Copyright © 2021 Emily Gunnis Ltd

  The right of Emily Gunnis to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2021 by Headline Review

  An imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  This Ebook edition first published in 2021 by Headline Review

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN 978 1 4722 7206 5

  Author photograph © Laurie Fletcher

  Jacket Design by Heike Schüssler

  Jacket Photograph © Rob Castro/Getty Images, Door Knocker © Shenjun Zhang/Shutterstock

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Praise for Emily Gunnis

  Also by Emily Gunnis

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Family Tree

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  Reading Group Questions

  Discover more captivating novels from Emily Gunnis . . .

  About the Author

  Emily Gunnis is the internationally bestselling author of The Girl in the Letter and The Missing Daughter. Her novels have sold in twenty languages. Emily previously worked in TV drama and lives in Brighton with her young family. She is one of the four daughters of Sunday Times bestselling author Penny Vincenzi.

  Praise for Emily Gunnis:

  ‘I was gripped by The Girl in the Letter. The story is compelling, twisty, heart-wrenching and thought-provoking. A novel that stays with you’

  Sophie Kinsella

  ‘A great book, truly hard to put down. Fast paced, brilliantly plotted and desperately sad at times – all hallmarks of a bestseller’

  Lesley Pearse

  ‘What a heartfelt emotional story, made even more so because it’s based on a shocking truth. I raced through it, involved, moved and gripped’

  Fanny Blake

  ‘A truly brilliant and moving read. I loved it’

  Karen Hamilton

  ‘Utterly gripping, taut and powerful. An emotionally charged, compulsive, moving novel’

  Adele Parks

  ‘Captivating and suspenseful’

  Jessica Fellowes

  ‘As moving as it is disturbing. A real triumph’

  Woman & Home

  ‘A gripping story that will take you on an emotional rollercoaster’

  My Weekly

  ‘Loss, betrayal and a decades-old secret . . . BRILLIANT’

  Heat

  ‘Rich with period detail and believable characters’

  Woman

  ‘Poignant . . . A powerful family drama’

  Woman’s Weekly

  ‘You won’t be able to put this book down. We guarantee it’

  Take a Break

  ‘Gripping’

  Bella

  ‘Immersive and heart-wrenching’

  Candis

  ‘Not to be missed. A must-read this season’

  Reader’s Digest

  ‘Heart-wrenching. An evocative and stirring tale that really lingers in your mind’

  Culturefly

  ‘What an enchanting, heart-wrenching, beautifully written and intense read. This book gave me everything I could have ever wanted in a storyline, and then some. Whilst my heart shattered multiple times throughout, I found myself loving The Girl in the Letter’

  The Writing Garnet

  ‘A pacy, heartrending read’

  S magazine, Sunday Express

  ‘An emotional, evocative novel that drew me in instantly’

  Ronnie Turner

  ‘A thought-provoking, moving and utterly heartbreaking novel’

  What Cathy Read Next

  ‘This story of long-buried, earth-shattering secrets reels you in on page one and doesn’t relinquish its grasp until you reach the final sentence. A masterful, compelling story whose themes will stay with you long after the turn of the last page’

  Shaz’s Book Blog

  ‘I loved this! Intrigue, mystery . . . I couldn’t stop reading it’

  Books and Nooks

  By Emily Gunnis

  The Girl in the Letter

  The Missing Daughter

  The Midwife’s Secret

  About the Book

  1969

  On New Year’s Eve, while the Hiltons of Yew Tree Manor prepare to host the party of the season, their little girl disappears. Suspicion falls on Bobby James, a young farmhand and the last person to see Alice before she vanished. Bobby protests his innocence, but he is sent away. Alice is never found.

  Present day

  Architect Willow James is working on a development at Yew Tree when she discovers the land holds a secret. As she begins to dig deep into the past, she uncovers a web of injustice. And when another child goes missing, Willow knows the only way to stop history repeating itself is to right a terrible wrong.

  For decades the fates of the Hilton and James families have been entwined in the grounds of Yew Tree Manor. It all began with a midwife’s secret, long buried but if uncovered could save them from the bitter tragedy that binds them. And prove the key that will free them all . . .

  For Grace and Eleanor – my inspiration

  No one does more harm to the

  Catholic Faith than midwives

  Heinrich Kramer and Jakob

  Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum

  Unable are the Loved to die

  For Love is Immortality

  Emily Dickinson

  Prologue

  Monday, 8 January 1945: Kingston

  near Lewes, East Sussex

  ‘They’re here already.’ Tessa James looked out of her bedroom window as two police cars pulled up outside The Vicarage, their beaming lights making her flinch and turn away before rushing back to her six-year-old grandson, who was sitting on the landing shaking with fear.

