‘This story of a girl, a boat and a heart full of hope is as much a part of me as my left arm. And yet stories from her old world were spun into fairytales, and I’ve never been sure where the fantasy ended and the truth began.’
Kate looked over the top of her page and saw that Essie had closed her eyes and was nodding. There was a trace of a smile—or was she asleep?
Essie’s eyes snapped open as she barked, ‘Well, don’t stop.’
‘I just thought—’
‘Carry on, Katherine,’ she demanded imperiously, and Kate obeyed.
‘My great-grandmother’s stories of childhood are rich with colcannon, sticky apple pie and handfuls of buried treasure plucked from the soil. Yet the scars on her hands and scant details about the people she left behind suggest a different, darker tale.’
Essie snorted. ‘A touch dramatic, don’t you think, dear? You get that from your mother.’ She waved her hand for Kate to keep reading.
‘I’ve learned that people polish some stories and bury others. As if by burying the past, they can stop trauma from being passed down the line. But I wonder if this recasting of history really helps us find that perfect future.’
Kate paused, wondering how much more to read …
Essie had straightened and clasped her hands together. When she looked up there were tears in her eyes.
‘Continue, child.’
‘Um, okay …’
‘When I go to visit my great-grandmother, I stop and sit on her front stoop and look over to the two statues standing in the park outside her house. I used to play soccer in Louisburg Square with my sister when we were children. We’d climb these statues.
‘Christopher Columbus stands proud, wet and mossy at the northern end, and Aristides the Just at the other. Men who were unquestionably brave. Men who sought new worlds. But both men also left a trail of mystery, darkness and deception in their wake.’
Essie raised a snowy eyebrow and said wryly, ‘I have no idea where this is going.’
Kate’s hands were shaking and she found it hard to keep the paper still and read. Her voice strained like a middle-grader on stage at assembly.
‘There are lots of records of great men. But what about the ordinary women who made new lives in faraway countries? Where are their histories?’
‘Ordinary!’ repeated Essie with a humph, and this time Kate ignored her great-grandmother as she was getting to her main point.
‘I want to immerse myself in the study of history to explore the ways people constructed their lives, their worlds … their stories. To compare conflicting tales against the evidence available. I want to study people who have weathered adversity, overcome moral dilemmas and had the courage to take risks—to follow a different path from the one mapped out.
‘My story is folded into my great-grandmother’s story. One day, I hope to solve the riddles of the past for my future.’
‘Well, that’s quite the essay.’ Essie gave an uneasy chortle. ‘It seems you’ve inherited the Irish gift of the gab. Perhaps you’ll be a writer one day? Have you thought of that? If not, you should. I never realised you were so …’
‘Interested?’
‘Nosy, more like it.’ Essie laughed. ‘My bonnie lass, you didn’t believe the fairytales I told you and Molly, did you?’
‘Well …’ Kate shrugged, embarrassed.
‘Let me tell you something, Katherine.’ Essie was leaning forwards. ‘I’ve had a good life in Boston. Beautiful family—roguish great-grandchildren.’ She tapped Kate’s leg. ‘Your great-grandfather and I managed to make something from nothing—with a bit of … luck. Now I’m supposed to say, May the road rise up to meet you and so forth on your eighteenth. I’ve got a whole speech prepared for after dinner, you know?’
‘I don’t doubt it!’ said Kate with a touch of nerves. Essie’s speeches were legendary. She always claimed she was making up for lost time.
Essie stood up, reached for her walking stick with one hand and put her other over the box in Kate’s hand. ‘I’ve watched you grow into a thoughtful young woman. That essay …’ She hesitated then reached up to touch Kate’s cheek. ‘I think you are perhaps starting to see that not everything in life is black and white. Now that you’re eighteen, I think I can share with you a little more of my early years … Perhaps then you’ll understand why I never returned to London—though it broke my heart to leave. I made a terrible mistake and I live with that guilt each and every day.’
Essie’s eyes looked haunted, and her voice quivered as she continued: ‘In eighty years nobody has ever really asked. Not your grandfather or father—they’ve always had their heads full of shipping lanes and ports.
‘My bones ache with regret, Katherine. But I also know that to turn my back on London forever was the right decision. Both things can be true, my love. It’s possible to live with a heart heavy with grief and loss, but also brimming with love and hope.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Kate, frowning. ‘Why didn’t you just go? It’s not like you couldn’t get a berth!’
‘I’ll tell you what: how about next time you’re home I’ll fix us some colcannon and I’ll tell you my story. From the very beginning.’
‘Including the man with the green eyes from Cheapside?’
Essie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where’d you get that from? I think you’ve got your folklore in a muddle, my beautiful girl.’
‘But you used to tell those fairytales when Molly and I were little.’
Essie’s smile relaxed. ‘My darling, we all need to believe in something beautiful. A little magic. It’s what keeps us going during the dark times …’
Chapter 8
KATE
LONDON, PRESENT DAY
The DJ picked up the beats in the Livery Room and the crowd started to roar and dance. Kate walked into the oak-panelled drawing room looking for Sophie. As the music reverberated off the marble columns, Kate touched her sapphires. She recognised something of herself in Essie; perhaps a desire to keep her innermost thoughts—her trauma—to herself. Essie had filled her days with work projects and charities. Were all these accomplishments a coping strategy for Essie, too, as she poured herself into a new life on the other side of the Atlantic?
Kate was sorry that she never did end up hearing Essie’s promised story about why her great-grandmother had left London and never returned. Essie’s secrets were buried with her.
Standing in the corner, under jasmine vines suspended from the ceiling, Kate opened her notebook and flipped through the pages, before having a peek at the sketch of the button. Could Essie have seen some of the cache of jewels found in Cheapside? She snapped her notebook closed and tucked it into her purse, then went to join Sophie and her husband George.
Kate had met Sophie during summer school at Oxford, when they were both preparing for their doctorates in Elizabethan history. They’d bonded over lukewarm beer and a mutual loathing of rugby. Sophie was thin and shared the luminous skin of her Indian mother, with cheekbones that belonged on screen and a throaty Greta Garbo laugh. After two years roaming South-East Asia with a backpack, Sophie had ditched the Dutch husband she’d impulsively acquired after a full moon party in Thailand, along with her dreadlocks and a filthy clove cigarette habit. She’d returned home to take over the family’s appointment-only antique jewellery business in an elegant set of rooms just off New Bond Street. Last year, she’d married George Bailey—a diamond dealer based in Hatton Garden and confirmed rugby tragic.