The lights from the Belmont Hotel’s conservatory illuminated the promenade in blocks of gaudy yellow light that cast the moon in eerie contrast, stark and haunting, white-grey in the dark winter sky. The Belmont Hotel had a faded Victorian grandeur to it which lent a mood of formality tempered by the soft easing of age.
Georgina climbed the short run of steps shaded at their top by a small stone portico. She hesitated at the door, holding it just open. The warm air from the hotel’s reception blew perfumed against her cheeks.
It was not too late to turn around and would be entirely forgivable to say to Molly that her mother had left early and that they had missed each other, no doubt only by minutes, and that it was a sign that it wasn’t meant to be. But she couldn’t lie to Molly and look her in the eye and see the disappointment quickly retracted so as not to make Georgina feel bad. No. She wanted to see Molly’s face shine with pride and her eyes light up with admiration, the warmth of her smile melting Georgina’s heart.
She took a deep breath and adjusted the cuffs of her coat, and tucked her hair behind her ear. She lifted her chin and said under her breath, “You can do this. Just think about Molly. Just Molly.”
“Good evening, madam. How can I help?” The receptionist beamed an empty smile at Georgina.
“Good evening. I would like to speak with one of your guests, please, Lydia Wright.”
“Let me see. Yes, I have a Lydia Wright. Is she expecting you?”
Was her mother expecting her? That was the very question. Was she honestly expecting that Georgina would break a habit of a lifetime and engage in conversation? Listen to her attempts to make excuses for herself? But then her mother still believed in cursed hope, didn’t she. So maybe she was. “I don’t know. I mean, no.”
“One moment, I will try her room for you.”
Georgina turned away from the receptionist and leaned against the desk facing the conservatory and the diners taking coffee after their meals.
“I’m sorry, madam. There’s no reply. Can I leave a message for you?”
“No. Thank you anyway.” Georgina expected to feel relief, but instead she felt strangely peculiar and upset at the thought of her emotions wasted. At least she wouldn’t have to lie to Molly. She walked back down the steps, pausing to tighten her belt around her waist. It had begun to rain and droplets fell in dark spots on the pathway ahead.
She stepped out onto the promenade, stopping to allow a bike to whoosh past with its tyres spraying a swirl of rain at her feet. She pulled her collar up and glanced to check for any more cyclists, and as she did so a figure caught her eye. A woman in the conservatory had stood and was staring out right at Georgina.
Georgina turned away and continued walking, and then a voice called out her name and she could hear feet splashing after her.
“Georgina. Please, wait.”
Georgina turned around slowly.
Her mother was scowling up at the night sky as if holding it responsible for everything. “This damned British weather. Always so wet. Won’t you come inside? Please. After all, you have made it this far. Yes?”
Georgina gave a guarded nod, determined not to betray an ounce of feeling.
“I need a cigarette. Before we go in.” Her mother slipped a thin silver cigarette case from her pocket and squinted towards a shelter. “There.”
Georgina stood with her mother under the wooden shelter with her height sheltering her mother from the worst of the night. She watched the blue haze of cigarette smoke drift down the promenade.
“Thank you for seeing me,” her mother said. “I feared you might not come.”
Georgina remained silent. She was here to listen for as long as she could stand to, and then she would firmly request that her mother lend the painting for Edith’s display. And she would make it clear that she considered her mother’s actions deplorable. And then she would leave.
“I’ve sat waiting in that chair for most of today.” Her mother nodded towards the corner seat in the conservatory. “There were so many people who looked like you from a distance because I so wanted them to be you. I even called out and banged on the glass at one poor soul. How I must have looked.” She took a long drag on her cigarette. “Turns out only you really look like you.”
“I’m surprised you can recognize me, Mother. I mean, what would you have done if it weren’t for Evelyn’s introductory speech that night identifying me? Asked around? Have you seen my daughter Georgina? She was that young girl I left without giving a damn eighteen years ago.” Georgina hadn’t wanted to be cruel, but the bitterness was so overwhelming it forced out the hate from her heart.
Her mother took another deep drag, holding the smoke and then blowing it away in one long slow wisp. “There is no point, is there, in me speaking if you are unable to listen, if all you can hear are your words condemning me.” She threw up her arm. “No point. I thought I might have been talking to an adult. Someone mature enough to understand that the world is made of many shades of grey. That none of us is perfect. None of us. But it seems you have not grown up.”
“What do you know of my growing up? You were not around. Remember?”
Her mother pointed to her heart. “I was with you.”
Georgina stabbed with her forefinger at her own heart in reply. “I was twelve.”
“Yes, and I have counted every day I have not been with you.”
“Funnily enough, me too. Hundreds upon hundreds of hours of lost sleep, wondering what I had done so wrong for my mother to leave and never return.”
Her mother reached out. “Georgina.”
Georgina pulled her arm away. “I demand you return the painting to the museum. That is where it belongs, not with you. That is the only reason I am here.”
“I will not have you demand things of me.”
“And I will not be blackmailed.”
“For pity’s sake, Georgina, I just wanted to speak to you, to have a chance to explain. Look—please read this letter from your father. It will help you understand.”
