LATER THAT AFTERNOON I waited for Mrs Derby outside the drawing-room. She had brought me back to school and was parking her car. The drawing-room was where the Derbys relaxed between lessons and after meals. In the holidays it was where they invited me to watch television with them, the place where we ate supper on our laps. It was where they entertained parents, and, every once in a while, admonished the most persistent of the school’s miscreants. So to us, it was a hallowed place scented with wood smoke. There were photographs of Major Derby’s old regiment displayed on the mantelpiece, a faded Axminster carpet on the floor and, either side of the fireplace, two stone lions glared at each other.
Not surprisingly, when Mrs Derby ushered me in I was trembling. I had never before sought the Derbys’ confidence, and the enormity of what I was about to say made me nervous.
‘Sit down, Ajuba.’
I remained standing, a hand on the sofa. Sarah Derby attempted to reassure me with a smile as she sat down. Nervous though I was, I looked straight at her.
‘What can I do for you?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got something to tell you, Mrs Derby.’
‘About your holidays?’
I knew Isobel had been to see the headmistress several times since bringing Polly and me back to school. I assumed she had told Mrs Derby what she’d implied to Polly: that I had taken the pearl necklace. So I said: ‘I didn’t take it.’
‘What didn’t you take?’
‘Isobel says I took Polly’s pearls, but I didn’t, Mrs Derby. I didn’t.’
‘No one’s accusing you of anything, Ajuba,’ she said gently. She was peering at me through metal-rimmed glasses that made her eyes look bigger than they were.
‘I saw Isobel taking them, and I saw a picture she drew of Polly. She hates her, Mrs Derby. She hates her.’
‘What makes you think that?’
As best as I could, I explained what had happened over the summer holidays: the Venuses’ separation, the burning of Peter’s possessions, Isobel’s distress, her visit to the rose room that awful night. As I spoke, Sarah Derby gazed at me calmly, prompting me with sympathetic nods and enquiries. She encouraged me in the telling of my tale, so that, gaining confidence, I told her things I hadn’t meant to. I told her about our investigation of the babies in Miss Fielding’s trunk. That I had heard one of the babies crying and I’d tasted Miss Edith’s tears. Before that, Isobel’s crying had kept me awake. When I had come full circle, I repeated the statement I began with: ‘So she hates her, Mrs Derby. Isobel hates her.’
‘Nobody hates Polly, Ajuba.’ She straightened her glasses. Then, seeing that I was deeply concerned for my friend, she chose her words carefully: ‘Look, Ajuba, divorce is very distressing. That’s the way it is. It’s painful for Polly, and it’s painful for Mrs Venus too.’ She paused and looked at me earnestly. ‘Was it dreadful when your parents divorced?’
‘What have my parents got to do with this?’
Very quietly she replied: ‘They divorced, didn’t they? Divorce isn’t anything to be ashamed of, Ajuba.’
I didn’t realise that I was ashamed. Her questions puzzled me, and when she asked me if Isobel reminded me of anyone, I sensed danger immediately.
‘My mother doesn’t steal!’ I protested. ‘She doesn’t!’
‘But Isobel does remind you of her, doesn’t she?’
‘No! She’s nothing like my mother. Mama believes in the power of God, Mrs Derby, and with God everything is possible!’ I cried, quoting my mother’s favourite Adinkra symbol: Gye Nyame, the power of the moon and the sun in one: the symbol she wore as earrings and on a chain around her neck. ‘Mama doesn’t steal!’
With infinite care, Mrs Derby touched my arm. She stroked it with a forefinger and asked: ‘Do you want to talk about what happened to your mother, Ajuba?’
‘Nothing happened to her. She’s getting better, and she’d write to me if she could, but she’s not very well at the moment.’
I wanted to tell her that my mother was with Aunt Lila, and that because even Aunt Lila didn’t know where I was, none of them could write to me. But the expression on Mrs Derby’s face took my voice away. What had I done wrong? What had I said that I shouldn’t have said?
Mrs Derby held on to my hand: ‘Ajuba, I want you to try and tell me what happened to your mother.’
‘She’s at home,’ I insisted. ‘Aunt Lila’s looking after her.’
‘Ajuba, you know that isn’t true.’
The moment she said those words, the air rushed out of me as if she had bludgeoned my chest with her fist. I couldn’t catch my breath. Tiny ants of fear, scrabbling beneath my skin, ignited my senses. Her face grew large as she brought it close to mine. I saw the hairs on her chin, grains of powder on her nose. How could she tell such a blatant lie? I knew that what I was saying was true because of the evidence of my eyes. It had to be true. Mama had told me time and time again: through God everything is possible. And one day in the distant future, Pa, the most errant and irresponsible of fathers, would return to us and we would be a family again.
