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It was dark when Grace woke up. All the memories of the party came flooding back: the joy of seeing her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren gathered together in her idyllic cliff-top home in Cornwall. The delicious buffet lunch made by the caterers from Falmouth that her daughter Katherine had engaged. She remembered the exquisite almond and raspberry cake adorned with moulded white chocolate butterflies. There had been so many candles. They had cast a warm, flickering glow over all the happy faces in the room.
Grace had never asked for a big party for her ninetieth birthday, but while she had protested about the fuss she had secretly been enjoying her special day. That was until she had unwrapped Katherine's present.
Grace lay in the darkness beneath the mohair blanket and tried hard not to think about what had been inside the beautifully wrapped parcel.
She could hear voices downstairs – there were still people in the house. It was probably Katherine and her brothers, who wouldn't leave their mother on her own after Grace's near collapse.
She knew they had dismissed it as exhaustion – an elderly woman worn out by a long day. Only Grace knew the truth. It hadn't been fatigue at all but the physical effect of pure terror, the terror of her past.
She thought she had left it far behind in that dark Welsh valley, but the DNA test Katherine had given her with such excitement threatened to expose everything.
Grace could hear the rain against the window, just a gentle tapping now that the fierce storm that had battered the house had subsided. It had struck at the moment Grace's memories had surged back, crashing over her like a tempest, threatening to sweep her away.
She shifted her body in the bed. She was still wearing her skirt and the satin lining slid against her legs. Grace touched the pearls around her neck and tried to calm her thoughts. Gordon had given her the necklace on their wedding day. Seventy-two years had passed since that small ceremony at the Chelsea Register Office. Gordon's mother had been there, and a scattering of his friends and business colleagues. There was no one on Grace's side, not even the girls she worked with at the milliner's shop in Piccadilly.
Gordon hadn't been surprised by Grace's lack of wedding guests – he knew her history. The large London house she had grown up in had been bombed during the war while she was evacuated, tragically killing her widowed mother. Grace had been brought up by a distant relative, a wicked uncle who had lost all the family money then died when she was sixteen, leaving her homeless and penniless. She had been forced to get a job in a shop and rent a tiny attic room in Notting Hill. Gordon had believed her story, why would he ever have doubted it?
Her voice was one of perfect English respectability – Grace paid a shilling a week to an actress who gave elocution classes in a grimy front room in Kensal Rise. She had taught Grace how to enunciate her vowels and pronounce words in a certain way, so that after a year no one would ever have suspected that Grace came from a tiny mining village in the South Wales valleys, rather than the affluent London street she claimed to have grown up in.
By the time Gordon had accidentally bumped into her at Oxford Circus Underground station Grace practically believed the story herself. Gordon had picked up the book he had knocked from her hand and asked for her name. She had paused, and the face of the actress she had seen in the film at the cinema the night before came into her mind. Grace Kelly was everything she dreamed of being.
'Grace,' she said. 'My name is Grace.'
Grace lay in the darkness wondering if she was still talked about in the valley. She imagined the voices in the corner shop: 'You remember Meredith Jones?'
'The girl who disappeared?'
'Yes, and so soon after that shocking discovery in the snow.'
Grace squeezed her eyes tight shut, not wanting to think of what she had done that freezing night.
She reached out to turn her bedside light on and picked up the framed pencil sketch she had made of Gordon when they had been on their honeymoon in Florence. He had been such a handsome man. Very like her grandson William, who she supposed would have already left to take his wife and children home – most of her family had travelled such a long way to be with her on her birthday. Grace had always joked with Gordon that they lived at the end of the world.
Once married, Gordon had decided they should live in Cornwall, nearer to his family's business. Grace had no objection: the field where Gordon proposed they build their dream house could hardly have been further from the steepsided valley where Grace had lived out the first miserable fifteen years of her life.
As a child her views had been of bare rain-swept hills and slagheaps, the pithead tower always a reminder of her father. He never came straight home after his shifts deep underground. When he did walk through the door he would be drunk and raging, shouting at his wife as Grace hid away in her room. Sometimes it was much worse than shouting, her mother's bruises were testament to that.
