by Erica James
‘Yes,’ I said nervously, glad that Max was standing next to me.
‘We’d like to ask you a few questions about the woman with whom you share this house.’
‘Before Miss Flowerday answers any questions you have,’ Max said, ‘I think it a reasonable request that you show us some identification.’
‘And who would you be, sir?’
‘I asked first,’ he said firmly.
It was then, as I looked at the two men, and the window behind them, that something caught my eye in the back garden. At first I thought it was one of Tally’s dresses drying on the washing line. But then I realised what it really was and let out an ungodly scream. Her neck in a noose, Tally was hanging from a branch of the apple tree.
What happened then, and to this day, was a nightmarish blur. After being taken to London, I was thoroughly interrogated – just as Max had predicted – and on being found to be innocent of any crime, it transpired that unwittingly I had been sharing a house with a spy who had been passing information on to the Germans. In the garden, and hidden in a tin box behind a patch of nettles and brambles, was evidence of ciphers which she had somehow stolen from the Park. A small case containing a radio device was found in an old potato sack in the greenhouse. It had been well hidden beneath an assortment of garden tools and pots.
More disturbing than any of this was that the official line on Tally’s death was that she had killed herself out of remorse for betraying her country. But how could it have been suicide? I asked, when there was nothing beneath her on which she could have climbed to attach the noose to the branch. I was told that she had simply climbed the tree and I was not to ask any more questions; the matter was closed. I had no way of knowing whether it was MI5 or MI6 who had interrogated me, but I was under no illusion that whatever was going on was deadly serious. As to who had killed Tally, I would never know.
When I was released from London and allowed to resume my duties back at the Park, Max insisted that he stayed with me at the cottage. I knew it was a mistake, but frankly I was so unnerved by the whole episode, and a little fearful that whoever had murdered Tally might return, I allowed myself to believe that no harm would come of Max sleeping in what had been Tally’s room.
How naïve I was!
That night, unable to sleep – the slightest noise putting me into a terrible state of alarm – I lay in the dark staring up at the ceiling. Just a few feet away from me, the other side of the wall, was Max. I tried not to imagine what it might feel like to have his reassuring presence with me on this side of the wall. But the more I tried not to think of him, the stronger the urge became to lie within his embrace, to feel what all those other girls had experienced with him.
Don’t be a fool, I told myself. Think of Kit.
But Kit was as far from my thoughts as he could be. For once in my life I wanted to be rash, to forget about the sensible woman everybody took me to be. If I died tomorrow – found hanging from the branch of a tree just like Tally – what did it matter how rational and loyal I’d been?
A faint knock at the door made me start.
‘It’s me, Max. Can I come in?’
God knows I should have said no, but I didn’t. At my affirmative reply, he entered the room. ‘I can’t sleep,’ he murmured in the shadowy darkness.
‘Me neither,’ I replied.
‘I can’t stop thinking about you,’ he said, approaching my bed. ‘I keep thinking how I’d feel if anything happened to you.’
‘How would you feel?’ I asked. Under any other circumstances, I would have deemed the remark wholly coquettish and beneath me, but holding my breath, I waited for his reply.
By the side of my bed now, he got down on his knees. ‘I’d be devastated,’ he said.
‘Is that what you say to all the women you’ve slept with?’
‘Must you always regard me so sceptically, Evelyn? Why not trust me, just once?’
‘Only once?’ I asked, gripped with the desire to slip my hands around his shoulders and pull him into bed with me.
Leaning in close, he ran a finger along the length of my jaw, then brushed it against my lips. Any restraint that had kept my longing for him in check now deserted me, and I raised myself up so that my mouth touched his. I kissed him in a way I had never kissed Kit, driven by a passion that left Max in no doubt that I wanted him to make love to me.
He must have known that he was my first lover, and he took me to him with a tenderness I would never have expected. Afterwards, and without a trace of shame, I slept in his arms. We both woke some hours later, and with still no shame in me, we made love again, this time he was less cautious.
We slept once more, and after the deepest of sleeps, I woke to the sound of birds singing. The innocence of that dawn chorus made me think of Kit and suddenly, as Max stirred beside me in the narrow bed, shame now made itself known.
Later that day, and mortified at what I had done, I sought out the powers that be at the Park and claimed ill-health as a result of Tally’s death. Rarely was such a request granted, there was a war on, after all, but I must have caught the administrative officer in charge in a sympathetic mood. My tearful entreaty was convincing enough for me to be granted a fortnight’s leave.
I left no word of explanation for Max, but packed my case and fled to Bletchley station to catch the first available train to Suffolk.
As luck would have it, Kit was home on leave and, taking me by surprise, he made it clear that he felt we had waited long enough to commit ourselves to each other. I’ll never know what made him decide this, but that night we made love in my old childhood bed at Meadow Lodge. (Thank God my mother was bedridden and her hearing had deteriorated to the extent it had!)
