The Library of Lost and Found(71)

Martha pressed her lips together, imagining the scene. “Did you know any of the men on board?”

Zelda took her time to speak. “I knew Siegfried Frost a little, and I think he survived. Another was Daniel McLean. He was just twenty years old, the poor lad. Your mum knew him, too.”

“Siegfried still lives in Sandshift.” Martha looked over towards the lighthouse. She tried and failed to picture the gray-bearded recluse as a young man. “He must only have been around Mum’s age when it happened.”

“So young,” Zelda agreed. “Your mum wasn’t much older when she got married.”

“I know. I found the marriage certificate when I was cleaning the house. I didn’t know Mum was pregnant with me when she walked down the aisle.”

Zelda fell quiet. “How do you know about that?”

“Just from the dates. I wonder if Dad resented me, because he felt forced to get married…”

“Hmm.” Zelda pursed her lips and looked out to sea. “They were different times, and your father was a complex man.”

They stayed there for a few minutes. The wind lifted Martha’s hair around her face while Zelda’s headscarf made a fluttering sound. Sea spit speckled their cheeks.

“The book,” Martha said. “You said you’d tell me.”

Zelda turned her wheelchair away from the statue and faced the sea. “When I left Sandshift, I wanted to get away from England. Gina’s parents invited me to stay with them in Finland.”

“You’ve known her for that long?”

Zelda nodded. “Her whole family was good to me. They welcomed me as one of them. I was terribly homesick for a while. I missed England and I left Betty behind.” She rubbed her nose. “Gina put up with my gloomy moods, though.

“She’s always said that writing is good therapy and thought I should keep my mind busy. So one day, she bought me a scrapbook and suggested I stick things in it. I’d kept some of the stories you’d written for me and I pasted them in.

“As soon as I’d done it, other ones started to flood back. There were ones I made up for you. There were stories I used to tell your mum, and ones she shared with me. I wrote them down. Not exactly, of course. Just whatever I could remember.

“Gina can draw well, though she won’t admit it. One day when I was feeling low, she sat beside me and drew a blackbird. Then she pasted it next to one of your stories, ‘The Bird Girl.’ And over the next few weeks and months, she drew other things, too, a mermaid, puppets and a nightingale. We worked on completing the scrapbook together.” Zelda paused and repositioned her blanket farther up her legs.

“Gina knew a local printer and when the scrapbook was finished she asked him to reproduce it, as a real book. She commissioned fifty copies for my birthday and it was such a glorious surprise. She turned the past into something beautiful for me, so I could face the future. She’s an ah-mazing woman.

“We gave copies to friends and Gina’s family, before we moved to America. I even came home, to give you your own copy…”

“Home?” Martha questioned. “You returned to Sandshift?”

Zelda took a deep breath and didn’t let it go. Her lips worked as if she was sifting through what she should and shouldn’t say. “It was 1985 when I called back at the cottage. It was during the day and I made a big mistake. Betty was at home but so was Thomas.”

Martha squinted against the daylight, an uneasy feeling swirling in her stomach. “And this was after my parents told me you were dead?”

Zelda gave a curt nod. “It was three years later. I wrote a message in a copy of Blue Skies and Stormy Seas and brought it for you. I knocked on the door, longing to see Betty, you and Lilian. But Thomas answered instead.” She lowered her eyes and shook her head. “I tried to apologize to him.”

“What did you need to do that for? Was it his fault that you left?”

Zelda placed a hand to her mouth. Her shoulders started to shake. “I begged to see you and Lilian… I said sorry, because I thought that’s what Thomas would want to hear…”

Martha reached out and stroked her back. “What happened to the book you brought for me? Why doesn’t it have a cover?”

“Your father tore it off when he threw it back at me. It hit me in the chest and fell onto the floor. I picked it back up and tried to offer it again but Betty, my own daughter, ordered me to leave.” Zelda tried to blink away her tears, but they spilled down her cheeks. “She said that things were settled, without me. My coming home would mess things up for the family, she said. Everyone thought I was dead, and they wanted to keep it that way. I had to leave…again.”

“But why did you go in the first place?”

Zelda shook her head slowly. Her fingers kneaded her blanket.

“What happened, Nana?” Martha asked softly.

Zelda gave the smallest smile as she reached out for Martha’s hand. “It was the evening of your parents’ anniversary party,” she said. “I was invited, and I…” She stopped talking abruptly as footsteps pounded on the sand. Will and Rose ran towards them, whooping with their arms raised. Martha tore her eyes away from her nana.

A brightly colored kite bobbed in the sky. As her niece and nephew drew closer, Martha could see it was shaped like a parrot, made of red, green and yellow polythene, vivid against the milky sky.