It was as cold inside as it was outside because the builders left the doors open all day so they could mix cement in the front garden and saw wood in the back.
Zoe didn’t think she’d ever been so cold as she’d been over the last few days. Ever since Win had gently suggested that perhaps she shouldn’t go to Cath’s every day. ‘I know Cath says you’re welcome but you don’t want to take advantage of her when she’s so stressed out about Clive,’ he’d said reasonably the week before.
So, Zoe was giving Cath some space. Which was why it was ten on a Wednesday morning and Zoe was unwashed (the builders had turned the water off as they were so often wont to do) and uninspired (her fingers were too frozen to wield pencil or pen) and confined to the back bedroom as Gavin insisted it wasn’t safe for her to freely roam the house she jointly owned at vast personal expense.
Instead, she was cross-legged on the floor, Libby’s suitcase open in front of her. Maybe it was one of the reasons she’d been going to Cath’s every day – when she was home alone, all she could think about was the suitcase. This morning, she’d succumbed to its siren song, after Flavia from next door had very kindly volunteered their Wi-Fi password until Win and Zoe got their electrics properly sorted out.
Zoe had Libby’s diary open on her lap while she wrote down names, dates, addresses and Googled them all. She was only interested in the facts, no more reading any entries or letters that would only upset her; Zoe simply wanted to find out who Libby was and what had happened to her. Why a suitcase full of her possessions had ended up in a cupboard of a house in Highgate that had been deserted since the day it was built.
As Zoe jotted down what she knew so far, her eyes drifted over Libby’s handwriting, careless and crooked, words crossed out and underlined, as if Libby had very little control over the breathless rush of words that crawled across the pages of her diary.
Libby AKA Elizabeth Edwards AKA Libby Morton/Elizabeth Morton
Actress – Withers & Withers theatrical agency, Greek Street
Married to Freddy – the same Frederick Morton whose byline keeps appearing in the newspaper clippings
Had been in Paris, the year before (1935)
Freddy left her and she came back to London
Business card for Hugo Watkins – garage in Mayfair
Letter of appointment from Frognal School for Girls for position of dance, drama and movement – £7 a week (how much is that in proper money, check?)
There was one fact that Zoe had omitted, for the same reason that she couldn’t casually mention it to Win one evening as they sat side by side in deckchairs, Win poring over his renovation spreadsheets, Zoe leafing through a stack of interior design magazines. ‘So, I’ve been poking around in the suitcase we found that first night.’
Win, understandably, would want to know why but Zoe wouldn’t ever be able to tell him the truth. That no matter how engrossing Libby’s diary might be, Zoe’s fascination with the other woman came from the one pertinent detail she’d left off the list in her own notebook.
Libby had lost a baby too. But it was so much easier to think of Libby’s loss than her own, which was still too painful to negotiate, still impossible to voice. When Win was staring at his laptop screen at all those columns of figures and muttering under his breath, Zoe wondered if he thought about the baby, their baby, at all. He certainly never talked about it.
Of course neither did Zoe, but the baby was always there, tugging away at the corners of her consciousness. The stone in her shoe. The bank statement she was afraid to open. The keys she couldn’t find.
Zoe turned back to her notebook, her list. Took a deep breath and added one more sentence.
Libby lost her baby in Paris.
It didn’t make Zoe feel even the littlest bit better or braver as she continued to work through the February pages of the diary, searching for any information that might be useful. There wasn’t much, just Libby railing against someone called Millicent, most likely her landlady. A couple of scattered attempts at a lesson plan for a ballet class and then Zoe got to halfway through March, so she and Libby were living the same day eighty years apart and there was a letter tucked between the pages that marked the fifteenth and the sixteenth.
Zoe’s eyes drifted down and they came to rest on that word. It used to be such a benign, innocuous word. An endearment. Now it was the saddest word in the English language. Baby.
March 15th
The baby would have been born by now, if he hadn’t been lost. I will mark today as his birthday this year and for all the years to come. How easy but so hard it is to love someone who was never truly here.
Zoe hadn’t thought there was space for more pain. Except now she was carrying Libby’s load too. Mourning Libby’s someone as well as her own.
