She looks up at me: I know she recognizes me. I feel a little afraid. It’s her grief that frightens me—and that I am here with my daughter, and she doesn’t have hers.
“You were at the trial,” she says. Her voice is quiet, and I can only just hear her.
“Yes,” I tell her.
There are many bunches of flowers against the trunk of the willow, their reds and yellows vivid in the sun; the ink on the cards is clear still, not yet blurred by rain. They’ve only just been put here. Because of the trial and the verdict, other people, strangers like us or family, have come here, to the place where Maria’s death is remembered. I stand by the woman and watch as Amber takes her bunch of freesias and places them carefully there.
She looks back at me uncertainly.
“We didn’t put a message on. We should have put a message.”
“They’re very pretty,” the woman says to Amber.
Amber bends for a moment, to read all the words on the cards.
The woman turns to me.
“It’s strange you’re here,” she says. “Because I wanted to see you. I tried to find you after the trial, but I couldn’t find you anywhere.”
“I just went home,” I say.
Amber straightens, looks across at us, working out what to do now.
“Mum. I thought I’d go for a walk,” she says, with studied casualness. “I thought I could look for the heron.”
She goes off down the path.
I sit on the grass beside Maria’s mother. In the shade the ground still has a slight dampness to it, in spite of the heat of the day. We’re close to the richness of earth and sap, and the mingled scents of the riverbank. The wind breathes softly.
“I wanted to find you to thank you,” she says.
“You don’t need to thank me,” I tell her. “Anyone would have done the same.”
“No, I don’t think they would have,” she says. “Not in your situation. He gave you a very tough time. It must have been horrible for you.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” I tell her.
“I’m very grateful,” she says.
We sit in silence for a while. A fleet of slow swans passes.
“I come here quite often,” she says then. Talking as though we know each other well. “I feel nearer to her here. Each time I come, I think I’m going to reach her, to touch her. But of course I can’t.”
I don’t say anything.
“I blame myself,” she says. She has her head down; she isn’t looking at me. “I saw things happening. There are only so many times you can walk into a wall.”
“You mustn’t blame yourself,” I say.
“It’s so difficult, with children, to know how far to interfere,” she says. “They have to lead their own lives. Well, you’re a mother. You’ll understand. … Though if I could do it again, there’s so much I would do differently. Everything.”
“Yes,” I say.
“It’s sometimes the hardest thing to know what’s right,” she says.
A barge glides slowly past us, with pots of begonias on top, and a man at the back holding a striped umbrella. Three geese take off from the water with a great clatter of wings. We gaze out over the river and all the things it carries and contains, its barges, water-birds, rowing teams, pleasure boats, its litter of tires and garbage bags and polystyrene boxes: and its plants that move so sinuously as the water covers them, as though they are stirred by a secret wind.
Amber has come back now. She sits on the grass a few yards from us, hugging her knees, tactfully turned away.
“I guess you need to go,” says the woman.
“Yes, we probably should.”
“I’m glad I met you,” she says.
She reaches out both hands and holds my hands for a moment. Her skin is so cold, in spite of the warmth of the day.
“I wish you well,” she says.
We walk back to the car.
“Was that Maria’s mother?” says Amber.
“Yes,” I tell her.
“I’m glad we did that,” she says. “I felt a bit embarrassed, but I’m sure we did the right thing.”
It’s hot in the car. We wind the windows down and the breeze comes in, smelling of salt and elderflowers.
Amber takes some jelly sweets out of the pocket of her jeans. They’re a disturbing blue color.
“Amber, those sweets look like they’re made from nuclear waste,” I say.
She ignores this.
“Mum,” she says, “when’s Molly coming home?”
“Saturday. It’s the end of term. We’re bringing all her stuff home.”
“I miss her,” she says.
“I know you do.”
She looks around doubtfully at my car.
“We’ll never get all her stuff in here.”
“We’ll manage,” I tell her. “Dad’s coming over, we’re going in his car.”
“Just like we used to,” she says.
The yearning in her voice hurts me. I put my hand on her arm.
“It’s OK, Mum.” She unwraps a sweet and sticks it into her mouth. “I can live with it,” she says, through the sweet. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
We come to the high brick wall that runs around the grounds of the convent. There are seedlings on the table in the gateway. I pull up at the curb.
“Honestly, Mum. You and your plants,” says Amber. “You always have to have something to look after.”
I get out of the car. The handwritten label says that they are Iceland poppies, and you can put donations in the Cadbury biscuit tin.
I choose a boxful. I shall plant them out in the border under the pear tree: I know just where they can go. In my mind’s eye, they’re flowering there already: I can see their sooty stamens, the sheen on their petals, the colors so true that you feel they might come off on your hand. Poppies fall quickly—they’re such ephemeral things— you can’t expect weeks of flowering: but for those few days they’re so lovely. And they seed themselves, and next year perhaps they’ll come up all over the garden.
A sudden huge gratitude washes through me. I open the biscuit tin, and find my purse and tip out all my money. The mist has lifted and the land has changed. But I know I can live here.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I AM DEEPLY GRATEFUL to Judy Clain, my editor at Little, Brown, for her wonderfully wise and perceptive response to my writing, and to my marvelous agent, Kathleen Anderson, for her empathy and dynamism. Molly Messick has been a constant source of support. Brian Hook very generously enlightened me about the workings of the Metropolitan Police—any errors are, of course, mine alone. My thanks also to Lucy Floyd and Vicki Tippet for contributing contacts and insights; and, as always, to Mick, Becky, and Isabel for their love and understanding.
In researching this story, I found these books especially valuable: Men Who Batter Women, by Adam Edward Jukes; A Celtic Miscellany: Translations from the Celtic Literatures, by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson; and Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARGARET LEROY STUDIED MUSIC at Oxford and has worked as a music therapist, play leader, and social worker. Her books have been published in nine languages, and her novel Trust has been televised in the UK. Her novel Postcards from Berlin was published by Little, Brown in 2003. She is married with two daughters and lives in London.
ACCLAIM FOR MARGARET LEROY’S
POSTCARDS FROM BERLIN
“Written with a wonderfully convincing authority. … Leroy succeeded in making me care about the characters. … I dreaded the worst and hoped for the best—and I won’t tell you which takes place.”
– MARGOT LIVESEY, New York Times
“A harrowing new novel about a modern mother whose love for her daughter is turned against her in a nightmarish turn of events. … The novel reads like a thriller and is brilliant at portraying the slow, steady disintegration of a seemingly ordinary life when secrets are unearthed and dark suspicions spread.”
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bsp; – MICHAEL SHELDEN, Baltimore Sun
“As in the best thrillers, moments of doubt creep in. We know that Catriona is just like us, an innocent caught in a horrible spiral not of her own making. Or do we?”
– WENDY FAWTHROP, Seattle Times
“Absorbing. … Written with the intense pace of a thriller and the brooding concealment of a mystery novel, Postcards is ultimately the story of a mother’s over-intense love for her child.”
– ANDREA HOAG, Minneapolis Star Tribune
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