The Women of Primrose Square

by Claudia Carroll

  Violet wasn’t improving. She was still lying, agitated and twitchy, in the bed, unable to sleep, even though Emily was lying fully clothed beside her, cradling her in her arms and trying to shush her fears away. So when Emily heard Francesca coming home, tiptoeing quietly up the stairs, she felt a huge sense of relief.

  Help is here, she thought as she very gently slid away from Violet and went out to tell her everything. Reinforcements. Francesca would know exactly what to do; she always did.

  With poor Violet in no state to argue, Francesca made a quick phone call to Jayne across the square and asked her to get here as fast as she could. It was well past midnight at this stage, but still Jayne came running. Emily felt an overwhelming surge of gratitude when she saw Jayne’s warm, concerned face appear at the front door, still wearing her dressing gown with tracksuit bottoms on underneath it. Emily had met Jayne a few times through Susan, as the two were next-door neighbours. Jayne was the heart of Primrose Square; everyone thought the world of her, and apparently she and Violet went back decades. If she wasn’t able to help, who could?

  Jayne, Francesca and Emily held a quick, huddled confab in the kitchen.

  ‘I just came home and Violet was in bits,’ Emily said. ‘I’m worried sick about her; it’s like the woman is having some kind of breakdown. She’s been reliving the most nightmarish time you could imagine. I had no idea she’s suffered the way that she has.’

  ‘I did notice that she didn’t seem quite like herself over the last few days,’ Francesca said to Jayne. ‘You’d warned me about it, of course, but I’d no idea it was quite this bad.’

  ‘It’s the date,’ Jayne nodded wisely. ‘She’s always a bit wobbly in the middle of August. And this year was bound to be worse than ever.’

  ‘Why this particular year?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Because it’s been fifty years, you see,’ Jayne said. ‘Her son, her little baby that was taken from her, would have been fifty years old today. It’s not something she ever talks about – even with me she pretends it never happened – but it’s still with her, every single day of her life.’

  It must have been close to one a.m., but the house was still up and awake as Francesca made tea and toast served on the good china and brought it upstairs on a tray to try to coax Violet to eat something. Violet had always adored Francesca – or Frank, as Violet still knew her – and if anyone could soothe her, Emily thought, it was her. Meanwhile she and Jayne sat together at the kitchen table, talking, talking, talking.

  ‘It’s trauma, pure and simple,’ Jayne said. ‘Can you imagine what it must have been like for Violet in one of those awful places? Think of those young, vulnerable women who were abused so badly, then just expected to get on with their lives as if nothing happened?’

  But Emily couldn’t answer. All she could do was beat herself up for being so catty about Violet when they first met. She felt mortified when she thought how cutting she’d been about Violet’s snobbery and her waspishness and all her odd ways. But no one is born like that, she reminded herself. Life is what made Violet the way she is.

  ‘I wrote to her at the time, you know,’ Jayne said quietly. ‘Because as far as I was concerned, Violet had just disappeared into thin air. One day she was here and the next day she was gone, it was as simple as that. Of course, I called to this house time and again, trying to find out what had happened to her. She was my friend and I was worried sick. Her father was a complete tyrant, though, and wouldn’t even let me through the front door. But there was a very nice housemaid who worked here at the time, Betty, and she told me as much as she knew.’

  ‘Did you know then where Violet had been taken to?’ Emily asked.

  ‘No,’ Jayne said. ‘No one did. It was as if she’d just been brushed under the carpet and forgotten about. Betty thought she might have been sent down to the country to live with a relative, but couldn’t tell me any more. She did say that if I wanted to leave letters here for Violet, she’d do her best to see if she could forward them on to wherever the poor girl had been spirited off to. It was years later before I found out that not a single one of my letters ever reached Violet. Her father burned them all and never said a single word.’

  ‘What a bastard!’ Emily muttered hotly, glaring at a photo of Freddie Hardcastle on the dresser.

  Jayne sighed deeply. ‘Normally, I try to look for the good in other people,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid in Freddie Hardcastle’s case, it wasn’t easy. He adored Violet, you see – he’d pinned all his hopes on her bringing great glory to this house, then when she got pregnant . . .’

