Chapter Thirty-Seven
Eating a slice of toast while sitting on her sofa, Evelyn heard the ping of a text. She felt inside her pocket and patted a cushion before finding her phone, safe and warm, beneath Toots.
The message began: Hello, this is Samuel. I am Frances Parfait’s carer . . .
Evelyn felt a swoop of grief, fearing she was too late. But then she scrolled down and realised there was still hope.
She finds it hard to type, so she has dictated this message: Plan sounds intriguing. Please advise. Kind regards, FP
Evelyn tapped out her reply, trying to put her proposal as succinctly as possible. Then she fed Toots, endured her customary hunch under the tepid shower, dressed and ate a second slice of toast while looking out at the Cornish mizzle.
The reply came as she was putting on her boots. It had been typed by Samuel, but the words sounded like Frances’s and her meaning was clear.
Dear Evelyn, the news of this cache explains a lot. I suspect Edwin had a kleptomaniac streak. He was a small man with an over-inflated view of his own talents, so I suppose this helped him maintain that fiction. I’m sorry if I sound bitter, but it seems I am.
Your plan appeals. It is only right that the stolen goods are returned to the museum. Of course some say they should be returned to their true homes in Rome, Athens, Cairo and Beijing . . . but that is a debate I shall not live to see resolved.
Anyway, I agree to participate. You know my address. I shall ask Samuel to make the arrangements after my passing.
When you visited I was taken by surprise and I apologise for my poor manners. I should have mentioned how much I enjoyed your company, all those years ago. The museum had high hopes for you – also for your friend Asa, who left shortly after you. I’m glad he went on to thrive in his natural habitat.
Your father’s betrayals were many but, as I look back from my point of no return, it wasn’t all bad. There were moments of love and joy and I hope you can remember some too.
Kindest regards,
Frances Parfait
It took Evelyn a while to digest the message and she considered several versions of a reply before settling on a simple Thank you.
Oh, Asa. If she’d searched for him earlier and more thoroughly, would she have found him?
Even if she had, would that have changed the course of her life?
She considered Frances’s words and tried to imagine Asa’s ‘natural habitat’, immediately discounting London, Edinburgh and America.
Then she remembered him talking passionately of the Colosseum and the Parthenon and she typed his name alongside Rome into her phone.
Finally, she found him hidden away, like a rare treasure, on the staff list of a small Roman museum.
Except these days he went by the name of Asa Bianchi-Lingard. There was no picture on the website, just the grey outline of a head, which felt appropriate because that was how she had trained herself to think of him: indistinct as a shadow.
There and then, she resolved to go no further. She would not google his double-barrelled surname because she couldn’t bear to know what other riches Asa’s life had included: a handsome son, a clever daughter, a lucky wife. A whole life lived without Evelyn Silver.
Frances’s ability to look back without anger was laudable, but Evelyn wasn’t at that stage yet.
Shortly, as agreed with Frances, she would go to her museum and write out address labels for the boxes waiting by the door.
Then she would arrange for them to be transported to Frances’s flat, where their labels and any paperwork would be destroyed.
The boxes would be stored in her flat ‘for as long as it took’ and Evelyn imagined Samuel would stack them neatly next to the dainty telephone table in Frances’s hallway.
Then, once Frances had passed away, Samuel would complete two final tasks.
Frances trusted him and, she said, he would be rewarded for his discretion.
First, he would deliver the boxes to the gates of the British Museum with a typed letter explaining that they had been stolen over the course of several decades by a person once known to Frances Parfait, who wished to return them.
The powers that be would immediately be sent into a tailspin.
Naturally, they would come looking for more information, but they would find no answers because Frances was no longer available to help.
Any further investigations would also be thwarted.
Frances Parfait had been confined to her bed for a long time and had not entertained any visitors.
Furthermore, there were no records of phone conversations or text messages as she did not have a mobile phone (the disposal of the pay-as-you-go burner phone Samuel had bought being his second task).
It was fortunate that Frances had long been in the habit of ensuring nothing in her possession linked her to a man called Edwin Silver, let alone his daughter.
The thought that her museum would soon be purged of its incriminating secrets cheered Evelyn as she set about her tasks that day. So when Sariah sent a message saying Fancy a coffee? Could do with a chat. I’m at Della’s she accepted her offer.
It was tricky when Della offered you a cup of tea or coffee or a new ice cream flavour, because there was a limit to the excuses one could make.
‘Earl Grey tea, please,’ Evelyn said, hoping that its milder flavour would be harder to spoil.
When it arrived with a mysterious froth on the top, she realised she’d underestimated Della’s abilities.
‘Shortbread?’ Della asked.
‘Made by me,’ Sariah added hastily. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night.’ She shrugged. ‘I also did coffee and walnut biscuits. And I gave the housekeeping team a Victoria sponge.’
