We've Come to Take You Home (19 page)

FORTY-NINE

‘M
Y MOTHER HAD ME
when she was fifteen, same age as I am now, but her parents wouldn't let her keep me. They took me away, put me up for adoption…'

Amy looked so small, so vulnerable, sitting up in the hospital bed, her week-old baby sucking at her breast.

‘I thought my mum and dad would do the same, so I didn't tell them, I kept it a secret. It was stupid, dangerous, not just for me, but for her. My mum and dad were more upset than angry, not about me having the baby, but because I hadn't told them.'

‘Didn't they guess?'

Amy shrugged.

‘I lied, all the time, tons of them, like I was allergic to wheat, which was why my tummy was so big. And I had a skin disease, which was why I had to wear leggings and baggy jumpers and t-shirts, even in the summer, on the beach with my friends, when it was really hot. Everybody believed me, everybody, my friends, my teachers, even my parents. I wouldn't. But they all did…'

The baby burped, blinked and then closed her eyes. The last time Sam had seen her was six days ago in the special baby unit.

‘I tried not to think about it, having her, just hoped it would be quick, that it wouldn't hurt…'

‘Did it?'

‘What?'

‘Did it hurt?

‘Are you stupid or something? Of course, it hurt. It's like there's a rat in your stomach, eating you, and the rat just keeps getting bigger and hungrier, until there's nothing left of you except the worse pain ever…'

Alone, nobody there to hold her hand; trying not to scream out because she didn't want to wake her parents.

‘A friend, somebody, there's no way I could have done it on my own …'

‘You do what you have to do…'

Amy shrugged.

‘I cleaned myself up, got dressed, wrapped her in a towel and put her in the bag. My parents keep loads of old stuff so that was easy to sort. It was still dark, must have been early, like seven or eight, something like that. It was raining but I made sure she was warm and dry, and we got downstairs and out of the house without waking them. I didn't know what I was doing, where I was going, I just caught the bus, saw the hospital, got off and left her in the car park. I phoned to tell them. I went back later, in the afternoon, to make sure she wasn't still there…'

The same day, Sunday, her father had been admitted.

‘You were wearing the jacket, with the flash on the sleeve, the one I saw in your bedroom. It was Sunday, my mother had just arrived at the hospital, I went to the toilet and you came out of a cubicle and you were crying…'

‘I was pretty desperate…'

How desperate, so desperate, she'd try to kill herself? The timing, everything, was exactly right.

‘Amy, my dad, a girl walked out in front of his car, he had to brake, hard, and that's when he knocked his head. The girl wasn't hurt. She ran away. But my father nearly died. Was that you? Did you walk out in front of my father's car?

Amy flushed.

‘What are you saying? That I tried to top myself?'

‘You said you were desperate, didn't know what you were doing…'

‘If I did want to top myself I wouldn't do something as boring as walk out in front of your dad's car. I'd swig back a bottle of vodka, and then chuck myself off the end–'

‘Sam, it is Sam, isn't it?'

A woman was walking towards the bed. Following her was a man carrying a very large, very pink teddy bear.

‘Amy's been going on and on about you. We're Ann and Malcolm…'

Sam stood up.

‘You'll come and see us, won't you?'

Amy looked up.

‘Yeh, we'd love to see you, both of us, me and little Sam. Couldn't call her anything else could I? And you could do a bit of nappy changing, get your hand in, for when you have one of your own…'

No way.

‘And, Sam, the postcard, the one with the blue sea and white beach, how me and mum and dad, how we'd all be going back…'

‘You'd closed your eyes, I thought you were going to die, but that's when you opened your eyes. It must have been very special…'

Amy laughed.

‘The blue sea and the white beach? There's no such place. I faked it, the card, made it up on the Internet.'

FIFTY

‘T
HANK YOU
, D
AD
.'

His smile was a bit crooked and his face a bit puffy, but her father didn't look bad for someone who'd just come back from the dead.

‘Thank you, Mum.'

