The Hidden Women: An inspirational novel of sisterhood and strength
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‘He said what?’ Annie said, when I told her about the conversation.
‘That I was up to something,’ I said. I was lying on my bed in my nightgown, even though it was still early. Missions like tonight’s always exhausted me, and Will’s appearance hadn’t helped.
‘You are up to something,’ Flora pointed out. She was on my bed too, sitting by my feet. She had a sheaf of paper on her lap.
‘That’s why I’m so nervous,’ I said. ‘Between Rose sniffing around and Will Bates lurking in the shadows, I’m worried people are starting to suspect.’
‘I am positive Will Bates knows nothing,’ Annie said. ‘He’s just teasing you. Flirting.’
I scowled at her.
‘I’m positive,’ she repeated. ‘He may be pretty …’
She paused to give Flora and me time to appreciate Will’s handsome face in our imaginations.
‘… but he’s not the sharpest tool in the box.’
I smiled at Annie’s bluntness. She certainly told it how it was and she did not suffer fools gladly. Her sharp brain made her a real asset to our little group, while Flora’s organisational skills kept the whole thing running smoothly. I’d lost count of how many times I thanked my lucky stars that they’d both joined the ATA instead of using their skills in the War Office or behind a desk somewhere.
The first time we’d helped a woman, it was just by chance. Back in 1942 when we’d been doing our training in Luton there had been a girl in our pool called Polly. One evening we’d all been out – it was fun there, and there were a lot of army regiments stationed nearby, lads doing basic training just like us. Their presence always made for a good night. But that one evening, Polly didn’t come home. She eventually arrived, much later, with her dress torn. She hadn’t told us what had happened – she didn’t have to. Quietly, me and Annie gave her a bath and cleaned her up, and tried not to wince at the bruises on her thighs.
A few weeks later, Annie caught Polly being sick in the toilet and realised she was pregnant.
‘What am I going to do?’ Polly had hissed at us in the bathroom that day, her face pale and her forehead beaded with sweat. ‘I can’t have a bloody baby.’
She’d gagged, just with the effort of speaking.
‘I didn’t even know his name.’
‘We need to help her,’ I told Annie.
‘But what can we do?’
I’d shaken my head. ‘I don’t know,’ I’d said. ‘But we need to do something.’
I’d not known Annie long at that time, but I already knew she was someone I’d trust with my life.
‘Someone helped me once,’ I’d admitted. ‘Not like this, not …’
Annie’s eyes had searched my face. I’d squeezed my lips together in case I cried.
‘And now you think we should help Polly?’ she’d said.
I’d nodded.
‘We’ll find a way.’
And that’s where Flora came in. She knew someone in Manchester. Someone who’d helped a friend of her sister. A doctor. At least, that’s what he said he was and we never checked. Flora made the arrangements, Annie and I worked out the logistics and the transport, and Polly went off to Manchester just a fortnight later. She came back even paler, but after a couple of days’ rest – we told our officers that she was having some women’s troubles and they didn’t push it – she was fine again.
We had thought that was it. But it wasn’t. Polly told someone what we’d done for her, and quietly, word got round. Turned out there were women all over the place who needed help of one sort or another and it seemed we were the ones to help them. Gradually we built up a network of people, all over the country. Truth was, the network had existed long before we came along. We were just lucky that we could put people in touch with each other. Doctors who could do what we needed them to do, women desperate to adopt a baby, others willing to shelter a pregnant woman for a few weeks – or nurse someone who’d picked up an infection after their, you know, procedure.
We criss-crossed the country delivering planes, and sharing information or arrangements with women while we did it. In two years, we’d helped eleven women – April was number twelve. We’d seen five babies born and adopted and the rest, well, they’d been sorted. And we’d had one death, a young woman called Bet who lost too much blood after her op, and who’d been too scared to go to hospital in case she got into trouble. We didn’t use that doctor again and we’d made sure we checked out new places now, but we were all haunted by Bet’s death. Never thought about stopping though. Not once. And if losing one of our women wouldn’t stop us helping others, nor would Will Bates and his clumsy flirting.
I sat up in bed and looked across at Annie, who was lying on her own bed next to mine.
‘April’s going to let us know when the baby comes,’ I said. ‘Don’t reckon it’ll be long.’
Annie nodded. ‘Glad we got there in time.’
