I gasp and drop the diary. Danny looks up, still reading the letter. ‘Dramatic much?’
‘Oh my God.’ I read the last entry again to check I’m not daydreaming. Nope, I read it right the first time. Some of the girls on the next table look over with disdain.
‘Fliss? Are you OK? You look like you’re throwing a whitey.’
The library lurches forward, like that bit in Titanic where it rears up out of the sea. I grip the table for support. Wow, I feel drunk, like the time we stole a bottle of Tia Maria from Marina’s sister and drank it on Clapham Common. The cogs in my head clank around, trying to process the information. If Margot was pregnant in 1941 … Mum wasn’t born until ’57. What the …?
I turn the pages, flicking through them frantically. There’s nothing else. Not a prologue or addendum or note or anything. Not a single further word is written in the book. That’s all, folks.
‘Fliss, you’re freaking me out. What’s going on?’
I close the book. ‘Nothing,’ I lie. ‘It just ends.’
‘What?’
‘There’s, like, no more.’
‘OK, slight overreaction there. I thought you were having an embolism or something.’ He rolls his eyes.
‘Sorry. It’s just so abrupt. Now we’ll never know what happened.’
Danny laughs kindly through a mouthful of Jelly Tots. He’s segregated the green ones and made a little pile of them on the table. ‘But, Fliss, we do! She became a bitter old crone who lives on a farm and everyone except her lived happily ever after.’
I can’t deal with the news and Danny at the same time. The drunk feeling has much too quickly become like the hangover I had the day after the Tia Maria. ‘I need the loo. I’ll see you in English, yeah?’
‘Sure.’ He hands me back the letter.
I go to the girls’ toilet and let freezing cold water run over my hands at the sink. I’m actually mourning the diary. I didn’t realise I was so close to the end, and I wasn’t ready. It feels like it’s been torn away from me. How can it be over? As crazy as it sounds, I haven’t had a chance to say goodbye – to Bess, to Glynis and Ivor. I’ve come to … well … love them.
From out of nowhere, a fat tear runs down my cheek. It’s hot and salty as it hits my lip. I bat it away with the back of my hand. Margot was pregnant? Mum has a brother or sister? Was abortion even around in 1941? I so should have paid more attention in history lessons.
I know I went into the diary with the aim of finding ammunition I could use against Margot somehow, but that’s not where it ended up. It’s probably the best book I’ve ever read, including Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, and that’s really saying something.
I go to my afternoon lessons, but I can’t concentrate at all. There’s a huge splinter in my brain and I can think of nothing else. I feel twitchy, unable to sit still for a second, writhing in my seat. When Miss Tunney calls on me to answer a question, I just stare at her blankly and she makes a snide remark, suggesting I should spend as much time on the reading as I do my nails. Maybe if she spent more time on her nails she wouldn’t be a ‘Miss’ at forty-six. I keep that thought to myself.
The rain is still coming down when I get home, and it feels like the sun didn’t bother to come up at all today, one long daynight. The long driveway to the farm is a minefield of vast, murky puddles I have to skirt around. I hang my dripping coat and umbrella at the foot of the stairs and head upstairs to change. I’m soaked all the way to my underwear so I change into my Little Miss Naughty pyjamas. ‘Mum?’ I hear sounds coming from her bedroom.
‘It’s me,’ says Margot. ‘Your mum’s downstairs.’
It’s now or never. It feels like the universe has given me an opportunity and I have to grab it. Urgh, I might vom. Green Jelly Tots and Diet Cherry Coke churn in my tummy. Can I really do this?
I have to know.
I take the diary out of my school bag. I kept it safe from the rain in a Miss Selfridge plastic bag. I lurk in the doorway of Mum’s bedroom, where Margot’s stripping the bed.
She doesn’t look up. ‘Your mum’s making dinner tonight. Sausage casserole for us. I imagine vegetarian sausage casserole for you. I don’t know how you stomach that Linda McCartney muck – it tastes like something that’s been scraped out of a vacuum bag.’
It feels like the words are being strangled. ‘Margot?’
‘What is it?’ She slips a pillow into a pillowcase.
Just do it. ‘Please don’t be cross, but I read this.’ I hold out the diary and Margot stops what she’s doing. At first she frowns, and then realisation spreads over her face: a wave from her eyes, spreading south until her mouth goes slack, lips parting in surprise. ‘I know I shouldn’t have done. I found it in my room,’ I fib, ‘and I wondered what it was, so I looked. Then I just couldn’t stop … It was so … interesting.’ I falter.
Margot says nothing. She’s frozen, staring dumb at the diary. Her jaw clenches but she doesn’t even blink.
‘I … I need to know what happens.’ My voice is wafer thin. I whisper, ‘What happened to the baby?’
I’m not expecting the slap. Margot’s hand whips out and strikes my face. My teeth rattle in my skull before a red-hot sting burns my left cheek. She snatches the book from me and I press my hand to my face. I exhale, too shocked to speak.
‘How dare you?’ Margot’s eyes blaze through the dim amber lamplight of the bedroom. A gust of wind throws rain against the window. ‘How dare you?’ she says again.
‘I … I just—’
‘You will not breathe one word of this to your mother, is that understood?’
‘But—’
‘Is. That. Understood?’ Her eyes widen to manic proportions and her nostrils flare.
I dip my gaze, so weak, so compressed by her glare. ‘Yes,’ I say feebly.
‘This is the end of the discussion.’ She sweeps past me, the diary in her arms. ‘Finish making your mother’s bed and come downstairs for dinner.’
I wait until she’s gone before I start to cry. I curl up on Mum’s bed and sob silently, too scared to make any noise.