The Secret Letter
‘I’ve been telling Miss Armstrong that she can save Elm Heath Primary.’
Danny smiled at me, a cheeky smile that gave me that unsettled feeling again. ‘I imagine you’re good at just about everything, MISS Armstrong,’ he said. ‘But I think this one might even be beyond you.’
Sophie glared at Danny – there was definitely tension there – and he ignored her, looking at me instead.
‘But you never know,’ he added.
‘It’s not closing,’ I said, knowing my words were empty because the lack of pupils spoke for itself. Danny just shrugged and Sophie looked away across the playground to where Cara was running round with her friends who were both dressed like pumpkins.
‘Cara’s over there,’ she said bluntly.
Danny looked like he was going to say something then he shut his mouth instead. After a second he opened it again.
‘Nice seeing you again, Ms Armstrong.’
I was faintly disappointed that he’d used my correct title.
‘Thank you for the good luck card,’ I called as he wandered over the playground towards Cara. He raised his hand to show he’d heard.
Sophie was looking at me, her brow furrowed.
‘He’s a tricky one,’ she said. Was she warning me off? There was really no need. I was hardly in the market for romance.
I didn’t get a chance to respond because one of the pumpkins was suddenly at my elbow. It was a little boy from Cara’s class whose name was Hayden. Or Jayden. Or perhaps Cayden.
‘Miss?’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Cara said she thought you were a bit sad, Miss.’
I wasn’t sure what to say. I looked at his little orange face, all earnest and worried, and smiled.
‘I’m not sad.’
He shrugged. ‘Thought this might cheer you up.’
He reached out his hand. In his palm was a corn dolly. I’d never got round to googling them, but instead I’d watched the kids making them. They’d twisted and wrapped corn into little shapes to make their creations. This one was a simple circle with a red ribbon bow.
‘Thank you,’ I said, genuinely touched at the gesture. ‘You’re so kind.’
‘That’s lovely, Jayden,’ Sophie said, obviously realising I was struggling to get his name.
‘It really is. I’ll put this in my office at school and it will make me smile every time I look at it.’
‘Miss, I made one for you too.’
On my other side was a little girl dressed as Elsa from Frozen, which had no direct link to harvest as far as I could tell. She pushed a corn dolly into my hand.
‘Thank you, Elsa,’ I said and she beamed at me.
‘I did one as well.’ Cara was there, in her yellow get-up, brandishing her corn dolly, which was plaited like her hair.
I took hers too. ‘These are all wonderful,’ I said.
And suddenly I was surrounded by children, all giving me their corn dollies – the little creations they’d all worked so hard on.
‘Miss, they’ll bring you good luck,’ they told me. ‘They’re lucky.’
I took each one, gathering them into my lap and trying not to show the children how overwhelmed I was by their kindness.
Then the parents started handing me their dollies too. Some of them were like tiny works of art – the dried corn twisted into heart and star shapes, or made to look like little ladies with fronds of corn forming their skirts.
‘Good luck,’ they each said as they handed them over.
By the time they’d finished I reckoned I had a hundred or more of the dollies heaped in my lap, and tears streaming down my face.
‘Thank you,’ I said over and over. ‘Thank you.’
I wasn’t sure what to do next. I couldn’t stand up because my knees were covered in corn and slightly alarmingly I couldn’t seem to stop crying either.
Luckily, like a guardian angel, Paula appeared behind the group of children and parents.
‘Let’s take all these to your office, shall we, Ms Armstrong?’ she said.
Sophie handed her a linen bag and together we carefully put all the corn dollies inside.
‘Come on then,’ Paula said, like I was one of her reception children. ‘Come on, Lizzie.’
I blew a – slightly snotty – kiss to the children as I followed her into school feeling like something important had just happened. Perhaps I wasn’t planning to stay at Elm Heath forever, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had to do my best to reverse the trend of children going to Blyton and do everything I could to make sure the school stayed open.
Chapter 8
Lizzie
‘I can’t believe they did this,’ I said later. I was sitting at Paula’s kitchen table with an enormous glass of wine and the corn dollies all spread out in front of me. ‘I can’t believe they gave them all to me.’
‘It really was something,’ she said. She picked one of them up and showed me. ‘Look, this one is like a peacock’s tail.’
I admired it.
