“Can you check my e-mail first?”
“Of course.” He tapped on the keyboard before scanning the screen. “You have two e-mails from Chandler. In the first one, she says she’s been trying to contact you on your mobile.”
“Tell her I’ve been swimming in the River Ouse.”
“In the next e-mail, she says that Evan has changed his mind and wants you to finish the story on the Ricker family. He’d like to meet with you in his office, first thing tomorrow.”
“Tell her—” Quenby paused, her head starting to ache again. “On second thought, don’t tell her anything at all.”
Chapter 54
Hannah gave birth to her daughter in the summer of 1967. She’d managed to hide her pregnancy, all the way up until the opening night of Cinderella in London’s Adelphi Theatre. The director was furious when he discovered her secret. Ian Levine demanded that she get rid of it, the very next day, but she refused to visit the man who made babies disappear.
Hannah left the West End for three years, but the stage kept calling her back. Her audience of one rewarded her hard work with cries instead of applause. Sleepless nights without any praise. She missed her beautiful costumes and the lights that poured down on her. The appreciation of an audience cajoling her onto the stage for a curtain call.
When Ian showed up at her door, he said he’d forgiven her, as if she’d done something wrong. That he wanted her back for Gone with the Wind. Years later Hannah told Bridget that he’d never even asked about their daughter.
She returned to the West End. Not because she wanted to work with Ian, but because she wanted to be Scarlett O’Hara.
After Jocelyn was born, Bridget had saved up enough money to take a long holiday from her work. She offered to come to London, to stay with her niece in the evenings while Hannah was performing, but Hannah assured her that she’d found a governess who watched over Jocelyn while she was onstage.
So Bridget had stayed at the children’s hospital, working with some of the most courageous children she’d ever met, not knowing that Hannah’s child was suffering alone.
Bridget traveled to London twice a year and took Jocelyn out for afternoon tea at the elegant Palm Court. She was a lively girl, just like her grandmother and mother. And she loved beauty and joy. When Jocelyn was eleven, Bridget asked Hannah if she could spend the summer with her, and for those months, they’d hiked over the dales, sung songs, and pretended to fly. She was what Bridget might have been if she’d stayed a princess for a few more years.
Childhood is fleeting, and she’d wanted Jocelyn to dream like she and Dietmar had once done.
As she and Jocelyn played, Bridget wondered again what happened to the boy who’d helped her in spite of her fears. The boy who’d saved her life.
Though Dietmar, like her, had probably changed his name, she still searched the phone books whenever she was in London, but she had never found a listing for Dietmar Roth. She’d stopped letting herself think that he’d died during the war. Instead she imagined him with a houseful of his own children, spread out on the floor with dozens of the wooden toys he’d liked to carve, charging the grand castle he’d built for generations of Roths.
Autumn of 1979, Hannah was offered a part in The Music Man on Broadway. New York City. Bridget had said good-bye to the two people most dear to her, not knowing what the future held. Then she counted down the days until they returned home.
But those weeks turned into years. Each time Hannah thought she could bring Jocelyn home, another commitment delayed them. Hannah invited Bridget to New York, but her old fears flared, chaining her to England. She’d even stood one morning at the door to a Jetway, pilots and passengers alike encouraging her to walk down the corridor, but between the narrow walls, all she saw was the dark hold of a fishing trawler, the walls caving and crawling over her, waves hurling her and Dietmar back and forth.
She couldn’t move. Nor could she breathe. An attendant wheeled her back to the ticket counter, and the plane left for New York without her.
Her body betrayed her when she so wanted to be strong. If she’d known what the future held, she would have forced herself to fly across the pond.
Seventeen years passed before Hannah’s stilettos stepped back onto British soil.
Jocelyn never returned.
Fame for Hannah had been like the apple for Snow White: one bite and she was hooked again. After New York, she answered the call of a Hollywood producer. Her career on the silver screen flourished at first, four films that gave the illusion of success. But somewhere in her rise to stardom, she misplaced her daughter.