She wasn’t here for the pain, Zoe reminded herself, but to find out more about Libby. Lay her ghost to rest, as it were, with facts. Not emotions and feelings and an ache that never went away.
She turned her attention back to the letter, which, serendipitously, was still in its envelope. An envelope addressed to a Mrs Elizabeth Morton, 17 Willoughby Square, Hampstead, London, NW3, England. But when Zoe carefully eased the thin sheets out, as thin as tracing paper, Mrs Elizabeth Morton became Libby, oh Libby, my dearest Libby.
Something goose-stepped along Zoe’s spine as she bent over the letter, even as she told herself not to read on.
There was another voice in her head. Louder, more insistent, impossible to deny.
Now I see you pale-faced and corpse-like. And the blood. So much blood, pools of it at my feet as I hurried you to hospital, screaming at the cab driver to go faster while you lay on the seat, your head in my lap. I knew the child was no more and I thought I’d lost you too and in that moment I loved you as completely as you’d ever wanted.
Blood. So much blood. Zoe could hardly remember any of that night but now she remembered staring up at the bathroom ceiling. At the one halogen spot that always blew as soon as they put a fresh bulb in. Lying on the bathroom floor, her head in Win’s lap. His voice drowned out by the frantic knocking at the door.
Zoe jerked away from the memory. ‘What the hell?’
The image was gone. There really was someone knocking at the bedroom door.
‘What, Gav? What now?’ Zoe called out and the door opened and Zoe steeled herself to appear interested in the latest crisis, but it was Cath bursting into the room, curls bouncing, bringing in a rush of cold, fresh air.
‘Gav let me in. So, hello, are you mad at me?’ she asked Zoe. Cath was a huge fan of getting right to the point, even though in this instance Zoe had no idea where the point was.
‘No! Of course not! Why would I be?’
Cath threw up red-gloved hands. ‘Everyone else is. We had an intervention last night via Skype to tell Dad he could either have a stairlift installed, maybe even a walk-in bath, or have carers every morning and every evening.’
Poor Clive. Poor Cath. Zoe pulled a sympathetic face as she put Freddy’s letter back in its envelope. ‘How did that go down?’
‘Like the fucking Titanic,’ Cath said. She watched Zoe put everything back in the suitcase then heft it into the cupboard. ‘You look cold and miserable, Zo. Why haven’t you been round mine where you won’t be cold and I can work on your misery with hugs and good advice?’
‘I think that my misery might be around for a while,’ Zoe said because there was no point in deflecting. Cath always called her on it when Zoe insisted that she was fine, absolutely fine. ‘And Win said that I shouldn’t take advantage of your good nature and —’
‘I’m not that good-natured!’ Cath protested. ‘And anyway, when do you ever listen to what Win says?’
‘All the time. Lots of the time. Well, some of the time,’ Zoe amended. Cath smiled and Zoe smiled back. ‘Now that you are here, I can just about offer you a cup of tea and you can admire our new roof.’
‘Such a tempting offer,’ Cath said with zero enthusiasm. ‘Would you mind if we went for a walk instead? I really need to clear my head.’
Zoe didn’t mind. Her own head, her thoughts were so muddied, a bracing walk to Hampstead Heath was exactly what was needed.
‘Talk to me,’ Cath said, as they set off up Southwood Lane. ‘About something that isn’t family and elderly parents, or houses or sadness.’
Zoe was silent for quite some time. She had to have some conversational gambits that weren’t to do with the bloody house or the sadness that she wore like a favourite cardigan most days.
‘I sent off the story about Reggie the mouse to Caroline, my agent, and it’s so crap that I’m hoping I don’t get a publishing deal because I’m sick of Reggie and his ninety-nine rural problems. Sorry, didn’t mean to be such a Debbie Downer.’
Cath shot Zoe an exasperated look but the freshness of the wind, some might even call it gale force, had blown away the worst of their collective worries. For now. ‘You’re not allowed to talk about work either, because my novel was due at the end of December and it’s now almost halfway through March.’
