The Girl on the Cliff (54 page)

‘If Anastasia’s father was a member of the Russian Imperial family, they were all shot very soon after Leonora wrote that letter,’ put in Matt.

‘Leonora could have escaped, left with her baby and Lawrence and come to England,’ Aurora said. ‘But she didn’t, because she loved Anastasia’s Daddy so much.’ Aurora shook her head. ‘She had to make a terrible choice, giving her poor baby away to a stranger.’

‘Yes,’ Grania agreed, ‘but then, sweetheart, I’m sure Leonora didn’t believe she would die. We all make decisions as though we will live forever. She did the best thing she could at that moment, to make sure Anastasia was safe.’

‘I don’t know whether I’d have been so brave,’ sighed Aurora.

‘Well,’ Matt put an arm tightly around Grania’s shoulders and planted a kiss on top of Aurora’s head, ‘that’s because you haven’t learned yet what us humans will sacrifice for love. Isn’t that right, Grania?’

‘Yes,’ Grania smiled up at him, ‘it is.’

Doesn’t that sound like the perfect ending?

The true ‘Happy Ever After’ moment. The sort I love.

Grania and Matt reunited and starting on a new life together, financially secure for the rest of their lives. And me with them, pursuing my dream of becoming a great ballerina, launched from within the security of the loving family I’d always craved.

What could be more perfect?

I know! A baby for them, and a brother or sister for me?

And yes, a year later, that happened too.

Now, I’m pondering whether to end the story here, not destroy it with ‘After the Happy Ever …’

But, you see, that wouldn’t finish
my
story.

And, I confess, I may have deceived you.

I’m not really ‘old’, although my body feels as if it is.

At least a hundred years old.

But, unlike Aurora in the fairy tale, I will go to sleep for a hundred years – forever, actually – and no handsome prince will be there to wake me …

Not here on earth, anyway.

Dear Reader, I do not wish to depress you. Sixteen years of a life well lived is better than none at all.

But if you have felt at any point during my story that I have commented on my characters from a romantic and naive
view-point, can you forgive me? I am sixteen years old. I am too young to have been tainted by love going wrong.

Well. I’m going to die. Before I’ve been tainted. And so I can still believe in the magic of love. I believe that our lives, just like fairy tales – the stories that have been written by us humans, through our own experiences of living – will always have a Hero and a Heroine, a Fairy Godmother and a Wicked Witch.

And that love and goodness and faith and hope will always win the day.

Of course, I’ve been thinking too that even the Wicked Witch is the ‘Heroine’ of her own story, but that’s a different point altogether.

And there is always a positive side to everything, if you look for it. My illness has allowed me to document my family history. The writing of this story has been my friend and companion through some difficult, painful moments. It has also allowed me to learn about life. A sort of crash-course in the short time I’ve been granted here.

Grania and Matt – that is, my mother and father here – find it far harder to accept the inevitable. I am calm, because I am lucky. I know I will not be alone when I cross through my gossamer curtain; I will find two pairs of loving arms waiting for me.

Spirits … Ghost … Angels … whichever you wish to call them – Reader, they
do
exist. I’ve seen them all my life, but I’ve learned to say nothing.

And for all you cynics out there, just remember, there is no proof either way.

So I choose to believe. In my opinion, it’s much the best option.

As I said from the start, I didn’t write this to be published.
My parents have seen me scribbling, asked what I am writing about, and I have declined to answer. It is mine, you see, until the end (or the beginning), which I think is very close.

So, Dear Reader, my story is almost finished.

Do not worry about me or feel sad. I’m simply on the next stage of my journey and I’m happy to undertake it. Who knows what magic I will discover on the other side of that curtain?

Please, if you will, remember me and my family’s story in a tiny corner of your mind. It is your story too, because it is about humanity.

And, above all, never lose faith in the beauty and goodness of human nature.

It’s always there; just, sometimes, you have to look a little harder for it.

It is now time to say goodbye.

Grania stood at the top of the cliffs, the wind howling around her ears, just as it had on the afternoon she’d first met Aurora, eight years before.

Her shoulders heaved in tearless sobs as she remembered the little girl who had appeared so suddenly behind her, like a sprite, and changed her life irrevocably. Eight years ago, she’d been mourning the loss of her baby. Now, she was lost in grief for another child.