The tiny terraced cottage in the valley had been dark and gloomy, but the house in Cornwall was filled with light. Grace adored her new home and she never grew tired of gazing through its many windows at the ever-changing sea. She held the drawing of Gordon to her chest and thought of the DNA test she had unwrapped earlier. Katherine had been so excited about her present. She was obviously dreaming of some exotic heritage: aristocracy, military heroes, maybe a grand title – Katherine had always been a snob.
Grace put the drawing down and got out of the bed. Her legs felt like jelly. She had to hold on to the furniture to cross the room. The voices downstairs were raised now – it sounded like Katherine and her brothers were arguing about something.
Grace took a few more stumbling steps and made it to the chest of drawers. She paused, taking in a deep breath before opening the top drawer. Her hand slid under neatly folded clothes until she finally felt the stiff brown envelope hidden at the back.
She pulled it out, the thin printed cardboard evoking a thousand memories. Grace realised she was shaking as she opened the tucked flap.
She hadn't looked inside since the day she had ripped the page from her school exercise book. She had put the folded paper into one of the rent envelopes her mother kept on the shelf beside the yellowing picture of Jesus holding a lamb. Behind the picture was a hole Grace's mother had gouged out of the damp and crumbling wall with a spoon, which was where her mother hid the money she made cleaning the mine manager's big house on the hill. If Grace's father knew the money was there he would have spent it at The Miner's Arms, or lost it at a dog fight at the back of the pub.
Standing in her stockinged feet on the deep-pile carpet in Cornwall Grace opened the envelope and drew out the folded piece of paper. On one side it said, 'the Tywi is Wales's longest river', in a looping schoolgirl hand. Grace turned the paper over and let out a whimpering breath. The ink sketch was of a baby's head, a perfect curve, a thin wisp of hair. Beneath the hair the sweetest face: eyes closed, a tiny nose, soft lips slightly parted like the petals of a flower.
Grace remembered sketching it as quickly as she could, knowing it would be her only keepsake of the sleeping baby in her lap. The baby had looked as serene as the angels in the minister's big Bible. He had shown her the illustrations during the extra lessons he gave her – lessons he promised would take her to the university in Cardiff. But the lessons hadn't taken her to Cardiff – they had taken her to hell.
It had been her birthday. Her mother had said she was sorry there wouldn't be a cake. Her father was leaving for his morning shift. 'The girl doesn't need cake, she's getting fat,' he growled.
Grace had felt the first twinge of pain as she walked down the street. They had been sent home early from school because of the snow. In the cold empty cottage it had happened very fast.
The baby had cried and Grace knew she must be hungry. Somehow, between the two of them, they had figured it out.
As the baby drifted into slumber, Grace reached for her satchel. Dried blood still caked her fingers, smearing the page of her geography book as she moved the fountain pen swiftly over the lined paper.
Her heart pounded as she tried to capture the baby's features, knowing there wasn't much time. All the while she kept listening for the sound of her mother coming home – or worse, her father. He would kill her, she knew that for sure. That night Grace had quietly taken down the picture of Jesus from the wall. Behind it, covered in dust, was a roll of dirty green notes. She pulled it free and stuffed it into her satchel, along with a brown rent envelope and three pairs of knickers. 'I'm so sorry, Mam,' she thought.
She had hurried down the winding terraced street, footsteps in the snow behind her, every one of them a mark of shame. As she passed the chapel she had glanced at the steps up to the big arched doorway – the cardboard box containing the tiny bundle was gone.
She hitched a lift to Merthyr and caught the mail train to Newport. Snow fell in flurries, and her tears flowed freely as the white world outside blurred past the window.
At Newport the morning paper was piled in bundles on the platform. 'Police Look for Clues in the Hunt for Abandoned Baby's Mother', read the large headline on the front page.
There had been talking in the station café as she waited for the London train: 'Who would do such a thing, a helpless baby left out on such a freezing night?' 'It was lucky that the minister's wife found her.' 'They've given her a name in the local hospital – she's a bonny babe by all accounts.'