Evelyn hadn’t had Sariah down as a domestic goddess and she noticed that Sariah’s hand shook when she reached for a napkin. But, she reasoned, that could be Della’s silt-like coffee.
‘I’ve always found baking quite calming,’ Sariah explained.
Her shortbread was a delight: light and buttery, with just a hint of something else.
‘Lavender?’ Evelyn wondered aloud.
‘Correct,’ Sariah said. ‘And a little lemon zest.’
‘Good, eh?’ Della wiped her hands on a tea towel. ‘Ladies, I gotta pop out. Can I trust you to look after things here?’
‘I think we’ll cope,’ Sariah said.
Della was barely out of the door before Sariah turned to Evelyn. ‘I met up with Grace yesterday,’ she said. ‘She told me some difficult things.’
Evelyn’s frothy tea grew cold as she listened to the truth of how Sariah had been brought up by Grace, but that her birth mother had been her aunt, Rose.
‘Turns out I was a sort of wedding present – and one they couldn’t give back,’ she said bitterly.
Evelyn had heard of cases like this but from further back in time.
It was hard to imagine it happening thirty years ago, but then Sariah explained that the family had been deeply traditional – and Rose was only fifteen.
‘Rose was taken out of school and sent away to stay in Plymouth. Mum kept calling this woman “a lady”, like she was so right and proper, saving the family from disgrace. But all she did was run a private home, continuing what she’d learned to do at the old mother and baby home, over in St Agnes.’
Sariah began cutting into a slice of shortbread, dividing it into smaller and smaller pieces and then crumbs. ‘I feel like something’s been pulled out from under me. Like, I’ve been living one version of my life, but it was never true.’
Evelyn nodded, because she understood that feeling.
But somehow, it was easier to give Sariah advice than it was to rationalise her own situation.
‘I think it’s important to remember that you are still your own person, Sariah, no matter who gave birth to you.
And from what I can see, you’ve made a good job of it. ’
Sariah used a napkin to wipe her nose. ‘Thanks.’
Just then, Della bustled back in with a carton of oat milk and saw Sariah mopping her tears. ‘Gee, Evelyn, thanks for lifting the mood. Must invite you in more often.’
Somehow, Della had managed to make Sariah laugh and the conversation turned to Della’s latest business idea. ‘Once the café is a success, I’m gonna branch out, start making my own products,’ she announced.
‘Cakes?’ Sariah asked.
‘Hmm, no, that’s more your bag. I see another gap in the market.’ Della set the carton she’d bought down on the counter with a thunk. ‘Think oat milk, but high class.’
‘Oh?’ Evelyn said.
‘I’m gonna call it Haut Milk.’ Della looked at them expectantly. ‘Good, eh?’
Evelyn got up to leave. ‘Great shortbread,’ she said. Then, to Sariah, ‘I’m here if you want to chat more.’
All afternoon, she thought of Sariah’s family, who had sent Rose away rather than have a pregnant bridesmaid at their elder daughter’s wedding and how this ‘lady’ had taken Rose in.
Remembering what Sariah had said about mother and baby homes, she set about searching for more information.
Sariah was right: such homes hadn’t only existed in Ireland.
There had been several in Devon and Cornwall, mostly run by charitable institutions.
One on the north coast had taken in women and girls until 1964, while another in Plymouth was in existence until 1969.
Then she found a Facebook support group for people who had given birth or been born in these homes, and she didn’t move from her chair for the next hour.
She read of pregnant girls who had to forage for firewood to keep warm, who were made to scrub, polish and sweep or do laundry at the huge boiling copper.
A link took her to a radio programme, where she heard an elderly woman talk about dressing her newborn baby, knowing it would soon be taken from her.
She heard how girls watched from upstairs windows as their babies were put in prams that were wheeled out and arranged on the lawn so prospective couples could pick out one they liked.
This was recounted by a woman who had given birth in the home in St Agnes.
She closed her laptop and shivered because the air had turned cold. Her mind circled back to those two words: St Agnes. When Frances Parfait was told some scrap of information by Edwin, might she have only half understood his words – heard the name Agnes and assumed it was the name of a woman?
With shaking hands, she texted Frances’s number and although she kept checking her phone all evening, there was no reply.
The message arrived early the next morning, as Evelyn was getting ready to leave the caravan.
It is with sadness that I have to tell you that Frances Parfait died in the early hours of this morning. I am sorry for your loss. Samuel.
A hollowness opened up inside her, a grief for a woman she wished she’d known better. In turn, this made her long for her quiet mother Elsbeth – eternally searching for the right words but never saying them. Then a more complicated grief rushed in, for the unknown woman who had given birth to her.