She hugged and kissed her mother.

‘I've got you another present.'

Her mother pulled a tissue-wrapped parcel from her handbag.

‘It started with my great-grandmother, and it's come down, all the way through the family, mother to daughter, mother to daughter, and now it's my turn to give it to you.'

It was square and hard.

‘Dad bought me the box. What matters is inside…'

The door opened. Mac walked into the room.

‘Bringing your father back from the dead, that, Sam Foster, is a result. But now we need to make sure that the miraculous recovery continues.'

He placed a beaker on the bedside table.

‘Mr. Foster, the sooner you take your pills, the sooner you'll be back flying your planes…'

‘I'm not doing any more flying.'

A few minutes before the room had been full of laughter. Now it was full of the worst possible silence.

‘But Mr. Foster, there's no reason why you–'

‘Nothing to discuss.'

Sam darted a look across at her mother. Did she know about this?

Her father leant his head back against the pillow.

‘Time to get grounded.'

He closed his eyes.

‘Dad…'

Sam threw herself onto the bed.

‘But the planes, you love them…'

He opened his eyes.

‘Hey, what's all this…'

‘Flying, that's what you do, that's who you–'

He hugged her tight.

‘I can live without the planes. But I can't live without you. And I most certainly can't live without your mother…'

Her parents were giving each other one of those looks.

‘Now it's time for you two to go home. We'll talk later. After you've opened your last present…'

‘Come on, Sam. There's this new recipe…'

Her mother was pushing her towards the door.

‘A Spanish stew. I've got some fish in the freezer and I thought we could use that. You fry some onion and potatoes and then you add garlic, some paprika and some cayenne–'

‘Dad…'

She had to ask.

‘The girl, the one who walked out in front of your car, can you remember what she looked like?'

Her father picked up the beaker.

‘Short, reddish blonde hair, leggings and a jacket…'

Her father gulped down the pills.

‘With a red, blue and silver flash on the sleeve.'

She had been right. It was Amy.

‘Did she do it on purpose? Did she see you coming? Or was it a mistake, like she was really upset, crying, didn't see you–'

‘Sam, what's this all about? Your father needs to rest…'

‘It's important, Mum.'

Her father nodded.

‘OK, I was driving down the street. The girl was walking towards me. Her head was down. Her shoulders were hunched. She looked upset. Perhaps she was crying. I don't know for certain. I didn't think much of it. It was Sunday, early in the morning, and I thought she must have had a row, perhaps with her parents, but more likely a boyfriend. I was about to pass her when she suddenly, without any warning, without looking up to check, turned and walked out between two parked cars into the road. The rest you know.'

She sank down on the chair beside her father's bed.

‘Does that answer your question?'

She had to know.

‘The girl didn't look up, but she might have heard you, known you were there…'

‘That's true. Sam, why is this so important to you…'

‘You could have died. If the girl did it on purpose, knew what she was doing–'

Mac put his hand on her shoulder.

‘Sam, this girl, do you know who she is?'

Did it matter whether Amy did or didn't walk out in front of her father's car? It was a small detail that had been important at the time but, perhaps, not now. If she confronted Amy, insisting on the truth, her foster parents would find out that she had tried to kill herself. It would only cause unhappiness.

It was the big scheme that mattered. Not the detail. Her father was alive and well and coming home to live with Sam and her mother. And Amy and her baby were alive and going home to live with her foster parents.

She looked up at Mac. He looked back at her.

‘Sam?'

Decision made.

‘No. I don't.'

They all had a future. Even if that future meant having to change nappies…

FIFTY-ONE

April 7th 1918

T
HERE WAS A WHISTLE
,
a belch and the train pulled out of the station. It was difficult to believe that just over six hours ago she had been standing here, on the same platform, cradling her newborn baby in her arms. There were no doctors, no nurses, no stretchers, no moans or screams. The hospital train had vanished along with its cargo.