‘I don’t understand!’ she screamed to the angry waves crashing below her. ‘
I don’t understand
.’ She sank to her knees, her physical strength leaving her, and put her head in her hands.

Pictures of Aurora assailed her senses – in every image, her endless vitality. Aurora dancing, spinning, skipping along the cliff top, the beach … her energy, her positivity and her continuous zest for life were qualities that defined Aurora’s essence. In the eight years Grania had cared for her, she could scarcely remember Aurora negative or sad. Even during the past few months, when her physical strength had been drained from her, Aurora’s bright face would smile at her from her hospital bed, full of hope and laughter, even through the worst moments of her illness.

Grania took her head from her hands and remembered
how brave Aurora had been in this very spot, when she’d had to tell her of her father’s death. Even then, Aurora had accepted and, through her sadness, found the positives.

Somehow, Grania knew she too must find the inner strength that Aurora had possessed to pull her through this. Aurora had never needed to search for reasons ‘why’, hadn’t torn herself apart at the injustice of life’s lottery. Perhaps it was because she had a certainty, an inner belief that a life ended on earth was not the end of life.

Aurora had left her a letter, but in the last terrible ten days since her death, she’d been unable to open it.

Grania stood up, moved back towards the grassy rock she’d so often used as a seat and pulled the letter out of her jacket pocket. Her fingers blue from the cold, she fumbled to open it.

Mummy,

I bet I know where you are when you read this. You’ll be sitting on your favourite rock on the top of Dunworley cliffs, looking out to sea. And missing me and wondering why I’ve gone. Mummy, I know you will be sad. Losing anybody is always painful, but perhaps losing a child is the worst, because it isn’t in the proper order of nature. But, really, it’s us humans who have invented the calculation of time. I think it was the Romans who made the first calendar and gave us days, months and years. And honestly, Mummy, I feel as though I’ve been alive forever.

And perhaps I have.

I never felt I belonged completely to the earth anyway. And remember, darling Mummy, that we will all
end up where I am now, and it’s only the skin and bones, our physical being, that makes us visible to each other. But our spirit never dies. Who’s to say, as you sit on your rock, that I am not next to you, dancing around you, loving you as I always have, just because you can’t actually see me?

Mummy, you mustn’t allow me leaving to make you so sad that you forget to love and care for Daddy and for Florian. Thank you for naming my little brother after the Prince in
The Sleeping Beauty
– and I hope one day he will find his Princess and wake her with a kiss. Please give a big hug to Granny and Grandpa and Shane. Tell him I’ll be watching to make sure he takes care of Lily. She’s getting older now and needs more attention.

Mummy, try to believe that nothing is ever ended, especially love.

You’ve probably spoken to Uncle Hans by now, and found out that I have left you both Dunworley House and Cadogan House. It seems right, somehow, that you should have them. They are part of our family’s joint history and I’d like to think of our line of strong women combining and continuing inside their walls. The rest of my money … well, Uncle Hans knows what I want to do with it and I trust him to establish my charity in his usual, careful way!

I’ve left you another present by the way. It’s in the special drawer that Daddy always kept locked in his study – you know the one I mean. I wrote it for us, and for both of our families, as proof of the link that has joined you and me for over a hundred years.

Mummy, I know something you don’t – I would check next month if I were you, but the tiny spirit is already there, nestled deep inside you. And it will be a little girl.

Mummy, thank you for everything you’ve given me.

See you very soon,

Your Aurora

xxx

Grania looked up slowly, her eyes clouded with tears. And saw a small, white seagull surveying her from the edge of the cliff, its head on one side.

‘Grania?’

She turned slowly in the direction of the voice. Matt was standing some distance away.

‘Are you OK, sweetheart?’ he asked.

Grania couldn’t reply. She nodded silently.

‘I was worried, the storm was blowing up and … can I come and hold you?’

She reached out towards her husband. He bent down and put his strong arms around her, holding her tightly. He glanced down at what she was holding. ‘Is that the letter she left you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What does it say?’

‘Oh, many things.’ Grania blew her nose on an old tissue from her pocket. ‘She was –
is
– extraordinary. So wise, so strong … how could she be those things so young?’

