‘Mrs Denver said you were coming to stay at the main house. I packed up your belongings and put them in the Green Room in the west wing.’
‘So it was you,’ she laughed, with a sense of relief.
‘What did you think had happened?’ the older woman asked with surprise.
‘Nothing, nothing,’ she said with a wave of the hand. ‘Actually, there’s been a change of plan. My friend has come to stay with me, so I think it’s best if I stay in the Lake House until he goes.’
‘I’ll get Mr Bills to bring your belongings back down, then.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it. Where is Diana?’
‘She’s just landed at Heathrow, so she’s due back in the next couple of hours. Your mother went to pick her up. Your friend, will he want something to eat?’
‘That would be lovely,’ she said, remembering that they had both slept through breakfast on the plane.
Rachel ascended the stairs to the Green Room, a beautiful space on the top floor. It had a four-poster bed, soft jade-green silk wallpaper and a vase of fresh flowers on the windowsill. The sight of her old canvas duffle bag on the velvet chaise longue made her laugh – it was like a crude interloper in an oasis of luxury. If someone had broken into the Lake House, they would have found slim pickings indeed, she thought, looking at her old biker boots and a wash bag that had seen better days.
Rubbing her eyes, she realised how tired she was. Jamaica had been a dead end, and Liam’s seven-day deadline to return to Ko Tao was certainly tempting, especially on a day as grey and miserable as today. Her bare forearms had become flecked with goose pimples. Somerfold must be an unwieldy place to heat even with the Denvers’ extravagant budget, she reflected.
Her thoughts turned to the Lake House, with its four exterior walls constructed largely of glass. When it was hot, it was as toasty as a greenhouse but she could only imagine how cold it would be when the weather dipped. In fact, that evening, it was going to be freezing. It would be the perfect excuse to cuddle up in bed with Liam, but she supposed he would welcome that cold-weather survival tactic like a hole in the head.
When Diana had first shown her around the house, she had pointed out a storage room on this floor. ‘It’s where we chuck all the winter stuff,’ she had said at the time. Deciding that it would be a good idea to take some blankets to the Lake House, she went to find it.
Rachel’s storage place in her Ko Tao apartment was a broom cupboard overspilling with rucksacks, flippers and boxes of nostalgia but this place was more like Selfridges. She could see shiny leather boots, furry moon boots and smart skis stored in a rack. There were coats, parkas, boxes of mittens and expensive candles, hotel slippers unused in their cellophane and a tall pile of cashmere blankets. There were Vuitton trunks and leather suitcases. On the top shelf was a row of handbags clearly not in current rotation, but Rachel was fashion-savvy enough to recognise one as a Birkin, another an expensive Goyard.
A large jewellery box contained brooches, bangles and earrings – obviously not Diana’s expensive baubles; in fact this place was clearly some sort of relegation zone, a halfway house between her proper dressing room and the nearest charity shop. Rachel picked up a silk embroidered wrap and put it round her shoulders. This was her sister’s life, a life she admitted she knew very little about these days. They had been so close as teenagers, but now every item of Diana’s belongings was alien to her.
She knew she should not be rifling through her sister’s stuff; she had come here for blankets, that was all. But it was impossible not to. Rachel had never been very materialistic, but this was still a treasure trove, a pirate chest of shiny possessions that she had never had or would have the chance to own, and she couldn’t help but think that if her sister didn’t want these delicious things, then maybe she could have some of them.
A cream vanity case caught her eye. She pulled it off the shelf and flipped it open. It was crammed with sunglasses, combs, eye masks and all sorts of pointless paraphernalia. As her hand ploughed through the stuff, she felt something hard. She tugged hard and retrieved a purple hardback book, knowing before she had a chance to flip it open what it might be.
Diana had been an enthusiastic diary keeper as a child and teenager, recording her thoughts and feelings almost obsessively in those flowery notebooks. Rachel had read them a few times – it had started when she had wanted to know the truth about her sister and the fifth-form heartthrob Paul Jones, but had become a bit of an addiction, like slipping into another world that was both familiar and more exotic than her own.
Feeling a surge of anticipation and guilt, she sat down on the bed and opened the book.
6 January. Still feeling woozy from the painkillers, but feeling worse inside. It’s been three weeks, but my brain can’t seem to grasp what’s happened. How could I lose my baby? Why me? After everything that has happened? Don’t I deserve some luck? A chance? The nurse told me it was nature’s way; that there might have been something wrong and this child – she was being nice, trying to get me to see it as a positive – could have been handicapped or worse, but it doesn’t feel like that. I don’t feel lucky. I feel cursed. The doctors can take away my baby, but why can’t they take away the pain? Julian came in late again yesterday. I don’t know how he can carry on working as if nothing has happened. He reached across the bed to me, but I pretended to be asleep. I don’t want him touching me right now – not his fault, I know, but it’s how I feel.
Rachel felt cold. She didn’t want to be this person, reading her sister’s diary, intruding on her most intimate thoughts. Diaries weren’t meant to be read, not really. They were a way for the author to sort out the day’s events, to make sense of the thoughts in their head, unburdening themself to an imaginary friend or a better self, perhaps.
But then something might be relevant here, she told herself. She had spent two whole days going through Julian’s possessions, but she had not yet been through Diana’s. It hadn’t occurred to her that it might be useful. Now she leafed through the book, skimming the pages, looking for anything that might be important.
28 January. Walked to the far edge of the wood and back, killed two hours. Omelette for lunch, trying to diet: again! Didn’t even have Mrs Bills for company tonight, so watched TV in bed. I miss being pregnant. I miss the baby’s kicks in my belly.
Then, later:
12 March. Jules staying at the NH house again, so alone once more. Took a bath, then had a salad in the kitchen. Went for a ride – Clarissa was skittish. Tried to pick up the knitting as Ruth recommended, but I’m all fingers and thumbs. Besides, knitting reminds me of baby things. Blankets and booties. Things I don’t want to think about. Chances of getting pregnant again near zero as my husband feels the need to keep out of my sight.
There were pages of it. Mostly it was a list of each day’s events, which were revealing only in their repetitiveness. Rachel had always assumed that her sister’s life was exciting, glamorous, but there was page after page of emptiness and dissatisfaction with life, with her husband.
14 May. T
hird night Julian has spent in London. He says that work is busy but I’m not so sure. Anne-Marie definitely sounds embarrassed when I speak to her. Am I being paranoid, or does she know something that I don’t? I keep asking myself if it’s happening again. Those whores, those slags who think it is okay to sleep with another woman’s husband. I can’t go through that humiliation a second time. I don’t want to start hating him again, but sometimes I can’t help it.
Rachel frowned. Diana’s anger shivered off the page. Whores? Slags? This was astonishing. Firstly because she had never known her sister to use such language, and also because Diana had painted a picture of Julian being such a supportive husband in the aftermath of her miscarriages.
16 May. Julian finally home. We tried to have sex. I think he was drunk. I needed to know if he still wanted me. But it hurt so we stopped. I don’t feel like a wife, a lover, a mother. I feel a failure. I hate it. I hate this. I hate him. Sometimes I wish that he would go to London and just stay there.
And then the entries stopped. It would have been a week before Julian’s death. Rachel closed the diary and let out a long breath. ‘Shit,’ she whispered, her hands trembling as she put the book back in the vanity case.