  ‘Baba, I’m scared. I don’t want to be alone in the dark.’ Alfie stared hard at her with the James family ice-blue eyes; so hard that she felt the little boy was looking right through her.

  He gripped his grandmother’s hand as she eased up the top step of the landing to reveal a small room underneath the stairs; a priest-hole, just large enough to fit a mattress and little more, which she had discovered quite by accident when she moved into the near-derelict cottage when she was pregnant with Alfie’s mother, over two decades before.

  ‘Climb in now, hurry,’ she urged.

  Knowing he had no choice, the little boy reluctantly scuttled in, then immediately turned around to look up at her, his black hair framing his cheeks as he started to cry.

  ‘Alfie, listen to me, you must only come out of here if you absolutely have to; you must stay hidden. You have enough supplies to last for five days. I’ve sent an urgent telegram to Mama; she knows you’re in here. She will come for you sooner than that, maybe as soon as tomorrow.’

  ‘What if she doesn’t come? What will I do?’ he said, starting to sob.

  ‘She will come, Alfie.’ Tessa wiped away his tears, needing desperately to close the lid on the secret room before the police burst in and saw the concealed entrance. With Alfie’s mother away working as a house servant in Portsmouth, Wilfred Hilton wouldn’t hesitate to have the little boy – his illegitimate grandson – sent overseas, probably never to be seen or heard of again.

  ‘Do you promise, Baba? B
ecause I know you always keep your promises.’ His tears left trails down his cheeks, muddied from playing outside in the fields earlier in the day. He had run in to escape the rain, around the time the Hiltons’ house servant, Sally, had come hammering at The Vicarage door, her clothes soaked through.

  ‘You have to come, Mrs James,’ she had said, her eyes wild with panic and panting from running through the woods that connected Yew Tree Manor and The Vicarage where they lived. ‘Mrs Hilton’s near having her baby and it’s stuck. The doctor says she will die if it doesn’t come soon. He said to fetch you. He doesn’t know what to do.’

  Tessa felt her stomach lurch at the thought of Evelyn Hilton enduring so much suffering at the hands of Dr Jenkins. ‘Sally, you know I’m forbidden by Mr Hilton to go anywhere near his wife. I have had no consultations with Mrs Hilton; it is the doctor’s job to deliver her baby safely.’ Fighting back tears, she tried to close the door on the girl.

  ‘Please, the doctor begged me to make you come,’ Sally said. ‘He said he would tell Mr Hilton he had requested your presence and bear all responsibility for you being there. Please, Mrs James, there’s so much blood. He says you’re the only one who can save her. They’ll both die if you don’t. I thought I couldn’t take any more of her screams, but she’s gone awful quiet now, and that’s worse.’

  ‘Where is Mr Hilton?’ Tessa enquired.

  ‘He drove off after the two of you quarrelled about your tenancy here at The Vicarage. You see, they had a telegram this morning to say that Master Eli has been killed in action. Mrs Hilton was terrible upset; she went into labour soon after Mr Hilton left. I called Dr Jenkins, just as I was told to, but it’s a breech baby and the doctor said he weren’t expecting it. He keeps shouting at me to find the master. I’ve been looking for him everywhere in Kingston village – at the Rose and Crown and the stables. I looked all over, but he’s vanished.’ The girl was frantic and began to sob. ‘Please don’t let her die, Mrs James. Please!’ She pulled at Tessa’s arms, easing her towards the door. ‘Richard is only six; he’ll be left without a mother.’

  Eli Hilton was dead. Tessa still couldn’t believe it. Bella’s beloved, Alfie’s father, killed in a war that was so nearly over. She had been there when Eli came into the world, and soon after had given birth to her own baby, Bella, and the two had been inseparable their whole lives. Eli was like a son to her, and as the servant girl stood staring at her in the rain, she found it hard to breathe. But there was no time to react, no time to scream and cry and weep. She was needed.

  ‘Alfie, stay here in the warm, keep the fire topped up,’ she had said, pulling on her heavy black boots and wrapping her shawl around her shoulders before venturing out into the storm.

  She had delivered Evelyn’s previous two babies safely – Eli and his younger brother Richard – but both births had been tricky. Evelyn was a woman whose labours never seemed to end. She was tiny, her birth canal was small, and attending her required a great deal of patience, which Tessa felt sure Dr Jenkins was lacking. She needed to be able to move around during labour, and had given birth to both babies on all fours on her bedroom floor at Yew Tree Manor. She feared Dr Jenkins would have her in stirrups on the bed, using forceps to try and heave the baby out.

