To The Grave Read Free

affected their perceived ancestry and it was entirely his client’s call as to if and when she wanted to tell them.
    She let go of Tayte’s hand and as he turned away he eyed the little red suitcase again and wondered, as he had wondered all week, who had sent it and how they came by it.  And he wondered why it had been sent now, some seventy years later.  Something had happened to prompt it, but what?  Tayte had no idea just now but he intended to find out.  As he left the house, heading for his car, he gazed up into the clear sky and snapped his collar higher to keep the late afternoon chill off his neck.  He thought about the girl again.  Philomena Lasseter.   He’d been thinking about her a lot.  Who was she?  Why was her name recorded on his client’s original birth certificate under her mother’s maiden name of Fitch?  And why had she been separated from her suitcase all those years ago?

 
      
      
      
    Chapter Two
      
    December 1943.
    I t was Christmas morning and Mena Lasseter awoke early, harbouring the sensation that she had been disturbed by something that now, in waking, left no obvious clue as to its source.  The blackout curtains at the window held her bedroom in total darkness and it was so quiet that she fancied she could hear the air around her, hissing in her ears.  She sat up and pulled at the heavy curtains behind her until they revealed a misty, moonlit landscape of leafless trees and frosted fields and just the hint of a salmon daybreak to the east.  When she opened them more fully the moonlight washed in from the Leicestershire countryside, casting diagonal crosses onto the oak-beamed walls from the blast tape that had been in place between the leaded lights since the bombings began.  The moon painted everything with its silver brush, stealing all the colours.
    But not quite all.
    As Mena turned away from the window and looked into the room across a cheerless bedspread, past the foot of an ironwork bedstead and the chaise beyond, she saw something beside her washbasin that she hadn’t seen in such a long time that the sight of it brought a lump to her throat.  It was an orange - a beautiful plump orange that was as vivid amidst the early morning grey as if it were in full sunlight.  She threw aside her bedcovers and ran to it, unable to resist piercing its peel as she clutched it to her nose, drawing in the sweet memory of its scent.  She laughed quietly to herself, choking back a tear and just smiling at it because she understood its significance: Eddie was home for Christmas, and what a gift.
    Mena - whose devout Catholic mother had named her Philomena after Saint Philomena the wonder worker - was sixteen years old and several months younger than she wanted to be.  She was tall for her age and knew she could easily pass for seventeen, which was the age she needed to be before she could join the Women’s Land Army, but her mother - staunch upholder of the Decalogue that she was - would not permit Mena to lie about her age, even if most of the other girls of her acquaintance were doing it.
    But August wasn’t so far away, she kept telling herself.  She could make do with being a fire-watcher until then and she also worked part-time as a volunteer, wheeling books through the wards at the Leicester Royal Infirmary and the general hospital in Evington, often reading to the patients.  She was still doing her bit, like her sister, Mary-Grace, who had enlisted with the Auxiliary Territorial Service two years ago and was no doubt having a glorious war, driving around in her motorcar, delivering important documents to important people.
    And there were her three brothers.  No one could ask more of them.  In the thick of it since 1940, Mena hadn’t seen Michael, James or Peter in far too long.  She envied them their freedom, despite the mortal danger and the hardship that was all too evident from their letters.  Edward Buckley - dear, sweet Eddie, who had always been like