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Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020
Copyright © Fern Britton 2020
Jacket Photographs: © Ildiko Neer/Trevillion Images (woman) and Shutterstock.com (all other images)
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Fern Britton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008225254
Ebook Edition © June 2020 ISBN: 9780008225261
Version: 2020-05-04
Epigraph
Here’s tae us. Wha’s like us? Damn few, an’ they’re a’ deid.
A toast adopted by Scottish regiments everywhere, and drunk to the memory of the First Battalion The Scottish Regiment, who in late 1914 prepared peacefully for summer camp, and yet who by 1918 were mostly dead.
In memory of my great-uncle, Second Lieutenant Herbert Edward Hawkins of First/ Fourteenth Battalion of the (London Scottish) London Regiment, 1887–1917.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One
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
Part Two
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Part Three
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
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Keep reading …
About the Author
Also by Fern Britton
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
Caroline, Callyzion, Cornwall
Present day
It is said that the failings of a family bloodline repeat themselves through the generations until eventually someone, possibly centuries later, breaks the mould. Whether they break that mould with a newly acquired error of personality, or by bringing in a fresh bloodline with its own chaotic genetic make-up, it’s hard to tell.
Whatever, I am certain your family will be no different to mine; a long line of women who have toughened themselves on the anvil of life. All with broken marriages, broken hearts and long-held secrets.
The story I am about to tell you is the one I have observed from my birth. Tales I have picked up, as any child does, sitting quietly and forgotten, eavesdropping as the adults reveal their shocking truths.
They dropped their pebbles in the pond and the ripples spread outward through their lives and into my own, where they lap still.
Everything I have, I have worked hard for.
Everything.
I bear no grudge.
I am not a materialistic woman. I am a widow living within my means watching my beautiful daughter take the leap from adolescence to adulthood, carving her own path. She will find a suitable boy, settle down and be a wonderful wife and mother. As I was.
As my mother almost was.
As her mother, Clara, certainly wasn’t.
Glamorous, strong and passionate, she lived her life by one rule. ‘To be a liar, you have to have a very good memory.’
And she should know.
I didn’t know any of this until very recently, and I must say it has rather disturbed my equilibrium. I like to think of myself as a woman who does not wear her emotions on her sleeve.
Losing my mother was dreadful, of course, as was my husband’s illness and death. I was proud of my outward stoicism; my resilience in the spotlight of grief.
That was until I overheard one of the church ladies talking about me behind my back. I heard them in the choir stalls discussing my ‘lack of emotion’, my ‘cold-bloodedness’, and then something I would prefer not to think about, it being so crude and unpleasant. All I will say is that their unkind laughter followed me for days afterwards.
I miss my husband dreadfully. His kindness. His affection. His success. He climbed the ladder of the corporate world and gave me the secure world I craved. Darling Tom.
He knew how hard my fatherless upbringing was and how hard I have striven to lead a normal life after the rackety one my mother brought me into.
All that has paled into insignificance now, for I have discovered another family skeleton. My mother was not the only one to have her secrets. To get pregnant out of wedlock.
Everything I thought I knew is a lie.
It arrived on my doorstep just a few days ago. A huge steamer trunk made in the days when people travelled the world by ship rather than hopped on an aircraft. The courier thrust his docket at me to sign. ‘This has travelled a long way to find you,’ he said, as if personally affronted. ‘All the way from Malaysia, via Singapore and Kent, by the looks of things. And it’s bloody heavy.’
‘Are you sure you have the right address?’
‘You are Caroline Bolitho?’
‘Yes. Well I was, that’s my maiden name.’
‘Then yes this is the right address. I went to the Vicarage just up the road in Callyzion first. But the woman there said the only Bolitho she knew was you and she gave me this address.’ He handed me a docket.
‘Sign and print please, and I hope you don’t find a body in there.’ He laughed until I gave him ‘The Look’, the one my husband and daughter feared.
I signed the piece of paper and opened the door wider for him to carry it into the hall for me.
‘Sorry, love. My job is to deliver to the door. That’s as far as I’m allowed to go. Cheers. Oh, hang on.’ He patted the top pocket of his shirt. ‘Here. You’ll need this. It’s the key.’ He handed me a small brown envelope and left me with the mysterious cargo.
By the time I had dragged the trunk into the lounge, I needed a cup of coffee to give me the energy to open the thing. To be honest I was more than a little wary of the contents. What could they be? Why had it been sent to me? Who had sent it to me?
I finished the last of the two digestive biscuits that I had allowed myself and rinsed my coffee cup, putting it on the drainer.
