Twenties Girl

“What if I come back with police and lawyers?” I plant my hands on my hips. “What if I report the painting as stolen goods and force you to reveal the name?”

Malcolm Gledhill raises his tufty eyebrows high. “Obviously, if there was a police inquiry, we would comply fully.”

“Well, fine. There will be. I have friends in the police, you know,” I add darkly. “DI James. He’ll be very interested to hear about all this. That painting belonged to Sadie, and now it belongs to my dad and his brother. And we’re not just going to sit around and do nothing.”

I feel all fired up. I’m going to get to the bottom of this. Paintings don’t just turn up out of the blue.

“I can understand your concerns.” Malcolm Gledhill hesitates. “Believe me, the gallery takes the issue of rightful ownership extremely seriously.”

He won’t meet my eye. His gaze keeps flicking to the paper in his hand. The name’s on there. I know it. I could hurl myself across the desk, wrestle him to the ground, and-

No.

“Well, thank you for your time,” I say formally. “I’ll be in touch again.”

“Of course.” Malcolm Gledhill is closing up the file again. “Before you go, if I might just call in my colleague Jeremy Mustoe? I’m sure he’d be very interested to meet you and to see the photograph of your great-aunt…”

A few moments later, a skinny man with fraying cuffs and a prominent Adam’s apple is in the room, poring over the photograph of Sadie and saying, “Remarkable,” over and over under his breath.

“It’s been extremely hard to discover anything about this painting,” Jeremy Mustoe says, looking up at last. “There are so few contemporary records or photographs, and by the time researchers returned to the village, it was generations later and no one could remember anything. And, of course, it had been assumed that the sitter was indeed named Mabel.” He wrinkles his brow. “I think one thesis was published in the early 1990s suggesting that a servant of the Nettleton house was Malory’s sitter, and that his parents disapproved of their liaison for class reasons, which led to him being sent to France…”

I want to laugh. Someone basically made up a completely wrong story and called it “research”?

“There was a Mabel,” I explain patiently. “But she wasn’t the sitter. Stephen called Sadie ‘Mabel’ to wind her up. They were lovers,” I add. “That’s why he was sent to France.”

“Indeed.” Jeremy Mustoe looks up and focuses on me with renewed interest. “So… would your great-aunt also be the ‘Mabel’ in the letters?”

“The letters!” exclaims Malcolm Gledhill. “Of course! I’d forgotten about those. It’s such a long time since I’ve looked at them-”

“Letters?” I look from face to face. “What letters?”

“We have in our archive a bundle of old letters written by Malory,” explains Jeremy Mustoe. “One of the very few sets of documents salvaged after his death. It’s not clear if all of them were sent, but one has clearly been posted and returned. Unfortunately the address was scribbled out in blue-black ink, and despite the very best modern technology, we’ve been unable to-”

“I’m sorry to interrupt.” I cut him off, trying to hide my agitation. “But… could I see them?”

An hour later I walk out of the gallery, my mind whirling. When I close my eyes all I can see is that faded, loopy script on tiny sheets of writing paper.

I didn’t read all his letters. They felt too private, and I only had a few minutes to look at them, anyway. But I read enough to know. He loved her. Even after he’d gone to France. Even after he heard that she’d got married to someone else.

Sadie spent all her life waiting for the answer to a question. And now I know he did too. And even though the affair happened more than eighty years ago, even though Stephen is dead and Sadie is dead and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, I’m still seething with misery as I stride along the pavement. It was all so unfair. It was all so wrong. They should have been together. Someone obviously intercepted his letters before they got to Sadie. Probably those evil Victorian parents of hers.

So she sat there with no idea of the truth. Thinking she’d been used. Too proud to go after him and find out for herself. She accepted the proposal of Waistcoat Guy as some stupid gesture of revenge. Maybe she was hoping Stephen would appear at the church. Even as she was getting ready for the wedding, she must have hoped, surely. And he let her down.