Flora was opening letters. We had a box at the local post office where people could contact us.
‘Too late for this one, though,’ she said, scanning the paper. ‘She wrote this last month and she says she was already eight months gone then. She’ll have had the baby by now.’
Annie shrugged. ‘Can’t help ’em all.’
But I wished we could.
Chapter 6
Helena
May 2018
It seemed Miranda and I weren’t the only ones to be thinking about Lil. On Monday morning, just before lunch, the office receptionist phoned me to say I had a visitor.
‘This is a nice surprise,’ I said as the lift doors opened and I saw it was my dad. ‘Are you working nearby?’
We were based in Soho, and Dad often worked close by when a film he’d composed the music on was in post-production. It wasn’t unusual for him to pop by and say hello when he was in the area, but he normally phoned first.
Now he gave a vague nod over his shoulder. ‘Nearby,’ he said.
‘I’m a bit busy at the moment but we could go for lunch in about half an hour if you like?’
But Dad shook his head. ‘I wanted to ask you something,’ he said. ‘Could we nip into another room, perhaps?’
Behind his back, I saw Elly studiously bashing away at her keyboard, pretending not to be listening.
‘Of course,’ I said, a flicker of unease in my stomach. ‘Follow me.’
I led him into the meeting room where I’d met Jack Jones the week before, and shut the door.
‘Are you okay? What’s the matter? Is Mum okay?’
Dad smiled. ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ he said. ‘We’re both fine. Fit as fiddles.’
He gave a little skip as though to prove how fit he was even though he was approaching eighty. Mum wasn’t far off seventy.
I raised my eyebrow at him and he pulled out a chair and sat down. I did the same.
‘So what’s up?’
‘I wanted to ask you a favour,’ he said.
‘Go on.’
‘I know you said you weren’t supposed to do your own research, but any chance you could have a quick look into this Lil stuff for me?’
‘Dad, no,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’
‘It’s important.’
I stared at him. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why is it important?’
Dad looked at his hands. ‘No actual reason that I can put into words,’ he said. ‘I’d just like to know more about my family. Before it’s too late.’
He took a breath.
‘I never really asked my parents much about the war, and that generation just didn’t talk about it, did they?’
I shook my head. More than once I’d come across the most amazing stories in the course of research that had never been mentioned in the family.
‘I think the war was so awful, more awful than we could ever imagine, and those who lived through it found it hard to talk about,’ I said.
‘My father – your grandfather – was in the RAF.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen his medals.’
Dad nodded. ‘Never mentioned it, not really,’ he said. ‘Not to us, at least not often. He had some old air force friends I remember him meeting up with, and I imagine they talked about what they’d done.’
‘Their own version of group therapy,’ I pointed out. ‘Must have helped.’
‘I wish I’d asked him more about it,’ Dad said. He looked really sad and I thought suddenly that even though my grandpa had been dead for more than twenty years, he must still miss him.
I reached out and took his hand. ‘He might not have talked, even if you’d asked,’ I said. ‘Did Grandma ever say anything?’
‘Not about Dad in the air force,’ Dad said. ‘But, of course, I remember bits about the war. Not much, because I was very small. But I remember living with Mum, and not really knowing Dad when he came home.’
He paused.
‘And I remember Lil,’ he said.
‘What do you remember?’ I asked, intrigued by this little insight into my own family history.
‘I remember her wearing a uniform,’ Dad said slowly. He tilted his head to the left and looked far away over my shoulder. ‘I remember sitting on her lap and playing with a toy plane and her arm round me felt scratchy, the material I mean. It was a uniform.’
‘How old were you?’
He shrugged.
‘About four, perhaps? I loved that plane.’
‘Was that the one Lil brought you?’
‘I always thought my father gave it to me,’ he said. ‘But now I really think about it, I seem to remember Lil bringing it. It’s such a long time ago.’
‘Uniforms and toy planes sound to me like that was our Lil on my list,’ I said.
Dad nodded. ‘That’s what I thought.’
‘Give me a minute,’ I said.
Leaving him in the meeting room, I dashed back to my desk and found the Jack Jones file – now with all the papers back in the correct order.
‘Everything okay?’ Elly said, super-casually.
‘Dad worked with Jack Jones,’ I said, sort of truthfully. Dad had indeed done some music for the TV show Jack had starred in – though he never met the actors as a rule. ‘On that detective thing. He wanted to check something.’