‘They’re all wonderful. I’ll ask Jeff if there is some way we can display them in my office.’
Jeff was the school caretaker and a very creative handyman to boot.
‘He’ll come up with something, I’m sure,’ Paula agreed.
I picked up Jayden’s corn dolly – the little circular twist of corn tied with a ribbon – and smiled. ‘So they symbolise luck?’
Chris was rummaging in a kitchen drawer, looking for a takeaway menu.
‘Luck,’ he said without glancing up. ‘And fertility.’
I swallowed a gulp of wine as I laughed.
‘Well I’ll just take the luck, thanks.’
‘I can’t find the blasted menu,’ Chris said.
‘I don’t suppose Deliveroo delivers here?’ I said hopefully. I’d been looking forward to a curry since Paula suggested it earlier on, after my corn dolly experience.
‘Noooo,’ said Chris doubtfully.
I picked up my phone and found the app, then I showed them how it worked.
‘So you choose what kind of food you want, then pick a restaurant, and then you scroll through and add what you want to your basket …’
I tailed off, aware both Chris and Paula were staring at me.
‘I’ll just call Nish on his mobile, instead of calling the restaurant,’ Chris said. ‘He won’t mind. What do you fancy, Lizzie?’
‘Chicken biryani?’
‘Done. Usual for you, Paula?’
She nodded and Chris pulled out his phone and went into the hall to make the call. I heard him laughing with the person on the other line.
‘Living in a village is very different from living in London,’ I said to Paula. ‘It’s strangely both harder and easier.’
She grinned at me. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said.
‘I am starting to, I think.’
‘You’ve not got much choice, now.’
I looked at the piles of corn dollies on the table. ‘Do these mean that I’m one of you now?’
‘Definitely. You might never leave.’
The idea didn’t fill me with horror, much to my surprise.
Chris had come back into the kitchen and was topping up our glasses.
‘You’ll like Nate’s husband,’ he said.
‘Marc?’ I remembered seeing him at my welcome barbecue.
‘He’s the son of a friend of Sophie’s, or a distant relative, or something like that,’ Paula said, leaning forward in a conspiratorial way. ‘He came to work on some project nearby …’
‘He’s a surveyor,’ Chris put in. ‘Or is he an architect? Something along those lines.’
Paula tutted at his interruption. ‘He stayed with Sophie for a few weeks, met Nate and boom! That was it.’
Her mentioning Sophie made me think of the expression on her face when Danny had approached the toffee apple stall earlier.
‘What’s the story with her and Danny?’
‘Similar,’ Chris said, misunderstanding. ‘He works in finance, and the company he works for provides investment for public sector initiatives …’
‘Oh Chris, shush,’ Paula said. She looked at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Why do you want to know?’
I drank some wine. ‘Sophie was all smiley until he appeared,’ I said. ‘Then she looked annoyed and wouldn’t really talk to him.’
Paula nodded and Chris topped up my glass.
‘I was good friends with Isabelle – Sophie’s daughter,’ Paula said. ‘I was older than her, but we both liked the same kind of music and we got to know each other that way. We were always in touch but we reconnected after Bella graduated from university.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You must miss her.’
Paula gave me a small smile. ‘I do,’ she said. She took a deep breath. ‘Paula met Danny at uni. They stayed in Manchester afterwards and set up home together. It was a mistake really. They weren’t love’s young dream. They were always breaking up and she’d come home, then go back to him five minutes later. She left him for good when Cara was a baby.’
‘How did she die?’
‘Ovarian cancer it was,’ Paula said. ‘Nasty stuff. Anyway, she got sick, and he, to be fair to him, came when she needed him. He started spending more time with Cara and when Isabelle went into the hospice, Cara moved in with Danny. I think he’s really stepped up and he’s a wonderful dad now.’
‘But Sophie’s not sure?’
‘I don’t think she can forgive him for making Isabelle’s life so miserable when she only had a short time to live it.’
I nodded. ‘That’s really sad.’
The doorbell rang, letting us know our dinner had arrived, and our talk of Danny and Sophie was forgotten.
On Monday morning, I went into school feeling full of beans. I’d really enjoyed the weekend and I was more positive and excited about the days ahead than I’d been for months. A year, even.
