Martha never made that trip to London.
She didn’t go there again until the summer of 1953, when Violet took her to see the Coronation crowds, and they didn’t go anywhere near the East End. London wasn’t her home any more.
They were ready to set off on their three-day visit: everything was planned and the train tickets were bought. Martha had packed her bag. Violet had arranged to stay with friends, and Miss Ward was going to come and stay at Cliff House to help May make sure Betty, Michael and Roy were all right. Violet refused to leave them with Aubrey because his days were hardly ever good any more, and there was no way he could look after children.
Two days before they were due to leave, the second telegram arrived.
The clipboard lady came to the house, and she and Violet shut themselves away in one of the sitting rooms for a long time.
When they came out, the lady patted Martha’s head and said, ‘Don’t worry, darling – we’ll take care of you.’
Violet led Martha outside because it was nearly summer now, and they looked down from the cliff at the Atlantic Ocean, and Martha remembered Mother telling her to stay away from the edge because, she realized now, she had forgotten to draw the fence in her picture.
She couldn’t bear the feeling of being alone in the world. She was so scared about what would become of her when she had to go back to London, because there was no Mother, no Daddy, no Daphne, no 3 Ridley Street. No other family. Martha didn’t know where she’d sleep.
Violet interrupted her thoughts: ‘Would you like to stay here, Marth? And live at Cliff House with me forever? I know it’s not home, but we’d love to have you.’
‘Yes.’ Her voice came out as a whisper. It came from the places deep inside her where the bad things lived. ‘Yes, please.’
‘Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll be each other’s family, you and me.’ She held Martha so tightly that she couldn’t move, and the wind blew their hair around as the ocean crashed on to the stony beach below. Martha didn’t care about much any more, but she was glad she had Violet.
She couldn’t think about Mother and Daphne. She knew the words. Direct hit. Her mind swerved away from them whenever they approached.
She knew they hadn’t had time to get to the air-raid shelter, that it had happened in the middle of the night, that they might not even have woken up. The houses on either side had been destroyed too. Seven people gone all at once.
She looked around. Things like that didn’t happen here.
In September, Aubrey found Martha sitting at the table, drawing. She wasn’t thinking about what she was doing, but when he sat next to her they both looked down at the piece of paper, and she saw that she had been drawing her lost family. Daddy, Mother and Daphne. The pictures were terrible and looked nothing like them.
It wasn’t fair! She didn’t want to forget their faces, but she couldn’t draw.
She glanced up at him, and away. ‘This isn’t at all what they were like,’ she said. ‘It’s all wrong.’ She stabbed the paper with her pencil, over and over again.
‘Do you have a photograph?’
Martha shook her head.
‘Oh, you poor thing. Keep drawing. Sooner or later you’ll capture them.’
And so she did. Aubrey would sit beside her, and they’d talk while she drew. Aubrey concentrated on her, and he seemed better like that than he did when he was in his own world.
He asked her about her parents and made her remember exactly what they looked like. Daddy, with his round glasses and his sandy hair. Mother, dark-haired and smiling. Daphne, who looked like an older version of Martha, but with a wider mouth and different eyes. The more Martha did it, the closer she got; or maybe her memories were changing to fit in with what she could draw.
She found that while she was drawing she could tell Aubrey anything she wanted, and he understood. As the months went by, she would look down at her paper and pencil, and, without looking at him, tell him everything. She shared every memory she had of Mother, of Daphne, of Daddy. She told him about their home that had been destroyed, that would never exist again. He let her talk and talk and talk, and then he would squeeze her non-drawing hand and whisper, ‘Stay here with me and Vi, little Martha. We’ll keep you safe.’
She squeezed back. He never told his own stories, and she knew they were worse than hers, and so she didn’t ask. She understood, now, how you could wake up screaming every single night. She understood that sometimes you could think you were happy for a few hours, and then it would all come crashing back, breaking over you in a wave like the sea.
Violet got her a black dress, and she wore it every day. When it became too small, she asked if it could be let out, and Violet cut up one of her own dresses to make a bigger one.
Some days she found she had to be looking at Violet all the time, to keep her safe. Other days she just wanted Aubrey next to her. Betty was sorry for her, but after a while, when Martha didn’t go back to normal, she started playing with Roy and Michael, and with the other girls at school instead. Martha didn’t care.
In time, she came to feel that Cliff House really was her home. London faded and, even though she never forgot it, it began to feel strange to her that she had lived so far away for the first ten years of her life. She couldn’t imagine a time when she hadn’t known Violet. She remembered seeing cows from the train window and finding them shocking and scary. Now she saw them every day. She even knew how to milk them.
Nothing bad happened for the rest of the war because all the bad things had happened at the start. That, Martha thought, was almost comforting.