It was the first time I had seen him entirely unclothed and the sight of his badly scarred body filled me with a fiercely protective love for him. Full of remorse for my betrayal of him, I swore to myself there and then that I would be the best wife I could to this man I had known nearly all my life. I would never do anything to hurt him.
We were married within the month, which brought an end to my work at Bletchley Park, and my association with Max Blythe-Jones. I never saw or heard from him again.
Not until the night of the party twenty years later.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chelstead Cottage Hospital, Chelstead
December 1962
Hope
No matter how hard Hope tried to open her mouth to speak, not a muscle moved. In her head she was screaming at the top of her voice that she knew who was sending the anonymous letters – it was Arthur, she was sure! But not a word would come out. She was as inert as stone.
She had overheard enough from the whispered comments amongst the medical staff to know that the worst of her injuries was a bleed on the brain, and that while they knew her brain was showing signs of activity, it was if the wires had disconnected and it could no longer instruct her body to move.
She constantly willed her limbs to do her bidding; just an inch would be enough, or a flicker of an eyelid, but her body refused point blank to obey her. Sometimes she felt her body was deliberately mocking her, teasing her into believing she had succeeded in regaining mastery of it and that her hand or foot had moved.
Listening to Romily and Evelyn she had been so sure that she had managed to twitch her fingers in response to what they were saying, but when they hadn’t reacted, she was forced to accept that any movement she believed she was making was nothing more than wishful thinking.
There had been a moment when she had been lying in that ditch with only the wind and rain for company, that she had been certain she was about to meet her maker. With the acceptance that her life was over, she had felt herself slipping away, as though falling over the edge of a cliff. Down and down she fell. Weightless. Not a terrified scream-filled hurtle towards the end, but a slow descent, like a piece of delica
te blossom caught on a spring breeze floating gracefully to the soft pillowy ground.
With that sensation came the relief that no more would she have to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders. No more would she have the worry of Edmund no longer loving her. Of him loving another. Of him leaving her. She was leaving him. He would now be free to be with whomever he wanted. This, like the car with which she had surprised him, was her gift to Edmund. Her final gift.
In the endlessly long days she had been lying here in a state of purgatory – with a tube down her throat to help her breathe and a drip feeding God knows what into her – her mood had swung from one end of the pendulum to the other. To live or not to live. As if she had any choice in it!
Some days when Edmund was with her, when her mood was so low and she saw this permanent vegetative state as her future, she willed him to do the decent thing and put a pillow over her face. ‘Just do it!’ she longed to say. ‘Put us both out of our misery.’
Other times when he was with her and holding her hand, telling her how everyone was rooting for her to get better, she pictured his face. His caring compassionate face. And it made her want to weep and beg him to put his arms around her. He repeatedly apologised for arguing with her, that he wished he could turn back time and make everything right again.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a poor husband to you,’ he’d said, ‘that I don’t seem able to make you happy in the way I once did.’
She could have wept when he told her he loved her. But was that remorse in his voice she could hear? Remorse for also loving another? Evelyn had just said her brother would never have an affair behind Hope’s back. Was she right?
The silence in the room told her that she was now alone. The nurses had finished doing whatever they came to do and had gone. Where were Romily and Evelyn? Why hadn’t they returned? She wanted to hear more of what they had to say about the anonymous letters. She wanted somehow to point them towards Arthur. He was just the sort of person who would enjoy stirring up trouble for the sheer hell of it.
Tormenting people was what he did best. He had done it as a child when he’d pulled the wings off butterflies. Or the time one hot summer’s day during the school holidays when he trapped a field mouse under a jam jar and put it in the sun so he could watch the animal slowly die.
Beyond the quiet confines of her room, Hope could hear the sound of a trolley being pushed along the corridor. It was the trolley with the irritating wheel that needed oiling. Was she the only one who could hear it squeak, the only one to be annoyed by it?
On the whole the nursing staff were competent and did their job well. She wished though they wouldn’t prattle on so much, telling her how much they’d enjoyed her books when growing up. They were familiar with Edmund in his capacity as a doctor, of course, and fussed over him whenever he visited, bringing him tea and shortbread.
It was all a far cry from her many dealings with the hospital in the past. For years she had helped with much-needed fund raising and every Christmas she would attend the children’s parties to give out free copies of her books. For the children too sick to get out of bed, she would go to them with a book and a pat on the head. What she never told anyone, not even Edmund, was that immediately afterwards she would have to wash her hands thoroughly, then rush home to change out of her clothes. She had a horror of germs, of catching something from a sick child which would prevent her from working.
Edmund had read out a letter from her agent, as well as several cards from her various publishers. They all wished her well. Flowers had been sent, too. She hadn’t been able to see them, but their cloying perfume had been too much. It was a relief when they died and were removed from her room.
Thinking of her agent and her publishers, she supposed they were already totting up the loss of future sales from her. The golden goose that stopped laying. Was somebody also writing her obituary?