  As they ran from the edge of the woods down the stone driveway of the huge Georgian mansion, the memory of her quarrel with Wilfred Hilton that very morning filled Tessa with sadness. ‘I want you and that bastard child out of The Vicarage and off my land,’ he had told her. ‘You bring shame on the Church and shame on my family. I see you trying to hide those women whose miscarriages you induce; do you think that by bringing them here in the dead of night we won’t notice? You are a disgrace, Mrs James, with your secrets and herbs and organic medicines. We need real doctors like Dr Jenkins, not God-hating charmers like you, spreading your hatred of proper medical practices like a cancer in our community.’

  Ever since she had become a midwife, women had asked how to get rid of the babies growing inside them. She had always listened sympathetically, but she knew it was illegal: people were sent to prison for bringing on a miscarriage. But the law wasn’t as much of a deterrent as her instincts – she had devoted her life to saving babies’ lives, not ending them – and so instead she offered comfort. She listened and she didn’t judge, because she knew that a woman had her reasons for not wanting a baby. She might have too many to care for already, or was so sick from bearing babies that another might kill her – and without her, what would become of her other children? She gave such women herbs that were recommended to bring on their monthlies, but they mostly didn’t work. A few women were so desperate they threatened to kill themselves. Those were the ones who troubled her the most. If she didn’t help them, they would drink bleach, or do it themselves with a needle or a crochet hook, or by any number of means that often had horrifying consequences. It was a man’s world, and few knew what pain a woman suffered for his pleasure.

  ‘And what did they teach Dr Jenkins at medical school?’ she had replied to Wilfred Hilton. ‘How many babies has he delivered? You don’t learn in medical school how to soothe a mother barely old enough to have a child, who’s near dying from the pain of childbirth. Or a woman who cannot get her baby out because her birth canal is too narrow.’

  ‘Shame on you, Mrs James. You’ve bewitched the women of this village with that tongue. I want you out tomorrow.’

  As she walked through the house and up the stairs towards Evelyn’s bedroom, it was the thought of the bleeding that spurred her on. The baby had turned, and Evelyn would be weak from loss of blood, maybe unable to push the infant out. However Tessa felt about Wilfred Hilton, she had to try and help her friend.

  But as she stepped into the bedroom, nothing could have prepared her for the scene. Never in her thirty years as a midwife had she seen so much blood. The white sheets on which she lay, and Evelyn’s ivory nightdress, were dyed completely red. Evelyn lay in the centre of the four-poster bed, pale and lifeless, her legs in stirrups, the doctor heaving and pulling at the baby’s legs, its head still inside her.

  ‘For God’s sake, do something!’ the doctor yelled when he caught sight of Tessa. ‘The shoulders are stuck, I can’t get the baby out. I’ve cut her, but it still won’t come.’ He was glaring up at her, panting with exertion, blood caked up to his elbows.

  Tessa rushed to Evelyn and gently took her legs down from the stirrups. She knew just from the sight of her, and all the blood, that it was too late to save her. But the baby’s legs were moving; there could still be hope for the child. Quickly, she felt Evelyn’s abdomen for the baby’s shoulder and then pressed down on Evelyn’s tummy just above her pelvic bone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the doctor panted, his face still puce and caked in sweat.

  ‘Dislocating the baby’s shoulder,’ Tessa replied. ‘Help me get Evelyn on all fours.’

  The doctor looked at her wide-eyed. ‘I will not! I want nothing more to do with this!’ He picked up his bag and rushed from the room, his white shirt spattered with Evelyn’s blood.

  Tessa watched him go, knowing what it meant: that he would blame her for what he had done and her work as a midwife would be over. She looked down at Evelyn, then at Sally cowering in the hallway, weeping quietly.

  ‘Help me!’ she snapped, frozen to the spot with terror. ‘Sally, you begged me to come. Please, Mrs Hilton needs you.’ The girl looked up at Tessa, then nodded and walked over to her.

  Together they eased Evelyn over, then Tessa reached inside her womb and with a great deal of effort turned the baby.

  ‘Push, Evelyn,’ she whispered in her friend’s ear as the next pain came. Evelyn used the last of her strength to push, while Tessa pulled as hard as she could, and out the baby came: a beautiful little girl, her long limbs white, her rosebud lips tinged blue.

  Long minutes passed as Sally sobbed in the corner and Tessa sat on the floor blowing into the baby’s mouth and rubbing her soft belly, trying desperately to breathe life back into the child. Finally she gave up and looked over to see that Evelyn had stopped breathing.

  She didn’t know when exactly Wilfred Hilton had walked into the room, as Dr Jenkins lurked behind him, but there was no shouting, no raging; he ignored her entirely and walked slowly over to his wife, looking down at her porcelain skin, then at his lifeless child, before pulling the sheet over Evelyn’s face. Tessa got shakily to her feet and laid the dead baby in the crib by the door.