  ‘He just shunted her off where he wouldn’t even have to look at her,’ Emily finished the sentence for her. Jesus, she thought. And I thought my own family was dysfunctional. Compared with this lot, I came from the shagging Waltons.

  ‘So how did Violet eventually get out of that place?’ she asked, dying to know. ‘Did they let her go once the baby was born?’

  Jayne couldn’t answer for a moment.

  ‘I wish I could say yes,’ she said after a long pause. ‘I wish I could tell you that Freddie forgave her and welcomed her home with open arms and that all was well again.’

  ‘But . . . what?’ Emily prompted.

  ‘But that’s not what happened at all. He still refused to have anything to do with Violet, so he just left her where she was, airbrushing her from history. His business had run into difficulty by then though, and towards the end of his life, I know he was under huge financial pressure.’

  ‘You said towards the end of his life,’ Emily said. ‘Did he live long after all this?’

  ‘Another decade,’ Jayne said. ‘Ten more years, can you imagine? And what’s worst of all is that at any point throughout those awful years, he could have sent for Violet and brought her back home at any time, but he was a proud, stubborn man and never did. Not once. According to Betty, he even burned every photograph of her that was in this house. Every single last one.’

  ‘Please tell me Freddie Hardcastle died a horrible, screaming death?’

  Jayne just looked at her wryly.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Emily said. ‘Kindness and tolerance and all of that shite. But honestly, someone like him doesn’t deserve any sympathy, does he?’

  ‘Freddie Hardcastle died a good ten years later,’ Jayne said simply. ‘When he did, this house went to Violet, although there was precious little money left over for her, just a string of debts he’d left behind.’

  ‘So she got out of that laundry and got to come home?’

  Jayne nodded. ‘And from that day on, I don’t think she ever set foot outside her own door again. Home became her safe space, her sanctuary, her refuge. Once she got away from that terrible place, and back here, she never stepped outside again.’

  ‘And what happened to her baby’s father?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Andy,’ Jayne said thoughtfully. ‘That was his name. He was a cousin of my late husband Tom’s and I’m afraid to say he didn’t behave very well at all. He was trying to make it in the music business, you see. He wanted to be the next Paul McCartney, but he had no success at all. So he went back to England, moved to Manchester and settled there. He married and went on to have a large family, and even though Tom and I told him what had happened to Violet, he didn’t want anything to do with her.’

  ‘He didn’t even want to know his own son?’

  ‘No,’ Jayne said sadly. ‘Although by then, Frederick Junior had long since been taken to the States for adoption. But still, though. All that unhappiness. All that pain and suffering for poor Violet. Those were very different times, you see. The past, as they say, is another country. Thank God it’s all changed now.’

  They were interrupted by Francesca, who came into the kitchen, looking white-faced and worried.

  ‘Violet’s asking for you now,’ she said. ‘She says there’s something very important she needs to tell you.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Jayne automatically said, rising to her feet.


  ‘No, not you,’ Francesca said apologetically. ‘It’s actually Emily she’s asking for.’

  *

  Emily knocked gently on Violet’s heavy oak bedroom door, let herself in and perched gently on the bed beside a deathly pale Violet.

  OK, she thought. Here goes. Either I can treat her like a complete basket case on the verge of a breakdown, or I can do the woman the courtesy of acting exactly the way I always do around her.

  Emily decided on the latter. ‘Jesus, old woman,’ she said lightly, ‘that was some heart attack you gave me earlier. Thought we’d have to check you into St Michael’s there for a minute, and as an ex-inmate, I can tell you, you’d bloody hate every second of it there. There’s no telly, for one thing. You’d lose your reason.’

  ‘So now you know,’ Violet said, propped up against a mound of silky, lacy-looking pillows.

  ‘Now I know.’

  ‘I’m sorry about all those grow baby bags, or however you refer to those dreadful things,’ Violet said. ‘I will of course replace them, in due course.’

