I was helping mother to set the breakfast table the following morning when I brought up the subject of the photograph. We were doing things properly because Granny was here: toast in a rack, butter in a dish, sugar in a bowl. Father, oblivious to our ministrations, was hidden behind The Times. Granny was fussing about in the kitchen trying to find her knife and fork. (She always brought her own silver cutlery from home because she said our stainless steel tasted funny.) I was distributing boiled eggs, covering each one with a hand-embroidered felt cosy. They were the sort of thing we were encouraged to make during needlework lessons as they were simple and didn’t require too much material. I used to dash them off so quickly mother now had a drawerful; if she ever found herself needing to insulate twenty-four boiled eggs at a time she would have been well prepared. At just the moment when mother was bringing in a tray loaded with cereal bowls, milk jug and teacups, my mind must have made the unconscious connection between eggs and birds, and I said, without any preamble, ‘Who’s Birdie?’
Crash went the tray as mother let out an ‘Oh’ which burst in the air like a bubble. She dropped on to her knees and started mopping up the milk with her apron, scraping shards of blue and white china into a ragged hill. My father looked up from his paper, white-faced.
‘Where did you get that from?’ mother said indistinctly from the floor, her head well down. Father covered his face with his hands and said ‘Oh God.’ I started to cry.
‘What have you done with my table napkin, Monica?’ Granny demanded, walking in on us and stopping mid-stride as she took in the scene.
‘I just f-f-found a picture in Daddy’s wallet. He said I could look for some change. I didn’t mean to do anything naughty,’ I sobbed as mother struggled to her feet and rushed blindly from the room. ‘Oh no. Oh God,’ said father, going after her, crunching heedlessly through the broken pottery leaving a trail of milky prints behind him. There was the sound of pounding footsteps on the stairs and then agitated voices.
‘Darling, please, you’ve upset Abigail now.’
‘I’ve upset her!’ And then more crying as the bedroom door clicked shut.
‘Now look here, ducky,’ said Granny, putting a hand on my shoulder and shaking me gently as if trying to wake me. ‘What’s this all about?’
Through a film of mucus and tears I gasped out what I’d said. At the mention of the name Birdie she said, ‘Oh dear. Oh dear,’ and sat down rather hard next to me, using my shoulder as a prop. She pulled out a large man’s hanky, embroidered with my dead grandfather’s initials, and wiped my face, then put her arm around me and gave me a squeeze, an utterly uncharacteristic gesture. ‘Shall we leave Mummy and Daddy upstairs for a moment and go out in the garden, eh?’ she wheedled. I nodded and made a grand effort to reduce my sobs to a whimper as she led me out through the french doors. The lawn was still wet with dew and our shoes left green trails on the silver grass. After a few circuits of the garden we sat down on the bench between the rose beds: the first leaves were just appearing. Granny traced the outline of her lips with one finger for a few minutes. She seemed to have forgotten I was there. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Thinking,’ she said. ‘Will you be very good when I tell you what I’m going to tell you? And very brave?’
‘Mmm-mn,’ I said, clamping down my bottom lip with my teeth to stop myself crying.
‘Of course, what I tell you is a secret. And that means you must never breathe a word of it to anyone. You’ve had secrets before, I suppose.’
My experience of the currency of friendship was still very limited at this stage, but I said yes anyway.
‘Well …’ She took a deep breath. ‘When you were just a baby yourself you had a little sister, but she died.’
‘Was that the baby in the picture?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did she die?’
‘Er …’ She paused for a moment and glanced up at the sky as if the answer might lie there, before saying, ‘No one knows. It was just one of those things.’
‘How old was I?’
‘Much too young to remember anything about it. But of course your mummy and daddy do remember, and that’s why you must never mention the name Birdie again, or ask about her. Do you understand?’
‘Why didn’t they tell me about her before?’
‘Because you’d no need to know. Sometimes it’s easier to get over things if you don’t talk about them or think about them too much. And they wanted to do whatever would be best for you. So you just go on being the Abigail we all love so much and forget all about this. Do you promise?’
I nodded, dry-eyed. There was no room for negotiation. But I didn’t forget; how could I? In the space of a few minutes I had gained and lost a sister, the friend and companion I had dreamed of for so long, for whom my bunk-beds and my tennis set, and my cupboard full of games waited in vain; who should have grown into my clothes; who would never hear me play my cello or walk to school with me, or wait outside the unlockable Girls’ loos with one foot under the door, or keep the secrets I would one day surely have. I thought about her often; last thing at night when I lay in my top bunk I imagined her hand reaching up from the bed below to hold mine. I thought about her on all those rainy weekends when mother had a headache or father was working in his study with the door closed and the silence in the house became a roaring in my ears. And whenever I heard my mother sigh, and I knew she must be remembering, I thought about you then, Birdie. But I kept my promise and never asked about you or mentioned your name, or heard it mentioned until that night nine years later when my life as an adult really began.