‘Come on, Caroline,’ I told myself. ‘The time has come.’
Back in the lounge, the trunk sat waiting. I circled it, reading the various labels. Most were aged and illegible but there was a name printed along the front edge. I went back to the kitchen and got a duster and an aerosol can of furniture polish.
The trunk was leather and, as I removed the grime, the natural hide began to shine. I made out the letters E.H.B. and an address for a rubber plantation on the island of Penang, Malaysia. I recognised the initials. Ernest Hugh Bolitho, my grandfather. My mother’s father. All I knew about him was that he had died in Penang, back in the Seventies, having never returned to his English family.
I kept on polishing until the entire bag emerged, old but gleaming. I had been through so much of late that the idea of opening up the past was both comforting and terrifying. I had kept my family tucked out of sight for years and only Tom knew the circumstances of my birth.
I often wonder if keeping my secret to myself actually pushed people away from me.
Tom was my first boyfriend. I couldn’t believe it when he spoke to me one Easter Sunday after Church. His parents were High Anglicans and kept the sort of decent, normal home that I had longed for as a child.
The trunk was almost clean now but I kept on polishing until there was nothing more to do.
The time had come to open it.
Chapter One
Clara, Kent to Callyzion, Cornwall
December 1918, one month after the First World War ended in Armistice
I came up from Kent last night.
Just me.
I knew, as soon as I got the letter from Bertie’s mother, that I had to go. I packed my bag and willed myself to stay strong. I kissed them both, Philippa and Mikey, and told them I would be back soon; then I left them, shutting the front door behind me, and walked away towards the station. I would not let them see my tears. My withered heart – now rigid against life’s blows – would make sure of that. And yet there was still a voice in my lungs screaming at me to turn around, go back, give up this fool’s mission. I faltered and almost turned, but the pull of seeing Bertie’s home and meeting the family that might have been mine was stronger.
In London I found a boarding house close to Paddington Station. ‘Just for the one night,’ I told the unsmiling landlady. In reply she pointed to the poster behind her. No noise after six, no gentlemen callers, breakfast at eight and money up front.
I handed over the payment she required and she showed me to my room. It was at the front of the house with a view of a terrace of white stuccoed houses. Really quite pretty.
I didn’t sleep well and was up early, fearful that I would miss my 7.35 a.m. train to Cornwall. Quietly I washed and dressed, creeping over the dingy rag rug which barely covered the splintered boards. Obligingly they did not squeak.
Downstairs, I let myself out into the dark morning. From the pavement, through the bow window, I glimpsed a dining room. Tables laid up for breakfast. I hadn’t eaten since leaving Kent yesterday, but I was not hungry.
I walked briskly to Paddington, in the cold morning air, my breath coming in cloudy trails. Paddington Station loomed ahead, lit up in the dark, a welcome glow for morning travellers like me.
Even with the sun not yet up, the station was busy. A steady stream of recently arrived commuters was heading towards the exits and the underground. Smart young working women, older men with bowler hats and velvet-collared coats, and young men in uniform, some on crutches, some with missing arms, and one with dark glasses and a white stick. I swallowed a hard lump that popped unexpectedly into my throat. My eyes darted over each of them. Could Bertie be among them? Maybe these men had seen him? Fought with him? Had news of him? Had watched him as he wrote his long and loving letters to me?
The blind soldier was greeted by an older woman, who touched his arm and said his name.
‘Mum?’
I had to turn away; the moment was private and I couldn’t watch.
‘Want help with your bag, miss?’ A porter tapped my shoulder, making me jump.
‘No. I’m fine, thank you.’ I held my bag close to my thigh and set off to find my platform.
This would be the longest train journey I had ever taken. Bertie and I had talked about it many times. The excitement of my meeting his parents and brother and sister.
‘We’ll take a picnic to the beach. There are sand dunes and rock pools full of little crabs and shrimps. Do you like to swim?’
‘I haven’t tried,’ I said.
‘I shall teach you,’ he said, wrapping his arms around me. ‘It’ll be cold. But I shall keep you warm.’
I had never known anyone as kind.
He kissed my hair. ‘My parents will love you.’
I was nervous now. I had found my platform and my train was waiting.
I almost turned around to go home, back to Kent and the two people I loved so dearly. A swirl of anxiety, panic, was building in my chest. Would I be found wanting by Bertie’s family? Or would they accept me immediately, as one of them? They might like me, but would I like them?
The train carriages had long corridors along one side and a set of small seated compartments down the other, each compartment housing six seats.