Elly looked dubious but she didn’t say anything.
I took the folder back to the meeting room and showed Dad the list with Lilian Miles on it.
‘So, she flew planes?’ Dad said in awe. ‘Bloody hell.’
I nodded. ‘Amazing, right?’
‘Could you check her records?’
‘Dad,’ I said, in a warning tone.
‘There must be service records,’ he said, not put off by my frown. ‘Surely they’d help us find out if it’s her? We know her date and place of birth; it shouldn’t be hard to cross-reference.’
‘I can’t, Dad,’ I said. ‘It’s completely verboten to do our own research. I could lose my job.’
I grinned at him.
‘You could do it, or Mum. She knows about research. Though it’s expensive to subscribe to some of the databases.’
Dad shook his head. ‘Oh, Nell, you know what we’re like with computers. We just don’t have the skills,’ he said. ‘I’m not bad on the email business but anything more complicated just flummoxes me. I’m no spring chicken.’
I patted his hand reassuringly. ‘You do brilliantly,’ I lied, knowing he was right. He and Mum struggled to work their television.
‘What about if you did it outside work?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It just feels so wrong because I found the information at work. It’s not right to use company resources for personal searches. I could get into trouble.’
‘Your boss wouldn’t know, Miranda said,’ Dad pointed out.
I shrugged. ‘I can’t,’ I said again. ‘Why are you so interested?’
‘I told you, I just want to know about my family,’ Dad said. But he didn’t meet my eyes when he said it. What was he hiding?
‘There is something we can do, though,’ I said, watching him carefully.
Dad looked hopeful. ‘What?’
‘We could ask her.’
‘Ask her,’ Dad repeated, just as I’d done when Miranda suggested it.
Before I could continue, there was a knock on the door of the meeting room and Fliss stuck her head round, her long blonde hair swinging.
‘Sorry, Helena,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d booked this room?’
Guiltily, I gathered up the Jack Jones papers I’d been showing Dad and smiled. ‘Just an unplanned meeting,’ I said. ‘We’ll get out of your way.’
I went to hustle Dad out of the room, before Fliss realised I’d been mixing up work and personal stuff, but it was too late. She was looking at Dad curiously.
‘Fliss Hopkins,’ she said, holding out her hand for him to shake.
‘Robert Miles.’
She beamed at him. ‘Helena’s father?’
‘Indeed,’ said Dad giving her a dazzling smile. He was such a charmer.
‘I was just going over some Jack Jones research when Dad popped in to see if I was free for lunch,’ I said.
‘But Helena tells me she is far too busy to join me, so I will bid you farewell,’ Dad said smoothly making me wonder if he’d always been such a good liar.
‘Nice to meet you,’ said Fliss.
She stood back to let us leave the room then entered herself, leaving the door open.
‘Let me think about it,’ I said as I showed Dad to the lift, hoping Fliss hadn’t realised I had been showing Dad my Jack Jones research and that she didn’t decide to have a look at it herself. ‘I can’t search Lil’s records, not without putting my job at risk, but I’ll have a think about what else we can do.’
Dad kissed me goodbye. ‘Thanks, Helena,’ he said. ‘It means a lot to me.’
Chapter 7
Lilian
September 1939
I cycled as slowly as I could through the village, wobbling on my bike because I wasn’t going fast enough to keep my balance.
‘Morning, Lil,’ Marcus the postman called. ‘Mind how you go.’
I ignored him, concentrating on keeping my legs going round. I had an ache in my stomach and my limbs felt heavy and hard to control.
‘By lunchtime it’ll be over,’ I whispered to myself over and over as I cycled. ‘By lunchtime it’ll be over.’
I could see the house up ahead, squatting at the end of the village like a slug, and growing bigger as I approached. I slid off my bicycle and chained it to the fence, and then, dragging my heels, walked up the path to the front door. Before I could knock, it opened. My piano teacher’s wife stood there. She was dressed to go out, wearing her hat and holding her gloves in one hand and her handbag in the other. I wanted to cry.
‘Lilian,’ she said, beaming at me ‘How nice to see you. He’s in the music room – go on through.’