She remembered reading her father’s obituary in The Times and the Telegraph. It had made impressive reading, but hardly reflected the man she had known. Would that be true of her? Probably. After all, the face she showed to the world as the renowned children’s author was not the real Hope.
Lying here she’d had a lot of time to reflect on her life. It wasn’t her achievements she dwelt on, but her failings. She had failed as a wife and as a mother to Annelise.
Annelise visited her every day. Sometimes she barely spoke; she just sat very still and held Hope’s hand. The silence was oddly comforting. It was a rare moment of calm when Hope didn’t have to listen, or think of something else to block out the flow of banal chatter.
Once more she heard the sound of the trolley with the squeaking wheel passing the door to her room. This time it was accompanied by the laughter of a couple of nurses.
She suddenly thought of something. Kit knew about the first letter she had received! She had told him about it the night of the party at Meadow Lodge. How had she forgotten that? Romily and Evelyn believed Hope had received only the one letter, but she’d had two. But then what did it matter how many letters she had been sent? Or that she’d told Kit and sworn him to secrecy?
Just as her head began to ache with the effort of trying to make sense of it all, she heard the door open followed by the sound of someone coming into the room. Listening hard, she could make out the noise of a coat being taken off. At the same time the distinctive sharp smell of a cold winter’s day mixed with a slightly sulphurous odour permeated the sterile air of the room. The same smell had met her nostrils when Romily and Evelyn arrived.
‘Hello Mums, it’s me, Annelise.’
In her head, and listening to Annelise make herself comfortable in the chair to her right, she said hello back to her. In her head she also began to say how sorry she was for her every act of neglect and disapproval. For working when she should have been—
Mid thought, she stopped listing all the things for which she needed to apologise, and concentrated on what Annelise was saying. But she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Not from Annelise. No!
Chapter Fifty-Three
Melstead Hall, Melstead St Mary
December 1962
Julia
‘Going out, Mrs Devereux?’
Julia nearly jumped out of her skin. She felt her cheeks flush and a quake of fear gripped at her insides. ‘Yes, Miss Casey,’ she said with as much authority as she could summon.
‘Are you sure that’s wise, madam?’
Grasping the handles of her handbag while standing in the large hallway, a couple of yards from the front door, Julia said, ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m surprised to see you up and dressed, madam, that’s all, let alone venturing out into the fog. It might not be good for you, given how unwell you’ve been of late. And you know how Mr Devereux worries about you.’
The quaking to Julia’s insides intensified. But she was determined to go out. ‘With Christmas around the corner,’ she said, trying to stick to the script she had written for herself, ‘I want to buy some Christmas cards.’
‘But the car, madam. It’s in London with Mr Devereux.’
‘I’m quite capable of walking. It will do me good. Is that all, Miss Casey?’ She forced a note of dismissal to her tone and the other woman, her face perpetually inscrutable, blinked, then looked steadily back at her with her cold blue eyes. Never before had Julia challenged her and she could see that it had taken the housekeeper off guard. Doubtless there would be consequences. Toe the line or face the consequences. That was another instruction from her father’s rule book.
Shutting the front door after her, she set off down the driveway in the damp cold at a brisk pace. Not once did she turn around and look back.
The fog had finally begun to lift. When Julia had opened the curtains in her bedroom this morning and seen that for the first time in days the end of the driveway was clearly visible, she had made up her min
d that she would dress and walk into the village. And nothing would stop her.
Until this morning, she could not have contemplated the journey. She blamed the tonic and the sleeping pills the doctor from London had prescribed her. ‘He’s the best in Harley Street,’ Arthur had said when she had rung him one evening to say she needed him to come home, that she was sick with worry.
‘For goodness sake, whatever are you babbling on about?’ he’d demanded.
‘It’s Hope. Surely you’ve read about her in the newspapers. She’s still in a coma. Arthur, we have to say something’
‘And what do you suggest we say?’
‘The truth! I can’t go on like this. I can’t sleep and I can’t eat. My nerves are shot to pieces. What if she dies?’
‘For God’s sake, pull yourself together, Julia! You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re overwrought and making yourself ill.’
‘But the car, Arthur.’
‘What about the car?’
‘It must have been damaged in the accident. What if—’
‘Now listen to me very carefully. What little damage the deer made, the car has been repaired while I’ve been here in London. And do I have to remind you that if you say anything contrary to the fact that I hit a deer, you know what will happen, don’t you? Prison. Not for me, but for you. Is that what you want? Is it what you want for Charles?’
She had been crying by this stage of the conversation and only stopped when Arthur’s tone became more conciliatory. ‘Come on old thing,’ he said soothingly. ‘Don’t cry, that won’t help anyone. Now I want you to promise me something. I want you to see this excellent nerve doctor I know. I’ll send him up to you and he’ll give you a thorough once over. But you must promise you’ll take what he prescribes you. Will you do that for me?’