The Couple at No. 9(104)

It’s still a blank – what she must have gone through after the real Rose suddenly disappeared. She hopes Felicity will be able to unlock some of the memories, however painful. When did she start calling Daphne ‘Mum’? She must have cried for her real mother. She must have felt abandoned and confused, and she can never forgive Daphne for that. Even if Daphne did dedicate her life to looking after her. The betrayal is something she’ll never get over.

She downs her Pimm’s and goes into the kitchen to get some water. She can’t drink too much: she’s driving home after this. She wanders across the kitchen – it’s been transformed: beautiful Shaker-style units in a pale grey with white stone worktops. She knows Saffy feels guilty – she often says that this house is truly Lorna’s. But Lorna is happy for Saffy to have it. She’s content in her apartment overlooking the sea. She’s found work as a manager of a local boutique hotel in Bristol and has made some new friends. When Daphne died Lorna inherited the rest of her money – there was more than she’d thought. Money she’d obviously taken from Rose by pretending to be her. It had been enough for her to buy the apartment outright.

After Victor’s arrest Lorna did wonder if Saffy wanted to stay at Skelton Place. But her daughter said she felt close to Rose, living there. And to honour her she planted a rose bush at the end of their garden. It’s started to grow nicely – the top has reached the stone wall.

‘Are you okay, Mum?’ Saffy appears beside her, Freya on her hip sucking the ear of a plastic giraffe. When she sees Lorna she reaches out her chubby little arms and Lorna gladly takes her, enjoying the warmth of her granddaughter’s little body against hers. ‘You seem a bit … wistful today.’

Lorna pulls funny faces at Freya, then turns back to her daughter. ‘I’m just thinking about everything, that’s all.’

Saffy walks over to the big American-style fridge to fill Lorna’s glass with water. ‘Why don’t you stay tonight? You can have Freya’s room and she can sleep with us. Theo and Jen are staying.’

‘I know, but … I’m going to read the letter tonight. I think it’s time, don’t you? I’ve been putting it off for long enough.’

Saffy smiles sympathetically and nods. ‘There’s something I need to tell you about that,’ she says, looking sheepish.

The letter. She’d kept it in a drawer, unable to face reading it. She knows it will be upsetting, but now she feels ready.

‘What’s that?’

‘The last page. I didn’t give it to the police at the time. I’m sorry. You’ll see why when you read it. When they returned the letter to me I made sure to put the last page back before giving it to you. It was before … well, before Gran told us what she did. I was worried it would implicate her. It was wrong of me.’

Lorna frowns. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You’ll know when you read it,’ says Saffy. ‘I was just trying to protect Gran. I really loved her.’

‘I know you did, honey. And I did too. I must remember that.’

They stand together, their arms linked with Freya between them chewing her toy.

‘I like to think that Rose is here,’ says Saffy looking out onto the garden. ‘The real Rose. Looking over us.’ Lorna smiles at her daughter. Always the romantic.

But she hopes it’s true, all the same.

Later, when she’s back in her apartment, she pours herself a glass of wine and goes to the balcony. The sun is going down and she watches as couples and friends, all dressed up, head out for the evening. She can hear the laughter and chatter of people sitting at tables in the restaurant opposite. Yes, this is what she likes, she thinks, as she settles down to read her letter. She likes to feel she’s in the middle of things. That around her couples are on their first date, or their last; friends are celebrating or reminiscing. She wonders what sort of person she would have become if her real mother had lived.

She takes the letter out of the envelope. It’s written on sheets of lined A4 paper, yellowing with age, with two horizontal creases, and she stares at it for a minute, at her mother’s flowery writing, imagining her sitting down to write it, almost like a diary. She runs her fingertip tenderly over the word ‘Lolly’, her eyes landing on the first sentence:

The village never looked prettier than it did the evening I first met Daphne Hartall.

As she reads she can almost hear her mother’s voice, melodious and soothing, as though she’s sitting right beside her, and she’s reminded of all those bedtime stories that she thought she’d forgotten. And as the sun fades and the stars come out she sits, entranced in her mother’s world, as she learns about her love affair with Daphne, her fear of Victor, and the night of the fireworks. The night she died.

And the last page, the final piece of the puzzle that Saffy had kept from the police in a misguided attempt to protect the woman she’d always thought of as Gran.

When she’s finished she clutches the letter to her chest and stares out at the moon reflecting in the water of the marina, tears on her cheeks, feeling she understands everything at last.

So now you know, my darling girl, my Lolly. You know everything. My confession. My sins.

And if you’re reading this, if you’ve found this, along with the evidence of the man I ran from, then I fear it means something bad has happened to me.