Read an Excerpt
PROLOGUE
August 1917
I have killed her. I saw her standing in the doorway, asking me what I was doing there. Me! She was always a mistake, from the very beginning. I only meant to strike her so that she could understand what she’d done but then I felt a blackness come over me. I don’t think I even thought. When I looked down, she was dead. It was done. I beg your forgiveness. I know I must turn myself in, but it is possible I will not survive the next battle. That would be best, I know. Remember me as I was.
The letter fluttered to the floor face up. He looked at it uncomprehendingly, an alien presence. He could still see the words written on it, and he closed his eyes. He moved his fingers convulsively as if trying understand why they stopped working, were unable to hold even a slim piece of paper.
CHAPTER ONE
May 5, 1948
Even from a deep dream of ringing, Lane knew the call to be for them. Two longs and a short. Pitying the two other households on her party line who had to wake up only to find the call was not for them, she dragged herself out of sleep and looked toward the slightly open window. The chill night air was seeping in, and she saw that it was still dark. What time was it? She cast an accusatory glance at Darling, apparently in the grip of a deep and undisturbed sleep. Who would call at this time of night but someone alerting him to an emergency? Two longs and a short, repeated the phone in the hall.
She threw the blankets off, not bothering with her dressing gown—she would shortly be waking her husband to deal with whatever it was—and went into the hall to pull the earpiece off the hook of her ancient phone.
“KC 431, Lane Winslow speaking.”
“You have a long-distance call. Please hold.”
Shivering and puzzled, she leaned against the wall, looking toward the bedroom where Darling’s bedside lamp had suddenly come on. The floor was freezing. Long distance wouldn’t be for him. Feeling some regret at having lost an opportunity to make him get up in the cold, she waited.
“Go ahead please, Scotland,” said an operator, who, for all Lane knew, was somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.
“Laneke? Is that you? It’s Grandmama.”
Lane felt a surge of worry. What time would it be over there? Why would she be going to the expense of calling? “Grandmama, hello. Yes, it’s me.”
“Did I wake you? I’m so bad at the times.”
“You can wake me any time. It’s almost morning. Is everything all right? How is Ganf?”
“Well, that is the thing, my angel. He’s fine now, but he’s had a little heart attack. They have him in the tiny hospital in the town for a few days. Dr. Mwangi has him well in hand. I didn’t want to worry you, but I thought you should know.”
Lane ignored her grandmother’s wishes altogether. She was worried. “Oh, you should have called! We could have fretted together. When will he be able to go home?”
“The doctor says he can come home on Friday. You really mustn’t worry. I can hear it in your voice. He’ll just have to be a little careful now. Take his pills, not dig in the garden, stop shouting at the wireless, that’s all. I think I’m calling you for moral support, really. He’s going to be a beastly patient and will not do anything he’s told. You know what he’s like.”
“Poor Grandmama! I expect you’re right.” Lane felt her anxiety subsiding a little. Surely plenty of old people lived with dodgy hearts. “But do you have anyone to help you? You can’t manage an obstreperous man like that completely on your own.”
“I’ve got Fiona. She’s a big strapping girl, and she worked in a field hospital. He’ll be no match for her. And…” she hesitated. “Diana is here.”
Frowning at this hesitation, Lane said, “Diana?” Her sister was in South Africa. But, no, after almost ten years she had suddenly turned up in Scotland, apparently. “I had no idea. Will she be staying long?”
“She’s planning to stay at least a couple of months. I hope she won’t be too bored. I’m afraid we haven’t much to entertain her. She’s gone off to Aberdeen to visit friends. She didn’t write to tell you?”
Having no idea anymore what would entertain her sister—but thinking ungenerously that giving a lot of trouble to everyone would be most amusing to her—Lane said, “Not a word, I’m afraid. Listen, Grandmama, hang up and I will call you back. You mustn’t go to this expense. Then you can tell me everything.”