  ‘Just give me a month off rent and let’s call it quits,’ Emily said cheekily and was rewarded with a wan half smile.

  There was a comfortable silence before Violet spoke again.

  ‘You and I have something in common, Emily,’ she said.

  ‘What’s that? Because I ain’t no lover of the royal family, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘I was about to say,’ Violet went on, ‘that people don’t like you and me, really, do they? They get the wrong idea about you, just like they do about me.’

  Emily looked at her, unsure where this was going.

  ‘But they’re quite mistaken, aren’t they?’ Violet said. ‘Because I know that there’s a real diamond inside you. I know from the little kindnesses you showed me, when I was nothing but foul to you. You’re a good person deep down, Emily Dunne. And now it’s time to let the world see that too.’

  It surprised Emily, how genuinely touched she was.

  ‘And what about you, Violet?’ she asked. ‘What are we going to do with you? Are you just going to stay here in this house, never going out, filling your days by firing off letters to strangers and crucifying yourself for something that no one even cares about anymore?’

  ‘And what, pray, is the alternative?’ Violet said, with a hint of her old haughtiness returning.

  A very good sign, Emily thought.

  ‘Or, you could do exactly as I suggest.’

  Gracie

  Meet in a public place, Beth had wisely advised, and Gracie was bloody glad that she’d paid attention. Everyone was always on their best behaviour in public. Rows would be overheard and, God forbid, if Ben didn’t handle this well, it would be significantly harder to storm out in a strop from a packed restaurant, with onlookers taking everything in.

  She’d chosen the Trocadero restaurant in town quite purposefully, as she knew Ben was a big fan of the head chef there and would be on his best behaviour. Amber was excited too, as she’d been pestering to be brought there for ages and was bird-happy when they did manage to get a reservation.

  ‘Oh my God, Mum!’ she chattered, as she, Gracie and Ben were shown to their table. ‘There’s, like . . . loads of celebs here . . . Loads!’ Then Amber took out her phone and she and Ben were so engrossed in snapping a TV presenter at the table right beside them, craning their necks to get the perfect selfie without the unsuspecting celeb being any the wiser, that neither of them even noticed a tall, slim, elegant lady gliding into the restaurant and slipping quietly into the booth beside them.

  Showtime, Gracie thought. Nor could she have stage-managed it any more smoothly.

  Gracie didn’t remember much about the meal. She couldn’t even say for certain what she ate – or didn’t eat, more likely. She remembered next to nothing about the conversation, which was perfectly normal, almost mundane. Exactly the kind of run-of-the-mill, ordinary things that they used to talk about as a family all the time, prior to Frank moving out. Everything, she thought, was as it always was and always had been, except that Francesca looked a helluva lot glossier and more groomed than Frank ever did.

  From the moment she arrived, Amber burst into a wide, broad grin, and even Ben seemed at peace with it all. Not only that, but Francesca was far more light-hearted and secure in herself today, surrounded by all her family. She was fun and funny and an all-round joy to be with. She was in her prime, she was glorious, she was her true self.

  All Gracie could remember, with any degree of certainty, was strolling back to the car with Ben, as Francesca and Amber were a pace or two ahead of them.

  ‘Well, love?’ Gracie prompted her eldest. ‘That wasn’t too awful for you, I hope?’

  Ben walked on in silence for a bit before answering.

  ‘The weird thing is –’ he shrugged, shoving his hands deep into his pockets – ‘is that it wasn’t weird at all. Not in the least. I mean, I thought Dad was going to show up in a dress like some kind of bad drag act, but it wasn’t like that, was it?’

  ‘No, love.’ Gracie nodded in agreement. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Dad did show up,’ Ben said, ‘but it’s like today I got to see the real him, and up until now, he’s only been play-acting, going around the place in suits and shirts the whole time. It’s like he’s been acting a part for the last eighteen years and now he doesn’t have to do that anymore. He can just be who he is.’

  ‘The real him,’ Gracie repeated softly. ‘That’s exactly what I thought when I first saw Francesca. I thought, this is who your dad was meant to be all along. And now it’s his time to shine.’

