“I mean it, Emmy. Don’t you tell her! Let her think what she wants about him. She has every right to think what she wants.” Mum reached for the bottle. Emmy leaned over her and moved it away from her outstretched hand.
“Stop it,” Emmy said.
“Julia has every right to think whatever she wants!” Fresh tears rimmed Mum’s glassy eyes. “Don’t you tell her! I mean it, Emmy!”
Emmy placed the bottle atop the fridge and used the moments when her back was turned to assess her own reaction to the news of Neville’s death. She felt nothing. Neville, most of the time an unemployed actor, had lived on and off with them for four years, starting when Julia was two. Emmy didn’t like the way he treated Mum and she didn’t like the way he looked at her when she started to develop a woman’s body. But Julia loved that Neville could sound like an old man or a French painter or an American cowboy. She loved his outlandish stories and crazy songs. He was the kind of father every kid thought she wanted. He never raised his voice to Julia, never corrected her, never made her mind. After he’d disappear for months on end, he’d come back with a fanciful tale of the adventure he had been on, bearing trinkets for Julia and excuses for Mum. He could see that Emmy saw straight through the lies and pretense, so he brought her nothing. He was handsome and talented. He was also an opportunist and a playboy. Emmy celebrated the day he said he was moving out for good, even though Julia and Mum both cried.
They hadn’t heard so much as a word from him in nearly a year. Julia believed he was somewhere in India on a movie set.
His death meant nothing to Emmy.
“Did you hear what I said?” Mom railed. “Don’t you tell her, Emmy.”
Emmy turned from the fridge. “Someday Julia won’t be satisfied with vague answers about where he is.”
“Today’s not that day.” Mum held out the juice glass.
Emmy took the glass and placed it in the sink where the breakfast dishes were still soaking. “I never said Neville was a lying cheat.”
“You knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. You were just a kid and somehow you knew. God, isn’t that ironic.”
Emmy opened a cupboard and pulled out a tin of corned beef, a loaf of pumpernickel, and a jar of peaches, as Mum apparently had no plans for their supper. “What’s done is done, Mum.”
“Why did he tell me his parents were dead? What was the purpose of me thinking that?” Mum crumpled the handkerchief and tossed it onto the table next to the mail. “Why would he do that?”
“Does it really matter now?” Emmy withdrew six slices of bread, picked off a few flakes of mold, and set them on a plate.
“It matters to me! Why would he tell me his parents were dead?”
Emmy could think of a number of reasons why Neville had lied to Mum about his parents, not the least of which was that when he wanted to move in with them; it was a lot easier for Mum to welcome him when she thought he had nowhere else to go. “Because he wanted you to feel sorry for him. Or because he liked lying to see if he could get away with it. He was an actor, Mum. He made his living pretending to be something he wasn’t.” Emmy opened the fridge and pulled out a jar of mustard.
“Aren’t you Miss Know-It-All,” Mum murmured.
“You asked me. I’m just answering your question. He lied to you because it suited his ends.”
“He told me he didn’t have the money to marry me. Did I ever tell you that? What a fool I was. His father is a professor! He probably has all kinds of money. What a daft fool I was. You’d think I’d know better. . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Emmy opened the tin and the greasy-sweet odor of canned meat permeated the air in the little kitchen. “If you don’t want me to tell Julia right now, I won’t. But if she asks me why he’s taking so long to come back from India, or wherever else she thinks he is, I’m not going to lie to her.”
Mum inhaled deeply. “You won’t have to. I’ll tell her my own way, on my own day. If she asks you where he is, you tell her you don’t know. Because you don’t.”
Her mother was staring at the letters on the table. It occurred to Emmy that if Neville’s mother knew about Mum, she might also know Neville had a daughter.
“How did his mother find you?” Emmy asked. “Does she know about Julia?”
“She knows,” Mum said slowly, her tone calculating. “He told his parents as he lay dying in a hospital in Dublin that he had a daughter in London. That’s where he was. Dublin. Living with a woman half his age, no doubt.”
“And?”
Mum swung her head around. “And, what?”
Emmy set the tin down. “Do they want to see her?”
Mum picked up the top letter and pocketed it. “Doesn’t matter if they do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that. It doesn’t matter if they do. They’re not going to. I want them to want to for a good long time. I want them to want to see Julia and not be able to. I want them to want it so much, it drives them near crazy.”
Emmy forked out a watery slice of meat and slapped it on top of one of the slices of bread. Juice spattered on the counter. “Brilliant idea, Mum. So very fair to Julia.”
Mum rose on unsteady feet and yanked on Emmy’s arm, forcing her to look at her. More meat juices erupted from the tin in Emmy’s hand and speckled the floor.
“That’s right. It is a brilliant idea. It’s my brilliant idea. Julia deserves to have what is rightfully hers. Just like we all do. Just like you do, Emmeline.” Mum let go of her arm. “And I intend to see she gets it.”
Emmy watched as her mother kneeled down and used the handkerchief wet from tears and whiskey to mop the meat juice off the floor.
“They obviously know where you live, Mum. Do you really think you will be able to keep these people from seeing Julia until you have what you want from them?”
Mum rose to her feet in one swift movement. “Is that what you think? That this is about what I want? When has anything ever been about what I want?”
Emmy turned back to the sandwiches. “That’s all it ever is,” she muttered.
Mum pulled at Emmy’s arm again, more gently this time. Her calm touch surprised Emmy.
“You’re wrong, Em.” Mum reached up to touch her daughter’s face and Emmy involuntarily flinched. Mum tenderly tucked a curling wisp of hair behind Emmy’s ear. “Someday I am going to prove it to you.”
For a moment, there was no age difference between the two of them, no crossed purposes, no opposing forces. They were just two women trying to chisel a happy life out of a giant hulk of rough-edged circumstances.
Then the moment passed. Mum pulled the letter from her pocket, held it over the rubbish bin, and saw that Emmy was watching her. She shoved it back inside the pocket and sat down again.
“There’s a designer who wants to teach me how to make patterns for my wedding dresses,” Emmy said a moment later. “He’s Mrs. Crofton’s cousin. He wants to see a couple of my sketches. He might mentor me in exchange for some hours working in his studio. He designs costumes for the West End, Mum.”
Mum furrowed her brow in consternation. Emmy could see that her mother was forming a response that Emmy would not want to hear.
“I’m nearly sixteen. Practically an adult,” Emmy said, already in defense mode.
“Nearly isn’t is, Em. You’re not an adult yet. Not in the eyes of the law.”
“But I know I can handle the extra work. Even when school starts in September. I can handle it. I’ve only a year left, anyway.” Emmy’s voice was rising in pitch and volume, and she tempered it to prove she was the rational adult she was claiming to be. “It’s not going to be a problem, Mum.”
“School isn’t starting in September.”
“What do you mean? Of course it is,” Emmy said.
Mum picked up the other envelope that had come in the day’s post and held it out.
Emmy wiped her hands on a dish towel and then took it.
The stationery was crisp and smelled of ink and importance. The return address was the school’s. Emmy sensed as soon as her fingers touched the paper that the letter would change everything that had happened that day. Her eyes caught the words “invasion” and “safety.”
“You and Julia are being evacuated to the countryside, Emmy,” Mum said. “They’re serious about it this time. You’re leaving London next week. All the children are.”