I forced a smile. ‘Thank you, Mrs Mayhew,’ I muttered, slinking past her. She was so pretty and fresh-looking in her summer dress. I felt her eyes on me as I went and wondered if she knew. If she could tell. I felt dirty. No, not dirty. Filthy.
At the music room door, I paused. Then I lifted my hand and knocked.
‘Come,’ said Mr Mayhew. Taking a breath, I went.
Mr Mayhew was sitting at the piano, making pencil notes on some sheet music that was on the stand.
‘Ah, Lilian,’ he said. ‘You’re late.’
He turned round on the stool and gave me a dazzling smile. My breath caught in my throat. Always when I wasn’t with him, he became a monster in my head. Then, when I saw him again – saw his dark, swarthy good looks and his broad shoulders – I wondered what I had been worrying about.
‘Come and sit,’ he said, shifting over on the padded stool. ‘Let’s play something fun to get warmed up.’
I put down my music case and settled myself next to him. I felt the warmth of his body as his thigh brushed mine when I sat, but I couldn’t move away because the stool was too small.
Mr Mayhew – I couldn’t call him Ian, even though he’d told me to – moved a sheet of music to the front of the bundle on the stand. It was a Bach piece that had been one of my favourites, long ago when I was still a child.
He turned to me, his face just inches from mine. I smelled coffee on his breath and tried not to recoil as nausea overwhelmed me.
‘Ready?’ he said.
I nodded, putting my hands on to the keys.
‘Two, three, four …’ he counted us in.
I knew the music by heart, so as I played I shut my eyes and imagined I was anywhere but in this stuffy room, with Mr Mayhew’s body heat spreading through my thin cotton frock.
At the end of the piece, Mr Mayhew stood up and I felt myself relax. Slightly.
‘Good,’ he said, strolling over to the window and gazing out into the garden. ‘Now let’s go through your examination pieces. Start with the Brahms.’
I relaxed a bit more, realising he wanted to concentrate on music today.
‘Could you open a window, please?’ I asked. ‘It’s very warm.’
He nodded and pushed the sash upwards. ‘Are you feeling well?’ he asked me, his brow furrowed in concern. ‘You’re very pale.’
I swallowed. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘It’s just the heat.’
Mr Mayhew came over to where I sat and stood behind me. Gently, he reached out and stroked the back of my neck.
‘Lilian,’ he said gruffly. ‘Is something wrong?’
I froze. My stomach was squirming and I wasn’t sure I could put how I was feeling into words. How could I tell him I’d wanted his approval for months, so badly that I almost felt a physical ache when I played a wrong note. That when he smiled at me my heart sang with the most beautiful music. That when he told me I was special to him, I wanted to throw myself into his arms and stay there forever. And yet, as spring had blossomed into early summer, and he had kissed me for the first time, I’d gone home feeling confused and guilty. When, just a week later, he had put his hand up my skirt while I played, his fingers probing and hurting, I’d gasped in fear and he’d nodded.
‘Like that?’ he said, his voice thick. ‘I thought you would. I knew what you wanted from the day you walked in here.’
I’d stayed still, not understanding what he was doing. Not wanting to upset him by asking him to stop. Because I had wanted this. Hadn’t I?
Now, after our lessons he would kiss me, and touch me – and make me touch him too. I didn’t know how to say no. Because I’d started this, hadn’t I? And sometimes he came to school to meet me at the gate and give me music he’d copied for me by hand – see how much cared – and we walked home the long way through the woods. And he’d take me by the hand and lower me into the soft moss below one of the trees and unbuckle his belt and …
I found that by imagining playing the piano I could pretend it wasn’t happening. And then when it was over, Mr Mayhew would always be so kind. He would brush leaves from my hair, and tell me how precious I was. I never cried until I was alone.
Now, feeling his fingers on the back of my neck, I waited for what he would do next.
‘Are you cross with me?’ he murmured. ‘Because I wanted you to play first?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to play.’
‘You tease me,’ he said. He trailed his fingers over my collarbone and down to my bust, and I closed my eyes.
And then the front door banged shut and he pulled away as if my faded cotton dress was prickly.
‘Ian,’ Mrs Mayhew called. ‘Ian, are you there?’
She came into the music room without knocking, which she never did. Mr Mayhew was very strict about that. Not a surprise, I supposed, given what we were often doing instead of playing piano.