Until, after morning assembly, when I sat down at my desk and opened an email from the head of the council’s education department, a woman called Denise Deacon, asking me to ring her, urgently.
‘Uh-oh,’ I said out loud. ‘This can’t be good.’
I dialled the number on the bottom of her email and she answered straight away.
‘I’m not going to beat around the bush, Lizzie,’ she said when I’d introduced myself and we’d exchanged a bit of small talk. ‘As far as pupil numbers and budgets are concerned, the council can’t justify keeping Elm Heath open any longer.’
My stomach lurched and for one terrifying moment, I thought I might throw up all over my desk. I took a deep breath and tried to control my voice. ‘I see.’
‘It’s no secret that admissions are falling and with financial cuts the way they are, well …’
‘Times are tough,’ I said, sounding weak and quavering. ‘How long do we have?’
‘They’re looking at the end of the academic year. But I wanted to speak to you first because I thought it was important that you know it’s not definite. The axe is being sharpened but it’s not yet fallen.’
I was heartened – slightly – by that news. We still had the rest of this term, and two more, to change the council’s mind. If they were open to their minds being changed of course.
‘What can we do to stop this closure?’
She sighed. ‘That’s the million-pound question, isn’t it? I wish I knew the answer because Elm Heath is a lovely school.’
‘It’s an important school.’
There was a pause at the other end of the line. ‘Listen, Lizzie,’ she said. ‘I think your best bet is to prove the school plays a vital role in the community. Maybe that it’s more than just a school; that it provides services that can’t be found elsewhere.’
‘Like what?’ I said, at a loss.
‘No idea, you’d have to get creative.’
I tapped the end of my pen on my desk. ‘We’ve got no breakfast or after-school club here,’ I said. ‘They were really well used at my old school.’
‘That’s exactly the sort of thing that I mean,’ Denise said. ‘As things stand, the kids can get the education they’re getting at Elm Heath from Blyton Primary. And the council have put a lot of money into that school – it’s in their interests to up the pupil numbers there.’
I snorted, but I was still thinking. ‘We had a police station at my old school. Like a community thing where the kids got to know the local bobbies. Obviously, things are a bit different round here, but it could still work? Or what about using the school hall for fitness classes? I bet there are local Zumba teachers and whatnot.’
‘It’s a start,’ said Denise.
I was on a roll, scribbling ideas down as I spoke. ‘Did you ever see that TV show where they took little kids into a retirement home?’ I said, thoughtfully. ‘What about inviting some local people to afternoon tea with the children?’
‘These are all great ideas,’ Denise said.
‘But?’
‘But I’m worried they don’t go far enough. You need to think about what makes Elm Heath unique.’
‘It’s very old,’ I said.
‘Well perhaps you can show that it’s of special historical interest. Anything that makes it important.’
‘More important than giving kids a good education?’ I said, slightly sulky that she’d dismissed all my ideas.
She gave a small, humourless laugh. ‘Quite,’ she said. ‘If you can come up with something then perhaps there’s a chance.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Then that’s what we’ll do. As well as all that other stuff.’
We ended the call and I sat for a second, thinking. So the axe was swinging above our heads after all. What had started as a project to save my career was suddenly a project to save a school. Was I up to the task? Was it worth it?
I glanced at the pile of corn dollies on my shelf, waiting for Jeff to put up a display for me.
‘We could do with a bit of that luck now,’ I muttered. I’d have to call a staff meeting, let everyone know what was going on. Urgh. Maybe I should buy some wine, to help the news go down a bit easier?
‘What would you do, Esther?’ I looked up at the photograph that I’d not yet managed to move. ‘Would you roll over and let them close the school or would you fight?’
Esther looked at me, her expression fierce, and I looked back at her, and a tiny idea took seed. She founded this school, I thought. Maybe she had a story we could use. Get us some publicity.
I studied her photo. She was staring, unsmiling, at the camera wearing a severe black skirt and high-necked white blouse with a sort of flouncy cravat-type creation. Her chin was lifted and she looked snooty, to my twenty-first-century eyes. She didn’t look like she was the type to put up a fight about anything.
I opened my laptop and typed Esther Watkins and teacher into the search engine then blinked in surprise at the first entry, which seemed to be a court report from a newspaper dated 1910.
‘Esther Watkins, aged twenty-one, schoolteacher, sentenced to ten weeks in Holloway Women’s Prison for public disorder offences,’ it read.
