Free The Lost Souls' Reunion by Suzanne Power Page B

Carmen did not look at it.
    The woman who lived in the flat below had been growing a sunflower in a window box. I had watched it reaching up for our window and each day I strained to touch it, but the wind snapped its life in two before that.
    â€˜Did you take the sunflower?’ I thought, when I opened the door to Noreen.
    â€˜I am glad you like my hat.’ Noreen said, in answer to my stare. ‘Can I come in?’
    I let her enter the room, not like me, who ran from strangers in the same way my mother went towards them.
    Carmen had not been home that night. Noreen sat in my watchful silence.
    â€˜Where is she then?’ she asked.
    She did not expect an answer. She looked down at her feet, which were swollen in the new shoes. Her ankles had no shape, they were straight lines pinched into the cutting edges of leather. She was a big woman again, but she perched on our chair as if she was small.
    â€˜Are you hungry, child?’ she asked after a long while. ‘I know I am.’
    The key finally turned in the door. Carmen did not recognize Noreen under her hat.
    â€˜Mammy,’ she said, after long minutes at the door with the cold wind of the day travelling up the stairs behind her. Noreen removed her sunflower hat to reveal a sweat-drenched scalp covered with hair that had grown grey and thinned and in places come away altogether. It was the only part of her that had given way to Joseph Moriarty and lost.
    â€˜Mammy,’ Carmen cried softly.
    â€˜Carmel.’
    Noreen watched her and said the name and did not draw close. She knew London had been no kinder to her than the homeplace had been. ‘I would have written to say I was coming, but you didn’t give me an address.’ Noreen began the talk with the distance between them.
    â€˜How did you find us?’
    â€˜An old woman in a café told me the place. I would have cooked a breakfast for the child, but she wasn’t keen. The child needs a wash, as do you.’
    â€˜How did you find us, Mammy?’
    â€˜By asking. I found the letters last month, one of them was Hammersmith and the other few were postmarked Shepherd Market. I went to Shepherd Market and found out what they do there. Then I was told to come here. I asked until I was told.’ Noreen spoke with a softness that did not hide the shake in her voice. ‘The child won’t tell me her name.’
    Noreen almost could not face what she had come to face. That is why she had bought the summer hat. Even though it was autumn it was brightness she needed.
    â€˜That’s Sive – go for bread, Sive,’ Carmen told me.
    I did not want to leave. I hovered by the door while Carmen fished about in her purse. A crumple of well-worn notes, each with their separate story, fell to the floor. Noreen put her head in her hands.
    â€˜Sive, take the pound note and count the change like I told you. Go to the Italian baker. You can’t trust the Italians, Mammy; they’d rob the eyes out of your head. You can’t trust anyone round here.’
    Carmen’s voice and her eyes were moving rapidly around the room, her breath was short. I went to her side.
    â€˜Go on, love!’
    My spindly limbs were pushed out the door. But I waited in the hall for a while. I heard the big woman’s voice.
    â€˜She’s very small for eleven.’
    â€˜She’s eight. The other baby’s gone.’
    â€˜Gone where? You said in the letter “gone”, too. Gone where?’
    â€˜Dead.’
    Noreen sighed.
    â€˜I didn’t get the letters until last month. Your father had hidden them. She’s not going to burn in the sun like her mother, is she?’
    By the time I returned with hot steaming bread wrapped in newspaper, both their faces had changed. They sat close together. My grandmother stood to make tea, but I was there before her. There was no kettle, the pan had to be boiled on the gas ring. I kept the matches in my skirt, away from