Survivor (54 page)

‘Just
before you were born, Mari, your mother got in a terrible state about
everything,’ Mog said. ‘She wailed that she knew nothing about babies,
and that you might die of neglect at her hands. I laughed at her because I’d
seen that, whatever life threw at her, she could deal with it. And besides, she had
me and your father too. You are just like Belle, capable of dealing with anything,
and you’ve got the whole lot of us too. An army of help.’

Mariette sat up and sniffed back her
tears.

‘I guess coming home has reminded
me of what a self-centred person I was when I left. But I just need to tell you that
going away taught me how precious all of you are,’ she said, looking around at
each of them. ‘I’ve got millions of questions for all of you, and
there’s so much I want to share with you too. But I guess my lovely Morgan is
right, there’s plenty of time for all that.’

‘There are thousands of
tomorrows,’ Belle said, reaching out to tweak her daughter’s cheek.
‘All of them empty and waiting to be filled with laughter, love and happiness.
Time for us to talk over all the things we didn’t have the time or inclination
for in the past. Tonight is just a celebration of all of us being here, together
again, at last.’

I owe Olive Bedford in the North Island
of New Zealand so much. Not only has she been the most stalwart of fans for over
twenty years, but for this book she did a tremendous amount of research for me about
New Zealand.

I only met her in the flesh for the
first time in 2011 – until then we merely wrote letters to each other – but on her
eightieth birthday, when she’d just lost her husband, I visited her while in
New Zealand. Since then she has moved home, learned to use a computer, travelled to
England alone, keeps abreast of world news, knits for my granddaughter, and is my
dear friend and confidante. She calls herself my honorary mother, but I would be
very proud to have her as my real one, as she is just the bravest, brightest,
kindest woman I’ve ever met. I love you, Olive!

Also a huge thank you to the little
museum in Russell in the Bay of Islands, where I spent so much time pouring over old
photographs and scraps of information to learn what life was like there back in the
1930s and 1940s. If I’ve got any facts wrong, please forgive me. Thanks also
to the fabulous Imperial War Museum, in London, which is just the very best place to
learn about both world wars and how they affected ordinary people.

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First published 2014

Copyright © Lesley Pearse, 2014

Cover photography by Craig Fordham

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been
asserted

Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire

ISBN: 978-0-241-96154-4