‘Excuse me.’ I stopped by a railway employee holding a whistle and a flag. ‘Could you point me to Carriage C, compartment two, please?’
The man kept his eyes on the passengers surging around his platform. ‘Next one down.’
‘Thank you.’ I found it easily. A piece of white paper, with C marked on it, was stuck to the open door of the carriage.
Stepping on board I turned left and found my compartment. It was empty. Thank goodness. I was not in the frame of mind for idle chatter with strangers.
I settled myself on the seat next to the window, forward facing, with my travelling bag on the seat beside me. Hoping that by spreading myself out like this I might deter fellow passengers.
I removed my gloves and coat and folded them on top of the bag next to me. I was building a rather nice defence. Once settled, I looked out of the window, watching the farewells. Kisses for the women. Handshakes for the men.
‘I’ll write to you and let you know how it’s all going.’
‘I’ll miss you.’
‘See you soon.’
‘I love you.’
I wondered what their stories were. So many people with smiles on their faces, hiding God knows what in their minds.
Pushing through them I saw an older man, on his own, quite short, with a tiny bristling moustache. He had a folded newspaper under his arm and was making heavy weather of lugging a suitcase down the concourse. I took an instant dislike to him. He had that look of arrogance and entitlement that so many men carried. He was obviously looking for his carriage and, through the window, he caught my eye. I shrank back in my seat.
He lifted his fist and banged his knuckles on the glass. ‘Is this Carriage C?’ he bellowed.
I looked down at my shoes as if I hadn’t heard.
He knocked louder. ‘Is this Carriage C?’ he shouted again, as if I were deaf.
I was forced to reply. ‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you say so?’ He shook his head and tutted, then bent to pick up his heavy case.
In seconds he was bumping in through the sliding door of my compartment.
‘Ah.’ He seemed to inhale and exhale all the air in the carriage simultaneously. ‘I do like an uncrowded carriage.’ He thumped his case on the floor.
I saw immediately that his mission was to spread himself even wider than I had.
He coughed and huffed, moving his case almost up against my own small bag, effectively hemming me in.
I looked firmly out of the window as all this was going on. At least he couldn’t sit next to me, and surely he wouldn’t sit in the seat directly opposite me? Without turning my head, I slid my eyes around to check what he was doing. He was dusting his bowler hat with his coat sleeve. I suspected it was done to attract my attention. To trick me into some sort of conversation. I stayed silent.
His hat went on the rack above the seats. His coat went next, removed and carefully folded. And finally, brushing some invisible lint from his jacket, he sat down. Exactly opposite me, just as I had hoped he would not, his knees mere inches from my own.
‘Ah.’ He made himself comfortable and opened his paper. ‘That’s better. Beautiful day for travelling, isn’t it?’
I did not reply. I did not wish to encourage any dialogue. I turned my eyes back to the window. What did he mean, it was a beautiful day for travelling? There was the station roof above us so you couldn’t tell if the sun was up yet, and on the platform there was still people’s breath on the chill air.
‘I shall open the window for us,’ he said. ‘Can’t stand being cooped up.’ He put his paper down and stood again. I moved my knees to one side. He pulled at the leather window strap and lowered the glass, letting it go with a thunk. He sat down. ‘That’s much better.’
The smell of burning coal and soot, shouts of porters loading baggage, not to mention an icy blast of December air, flooded the carriage.
I wondered if I should put my coat back on but that would only provoke more unwelcome words.
I could feel him looking at me. Inspecting me over his half-moon glasses. ‘You look as if you could do with some fresh air,’ he said, ‘if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘I’m perfectly fine, thank you.’
‘Going all the way, are you?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Penzance?’
‘No.’ I looked down at my lap. My velvet bag which held my ticket, purse, handkerchief, lipstick and cigarettes were in it. How I wished it had held a book or magazine too.
‘I am,’ he continued. ‘Going all the way to see my son. He’s just come back from France. Alive, thank God. Lost a couple of fingers. A miracle really. Hand grenade exploded on him. He made corporal. Like his grandfather in Crimea. Very proud of him. Do you know Penzance?’
I shook my head and again looked out of the window, praying that he would stop. My prayer went unanswered.
‘Terrible thing, this war. The war to end all wars is what they are telling us.’ He lifted his newspaper and waggled it at me. ‘So many young men gone. Heroes, the lot of them. Apart from the conchies of course.’ He sniffed loudly. ‘Cowards.’ He shook his head and tutted. ‘They’re all right, Jack. They never had to face the enemy, did they? No. And what’s happened? We have lost a generation. All those brave lads. The brightest and the best, all gone.’