Grace snapped back to reality as she heard footsteps coming down the corridor. She pushed the picture and the envelope back into the drawer. 'Mother!' Katherine was standing in the doorway. 'What are you doing out of bed?'
'I'm looking for a jumper.' Grace pulled out a soft blue sweater. 'I'm cold.'
'I'll fetch you a hot water bottle.'
Katherine tried to guide her back to bed. 'Don't fuss me,' said Grace, batting her away. 'That's the last thing I need.'
'Have you really not enjoyed your birthday?' Katherine's expression looked crestfallen.
Grace took her by the hand. 'Yes darling, of course I have. It's been wonderful.' She looked into her daughter's face, surprised to see so many wrinkles. She thought of her first baby, who would be three years older. Would she also have a face full of wrinkles? Was she even alive?
'Can I ask one thing of you?' She continued holding Katherine's hand as she sat down on the edge of the bed.
'You know you can ask me anything mother.' Katherine sat down beside her. 'All I've ever wanted is to make you happy.'
Tears welled in Grace's eyes. She wondered if Katherine had sensed her sadness as she grew up. Grace had abandoned her first daughter – had her second paid the price for that?
Grace touched Katherine's face and took a breath. 'Please don't make me take the DNA test,' she said, her words coming out in a tumble.
'But I thought you'd find it interesting.'
Grace shook her head. 'I have a family, a wonderful family who mean the world to me. I really don't need to go digging around for any more.'
Katherine's eyed flickered, then she nodded her agreement.
'OK, no DNA test. I understand.'
Five weeks passed. Grace stood, bundled in an ancient fur coat, beside her easel in the garden, painting the swathes of wild snowdrops that edged the lawn. Beyond the garden the sea stretched out, nearly as blue as the bright February sky, lifting Grace's spirits with thoughts of the coming spring.
She had always loved the snowdrops. They appeared every year like familiar guests who needed no coaxing to visit but demanded nothing – no special treatment, no food or trimming of their fading blooms.
Grace was so engrossed in her painting that she didn't hear the crunch of wheels on the gravel drive, the slam of car doors or the sound of footsteps on the path as they approached around the side of the house.
'Mother?'
Grace turned at the sound of Katherine's voice, surprised to see not just her daughter but her sons and her grandson William.
'Well, this is an unexpected pleasure, why didn't you tell me you were all coming?' said Grace.
Katherine and William looked at each other. Katherine's brothers shifted in their shiny shoes.
It was William who spoke first.
'We have something to tell you.'
'We've had rather a shock,' said Katherine, pulling up the collar of her camelhair coat against the chill.
'Please don't alarm yourself...' her eldest son cautioned.
'...but we think we have a right to an explanation,' her younger son interrupted, sounding very professional all of a sudden.
'Answers to what?' asked Grace.
Katherine shivered, despite her expensive coat. 'You remember the DNA test?'
'Not that again,' said Grace, turning back to her easel. She added a dash of white with such force that the paint spattered her hands. 'I thought we'd agreed that I don't have to do it.'
There was silence, just the slapping of the waves against the cliffs below.
'I did it.' Katherine spoke slowly.
Grace felt the earth tilt, sickness rising from her stomach.
'I took the test.' Katherine paused.
'It seemed a shame to let it go to waste.'
'The result was surprising,' her eldest son said, sounding tense. 'So, I took a test as well.'
'We both did one,' his brother said. 'For absolute clarity.'
'They all got the same result,' William said, stepping onto the grass to guide Grace to a wooden bench.
'Which was?' Grace forced the words from her mouth as she sat down heavily.
'We got a match,' said Katherine.
'A close match,' said her brother.
'A half-sister,' the three of them said almost in unison.
'She lives in Wales,' Katherine gave a shrug, as though nothing was making any sense. 'In Abergavenny?'
'She's called Eira.' William gently put his arm round Grace's shoulder.
Grace looked down at her hands. Flecks of white paint speckled her fingers.
'Such a pretty name,' she whispered.
'She says it's a Welsh word,' continued William. 'She says it's the Welsh word for snow.'
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