Sage shook her head. ‘No…I’ll read them until eight and then we can ring the hospital.’
As she closed the door behind her, she stood in the hall for a few minutes. The spring sunshine turned the panelling the colour of dark honey, illuminating the huge pewter jugs of flowers and the enormous stone cavern of the original fireplace.
The parquet floor was old and uneven, the rugs lying on it rich pools of colour. The library lay across the hall from the sitting-room, behind the large drawing-room. She stared at the door, and turned swiftly away from it, towards the kitchen, to find Charles and ask him to make up the fire.
While he was doing so she went upstairs. Her bedroom had been redecorated when she was eighteen. Her mother had chosen the furnishings and the colours as a surprise, and she had, Sage admitted, chosen them well.
The room was free of soft pretty pastels, which would have been far too insipid for her, and instead was decorated in the colours she loved so much: blues, reds, greens; colours that drew out the beauty of the room’s panelled walls.
The huge four-poster bed had been made on the estate from their own wood; her name and date of birth were carved on it, and the frieze decorating it had carved in the wood the faces of her childhood pets. A lot of care had gone into its design and execution; to anyone else the bed would have been a gift of great love, but she had seen it merely as the execution of what her mother conceived to be her duty. Her daughter was eighteen and of age, and therefore she must have a gift commensurate with such an occasion.
In the adjoining bathroom, with its plain white suite and dignified Edwardian appearance, Sage washed her hands and checked her make-up. Her lipstick needed renewing, and her hair brushing.
She smiled mirthlessly at herself as she did so… Still putting off the evil hour…why? What was there after all to fear… to reveal… ? She already knew the story of her mother’s life as everyone locally knew it. It was as blameless and praiseworthy as that of any saint.
Her mother had come to this house as a young bride, with a husband already seriously ill, his health destroyed by the war. They had met when her mother worked as a nursing aide, fallen in love and married and come to live here at Cottingdean, the estate her father had inherited from a cousin.
Everyone knew her mother had arrived here when she was eighteen to discover that the estate her husband had drawn for her in such glowing colours—the colours of his own childhood—had become a derelict eyesore.
Everyone knew how her mother had worked to restore it to what it had once been. How she had had the foresight and the drive to start the selective breeding programme with the estate’s small flock of sheep that was to produce the very special fleece of high-quality wool.
But how her mother had had the vision to know that there would come a time when such wool was in high demand, how she had had the vision to persuade her husband to allow her to experiment with the production of that wool, let alone the run-down mill, Sage realised she had no idea, and with that knowledge came the first stirrings of curiosity.
Everyone knew of the prosperity her mother had brought to the village, of the new life she had breathed into Cottingdean. Everyone knew of the joys and sorrows of her life; of the way she had fought to keep her husband alive, of the cherished son she had borne and lost, of the recalcitrant and troublesome daughter she was herself…
No, there were no real secrets in her mother’s life. No reason why she herself should experience this tension…this dread…this fear almost that made her so reluctant to walk into the library and unlock the desk.
And yet it had to be done. She had given her word, her promise. Sighing faintly, Sage went back downstairs. She hesitated outside the library door for a second and then lifted the latch and went in.
The fire was burning brightly in the grate and someone, Jenny, no doubt, had thoughtfully brought in a fresh tray of coffee.
As she closed the door behind her, Sage remembered how as a child this room had been out of bounds to her. It had been her father’s sanctuary; from here he had been able to sit in his wheelchair and look out across the gardens.
He and her mother had spent their evenings in here… Stop it, Sage told herself. You’re not here to dwell on the past. You’re here to read about it.
She surprised herself by the momentary hope that the key would refuse to unlock the drawers, but, of course, it did. They were heavy and old, and slid surprisingly easily on their wooden runners. A faint musty scent of herbs and her mother’s perfume drifted up towards her as she opened them.
She could see the diaries now; far more of them than she had imagined, all of them methodically numbered and dated, as though her mother had always known that there would come a time, as though she had deliberately planned…
But why? Sage wondered as she reached tensely into the drawer and removed the first diary.
She found her hands were shaking as she opened it, the words blurring as she tried to focus on them. She didn’t want to do this…could not do it, and yet even in her reluctance she could almost feel the pressure of her mother’s will, almost hear her whispering, You promised…
She blinked rapidly to clear her eyes and then read the first sentence.
‘Today I met Kit…’
‘Kit…’ Sage frowned and turned back the page to check on the date. This diary had begun when her mother was seventeen. Soon after her eighteenth birthday she had been married. So who was this Kit?
Nebulous, uneasy feelings stirred inside her as Sage stared reluctantly at the neat, evenly formed handwriting. It was like being confronted with a dark passage you had to go down and yet feared to enter. And yet, after all, what was there to fear?
Telling herself she was being stupid, she picked up the diary for the second time and started to read.
‘Today I met Kit.’
Spring 1945
‘TODAY I met Kit.’
Just looking at the words made her go dizzy with happiness, Lizzie acknowledged, staring at them, knowing it was impossible to translate into cold, dry print the whole new world of feelings and emotions which had opened up in front of her.
Yesterday her life had been bound and encompassed by the often arduous routine of her work as a nursing aide: long hours, low pay, and all the horrid dirty jobs that real nurses were too valuable to spend their time on.
She would rather have stayed on at school, but, with her parents killed in one of the many bombing raids on London, she had had no option but to accept her great-aunt’s ruling that she must leave school and start to earn her living.
Aunt Vi didn’t mean to be unkind, but she wasn’t a sentimental woman and had never married. She had no children of her own, and, as she was always telling her great-niece, she had only agreed to take Lizzie in out of a sense of family duty. She herself had been sent out to work at thirteen, skivvying in service at the local big house. She had worked hard all her life and had slowly made her way up through the levels of service until she had eventually become housekeeper to Lord and Lady Jeveson.
Lizzie had found it bewildering at first, leaving the untidy but comfortable atmosphere of the cramped terraced house where she had lived with her parents and grandparents, evacuated from the busy, dusty streets so familiar to her to this place called ‘the country’, where everything was strange and where she missed her ma and pa dreadfully, crying in her sleep every night and wishing she were back in London.
Aunt Vi wasn’t like her ma…for a start she didn’t talk the way her ma did. Aunt Vi talked posh and sounded as though her mouth was full of sharp, painful stones. She had made Lizzie speak the same way,