‘Perhaps, as your mother says, she’s an old soul,’ Matt murmured.

‘Or an angel …’ Grania leaned weakly against Matt’s shoulder. ‘She says she’s written something for me and left it in the study drawer.’

‘Shall we go home and find it? Your hands are blue, sweetheart.’

‘Yes.’

Matt helped her up from the rock and put an arm around her as they turned to head up the cliff.

‘Aurora said something else in the letter too.’

‘What was that?’ Matt asked as they began walking.

‘She said that I –’

A gust of wind blew suddenly, snatching the letter easily from Grania’s freezing hands and carrying it towards the cliff’s edge.

‘Oh, baby,’ said Matt helplessly, knowing there was no rescuing it. ‘I’m sorry.’

Grania turned and watched as the letter span and danced and twirled in the wind, startling the seagull into taking flight with it, and following the letter up and out to sea.

Grania felt a sudden peace descend on her. ‘I understand now.’

‘Understand what, sweetheart?’

‘She’ll always be with me,’ she murmured.

The Girl on the Cliff
is a work of fiction, set against a historical background. The sources I’ve used to research the time period and detail on my characters’ lives are listed below:

Juliet Nicholson,
The Great Silence: 1918–1920, Living in the Shadow of the Great War
(John Murray, 2009)

Virginia Nicholson,
Singled Out
(Penguin Books, 2008)

Alison Light,
Mrs Woolf and the Servants
(Penguin Books, 2008)

David Stevenson,
1914–18: The History of the First World War
(Penguin Books, 2005)

David Stevenson,
The Outbreak of the First World War: 1914 in Perspective (Studies in European History)
(Palgrave Macmillan, 1997)

Jim Eldridge,
The Trenches: A First World War Soldier, 1914–1918, My Story
(Scholastic, 2008)

Sebastian Faulks,
Birdsong
(Vintage, 2007)

Tim Pat Coogan,
Michael Collins
(Arrow, 1991)

Joseph J. Lee,
Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society
(Cambridge University Press, 1990)

Orlando Figes,
A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution
1891–1924 (Pimlico, 1997)

Lynn Garafola,
Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes
(De Capo Press, 1998)

Serge Lifar,
Serge Diaghilev
(Putnam, 1945)

Meredith Daneman,
Margot Fonteyn
(Viking, 2002)

Ninette De Valois,
Invitation to the Ballet
(Bodley Head, 1937)

Lutz Röhrich,
‘And They Are Still Living Happily Ever After’: Anthropology, Cultural History and Interpretation of Fairy Tales
, translated by Paul Washbourne (University of Vermont, 2008)

This is the page I look forward to writing most. It means the book is finished and is on its way to publication, due in many different aspects to the unstinting support, advice and encouragement of all the people below.

Firstly, Mari Evans, my superb editor at Penguin for her invaluable ‘tweaks’. The whole team at Penguin who have championed the book so passionately, especially Roseanne Bantinck, Anna Derkacz and the entire foreign rights team who have brought my stories to a global audience. Karen Whitlock, my copy editor, Pat Pitt, my typist, and all the ‘behind the scenes’ people who contribute so much.

Jonathan Lloyd, my fabulous agent and friend, whose patience (and huge expense account on my behalf) has finally paid off. Susan Moss and Jacquelyn Heslop, who were the only two I trusted to read the manuscript before I sent it off, and comforted me so positively until the professional verdict came in. Helene Rampton, Kathleen MacKenzie, Tracy Blackwell, Jennifer Dufton, Rosalind Hudson, Adriana Hunter, Susan Grix, Kathleen Doonan, Sam Gurney, Jo Blackmore, Sophie Hicks and Amy Finnegan … girls, what would I do without you?! Danny Scheinmann, whose calm advice has been invaluable, Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, whose ‘Richard and Judy Bookclub’ has given me a wonderful platform from which to launch my future novels. David Makinson of
The Holt Bookshop, Richard, Anthony and Felicity Jemmett, Moreno Delise, Patrick Greene, and a very special thank you to both Isabel Latter, genius osteopath and friend, and Rita Kalagate, who kept me going physically during the endless re-writes.