Helen sat down on the only free seat left on the tram.
‘Oh, isn’t she gorgeous!’ the old woman she’d sat next to exclaimed. ‘Incredible eyes.’ She looked at Helen. ‘She’s obviously got them from her mammy.’
Brushing Hope’s mop of black hair to the side, Helen smiled at the old woman, who smelled heavily of lavender. She couldn’t, of course, correct her and explain that this gorgeous little girl on her lap was, in fact, her sister. That the bonny little girl was her father’s love child – a child he’d had to a woman she was just on her way to see.
Helen was glad when the old woman struck up a conversation with the passenger on her other side. She wanted to be left to her own thoughts. Hope also seemed happy to sit and simply look around her.
The day, Helen reflected, had passed in a haze, ending with the slightly bizarre conversation with Rosie in which she had reassured her that she had been a cow of a boss to Charlotte.
She had seemed satisfied, but Helen thought Rosie was delusional if she thought she was going to scare her sister back to Harrogate simply by making her work.
Whenever she looked out to check on Charlotte – or Charlie, as she’d heard her telling people to call her – she seemed happy as Larry, hurrying around the office, making tea, sorting out the post, tidying up. And, of course, Marie-Anne and Bel had fussed over her, even though they were under strict instructions to give her a hard time.
Helen had told Rosie that she’d put Charlotte on the payroll as a temporary worker and that she’d be given a very basic wage, which, she’d said, might be a good way of showing her how little she would earn if she were not to go back to school; although something told Helen that it wasn’t so much that Charlotte was averse to going to school, but more that she didn’t want to go back to the one she was at.
As the tram trundled up Holmeside, Helen’s mind started to mull over a slightly throwaway comment Rosie had made explaining how Charlotte was able to go to such an expensive boarding school.
What was it she’d said?
Helen’s thoughts were broken momentarily by the old man opposite her who had fallen asleep and had started to half snore.
That was it. She’d said her parents had left enough money in their will.
But why, Helen wondered, hadn’t they done the same for Rosie?
As the tram squealed to a stop on Vine Place, Helen thought about all the secrets and lies her mother’s investigator had unearthed: Dorothy’s bigamous mum, Angie’s mam’s bit on the side, Martha’s evil birth mother, Hannah’s aunt’s financial troubles …
The only blot on Rosie’s copybook was that she had fallen in love with a man almost twice her age.
Something told her that her mother’s private eye hadn’t dug deep enough.
The blinds of the tram were pulled down in line with blackout regulations, and as there was little light, Helen allowed herself to rest her tired eyes, which still felt dry and scratchy from all the brick dust last night.
Likewise, Hope curled up in her big sister’s arms and started sucking her thumb.
For a little while, Helen allowed herself the indulgence of imagining that Hope really was her child. The one she had lost when she’d been four months gone.
Since the miscarriage, she had wanted to ask John whether or not the baby she had been carrying was a girl. He must know. After all, he had operated on her.
But she had never asked him – and he had never told her.
Perhaps it was best if she never knew.
Wanting, yet not wanting to know.
It was like having a scab and itching to pick it, but knowing that if you did, it would hurt, there would be blood and it would take even longer to heal.