Before she placed the call, Lane went back into the bedroom and got her dressing gown under the puzzled gaze of Darling, who was now fully awake. He was half sitting with his hands folded on the outside of the covers. The clock next to the bed said 4:12.
“What’s happened?”
“It’s Grandmama. Ganf has had some sort of heart attack, but he’s going to be all right, she says. More mysterious is that Diana is there, after all these years, only she’s not, of course. She’s no sooner arrived than she’s gone haring off to visit friends. It sounds like a long story. I told her I would call her back, so I’m suiting up to do that. You can go back to sleep.” “You’re going to call at this time of day?” He glanced at the clock.
“It’s lunchtime in Scotland,” Lane pointed out.
Darling took up his bedside book. “I will stay here, alert and potentially helpful. If you faint from dismay, or there is any other sort of emergency, I will be right on hand.”
Lane smiled and leaned over to kiss him. “You are a love. I wouldn’t dream of being such a nuisance.”
“It would be the first time, then,” he called after her as she went back to the hall.
Wishing she’d made herself a cup of tea, Lane waited in the hallway for the call to be put through. Finally, there was her grandmother’s voice, made slightly hollow and tinny by whatever mechanism made an international call possible.
“Laneke?”
“All right. Now tell me everything. Diana is there, you said. When did she arrive?”
“Yes. Well, I mean she was here. She came a week or so ago, just when your grandfather was taking a turn for the worse. I think she just wanted to stay out of the way, poor dear.”
Lane was surprised. She may hold jaundiced views about her sister, but she, like Lane, doted on their grandparents. It surprised her that her sister would dash off to visit friends when Ganf was sick. “How long will she be away? She could be helpful when he is out of hospital. You sound a bit worried.”
“No, no. I mean, not much. It was such a surprise to suddenly see her. She didn’t even wire us that she was coming.”
“I wonder if she is all right. How did she seem?”
“Oh, you know Diana. Always cheerful and energetic. I almost wonder if all that activity in the house didn’t make things worse for Ganf. Perhaps that’s not fair. He started showing signs of a dicky heart a couple of years ago. Anyway. She is much like her old self. A little older, of course, and perhaps a bit too thin. I’m not surprised she went off to see friends. This place must seem like a morgue to a young girl like her.”
Lane considered. She had not seen her sister since before the war, when she went off to South Africa, but she had certainly been someone who liked to be the life of the party. Nursing an invalid, even a beloved grandfather, might not be her cup of tea.
“Now listen, Grandmama, you have enough to worry about with Ganf coming home. Is there anything you need?”
“No, darling girl. Dr. Mwangi has given us a complete list of instructions, including what he must eat. Broth, lean meat, plenty of vegetables and no drink, no sweets, not that there’s much else on offer with rationing. And he has to go for sedate walks. He’s not going to like it much, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t let him bully you!”
Her grandmother laughed. “The worst of it is that I suppose I will have to go on his eating regimen as well, for solidarity. But what about you, my darling. How is your fetching husband?”
“Very fetching. He sends his love. Listen, go get Fiona to make you a slap-up lunch with everything you won’t be able to have when Ganf is home. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything from your sister.”
When she’d rung off, Lane snuggled next to Darling to recoup the warmth she’d lost standing in the hall.
“So?” he asked.
“My poor grandpapa is doomed to a life of roots and berries. He’ll have to be careful. Grandmama feels she has to join him in his suffering. She sounds worried and I think, though she didn’t say so, it is the mysterious behaviour of my sister that is troubling her. I must say, I find it puzzling too. Why has she suddenly turned up there after all these years? She is supposed to be staying a couple of months, and the first thing she’s done is scarper off to visit friends in Aberdeen.”
“Is any of it something that needs to be resolved just this minute?” He pulled the chain on his lamp and then brought her close to him. “Take some deep breaths and let’s go back to sleep till it’s respectably light outside. No, not the feet, I beg you!”