Mrs Mayhew’s hat was askew and her hair was escaping from its roll. She had a streak of dust across the front of her dress and her forehead was beaded with sweat. I’d never seen her look so flustered; she was normally perfectly groomed.
‘Oh, Ian,’ she wailed. ‘Ian, have you heard the news?’
Mr Mayhew stiffened next to me. ‘He’s done it, has he?’ he said. ‘He’s bloody gone and done it?’
A tear rolled down Mrs Mayhew’s face, leaving a clean track in the grime on her cheek.
‘I ran all the way from the village,’ she said. ‘They were talking about it on the street. Mrs Armitage was sitting at the war memorial, just weeping.’
I felt sicker than I had moments before. Mrs Armitage had lost both her sons in the Great War. The war we’d been told would end all wars. The war that my own father never talked about.
‘What does this mean?’ I stammered. ‘Is it Hitler? What has he done?’
Mr Mayhew patted me on the head distractedly, his full attention on his wife.
‘He’s sent his troops into Poland,’ he said. ‘And Mr Chamberlain promised that if he did that, then …’ His voice trailed off.
‘I need to go home,’ I said. ‘I need to find Bobby.’
Mrs Mayhew looked at me for the first time. I didn’t think she’d even realised I was there before then.
‘Bobby,’ she said vaguely. ‘Who is Bobby?’
I was already halfway out of the door. ‘He’s my brother,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘I need to find my brother.’
Chapter 8
Helena
May 2018
Work was crazily busy for the next few days and I didn’t have any time to think about Lil for a while. Until Jack Jones turned up at the office again – much to my surprise.
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ he said when I went down to reception to see him. ‘I was having lunch with my agent nearby, and thinking about everything you’d found out and I wanted to see how you were getting on.’
I gave him a small, forced smile. ‘Yeah, all good,’ I said vaguely. I was getting on pretty well with his research, but I wasn’t happy about him checking up on me in this way.
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Does this look like I’m checking up on you?’
He was so close to what I was thinking that I stared at him in horror.
‘It does a bit,’ I admitted, unable to think of anything else to say but the truth. ‘The celebs aren’t normally this interested.’
He grinned at me, pushing a lock of his curls out of his dark eyes, and I felt myself melting, just a bit.
‘I’m being a nightmare,’ he said.
‘It’s fine.’ I was feeling slightly odd. ‘Do you want to come upstairs?’
I took him up to the office and we sat in the same meeting room as before. Elly was at lunch, thank goodness, else she’d have been hovering to see what Jack wanted.
I offered him a coffee and tried to disguise my relief when he turned it down.
‘I had an early start today so I’ve had more than enough caffeine already,’ he said, with the same cheeky grin. ‘It makes me a bit bouncy.’
‘I wish you’d bounce my way,’ I thought to myself and then blinked in surprise. What was happening here? I’d barely looked at a man since Greg and I had fallen apart. Being a heartbroken single mother hardly made me a catch. And yet, here I was, fluttering my eyelashes at a real-life celebrity who was as likely to fancy me back as – well, as Greg I supposed.
I swallowed. ‘I’ve found out quite a lot about your grandparents, and your great-grandparents,’ I said carefully looking away from where his T-shirt hugged his broad chest. ‘It’s relatively simple to research just one or two generations back.’
I leafed through my folder to find the right documents.
‘Do you not know any of this already?’
Jack shook his head.
‘My maternal grandparents came over from Jamaica in the Fifties,’ he said. ‘They had one daughter already, and my mum was the first of their children to be born here. She’s the middle child – I’ve got two aunties.’
I nodded, interested. We’d not researched his maternal family at all so this was all new to me.
‘My grandad was a bus driver and my gran was a nurse. They worked really, really hard and they wanted a better life for their kids – my mum and my aunties.’
I nodded again.
‘And then Mum decided she wanted to be a writer, which wasn’t really in their plan,’ he said with a smile. I could see he was really proud of his family and my heart swelled a tiny bit more. ‘But they were so supportive of her. And she worked all the way through university to pay for herself.’
‘They all sound amazing,’ I said.
‘Then Mum met my dad,’ Jack said. ‘And it all went a bit wrong for a while.’
‘Wrong, how?’
‘He wasn’t a bad bloke, by all accounts. He seemingly loved Mum and they planned to get married. But she found out she was pregnant and he got scared, I think.’