The Amber Keeper Read Online Free PDF Page B

climbing Coniston Old Man, just the three of us, with me moaning about the long walk all the way up, and Mum gently urging me on?’
    Millie smiled. ‘Then when we neared the summit you set off at a run and beat us all.’
    ‘She gave me a badge for winning, one she made herself out of slate with “star performer” carved on it. I’ve still got it. What fun we had back then.’
    Both women lapsed into silence for a moment as they recalled happier days, then Abbie gave a little sigh. ‘I still can’t get my head around why Mum would do this. It’s quite beyond my comprehension. But then she was never easy to understand.’
    ‘It’s true she was rather a complicated person, a bit screwed up, as you young people would say. But then she had a lot to deal with, not knowing exactly who she was, for one thing.’
    ‘That must have been awful for her.’
    ‘I’m afraid it did trouble her greatly.’
    Abbie tried to recall when first she’d learned that her mother had been adopted, perhaps when she was being something of a problem during her own teen years. Kate had told her that she considered herself fortunate to have enjoyed a good upbringing with loving parents, which included being privately educated at a local girls’ school, when she could so easily have suffered a deprived childhood confined in an orphanage. She said just the memory of that cold, unfeeling place gave her the shivers. Growing up here in the small village of Carreckwater, situated as it was in a wooded valley in the heart of Lakeland, had been utterly delightful, not to mention living in this beautiful house on the shores of the lake. Kate had declared that she’d a great deal to be thankful for.
    So why had all that optimism disappeared?
    Not knowing who her birth mother was must surely have haunted Kate. No doubt some foolish girl who had got herself into trouble, abandoned her child and simply walked away. Not a pleasant thought. It had never crossed her own mind for a moment to give up Aimée, no matter what. Of course, the girl might well have been forced into giving up her baby, as was often the case in those days.
    Abbie’s head teemed with questions and she longed to know more about her mother’s origins. But was her grandmother up to such a discussion, grieving as she was right now? On the other hand, perhaps talking about her daughter might bring her some comfort. Abbie decided to take the risk, and to stop the moment Millie appeared weary.
    ‘When you said Mum felt as if all the security she’d taken for granted was slipping from her grasp, why did you say it was hard won?’
    ‘Because she spent her early years in an orphanage, which left her with a justifiable sense of insecurity.’
    ‘Where was it, this orphanage?’
    ‘Pursey Street in Stepney, London.’
    ‘Goodness, that’s some distance from the Lakes. Why choose that one?’
    ‘I can’t quite recall. It’s all so long ago.’
    ‘So when did you return to England, exactly? You’ve never said.’
    ‘Some time in the early twenties, I think.’
    Abbie could tell that Millie was being deliberately vague, but couldn’t work out why. Something was going on that she didn’t quite understand. Why had Millie adopted a child at such a young age? Surely at the time she’d still have been young enough to expect to have children of her own one day? Not that any had ever come, so perhaps she’d known that she couldn’t. But that was not a question she dared ask. ‘Was it something that happened during the revolution that made you decide to adopt a child? Did you see children starving in the streets? Was that the reason?’
    She couldn’t help but wonder what terrible events had happened back then to make Millie so unwilling to recall the past. Like her mother before her, Abbie had tried on numerous occasions to persuade her grandmother to talk about her time in Russia, and how she came to go out there in the first place. But only rarely would some snippet of the young