‘All right. No shop talk. What else is there? I could bitch about Win and how he’s worked late so many nights that he’s either going to make partner soon or he’s having an affair… It shouldn’t be this hard to think of positive things to talk about…’
‘What were you doing with all the old junk in that suitcase when I came in?’ Cath asked. ‘I thought most of your things were in storage.’
‘They are,’ Zoe said. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to share Libby with anyone else. Libby felt like a secret. Something, someone, who was hers alone. But perhaps Libby and the suitcase wouldn’t have such a hold over Zoe if she shared the secret with Cath, the way she shared most other things. ‘Would you like me to tell you about Libby Morton and her mysterious suitcase?’
‘OK, now that has me interested.’ Cath sketched a courtly bow. ‘You may proceed.’
So, Zoe told Cath about her search for Libby, who had proved to be very ungoogleable that morning, even with Zoe’s list of facts and Flavia-from-next-door’s Wi-Fi.
There were lots of Elizabeth Edwards in the world, but none of them had been employed as dance teacher or actress in the 1930s, or even the 1920s. Libby hadn’t managed to land a role in any film listed on the IMDB. There were also a lot of Elizabeth Mortons in the world but none of them was Libby.
‘It’s a mystery. A sad little mystery,’ Zoe summed up as she and Cath left the heath, because they’d ‘done’ the entire heath in the time it had taken Zoe to bring Cath up to speed. ‘I’d hate to think that eighty years from now, some of the things that meant the most to me, like the sketches I made for Win when I first knew him, or my wedding dress, were discarded as if they were worthless, and stuffed away in an empty house.’
‘No wonder you looked sad when I came in,’ Cath said. She caught Zoe’s gaze, held it. ‘The baby clothes. Just hearing about them makes me hurt.’
‘I know.’ Zoe breathed slowly round the pain until it faded into the background, then forced a smile for Cath who had her hand on Zoe’s arm, a concerned look on her face. ‘So, back to Libby. I made a note of all the dates and addresses that might provide some clues but I don’t really know what else to do.’
‘Well, we could start by having a look at where she used to live in Hampstead,’ Cath suggested with her phone held out in front of her. ‘Just for curiosity’s sake.’ With the aid of Google Maps they navigated along the pretty little streets and alleys between the heath and Hampstead High Street until they came to Willoughby Square.
The square had been through an extensive and expensive period of modernisation, renovation, gentrification. All the houses rendered the same shade of pale cream. The front gardens neatly tended, door knockers and letter boxes gleaming from the loving attention of cleaners ‘who work God knows how many hours a week and can barely make their rent while their employers spend millions of pounds digging out three-storey basement extensions for cigar rooms and home spas that they don’t even need,’ Cath commented scathingly.
Zoe nudged her in the ribs. ‘Calm down, Karl Marx.’ She gestured at the house nearest. ‘Which way do the numbers run?’
Number 17 was obscured behind a big double gate painted an attractive shade of grey that Zoe thought would look quite nice on their own garden gate. There was an intercom but Zoe could hardly press the buzzer and ask if there were any descendants of an Elizabeth Morton née Edwards living there. Instead she stood on the other side of the square, neck craned so she could get a good look at the house.
‘I thought this was going to be more exciting,’ Cath remarked.
‘It is a little bit disappointing, isn’t it? I don’t know what else I was expecting,’ Zoe said, though a tiny, very irrational part of her had expected to be transported back to 1936 and that Libby would emerge from the house, see Zoe standing there and hurry over with a wide, welcoming smile. Her reverie was interrupted by the sound of her stomach letting out an almighty rumble. She checked the time on her phone. ‘It’s nearly one o’clock. No wonder I’m hungry. I only had a couple of digestives for breakfast because Gav wouldn’t let me into the kitchen.’
Cath draped an arm round Zoe’s shoulders. ‘Let’s be really wicked and have a long, boozy lunch in the Flask. Didn’t you say that your Libby had met someone in the Flask?’
‘The diary just had the time and the place,’ Zoe clarified. ‘So I don’t know who she was meeting.’
‘It still counts as research.’ Cath was already pulling an entirely willing Zoe along the street. ‘Do you think they had Pinot Grigio back in nineteen thirty-six?’