Elsa looked out over the glassy surface of the lake. ‘Too frightening, sometimes,’ she agreed.
‘Want to talk about it?’
Elsa shook her head vigorously. The story of how she was recently widowed was a well-rehearsed one but she couldn’t bear to tell one more person how the love of her life had been taken from her: it would break her heart. ‘I’m supposed to tell you that my husband died and I’m staying with Aunt Flo until I’ve had the baby.’
‘But …’
‘I can’t say.’ Elsa put her hand to her mouth to hold back the confession that was ready to tumble over her lips.
‘My mum always said there was something special about this bench,’ Maggie said, after another lengthy pause. ‘Now you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but me and this old bench are good listeners and neither of us will tell a soul.’
‘I’ve wanted to tell someone for so long,’ Elsa said. ‘You promise you won’t tell?’
‘I promise.’
She let her hand drop to her side and her fingers followed the gentle curve of the wooden slats beneath her as she steadied herself. ‘Aunt Flo isn’t my aunt, she’s not even a distant relative and there is no husband, dead or otherwise. The only grain of truth in the story is that I am pregnant, five months by my reckoning.’
‘These things happen, but it’s not exactly unheard of. If you don’t mind me asking, Elsa, how old are you?’
‘Twenty-two.’
A frown creased Maggie’s brow. ‘That’s still very young,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Don’t you have any family to support you?’
‘Oh, my parents would kill me if they found out. Dad kept telling me if I didn’t curb my wild streak, it’d end in tears, and Mum made it clear that if I got in trouble she would rather see me on the street than bring shame on us all. It would destroy them if they found out. Only my sister Celia knows.’
‘So what will you do when the baby’s born? Surely your parents will come around once they see their new grandchild.’
Elsa would have laughed if the hope that was being dangled in front of her wasn’t so impossibly beyond her reach. ‘They won’t,’ she said stoically. ‘And there’s no way I can manage on my own so I’ll go back to Liverpool and the baby will go to a respectable family.’
‘Is that what you want?’
Elsa pulled her coat around her tightly as she imagined her newborn baby being wrenched from her arms. ‘What I want is Freddie. I want him to ride into Sedgefield on his motorbike and rescue us both,’ Elsa said. ‘But that’s a silly dream, isn’t it? Freddie doesn’t even know I’m here. Or why.’
‘You won’t tell him?’
‘He’s an American serviceman. We met at a dance while he was stationed at the Burtonwood airbase.’
‘Burtonwood? I thought that site had closed down years ago?’
‘No, I know some people who are still there, just not my Freddie. He broke my heart.’
‘You fell in love,’ Maggie said simply.
‘A man in a uniform, how could I resist? When I found out he was being posted to Germany, it felt like someone had ripped out my heart. But we made the most of those last few weeks together – and that’s how I ended up like this. If I’d known then what kind of trouble I was in, I wouldn’t have been so eager to break things off when he left. I thought I was being all grown up about it. I didn’t want to wait around for the rest of my life while he would eventually go back to America and forget about me.’
As Elsa spoke, she continued to stroke Harvey. He had stayed close and whined once or twice, offering his own note of sympathy as Elsa revealed her heartbreak.
‘So why don’t you contact him now and let him know?’
‘Because I wanted him to come back for me and not because he found out I was pregnant. And in my heart that’s what I thought he would do, even on that last night together when we said our goodbyes.’ Elsa took a breath and held it. She could feel the tears stinging her eyes but she refused to let them fall. She kept her gaze on the lake. ‘I’m a silly, romantic fool.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with a bit of romance.’
‘Oh, but there is! This is my punishment. I should have listened to my mum. I don’t deserve Freddie and I certainly don’t deserve to keep this baby.’
‘I may not know you very well, Elsa, but I don’t believe you deserve to have your baby taken from you, not if it’s something you don’t want to happen and I get the feeling you don’t.’
‘Some days I just want to jump in that bloody lake and let it swallow me up and then no one will ever take my baby from me. But what kind of mother would even think such a thing?’
‘A desperate one,’ Maggie said, her voice choked with emotion.
The young woman sitting on the bench next to Maggie had fallen deathly silent, in fact Maggie wasn’t even sure she was still there. Perhaps she had vanished into the ether, leaving as silently as she had arrived. Maggie’s blood ran cold at the thought and she strained her ears for the slightest sound that would reassure her of the woman’s earthly presence but she could hear nothing above the hammering of her own heart.
Maggie depended on her instincts and they were telling her something was wrong. Elsa’s appearance had been accompanied by so many conflicting messages. There was something about her voice that didn’t quite ring true and the dated perfume belonged to a different era, as did some of the things she had said. And yet despite all of this Maggie felt an immediate connection to Elsa, perhaps because they were both terrified of becoming mothers, albeit for very different reasons. Nothing added up and yet everything made sense because Elsa needed a friend and Maggie needed to help someone. More than anything, Maggie wanted to prove she wasn’t as hopeless as she would have herself believe.
‘I don’t want to let her go. I can’t.’
The voice came from nowhere and gave Maggie a start. ‘Elsa? Are you OK?’
‘I don’t think I’ll be able to live with the pain of losing my baby,’ she replied, her voice wet with tears. ‘I won’t survive it.’
As Elsa shifted uneasily, Maggie placed her palm flat against the wooden slats of the bench and was grateful for the gentle vibration that confirmed Elsa’s presence had substance. But then Maggie felt that sense of connection again, a connection that travelled through the painted layers of the bench, peeling back time itself … Realising how irrational she was being, Maggie put these thoughts to one side and let her heart reach out to Elsa. ‘Then fight for your baby. Swallow your pride and tell Freddie. At least then you’ll know that you’ve done all you can. Can you still contact him? Could you phone or send him an email?’
‘A what?’
‘Could you write to him?’ she asked, refusing to acknowledge why Elsa might not know what an email was.
‘I could ask someone at Burtonwood to pass on a letter for me, I suppose,’ Elsa said. There was a spark of hope in her voice now, although she was quick to dampen it. ‘But even if he did turn up, I don’t think I’d fit on his bike any more. And I can’t help thinking he’s vanished out of my life just like the swans have disappeared from the lake.’
Maggie turned her head towards the lake as if to scan the waters she couldn’t see. ‘What swans? I don’t think there have ever been swans in Victoria Park.’
‘But I’ve seen them,’ Elsa insisted, and the spell that had been cast over the two expectant mothers began to splinter. ‘I’d better go,’ Elsa added sharply. ‘I’m going to be late for work.’