‘That can’t be right,’ I said to myself. I glanced over at the photograph where our Esther’s names and the dates 1889–1970 were written on the frame. I added up in my head. If our Esther had been born in 1889 then she would indeed have been twenty-one in 1910.
‘Well, well, well,’ I said. There was obviously more to Esther Watkins than I’d imagined. I felt a small flicker of excitement followed almost immediately by crushing disappointment. An ex-con’s story was hardly going to prove that Elm Heath was a vital part of the community, was it? I was just going to have to come up with something else.
Chapter 9
Esther
1910
I walked the long way round to the house, clutching my bag to my chest as I tried to remember the name of the suffragette who lived there. Agnes, I thought. I couldn’t recall her surname. It was a long walk up the hill from Stockwell, and when I eventually found the house, hot and bothered and with my cheek throbbing, Agnes wasn’t in.
I pulled the bell and heard the noise echoing round the empty house and then, completely out of ideas and energy, I sat down on the stone step. I’d wait, I supposed, until she came home. It wasn’t as though I had anywhere else to go.
Leaning against the iron railings I found my eyes closing but I forced myself awake. I may have been on my uppers but I wasn’t about to start sleeping in the street like an urchin.
‘Are you waiting for me?’
I looked round to see a woman, older than me – in her thirties I guessed – hurrying up the stairs. She looked vaguely familiar.
‘I’ve seen you at meetings,’ she said now. ‘I’m Agnes Oliver.’
‘Esther,’ I said, standing up. ‘Yes, I was hoping you could tell me where I could find Mrs Pankhurst.’
‘Oh, heaven knows, that woman is never around when we need her.’
Faintly amused by the woman’s sense of entitlement, I smiled. ‘She is often busy.’
‘We’re all busy,’ Agnes said. ‘She wants me to put together this blessed newspaper and it’s all well and good, but when I’m spending all the hours God gives me on that, she forgets I’ve also got three children who need looking after. And she promised she was going to find me a governess but has she? No, she has not …’
Without stopping to think, I interrupted her tirade. ‘She has,’ I said. ‘Found you a governess, I mean.’
Agnes blinked at me and I stuck my hand out for her to shake.
‘It’s me. I’m Esther Watkins and I’m a schoolteacher. At least I was.’
‘What happened?’
I screwed up my face and took a chance. ‘I lost my job because I was in Holloway.’
Agnes nodded slowly. ‘The school won’t have you back?’
‘No.’
She was looking at me, sizing me up, I guessed. I tried to stand up straighter, aware that I was not at my best, and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear.
‘What happened to your cheek?’
‘I tripped over a tree root on my way here.’
Agnes nodded again, her eyes never leaving my face.
‘Is it a live-in position?’ I said, hoping beyond hope that it was.
‘I would prefer it to be live-in but if that’s a problem, we can discuss it. Did Mrs Pankhurst not explain all this when she told you about the position?’
‘I must have forgotten,’ I lied. ‘So much has happened.’
‘Hmm,’ she said. For a moment, I thought I’d made a big mistake and that this wasn’t going to be the answer to my prayers but then she clapped her hands together.
‘You’ll be perfect,’ she said. She gripped my arm tightly. ‘Could you possibly start today?’
Relief flooded me. ‘I could.’
‘Wonderful. I can get you a cab and we can collect your things.’
‘I have all my things,’ I said, gesturing to my carpetbag. ‘I don’t have much. And, well, I can’t go home because my mother is of the same mind as my former headmistress.’
Agnes’s face softened. ‘Doesn’t approve?’
‘Not in the least.’
The familiar frustration and rage that I felt when I thought of my mother began to build.
‘We lost everything when my father died because of mistakes he made,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘We had to sell the house. But still she thinks women are supposed to suffer and that this is just the way it shall be.’ I took a breath. ‘Sorry.’
Agnes shook her head. ‘Don’t apologise,’ she said. ‘We all have our reasons for finding our way to each other.’
She picked up my battered bag. ‘Now, shall we go in?’
She unlocked the large front door and I followed her inside. I hadn’t even asked how many children I would be teaching. I hoped it would be two quiet little girls rather than four boisterous boys, but I felt I couldn’t ask because I’d pretended that I knew all about the job.