She ran down the stairs into the tunnel. The little girl was humming. The yellow bird was singing. The mother was rolling up her blanket. The dog was wagging its tail. And instead of the kicking and the cursing there was chatter and laughter. The station hadn't taken a direct hit. The people who had spent the night sheltering within its walls were all still alive.

‘German attacks fail at all points.'

Outside, on the station forecourt, a boy was selling newspapers.

‘Amiens front stands firm.'

It was only April but she was sweating inside the itchy cocoon of her ankle-length coat. Jess stopped and raised her face up to the sun. Warmth and light replaced the cold and dark of the night she had been dreading, and which she had never expected to live through.

Taking Rosemary back to the village, where she had grown up, had been the right thing to do. Her daughter would be safe down there in the country with Martha looking after her. She would have food in her stomach, clean clothes on her
back and there would be enough money to buy coal for a fire and medicine if she was sick. But don't let it be for too long. Because Jess wanted to be there at her daughter's side, holding her daughter's hand, as her own mother had held hers, when she took her first step. And there, cradling her on her lap, when she looked up, giggled, and spoke her first word.

With the Germans now on the run the war could be soon at an end. Tom would come back home to them, she was sure of it, and when he did she and little Rosemary would be waiting for him. Whether they would get married, whether she would ever be his wife, she didn't know. She could only wish, only hope, that their story, the one they'd started together, would have a happy ending.

There were two ways back to Eaton Villa. The first was the route the Major had taken the day she arrived in London; down Ebbs Road, left into Honeywell Road, right into Hillier Road and, finally, left into Glebe Road. She'd chosen to walk that way to the station, last night, as the roads were wide and safe. And the houses would have given some shelter if there had been an air raid. It was also the route that she and Ellie used when they went shopping together.

But if she followed the path along the side of the railway track, back towards the warehouses, and then took the shortcut down the lane, across the common, she would be able to take at least ten minutes off the journey. She would never have used it at night, it was just too dangerous. But it was six in the morning. Last night's drinking pals, any that were still around, would be too far gone to make themselves a nuisance.

Ellie would have tidied up her bedroom and cleared all trace of what had happened there the night before. But she had to be back at the house in time to light the range, heat up the water and take up the Major and his wife their morning tea. If she didn't, they would go upstairs to her room. And find it empty.

She followed the narrow footpath, squeezed between a wire fence and a high, brick wall, back along the railway tracks in the same direction her train had just come from.

A low, insistent drumming grew steadily louder and nearer. A dull thump and the ground beneath her feet rocked and heaved. There was another thump. And now the drumming was no longer background, but foreground, drilling its way into every bone and sinew in her body. Up ahead, flying towards her out of the early morning sun, was a plane. A huge ball of fire billowed up into the sky.

The footpath opened out into a yard between two derelict warehouses. Out here, if the plane dropped a bomb, she would be killed. She had to get inside. She ran towards the nearest warehouse. She pushed on the door. It stayed closed. She threw herself at the door. It refused to move. She tried one more time. Metal clanked down onto concrete. The door opened.

She was in a hallway. In front of her was a staircase lit by a single window. She would be safer on the ground floor. And she would be safer further inside. To her right was a set of double doors. She pushed. They opened easily. The main storage area of the warehouse was empty but instead of being dark, which was what she had been expecting, it was light.

The memory she cherished most was the last few moments she and her father had spent together. She had nursed it, keeping it alive inside her head; walking out of the door of the cottage, through the garden and onto the track, climbing up the hill, side by side, her hand in his hand, onto the top of the ridge.

Her father stepping forward and putting his arms around her and the hoping, the longing, that she would never ever have to step out of them. That they could stay that way, father and daughter, daughter and father, up there on top of the world, together for ever. And then the low, insistent drumming,
getting steadily louder and nearer, and there, without any warning, swooping down on them out of the sky, the white plane with black crosses on the underside of its wings.

And there it was now. Right there directly above her. She could see it through the glass roof of the warehouse: the same white plane with the same black crosses on the underside of its wings.