Summer in Mayfair

‘Thoughtful and dark’

THE TIMES MAGAZINE

‘Captivating’

WOMAN & HOME

‘Beautifully written … with a dramatic, thrilling conclusion’

HELLO!

‘Fans of Downton Abbey will love this’

DAVINA McCALL

‘A tenderly absorbing tale, shades of Dodie Smith’

YOU MAGAZINE

‘A modern-day Nancy Mitford’

SIR ELTON JOHN

‘Brimming with secrets, scandal, shame’

THE SUN

‘This touching, atmospheric story … has echoes of I Capture the Castle about it’

THE SCOTTISH DAILY MAIL

‘Frank and thrilling’

S MAGAZINE

SUSANNAH CONSTANTINE is a television presenter and journalist. She lives in West Sussex with her husband and three children. She has co-written nine non-fiction books with Trinny Woodall. Summer in Mayfair is her second novel.

Also by Susannah Constantine:

After the Snow

Summer in Mayfair

Susannah Constantine

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Susannah Constantine 2020

Susannah Constantine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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, downloaded, 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.

Ebook Edition © June 2020 ISBN: 9780008219703

Version 2020-06-06

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 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008219727

For Prue and Peder

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

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

Extract

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

Chapter One

June 1979

Culcairn station was tiny, barely the length of a carriage. The platform was deserted and a light veil of summer drizzle fell, cobweb-fine yet saturating. The mist of tiny droplets crept into the creases of her collar and settled everywhere. Esme Munroe felt her skin was weeping. It ought to be. She was going. Her parents and sister had already gone so she had been left no option but to do the same and it broke her heart. She was leaving home and her beloved Mrs Bee for the next chapter in her life. London. A place teeming with strangers, lives and loves and languages she knew nothing about as yet. She told herself that boarding this train had to be about more than the sorrow that wreathed her family home. It had to be about her future and whatever lay ahead, a voyage of discovery of the city and herself.

In the end, the decision to go to London had been a quick one. Esme knew that once she had accepted she must leave The Lodge – her childhood home, where all her yesteryears were buried deep – it had to be a swift uprooting. The move had filled her past with a rose-tinted glow, nostalgia papering over any bad memories and turning the years gone by into a safe but unreachable land, while her future seemed hazy and unknowable from up here in the Highlands.

As she’d shut her bedroom door that morning, she’d known she was leaving something of herself behind, ready for her to find again when she returned. She reasoned that everybody had to leave home at some point and when she came back she would see The Lodge with fresh eyes and love it again for new reasons. But it was time for her to go. Time to change and time to leave.

Leave. She rolled the word around her tongue for a bit. A beautiful and definite word; strong and forceful, the way she had always wanted to be.

The process of packing had been simple for her and frustrating for Mrs Bee. The woman who had devoted her life to the Munroe family as beloved housekeeper wouldn’t let her youngest charge leave home without enough luggage to last a lifetime. There were two suitcases on her bed. One with the bare necessities and the other piled high with the entire contents of an airing cupboard and a supermarket aisle’s worth of toiletries and cleaning supplies.

‘You’ll need sheets and a hot-water bottle, at least. Things to make you feel at home.’

Esme had told Mrs Bee not to worry about her as she packed her bag of basic belongings. The housekeeper kept trying to add more things. But Esme insisted that the less she took the easier it would be to move around.

‘Don’t be so dramatic, love. You’re not going to be sleeping on the streets.’

Indeed, Esme had her sister Sophia’s godfather to thank for that. Bill Cartwright had come to her rescue. Having no qualifications in anything that might lead directly to a job, Esme had slowly realized it was assumed that she would follow the example of her mother and marry well. When she left school, her father had patted her hand and humoured her when she expressed a desire to follow her passion and study art. But now Bill Cartwright had given her a chance, offering temporary lodging and a job in his London gallery. It had become a standing joke that she wanted a job, so she felt slightly vindicated that she had done her history of art course and now deserved her position at the gallery. She was to be that lowest rung of the art-world ladder: a receptionist sitting prettily front-of-house filing her nails in between making tea and coffee. No matter. Perfectly shaped nails would pay just enough for her to survive on for a while, especially since the job came with the bedsit above the gallery. She had allowed her father to pay for her train ticket but refused his offer of a weekly allowance. It would have been too easy to rely on family funds, and if she was going to become independent she would have to be frugal and spend her salary wisely. And anyway, the money her parents had gained from selling their London residence had now been mostly eaten up by overdue bill payments, or her father’s addiction to antiques meant it was hanging on walls or lying unworn in her mother’s jewellery box. But there was no need to worry about money until she had to move out of the gallery and pay proper rent, and that wouldn’t be for a few weeks. Instead, her first priority was to find and make friends, to live the real London life and frequent the niteries she hadn’t read about in social columns, while spending her salary on essentials. She didn’t want so much to become a better person but a cooler, more independent one. Someone who had the courage of her convictions, once she had discovered what those were.