‘Edie?’ she called. ‘Edie?’
A woman wearing an apron came rushing through the hall from the back of the house. ‘I was hanging out the washing,’ she said. ‘Have you been knocking?’
‘Not at all,’ Agnes said, peeling off her gloves. ‘This is our new governess, Esther. Esther, this is Edie our housekeeper.’
Edie and I nodded hello to each other.
‘Are the children here?’ Agnes looked around her as though she expected them to appear in a puff of smoke.
‘Went for a walk with Mr Oliver.’
‘I shall go and find them.’
Edie showed me to my room while Agnes went to find the children. My bedroom was on the top floor alongside another room with bookshelves crammed with books, a blackboard, and a low table. The windows looked out over London.
‘What a marvellous view,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine the children ever want to do schoolwork when they could be looking at the rooftops.’
‘Mr John always wants to do his schoolwork,’ Edie said as I sent silent thanks upwards for a scholarly pupil. ‘The girls don’t apply themselves so much, so I’ve heard.’
I wondered how many girls there were. ‘Remind me of how old they all are,’ I said casually.
‘John’s ten, Meg’s eight and Pearl’s almost seven,’ she said. ‘They’re nice kids most of the time. Just don’t let them run rings round you.’
I smiled. ‘Don’t worry about me. I can give as good as I get.’
She looked at me with a critical eye. ‘Yes, I reckon you can. Though right now it just looks like you could do with a good dinner and an early night.’
I nodded, almost moved to tears by her kind words, which seemed ridiculous. It was just such a long time since anyone had said anything nice to me.
‘Go and meet the children, then come into the kitchen for some food,’ Edie said. ‘You’ll soon settle in here.’
She was right. Within a week I felt like I’d been there forever. Agnes and her husband – who was also called John – were kind, the children were welcoming, and I was so grateful to have a roof over my head and money in my pocket that I thanked my lucky stars every day that I’d bumped into Agnes on her doorstep.
On my first Saturday with the family, Agnes knocked on my bedroom door.
‘I know it should really be your day off but I have some jobs to do for Mrs Pankhurst,’ she said. ‘And Christabel is breathing down my neck, too. Could you possibly take the children to the park?’
‘Of course,’ I said. I had nothing else to do, though I was itching to get back to meetings. ‘What sort of jobs do you have to do?’
‘Lord, I almost forgot you were one of us,’ Agnes said, pleased. ‘It’s mostly frightfully dull newsletter bits but I can show you this afternoon, if you like? And I have a meeting this evening – would you like to come along?’
I was thrilled. ‘Yes please,’ I said. ‘I’m feeling a little out of touch.’
‘You can tell us all about your exploits in jail,’ Agnes said.
I picked up my shawl. ‘I’m not sure about that,’ I said. ‘But I’d like to come, thank you.’
After a delightful morning with the children, who were really a lovely bunch, I tracked Agnes down in the dining room. She was sitting at the table, a typewriter in front of her. She was surrounded by reams of paper and looking flustered.
‘Oh, Esther, thank goodness,’ she said. ‘Can you help me?’
I pulled out another chair and sat down. ‘I can try.’
‘Christabel and I want to get this all to the printer next week, but we’re missing a few pages, and I need to fill them.’
She looked up at me and gasped in delight. ‘Of course!’
‘What?’ I said, warily. I may only have known Agnes for a week but I was already getting to understand her spontaneity didn’t always work out for the best.
‘You have to write something about your time in jail.’
‘Really?’
‘I heard a whisper that you were the one writing to Mrs Pankhurst about her experiences in Holloway,’ she said. ‘Is that true? I heard the letters were wonderfully detailed. Evocative.’
I bowed my head, embarrassed by the praise.
‘Come on, Esther,’ Agnes urged. ‘You’re educated and witty, which is more than I can say about some of the writers we have contributing to the paper. Don’t tell Christabel I said that.’
I smiled briefly but then shook my head. ‘I’m not sure, Agnes.’
She took my hand. ‘You’ve been through an ordeal,’ she said, her reading glasses slipping down her nose. ‘I believe it would be good for your own peace of mind to share your experiences.’
I nodded. ‘That is true. It always helps me to write things down.’
‘It would certainly be good for others to read about them. So they’re prepared, if needs be.’