‘She’s dead now,’ Molly told him, quickly telling him the story and that Petal was still missing. ‘I want to try and find her family. If she did come from somewhere around here, surely someone would remember a black baby.’
Ernest agreed that they would and said he would ask his wife because, as a teacher, she had contact with people from a huge radius around Rye. ‘Usually, she doesn’t forget anyone,’ he said with a proud smile. ‘We’ll be out together, and someone she taught twenty years ago will come up to her. She always remembers them, not just their name but the things they were good at.’
‘Then I hope she might help me with this,’ Molly said. ‘Local knowledge is invaluable.’
But, for now, seeing Charley was more important than questioning people about Cassie. She sensed from the tone of his letters that he was really serious about her, even if he hadn’t actually said anything to confirm that. She was serious about him, too: he was the last thing she thought about before dropping off to sleep at night and her first thought in the morning. She wished there was another girl of her age working at the George, someone she could talk about such things to, but all the female staff were in their mid-thirties or older, all married women with kids, and, although they were warm and friendly, they were hardly the kind she could have a heart to heart with about falling in love.
In women’s magazines and films love was always depicted as a kind of sickness, where the victim couldn’t eat, sleep or function normally. Molly, however, was sleeping like a top, eating like a pig, because the food in the George was so good, and, if anything, she was functioning on a day-to-day basis more efficiently than she ever had. It was true that Charley was never far from her mind – her stomach did a little flip every time she thought about his kisses – and she really missed seeing him all the time, as she had in Whitechapel. But was that love? Or just an infatuation that would fizzle out one day?
‘You’re looking very nice today, Molly,’ Mr Bridgenorth said on Saturday morning. ‘I take it your young man is coming to take you out?’
Molly had been leaving the staff room after eating breakfast when she ran into him in the corridor.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she said with a broad smile. She’d washed her hair the night before and slept with it plaited, so it was wavy, and she was wearing a new turquoise-and-white dress with a full skirt and three-quarter-length sleeves.
‘Yes, Charley is coming to take me out,’ Molly said. ‘We’re going for a picnic. It’s such a lovely day we might even paddle in the sea. But can I do anything for you? Were you looking for something, or someone?’
‘Yes, you, Molly. I wanted to tell you that, because Ernest thought your friend looked familiar, I looked through our records to see if a Cassandra March ever worked here. She didn’t, I’m afraid. Well, not if that was her real name.
‘But while she was on my mind I suddenly recalled hearing some gossip in the bar about a young unmarried woman out on the marsh having a mixed race baby. I think this was back in 1948, though I can’t be certain. All I really remember is that it was something of a mystery because no one had seen the child except the housekeeper.’
‘They must have had money, then, if there was a housekeeper!’ Molly said.
‘Some, I suppose,’ Mr Bridgenorth replied. ‘Probably a family with a sizable house and live-in help. The housekeeper might even have been a relative. As I recall, it was said there were mental problems in the family.’
‘Cassie didn’t have any mental problems,’ Molly said with a touch of indignation. ‘She was about the brightest person I ever met.’
‘People tend to say that about almost anyone who lives out on the marshes. They say it’s down to the wind.’
‘How did anyone know the baby was black, or even if there really was a baby if they hadn’t seen it?’
‘I don’t know.’ Mr Bridgenorth shrugged. ‘But my experience of gossip is that there’s always some truth in it. Maybe the housekeeper talked. In any case, whether or not it’s true, that girl’s name definitely wasn’t Cassandra, it was something ordinary – Carol, Susan, something like that – and the family name is Coleman.’
‘Well, that’s a good start,’ Molly said, suddenly feeling hopeful now she had a name to go on.
‘I’m not sure it is, Molly,’ he said doubtfully. ‘You see, I’ve talked this over with Ernest and, after some discussion with his wife, who, as you know, is a teacher, he came up with more detail about the family. The grandfather was a doctor, and his daughter married a man called Reginald Coleman. Rumour had it that the parents disapproved of him. Anyway, he enlisted in the war and never came back. Ernest says he was reported missing, presumed dead, but there were whispers that he had deserted because he had a woman in France.’
‘Goodness me!’ Molly gasped. ‘So where is this house?’
‘A couple of miles from Brookland, very isolated, not another house near it.’
‘So why did no one around here respond when there were pictures of Petal and Cassie in the newspapers and they were asking for information?’ Molly asked. ‘Surely if Ernest thought she looked familiar, other people would recognize her, too?’
‘Don’t you think it’s all to do with place?’ he asked. ‘If a body had turned up down the road here, everyone would be talking about who had gone missing, who it looked like. But a girl found dead some hundred and fifty miles away doesn’t have the same impact. The newspaper gets wrapped round fish and chips and it’s forgotten.’
‘I suppose that’s it.’ Molly sighed. ‘But thank you for all that information. I’ll mull it over and decide what to do.’
Mr Bridgenorth smiled. ‘Forget it for now and have a lovely time with your young man. I must get off and do some work now.’
An hour or so later, as Molly was packing a bag with the picnic she’d made, Trudy, one of the cleaners, called out to Molly, ‘Your bloke’s in reception. Lovely smile he’s got!’
Molly’s heart flipped with excitement and she hurried from the kitchen to meet him.
Trudy was right, Charley did have a lovely smile, and it seemed even wider and warmer than she remembered. ‘You look gorgeous,’ he said, and swept her into his arms.
‘Not here,’ she whispered, blushing furiously, as she knew Trudy and Anne, the receptionist, were peeping round the door to watch. ‘I’ve made us a picnic!’ She picked up the straw basket she’d dropped on the floor just before he hugged her.
‘You look good enough to eat yourself,’ he said and, taking the basket in one hand, and hers in the other, he led her outside.
‘Sorry it’s only a van.’ He waved towards a small blue van with ‘JACK SPOT GARAGE’ stencilled on the side. ‘I wanted to come in a Rolls Royce but, strangely enough, none of my pals have got one.’
Molly laughed. She wouldn’t have minded if he’d turned up in a horse and cart.
She directed him away from the hotel, down the hill to the main road, and from there to Rye Harbour, on the way telling him the rumours Mr Bridgenorth had heard about a girl with a black baby.
Charley looked a bit apprehensive. ‘I can’t help thinking it would be better to leave well alone,’ he said. ‘The chances are it’s not your friend’s family and, if it was and Cassie left after some serious falling out, then you’ll only be stirring up muddy water.’
‘If it is her family, I just want to tell them about Petal and hope they’ll push the police to do more.’
‘Well, just be careful how you approach them, that’s all I’m saying. If they didn’t want to know the baby when she was born, they aren’t likely to care that much about what happened to her. And some families don’t like outsiders poking their nose in,’ he said.
Molly was a bit hurt and surprised by his attitude. She’d expected him to be behind her one hundred per cent.