“For the last time, I am not interested in that letter and what it may or may not prove or explain. For what it’s worth, I am certain the last thing my father would have wanted to do was hand the painting over to you.”
“Your father gave that painting to me as a wedding gift. It is mine.”
“Just keep it then. And I hope that every time you look at it, you remember how much I hate you.”
Her mother gasped, “Georgina. Please wait—” She tried to reach out, her hand catching at Georgina’s pocket as Georgina wrestled free and left with all the speed and might she could muster.
* * *
Molly discreetly checked her watch. Art club would be over in ten minutes. Had Georgina returned home? Had she somehow managed to find a peace of sorts with her mum, or at least begun the process? Perhaps she’d even returned with Edith’s painting. A student’s pencil rolled from their desk to the floor with a dull plink and reminded Molly she should be concentrating and wrapping things up.
“So let’s bring our thoughts together.” Molly swept over the next sheet of paper on the flip board. She looked back at the eager faces young and old with their pencils and pens poised as they began to jot down the key points from the evening’s lesson on self-portraits. “So in summary, we all agreed that the eyes are important to how an image of a face is received and how we read a face to help us know how to respond.”
Molly paused. Georgina stood just outside the education room. Her face was pinched with unmistakable pain and she looked utterly broken. Molly’s chest tightened as Georgina bowed her head and began to cry.
Molly took a deep breath. “Next week we will be painting our own self-portraits, so think about how you might adopt some of the techniques we have chatted about tonight. Thank you for your attention, have a lovely rest of the evening, and see you next week.”
Molly rushed out to Georgina and wrapped her arms around her.
Georgina mumbled through her tears, “I shouldn’t have gone.”
Molly felt the most terrible guilt. Georgina had faced her mother for them hadn’t she? She had gone into battle and returned with what Molly desperately hoped was not a mortal wound. Say something to her. Anything. “I just need to lock up,” Molly said. “Why don’t you head home. Maybe rescue the coffee machine from the packing box again. I’ll raid Marianne’s biscuit stash, and if she asks I’ll say one of my students had an attack of low blood sugar.”
Molly felt Georgina’s sobs subside. She moved away, nodding.
“I’ll be five minutes, max,” Molly said. “I promise.”
Molly arrived at George Wright’s door with her notes in one hand and two packs of Bourbon biscuits in the other. “Got the biscuits. I’m officially a criminal.”
“And I’m officially ridiculous. Come through.”
“No.” Molly slipped her arm around Georgina’s waist. “You’re officially brave. And you’re my hero.”
Sobs overwhelmed Georgina again. She forced out, “I just need a minute.”
“Sure.” Molly finished making the coffee and placed a mug on the worktop next to Georgina. “I’ve put a couple of scoops of sugar in, just to warn you. I’ll be in the sitting room—oh, and if you hear a hissing noise, it’s me on the beanbag, not an angry adder.”
A laugh escaped Georgina. She shook her head and said, “Don’t go anywhere.” She reached out for Molly’s hand and pulled Molly in to her. She whispered into Molly’s ear, “Sorry about the painting.”
“What painting? Oh, that old thing. I’ve forgotten about it already.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
Molly shrugged. “I guess if it’s hers, then we have no right to keep it.”
“Actually I told her she could keep it, and that I hoped when she looked at it…”
Molly could feel Georgina’s chest shudder. “Georgina?”
“It would remind her how much I hate her.”
Molly squeezed Georgina as tightly as she could. She wanted to take her pain away and bear it for her somehow.
“I’m so tired.” Georgina wiped at her eyes.
“I bet. Let’s finish our coffees and go back to my place.”
“Can we stay here?”
“Yes, of course. I love being with you here—you know that.”
Georgina looked intently at Molly. It was like she wanted to say something but didn’t dare. She chased the thought away with a smile. “Then I’ll see you up there.” Georgina walked away up the stairs to her room with the not quite double bed and the shadows that fell as they’d always done against the wall.
Molly rinsed the mugs at the sink while looking out at the garden. The moon shone brightly in the sky. Was Georgina looking out at it too?
April 1832
Edith’s lodging, Cank Street, Leicester
“Do you think the moon looks like a holy wafer?” Edith turned to Josephine, naked at her side, her skin ice-white in the moon’s glow.
“Maybe. Although rather than holy, I always find the moon rather ominous.”
Edith traced her paint-smudged fingers along the line of Josephine’s collarbone. “Ominous? And not beautiful?”
Josephine leaned up on her elbow. “No. It is the black shadows it casts. Sometimes I feel that blackness upon us.”
“You do?”
“Yes. As if our love exists in moon shade rather than sunlight.” Josephine lay back into Edith’s arms.
“I love you with all my heart,” Edith whispered. “No shade, no doubt. My love for you couldn’t be brighter.”
“And I love you too, Edith. Always.”
Edith held her tightly, staring out at the moon, wondering if somewhere in the world there were two women loving each other freely—on a continent far away perhaps—and looking up at the moon like them, but with their hearts open to admire it fully without sadness to dull its light.