldn’t be with him, I’d taken to reading all of the old messages we’d sent each other. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was daydreaming about the day we’d kissed. I was glad just knowing that he was back. Life had been so dull without him. Dull was okay. I knew how to deal with dull. But when you’ve had a taste of magic, it’s hard to be satisfied with the ordinary again.
‘Twenty-fives, that one’s easy enough,’ she said, dealing out five cards to each of us and turning the top one on the pack right side up. ‘Now hearts are trumps.’
‘Okay,’ I said. They sure are.
As time passed and the sun slanted on different parts of the garden, highlighting plants I didn’t know the names of, I wasn’t much closer to figuring out the rules of the game. I just took her word for it and found that the physical act of shuffling and choosing cards to put down was sort of calming. My thoughts began to form around things I wouldn’t normally let myself think about.
‘God, I hated being back in that town,’ I said, thinking back to the funeral and placing an ace on the table.’
‘Oh, you’ve won!’
‘Have I?’ I looked down and felt a rare moment of joy for joy’s sake. She marked it down on a piece of paper.
‘I always felt like an outsider there,’ I continued, shuffling the deck. ‘I mean, people always thought I was a bit strange anyway. Me and my mother. The kids at school used to think we were witches – how we could communicate without words. And they definitely didn’t like when I started reading them.’
‘Whatever do you mean, reading them?’
I silently cursed myself. How had I let that slip? I’d got distracted by the silly card game. I looked up at her face, her countenance alert. She’d done this on purpose, tricked me into saying more than I’d meant to.
‘Oh, you know, you just get a gut feeling about people.’
‘Intuition, some might say,’ she said, motioning that I should deal the cards again.
‘Yes, something like that.’
‘Hmm. Can you read me?’
I considered her for a moment. After our initial meeting, I thought I knew all I needed to know about Madame Bowden. All I wanted was safety and I knew she would not harm me. But her question jolted me and I wondered if perhaps she had been hiding something in plain sight all along.
‘You are testing me for something, although I’m not sure what.’
‘Well, that doesn’t take a mind-reader. What else?’
I hesitated. How could I say this without hurting her feelings?
‘Come on, I won’t break!’
I blinked. Was she reading me?
‘You are very, very old. Older than you seem. And you are afraid that you will be forgotten about. You’re waiting for someone, aren’t you? Someone to take care of …？’
‘Yes, well, that’s quite enough of that.’
She folded her hands on her lap and looked at a blackbird splashing in the bird bath.
‘See? People don’t like it when you tell them things that you shouldn’t really know.’
She sighed heavily then cocked her head to one side. ‘I underestimated you. I won’t do that again.’
I supposed that was a compliment and I nodded.
‘Being an outsider can be a good thing,’ she said, returning to our previous conversation.
‘You think? It seems to me it would have been much easier if we could’ve just fitted in.’
‘Heaven forfend, Martha! Conformity is a death sentence. No, my dear, you must embrace what makes you stand out. That’s what they despise. It’s the circle of hell in this life – blaming children for being who they are, because we were blamed and our parents before us. If you’re not harming anyone, why try to change who you are?’
‘I don’t know. I never thought of it that way. All I know is that I feel so angry with myself all the time. Like I’ll never be good enough for them, so why even try?’
‘Good enough for whom? For people who are trapped in a life that is not of their own making? Surely you can see that they merely want you to be trapped with them, so they will feel less alone in their emptiness. Be careful, Martha, you’ll become blind to your own value if you keep looking through the eyes of the bourgeoisie!’
That night, after I showered and looked once more at the story inked on my back, I thought about what Madame Bowden had said. I knew it as soon as I arrived in Ha'penny Lane, but I kept trying to deny it. I could feel the very fibres of the building getting under my skin, filling my head with ideas of a future I would never have dared to dream about. Yet when I saw Opaline’s letter to Sylvia, I knew that the book she referred to was the one that had been given to me. Was it all somehow linked to Madame Bowden? All I had were questions and the only person I could talk to about it was Henry. Could we be friends? The idea made me feel so sad. But I couldn’t see any other way. I couldn’t risk losing myself again, not when I’d fought so hard to rebuild my life.
As I lay in bed reading one of the books on my literature course, Persuasion by Jane Austen, I noticed more books lying flat on the branch that had flattened out as a shelf. The words emblazoned on their spines were almost golden in the lamplight. Dear Reader by Cathy Rentzenbrink, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews. Gosh. Did Madame Bowden really think I could manage all of this extra reading? I looked back down at the page I was reading. I couldn’t let myself get distracted, as I had to finish it before my next class. My curiosity wouldn’t let me be and I looked up again, only this time, certain words seem to stand out more than others.