  They both looked in front of them to where Francesca and Amber were striding on ahead, the two of them laughing and giggling at some shared joke. Happy and relaxed in each other’s company. Just like always.

  ‘I’ve been a bit shit to Dad lately, haven’t I?’ said Ben.

  Gracie gave a half smile. ‘I think that’s something we’re both guilty of.’

  ‘And you know something else?’ Ben added. ‘I thought I’d hate this. I only came because of you and Amber, and I was all set to leave after half an hour. But it was . . . well, it was all . . . OK. Fine. Normal. Isn’t that, like, seriously . . . whacking?’

  ‘You know what I think, love?’ Gracie said, turning to face Ben in the warm summer sunshine. ‘I think that families aren’t perfect. They never are, no matter how much they try to be. But as long as we can all live our truth in our little family, then that’s OK, isn’t it?’

  ‘Suppose.’

  ‘If we can do this as a family, together, then we’ve got to be doing something right, haven’t we?’

  Emily

  ‘Come on, old woman. Move your arse, would you?’

  ‘If you would kindly refrain from corner-boy language,’ Violet said primly, ‘then I would find this process a whole lot less degrading.’

  ‘We’re here with you, Vi, love,’ Jayne said soothingly. ‘Nothing bad is going to happen to you, I promise. We won’t allow it.’

  ‘I would feel greatly more encouraged,’ Violet said, ‘if your hand wasn’t trembling as you spoke.’

  Jayne and Emily were linking Violet through one arm each and trying to coax her to come outside. To cross the threshold of her own front door, something the woman hadn’t done in decades. Between the two of them, they’d been cheerleading her on for days, and as it was such a fabulously sunny afternoon, they’d decided this was as good a time as any. The hall door was wide open, with Primrose Square looking at its sunshiney best in the late summer sun.

  ‘Come on, you’re so close!’ Emily said enthusiastically. ‘I’ll get you a dirty big cream puff if you manage it!’

  ‘One more step, Vi, and you’re almost there,’ Jayne tried her best to encourage her.

  But Violet’s nerves had got the better of her. She’d started to shake by then, uncontrollably.

  ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘N
o, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh come on, please try, Violet,’ said Jayne. ‘This is the closest you’ve come in years. Think of how good it’ll feel to be out in all that lovely fresh air!’

  By then, though, Violet was having a full-blown panic attack and there was no budging her.

  ‘No,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I can’t. Not now. Not today. Maybe not ever.’

  ‘But look, you’re almost there . . .’ Emily tried to say. ‘Just one more step and you’re home and dry!’

  It was pointless, though; they all knew it.

  ‘She’s upset, so we should leave her,’ Jayne said quietly to Emily. ‘You’ve come this far, Violet, and I’m so proud of you. But I think that’s probably enough for one day, don’t you?’

  ‘Enough for one day,’ Violet said, pale-faced and trembling as she was led back into the hallway, back to safety, back to where she belonged.

  *

  Not long afterwards, Emily had a meeting with her boss, Julie Flynn at Flynn’s Stores’ headquarters on George’s Street. Punctual to the dot, she was shown into Julie’s office and rewarded with a big, warm smile and the very welcome offer of a coffee.

  ‘Your first few weeks here have gone fantastically,’ Julie said, handing Emily an Americano and perching on the edge of her desk. ‘Line management tell me you’re first here every morning, last to leave in the evening and always so helpful and cooperative with customers on the shop floor. You’re working your ass off, and I don’t want you to think it hasn’t been noticed.’

  ‘Wow, thank you,’ Emily said, totally unused to being complimented. Up until then, her sole experience of meeting with any boss had always been a prelude to her being fired. She’d never in her whole life known what it felt like to work at a job you actually enjoyed, for a boss you respected and admired. It was a good feeling. In fact, more than that, it was a bloody amazing feeling.

  ‘I’ve got my beady eye on you, you know,’ Julie joked. ‘And if you ever wanted to chat to me about design, my door is always open. Although I know that’s not the reason why you and me need to talk today.’