. . . I know what you must have gone through . . . You must NOT think that any of it was your fault . . . four years before . . . I’m so sorry . . . they should have prosecuted, then it wouldn’t have happened to you too . . . My parents never knew it was him . . .
Marnie slumped to the chair and started the letter again, reading every word now. Reading every word of a woman who had once been a girl, like herself.
. . . I kept my son . . . It has taken me a long time to trace you, using up quite a few favours – some possibly illegal, but as soon as I heard about you, I felt I had to find you. If I do not hear from you then I will presume you wish to be left alone, but please feel free to contact me and talk – any time you wish, I would be more than happy to be there for you.
By the time she had turned the page she had to wipe the tears forming thickly in her eyes. Tears of sadness for the girls they had been, tears of relief that she was not alone. And after the last word had been read, tears of anger that her mother had kept this letter from her when it could have made all the difference. Why had she kept it? Had she wanted to give Marnie some belated relief after her death? No, that didn’t make sense because finding it now could only show how much Judith Salt had drawn out the pain for years when she could have stopped it. Or had she merely forgotten about its existence?
Marnie growled and that growl turned into a scream and with that scream, her arm lashed out sending her mug and all the things from the box scattering to the floor.
Marnie sank her head onto her arms and cried for her thirteen-year-old self who’d been so starved of love that when it came calling, she hadn’t been able to resist.
Chapter 32
Marnie hadn’t been able to sleep properly and eventually gave up the ghost and rose extra early to make the cheesecakes but her head was far from the task in hand. The contents of the letter she’d found in the box had been swirling around in her head, throwing it into turmoil. She wanted to dig up her mother and ask her why she hadn’t told her about what Laura Hogg had gone through. She wondered if Laura Hogg’s mother had called her a tart and slapped her face in anger and humiliation and walked around the house like a player in a Greek tragedy, back of her hand pressed against her forehead as she proclaimed, ‘oh the shame’.
As Marnie waited for the van to arrive to pick up the cheesecakes, she took out a pad and a pen and began to write a letter to Laura Hogg but she didn’t know how to start it.
A picture landed large and vivid in her head. A stiff-faced nurse, bringing her a warm cloth to ease the pressure in her breasts.
‘It’ll dry up eventually,’ she said, her voice kippered and unsympathetic. She’d been right, of course. The milk had cried out of her breasts in the beginning, and unneeded had pined away in the end.
Marnie forced her focus onto the blank sheet of paper in front of her.
Dear Miss Hogg,
I must apologise for not writing but I never received your letter. I found it in my deceased mother’s possession . . .
No, she couldn’t say that. She screwed it up into a ball and started again.
Dear Miss Hogg,
Thank you for writing to me all those years ago . . .
But what if Miss Hogg was now married with children and had put this episode behind her? To get a letter might stir everything up again, as it had done for her. Maybe she should leave well alone. What was it that Herv had said once: Sometimes it is best to let the past settle.
She looked up the address on the internet and found that the Hoggs had lived there until 2005, but there was no trace of them after that. She felt bitter that Judith had robbed her of the opportunity to respond. As if she hadn’t taken enough from her.
She started to write the letter she would have sent anyway. It didn’t matter now that it had crossings out all over it.
I’m so sorry to hear what you went through . . . I so appreciate you taking the time . . . I wish I could have read this years ago . . . I don’t know why it was never given to me . . . I don’t know if it was misplaced kindness . . . But it wasn’t, she knew, because her mother kept bringing it up, and always with loathing prevalent in her voice, long after the date of the letter, long after she must have known about Laura Hogg and what had happened to her.
I’m glad it all worked out for you . . . I didn’t keep my baby . . .
Tears slipped down her cheeks as she finished it, wished Laura well. And her baby. The baby she’d been allowed to keep. Then she sealed it in an envelope. Then she went over to the sink, lit the corner of it with her chef’s torch and held it until the flames kissed her fingers. She’d always sent her letters to Santa that way because someone had told her that the smoke carried the words straight to his heart. She sluiced the ashes down the drain and as the last of them disappeared, so did the portal to those years. She had to close it up, nail it shut, cement over it again or she would disappear down it and drown in bitterness and anger.
She looked up at the clock to find it was nearly nine. The van had never been that late before. She pulled up Mrs Abercrombie’s direct number on her phone and rang it.
‘Fiona Abercrombie,’ it was answered immediately, in her usual clipped, business-like tone.
‘Hi, Mrs Abercrombie, it’s Marnie Salt here. Your van driver hasn’t turned up.’
‘No, and he won’t be doing so either,’ said Mrs Abercrombie.
‘Pardon?’
‘I told you that if anyone got wind that we were being supplied by an outside caterer, the deal would be off immediately, with no come-backs.’ She sounded furious.
‘No one could possibly have known,’ replied Marnie.
‘Then you should have been in here yesterday when two women were shouting their mouths off very publicly and very loudly about the cheesecakes not being made on the premises but in a very scruffy little kitchen and they were going to tip off the trades descriptions office, environmental health and anyone else who’d listen.’
Then Marnie knew. It had to be Kay Sweetman. She was the only possible person who could have seen the boxes when she had stomped through Little Raspberries on Saturday.
‘Did one happen to be very fat with short dark hair and the other a tall blonde?’
‘Oh, know them do you? I rest my case. I shan’t be ordering from you any more, Miss Salt, and I have to say I am very disappointed in you.’
‘Mrs Abercrombie . . .’
‘What?’
‘Go to hell,’ said Marnie and ended the call.
Five minutes later, Marnie was at the vicarage.
Lionel opened the door to find her holding a box. ‘Good morning, Marnie, how are—’
‘Lionel, would you like an apple crumble cheesecake?’ said Marnie, interrupting him.
‘I would absolutely love one,’ he said, both surprised and delighted.
‘There you go.’ Marnie shoved the box in his hand, turned and walked back to the car where other boxes of cheesecakes were awaiting delivery. By the time Lionel had shouted a rather confused thank you, Marnie had her foot on the accelerator. She drove to the pub and gave David and his wife a cheesecake in the same manner, thrusting it hard into their hands. Then she went over to Dr Court’s house and gave them one, then to Derek in the gravedigger’s house, then to the Rootwoods. Then to the shop. Roger was behind the post office counter, Kay Sweetman was circulating stock.