‘Don’t worry, love. Everything will be here when you get back. Just the same. It will be you who will have changed,’ Mrs Bee had said as they drove to the station.

Esme opened the carriage door now. Mrs Bee was right. The Tuesday sleeper was almost empty. Just a few scattered passengers inhabited the berths in second class. The housekeeper helped Esme board with her small bag and one extremely large wooden crate.

‘Och. Where on earth are we to put this thing?’

The cubicle was a womb of tartan and plastic wood panelling, and contained everything a passenger required for an overnight stay. Leather straps ran from the top bunk base to the ceiling so it could be flipped up for day travel when it became a regular compartment for first-class customers. The beds had been turned down and gifted with a packet of shortbread. It was compact to the point of being claustrophobic, especially with a socking great wooden packing case crammed in.

‘You’re the one who insisted I bring it, Mrs Bee.’

Esme was still reeling from the death of the Earl of Culcairn, and the fact that he had left her a painting in his will. The Earl and his family lived at the castle – and as neighbours to the Munroes at The Lodge, it was natural the families became friends. But the Earl and her mother, Diana, had become much more than friends. News of their affair had been discovered when Esme was too young to understand what infidelity was. Her father had yelled for a couple of hours and then like anything that would crack the façade of respectability, it was swept under the carpet and never spoken of again. And now the Earl was gone, and her mother might as well as have been too, her body nearly as fragile as her spirit.

Esme’s eyes felt heavy with unshed tears but she’d walked out the door without putting a handkerchief in her pocket again. The letters the Earl had written to her at boarding school and his words of advice and encouragement still resonated today: ‘Fear is just a feeling and when it comes, ask for more.’ It took her many years to understand that. ‘Hate is a weakness that can be used against you’ and the most pertinent, ‘never believe you are better than anyone else’. When her mother was ill, with her father holding vigil, it was the Earl who had come to cheer her on at sports day. He who taken her for Welsh rarebit at the local tearoom to celebrate her winning the swimming cup.

She hadn’t wanted to expose the painting, let alone bring it with her. She felt that once the packing crate had been opened, her last physical contact with the Earl would be gone, the final essence of him escaping the container for good. Now he was dead, his wife, the Contessa, had made it very clear that she was no longer welcome at Culcairn Castle. Her loathing of Esme went beyond being simply the daughter of the woman her husband had loved illicitly. It was a cancerous hatred that mutated towards anyone who was fond of Esme, including the Contessa’s own children. Growing up, their friendship had been intense but the secrets and lies had pulled them apart over the years.

Esme ended her reverie, aware that Mrs Bee had offered a response.

‘Well, you don’t want your father getting his hands on it. It could be worth a wee fortune.’

Esme knew Mrs Bee meant this kindly but art was her father’s drug of choice and he wouldn’t think twice about commandeering it as his own.

‘Or not. I can’t imagine the Bitch would let something valuable slip through her bony hands. Especially if she knew that the Earl was leaving it to me.’

Esme knew Mrs Bee wouldn’t react to her name-calling of the Earl’s wife. The housekeeper had tried to temper her resentment of the woman but it was a waste of time and quite frankly, given half a chance, Esme would call her something far, far worse.

‘I guess we can shove it on the bottom bunk and pray no one gets on at Edinburgh,’ suggested Esme.

The two women lifted the crate and pushed it back against the compartment wall but the overhang jutted out leaving barely enough room to squeeze by. Unfortunately, it was Mrs Bee who got hemmed in.

‘I’m stuck!’ she laughed. ‘Looks like I’m coming to London with you. We’re going to have to try again, darling.’

Esme took the window side this time and they repeated the manoeuvre.

‘Ah, look at you, you wee thing. Slim as cotton thread. It’s been a few years since I could have wheedled through that gap.’

Esme used to hate being as skinny as she was. She loathed her stick-thin legs to the point of padding them out with two pairs of thick tights under her jeans. Since leaving school, her pins had garnered enough compliments for her to believe they were good enough to show off without the extra layers.