‘Ajuba, your mother’s dead.’
I tore my hand away, clenching it into a fist. ‘She didn’t die. She didn’t die. She opened her eyes. I woke her up!’
‘My dear, your mother died in hospital.’
‘But I saw her open her eyes. And the ambulance took her away.’
‘Didn’t your father tell you?’
‘He said . . . he said . . .’ Pa had said that I was never going to see my mother again, and that I should forgive her, even though what she had done was dreadful; an affront to everything he stood for. But Mama had told me to turn my back on my father, and not to believe his lies. Gradually, the possibility came to me that perhaps Pa hadn’t been lying after all. What if he had told me the truth?
My resistance weakening, I felt tears trickling down my face, welling in salty pools around my mouth. I remembered Miss Edith’s tears, the bitter taste of surrender. I wiped my face with a sleeve, struggling to suppress my feelings, but I couldn’t stop crying, and for a moment I was in the rose room again. Did I see Miss Edith? Or was the person I saw crying me? I heard a child sobbing. What was happening to me?
From a distance I was aware of Mrs Derby holding me in an awkward embrace. My body stiffened but, with my tears persisting, I slowly gave way to her sympathy.
Mrs Derby kept me for the rest of the evening, bringing in a tray for our supper. Banishing Major Derby from the drawing-room and yet another repeat of Dad’s Army on television, she gave me her undivided attention. Between my disbelief and my tears, the fractured sobs of bewilderment that threatened to rend me apart, she pieced together my account of Mama’s nervous breakdown: our flight to London, Mama’s attempt at suicide, and how I managed to raise the alarm. And then, when Pa told me that I would never see her again, I explained to Mrs Derby as best as I could the many reasons Mama had given me not to believe a word he said. My mother had warned me that one day my father would try and steal me from her. If he did, he would try to deceive me by poisoning my mind, so I should block my ears to whatever he said. Mama had promised that wherever she was, she would always love me, and before long we would find each other again.
‘Are you sure Mama died?’ I asked again, still unable to grasp the finality of the words. I was hoping that a mistake had been made, and that my mother was with Aunt Lila. She wouldn’t have wanted me to grow up without her. I needed my mother alive.
‘I’m afraid she did,’ Mrs Derby confirmed. ‘I would never lie to you, Ajuba, I promise. I am telling the truth.’
‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’
She did what I asked of her, and when I started crying again, she drew me into her arms. Despite her scent of lavender and the accommodating flatness of her chest, her arms – reminding me of arms that had held me since birth – made me push Mrs Derby away. Mama smelt of jasmine and traces of lemon and nutmeg.
‘If she really died,’ I argued, ‘then why wouldn’t Pa let me see her?’
‘I don’t know what was in your father’s mind, Ajuba, so I can’t speak for him, but many people don’t think it’s appropriate for a child to see a dead body. It can be upsetting and very painful indeed.’
‘Is that why they wouldn’t let Maria see her father when he died in Angola?’
Sarah Derby nodded.
I still couldn’t believe her. It wasn’t possible. Mama wouldn’t abandon me. I was certain that if I tried hard enough, one day I would track her down. All I had to do was believe and it would happen. I wouldn’t fail her again. I attempted to bolster my conviction with memories of my mother’s love for me, but, seeing unwavering compassion on Mrs Derby’s face, my confidence faltered. Furious at my father and at my own inability to distinguish truth from lies, I kept trying to make Mrs Derby see things my way, in the hope that she would say the words I wanted to hear: Mama was alive. She was with Aunt Lila.
‘But I asked to see her, Mrs Derby. I wanted to see her so I would know if he was telling the truth.’
My mother used to say that the truth would open my eyes and set me free. It had done no such thing. It was crushing every hope I had for tomorrow.
‘If I had known, if I had seen her, then I would have said goodbye to her. How can she be gone, Mrs Derby, if I didn’t say goodbye?’
‘You’re beginning to say goodbye to her now,’ Mrs Derby assured me. ‘I know it’s not going to be easy, but you’re a very brave girl, Ajuba.’
I was in her arms again, clinging to her scent of lavender as I swayed back and forth. Struggling to comprehend the horror of what she said Mama had done, I tried to bite through the palm of my hand. I needed to see my blood, to taste it on my tongue to make sure I was alive. If, after all this time, Mama no longer existed, how could I be sure that I was real? I tried desperately to puncture the flesh, but Mrs Derby wouldn’t let me. She held me, comforting me, while I wept in her arms.