The Last Letter from Paris

THE LAST LETTER FROM PARIS AN ABSOLUTELY HEARTBREAKING WORLD WAR TWO HISTORICAL FICTION NOVEL KATE EASTHAM BOOKS BY KATE EASTHAM The Last Letter from Paris The Sea Nurses When the World Stood Still An Angel’s Work The Nursing Series Miss Nightingale’s Nurses The Liverpool Nightingales Daughters of Liverpool Coming Home to Liverpool AVAILABLE IN AUDIO When the World Stood Still (Available in the UK and the US) An Angel’s Work (Available in the UK and the US) CONTENTS Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Epilogue An Angel’s Work Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Hear More from Kate Books by Kate Eastham A Letter from Kate The Sea Nurses When the World Stood Still Acknowledgements PROLOGUE MONTAUK, LONG ISLAND, JULY 1933 Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of Weeping than you can understand. W.B. Yeats A foundling. It sounds romantic, something from a fairy tale or perhaps just plain accidental, stumbled upon by chance. I was left in the long grass on the shores of Southampton Water in the summer of 1917, a year before the end of the war. A foundling during wartime, all very dramatic. As soon as I was old enough to be aware, my adoptive mother, not wanting a secret to act like grit in a wound that would be hard to heal anyway, told the story of my finding. Easy for her, she was the one who witnessed it as she stood leaning on the rail of a small pier. She was tantalisingly close to the woman with dark red hair – exactly like mine – who left me next to the gently lapping salt waters. I’ve never found out why I was abandoned, left to wonder if my birth mother was desperate, terrified, or merely too poor to take care of me, especially since I needed an urgent surgical repair of the harelip that I’d had the fortune to be born with. My special mark, as my adoptive mother, Evie, calls it, tracing it gently with her fingertip. It’s a fine silver line but it pulls my top lip slightly out of shape. Now, in my teenage years, I see the scar as a huge, deforming mark which I cover with my fingers every time I stand in front of a mirror – which is often. Gone are the days when the other kids in class would ask about it then grab my hand and pull me into a game of hide and seek. Now some of my peers narrow their eyes, look closer, make derogatory noises or offer sympathy. ‘You won’t get a boyfriend with a scar like that,’ Justine Murray said the other week. I had to bite back a response of, ‘Neither will you, with your ugly mug.’ Stuff like that doesn’t usually get you anywhere except left out in the cold. Not that I’d ever let anyone truly intimidate me, I’d always stand my ground. If you’ve been dumped by your own mother, it pays to hold on to every scrap of self-belief that you have. It was sixteen years ago today that Evie saw me being deposited by the woman with dark red hair. And without knowing my actual birthday, we always celebrate this as my day to remember. I’ve had cake and candles, even a sip of wine, and my best friend Martha bought me a leather-bound journal and a set of pencils. And this year, Evie gave me something very special – the necklace that my birth mother had hidden in my clothing when she left me. It has a silver chain and an enamelled pendant with a distinctive spiral pattern… I’ve worn it all day, I’ll never take it off. When Evie fastened it around my neck, she said, ‘The woman who gave birth to you meant for you to have this, Cora, it shows that she loved you very much.’ Then we both cried, her more than me. After we’d hugged and dried our eyes, Evie retold the story of my finding. Starting with her working as a nurse at Netley hospital, leaning on the rail of the small pier jutting out into Southampton Water. She’d been taking a break after completing a busy shift nursing wounded soldiers brought back from the trenches. The smell of the salt water, the gentle lap of the waves, she described how it gave her solace, reminded her of her roots in the fishing village of Anstruther on the east coast of Scotland. Then she paused for effect and spoke of a rustling sound behind her, a woman’s voice muttering jumbled words in French. The light was beginning to fade, she couldn’t see properly so she walked back along the pier. ‘Hello,’ she’d called softly and the woman had screamed and then she’d stooped down to what looked like a blanket bundle on the ground and started to sob. When Evie called out to her, she’d immediately turned and run away. Evie’s instinct had been to chase after her, try to help. But when the bundle had started to writhe and she’d heard the first piercing cry and a tiny arm had shot out of the blanket, she’d bent down and pulled me out of the long grass. I love the next part, when she describes how loudly and angrily I protested. It gives me a presence I wouldn’t necessarily have if I’d been gently accepting of being abandoned by my birth mother. It’s hard to describe how it feels to have been left, like a package, and then for your mother to actively run in the opposite direction. It’s taboo, surely, severing a bond that