‘Right, love, I’d better skedaddle or I really will be coming with you and you don’t want your old Mrs Bee cramping your style.’

The whistle blew – a staccato accompaniment to Mrs Bee’s soft-shoe shuffle along the narrow corridor. Standing on tiptoes she reached up from the platform and gave Esme a hug.

‘I love you, darling. Look after yourself and be careful. There are all kinds of strange folk in London.’

This was exactly what Esme hoped but she said, laughing, ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Bee, it’s not like I’m heading off to war or exploring sub-Sahara.’

Esme had lived in the capital until she was four years old when her parents relocated to Scotland. They had kept the South Kensington house she was born in and continued to use it on a regular basis for some years. School holidays had kicked off with a few days in the city before journeying back up to the Highlands until their crumbling finances had forced them to sell. Esme’s knowledge of London was hazy, thinking back to those childhood years, but she knew how the buses and Tube worked. She’d find her way, she was sure.

As the train heaved out of Culcairn station, Mrs Bee stood alone and silhouetted against the platform lamp like some Eastern bloc infiltrator. Esme pushed away the lump of sadness rising in her throat, as she continued to wave until the old lady melted into the darkness. She would miss the one person who had been a constant source of love. Her dear Mrs Bee. Time for her to put her feet up but Esme worried that she would be lonely now both her parents had vacated The Lodge and her sister Sophia was living in New York.

Esme closed the window and she leant against the berth wall eyeing the painting in its crate. She tried to visualize the Earl adding her name to his last will and testament and sticking on the label with her name written in his hand. Part of her wanted the picture with her more than anything else in the world; it represented all the truths he had taught that she considered valuable and professed he really cared about her. It was a piece of him. A talisman for a safe passage. The rest of her screamed to throw it onto the tracks, be rid of anything from her past that could reach out to hold her back.

She climbed up onto her bunk without bothering to change into her nightclothes and listened to the wheels on the track. The noise was deep and secure. Metal grinding on metal in perpetual, rhythmic motion. The train was in no rush to reach its destination given its twelve-hour journey. But sleep was miles away, back in her bedroom at The Lodge. A combination of excited anticipation and abject fear churned in her stomach confusing pangs of hunger for nausea, the kind she felt before riding a new horse. Mrs Bee’s chiding tapped at her brain. ‘I’ve made you a wee picnic. You must eat. Keep your strength up. You don’t want to start this new life of yours on an empty stomach.’

Esme rifled through her bag to find her supper. When she looked at the contents of the Tupperware box – the kind Mrs Bee stacked and hoarded – she was touched by how some things never changed. Marmite sandwiches, crusts off, quartered apple, Wagon Wheel and a packet of roast chicken flavoured crisps all wrapped in grease-proof paper. Exactly the same as the packed lunches Mrs Bee made for her as a child.

She remembered an occasion when Mrs Bee had gone on holiday to Skegness. It was bad timing as her mother was just emerging from an extended period of depression and the beast of mania was awakening. Her ‘reward’, as her mother put it, was in some ways even more torturous than her depressive state, for those living under the same roof. Wildly erratic and unpredictable, she was at once an innocent child and all-knowing demon. Vicious in parts and helpless in others, Esme preferred the pitiable mute to the volatile moods of the upswing. She was easier to ignore. Riding up the crest towards full-blown delusion, her mother had made a packed lunch for her youngest daughter’s journey back to boarding school down south. Comprising an uncooked chicken thigh, a teabag in a thermos of cold water and baked beans still in their tin, Esme was too ashamed to show it on the school bus or ask the teacher for a sandwich and went hungry instead.

Esme felt her father had sentenced his wife to a colourless existence compared to the homeliness of The Lodge and grandeur of the castle. An affordable care home was never going to have the luxuries of The Savoy. But it did have the advantage of being close to The Lodge and Mrs Bee promised she would visit regularly: ‘Don’t you worry, love, she’ll be well taken care of and I’ll make sure she always has a wee slice of cake to nibble on.’

It had been left to Mrs Bee and Esme to drop her off. The nurses had been kind and the place was pristine but the accommodation was basic, to say the least. A bare room with wood-chip walls and a pine furniture. It had an en-suite shower room with a red emergency cord.