My fingers tightened around my bag, rubbing the weft of the velvet. I’d heard all of this before. People spouting off about stuff of which they had no experience. Patting my hand. Telling me how proud of Bertie I must be. I had wanted to scream at all of them. Shout at them, ‘Of course I am proud of him, you fools.’
I felt the unbidden anger raging in me again and I gripped my hands into two bony fists, hoping to gain control over the violence within me.
The man kept going. ‘We won, though, and that’s the important thing.’
‘Please, don’t,’ I said loudly, surprising myself with the vehemence in my voice.
He stopped smiling and looked at me in astonishment.
‘What?’ he said. ‘Don’t talk about the war? I was only making conversation,’ he said. ‘Being civil. I told my wife, I blame the suffragettes. Young women have forgotten how to make pleasant conversation. All that driving ambulances and thinking they can do a man’s job …’ He stopped abruptly, a thought dawning on him. He nodded slowly, ‘Oh, I see. You’ve suffered a loss, haven’t you? Someone close? I can always tell. A lot of women have suffered. Many sweethearts left behind. I don’t suppose you’ll ever marry now. Not with all them young men gone. For ever. I feel sorry for you.’
He lit the fuse inside me and my bomb exploded. ‘How dare you. How dare you presume to talk to me in this way. You know nothing about me.’
‘All right, all right. Keep your hair on, dear. Grief, that’s what it is, love. Turned many a woman difficult, grief.’
‘Shut up. Just shut up and leave this carriage and close the damn window as you leave.’ My voice was rising in pitch and volume.
‘Crikey,’ he said, gathering his things, ‘looks like some poor bloke is better off dead than married to a fishwife like you. You’ll never get a bloke like that.’ He stood up to retrieve his hat and coat. ‘I shall find a more amiable travel companion, if that’s the way you are.’
Outside on the platform, the last door was slammed shut, a guard’s whistle blew and the train suddenly lurched forward. The man fell back almost into my lap. I pushed him off me and he fell forward onto an edge of his huge suitcase, dropping his paper as the wind was knocked from him. He scrabbled to his feet, rubbing his shoulder.
I picked up his newspaper and threw it at him. ‘I pity the poor woman who married you.’
Shaking his head at me, but keeping his lips firmly closed, he left the compartment.
Left in the peace of my carriage, I closed the window and then searched my little bag for my handkerchief, angrily wiping away hot tears as, with another jolt, the mighty train wheels, powered by coal and steam, began to pull away from the platform.
I cried tears of grief and anger on and off for a further hour or so, appalled that I should do this in a public space but glad that it deterred the few passengers still walking the train’s corridor from joining me.
And now, several long hours later, I was finally crossing Brunel’s great iron bridge, the Royal Albert, taking me over the river Tamar, from Devon into Cornwall.
Chapter Two
Clara, Callyzion
December 1918
I leant my head on the cold glass of the train window, drinking in the outside scenery. Bertie had described all this to me time and time again. He had insisted on reciting all the romantic names of the Cornish station stops.
‘As soon as you are over the bridge you come to Saltash. The Gateway to Cornwall.’
‘Why is it called Saltash?’ I had asked.
‘No idea. Then after Saltash it’s St Germans, Menheniot, Liskeard—’
I interrupted him. ‘I’ll never remember all those names. Just tell me where I need to get off?’
‘I’m getting to that, Miss Impatience.’ He inhaled comically and continued. ‘Saltash, St Germans, Menheniot, Liskeard and then Bodmin. I shall be waiting for you at Bodmin.’
‘Will you really?’ We had been lying in the tiny bed of our Ealing home. ‘I’m not sure I have had anyone wait for me anywhere before.’
‘What sort of blighter would I be if I didn’t pick up my beloved fiancée after she’s travelled all that way to see me?’
‘You’d be a very bad blighter indeed.’ I smiled.
He held me closer, dropping a kiss onto my head. ‘I can’t wait for you to meet my family. Father will adore you. Mother too, or though she may not show it at first, she’s always cautious of new people. But Amy and you will be great friends. She’s always wanted a sister. Brother Ernest can be a pompous ass but he’s not a bad egg.’
‘It’ll be wonderful to feel part of a family again.’
‘You are the bravest person I have ever met.’ He squeezed me tightly, his arms encircling me. ‘My stoic little squirrel.’
At this point, I am sorry to say I had already told a few lies to Bertie about my upbringing. Needs must sometimes. ‘My parents were wonderful,’ I fibbed, ‘and I miss them every day, but I feel they would be very happy for me now.’ Shameless, I know.