Esme and Mrs Bee had done their best to cheer the place up by hanging some of her father’s paintings and replacing the plywood furniture with antique pieces from home. Mrs Bee had made up her bed in linen sheets and goose-down pillows. Nothing was too small and easy to steal and once they had finished the mini makeover, her mother’s room was quite cosy. Not that Diana noticed. Most of the time she was too sedated to even recognize Mrs Bee.

Esme was sure her soul had already flown with the Earl’s and that they were finally united in heaven. Looking back, Esme realized that her mother’s heart, the only piece that had remained unaffected by her depression, had broken that horrible Christmas of 1969. Esme remembered overhearing her mother pleading with the Earl not to leave her, when they thought they were hidden from view in one of the many rooms at Culcairn Castle. Just like that, her mother disappeared into herself never to return. Esme never again felt her unconditional love and the abrupt shock of emotional abandonment had wreaked havoc on Esme over the years. She still had morning terrors but had come to accept them as a kind of haunting that would pass as soon as she got out of bed. Now that she was older, she was grateful to the Earl for giving her mother some happiness and the kind of love her father had never shown her, beyond an obsessive admiration of her beauty.

She could have blamed the Earl and her mother for so much – not least the emotional bullying inflicted on her by the Contessa, when she had had to stay at Culcairn Castle. Maybe this was why the Earl had left her a painting. By way of apology. A guilty conscience placating itself before death. The Culcairns had three children, one boy, Rollo and two girls, Bella and Lexi, who was the same age as Esme and had been her best friend throughout her childhood. Often when her mother was sent away to a mental facility, sometimes for weeks at a time, Esme was sent to stay with Lexi. There she was a target for the Contessa’s bitterness, using Esme to vent her spleen. She did it subtly, bullying Esme with silence and instructing staff to ignore her, too. There was never a place laid for her at meals and the Contessa acted as if she was invisible during her incarceration at the castle. Frankly, she understood why the Earl had strayed from the Bitch, as Sophia referred to her. Who would want to be tied to a woman so filled with hatred and poison? But even when the Contessa had finally physically attacked Esme and the Earl promised his wife he was leaving her, he’d only got as far as moving out of their marital bed and into the adjoining dressing room. Esme wondered whether the Earl had been more afraid of his wife than he’d ever admitted.

Esme was woken by a knock on the compartment door and realized that she must have fallen asleep.

‘Rise and shine. We’re coming into Euston,’ said the guard cheerfully, through the opaque glass.

She looked at her watch: six thirty. The train hissed and spluttered to a halt and Esme tugged at the blind which snapped open to reveal a landscape of grey. Bin bags banked against metal girders and the weak rays from the rising sun trickled through the grubby roof of Euston station, illuminating the grime. It occurred to Esme that unlike rural dirt, which was a working layer of earth, suburban dirt was nothing to be respected. The farmers liked dirt whilst city dwellers got rid of it, or at least they did in residential areas. Here in a grand public gateway to the city decades of grease and soot coated the glass roof and clung to its beams. Sparrows and pigeons pecked at crumbs of bread and flies caught in abandoned spiders’ webs that wafted in high corners.

Gathering her belongings, Esme wondered how the hell she was going to get the crate off the train. She looked down the platform to see if there was a porter but aside from her few fellow passengers and early male commuters with big hair and sideburns, Euston station was quiet. She had readied herself for the onslaught of mass human bedlam, pushing and shoving to begin their day but the city still slept. A homeless man with a shopping trolley was checking pieces of litter strewn across the platform. He picked up a beer can and drained what was left, wiping his mouth with a dirty sleeve. Sensing Esme’s gaze, he turned to look at her and she blinked, turning away and embarrassed by her luck of the draw in life. Mrs Bee never let her forget that life was a lottery and, despite her mother’s mental health, she was fortunate in so many ways.

With no choice, she dragged and tugged the crate out of her compartment and pushed it onto the platform. It clattered to the ground causing the wood to split down one side. She felt her throat thicken signalling the onset of tears. Telling herself to get a grip, she grabbed an abandoned trolley and heaved the picture aboard, smiled at the homeless man and headed for the taxi rank.

Compared to the nostalgic romance of Culcairn station, Euston appeared vast and hostile; even more so given its lack of people at this time in the morning. She felt tiny and insignificant and clutched at the bar of the trolley as a couple of early commuters charged past. A wave of longing for The Lodge made her want to get back on the train and she dragged her feet as she forced her way forward through the cloying urban air, pretending to feel confident and grown up. The last thing she wanted was to be pitied.