Forty

It was early: breakfast had yet to be served at the Pilgrim Hospital. Juliet was sitting up in bed. There was still a drip in her arm, pumping in antibiotics. It had been fitted as soon as she’d been admitted to hospital and although it had been swapped from arm to arm several times, it was beginning to feel unbearably sore. The area around the cannula was puffy and red. She dreaded each change of the shiny bag of clear liquid. The staff nurse had told her cheerfully that the antibiotics were very strong and that some people were sensitive to them, before wheedling Juliet into putting up with it for just one more day.

The burst of optimism that had buoyed Juliet through the second stage of her illness was beginning to fade. She wasn’t allowed to shower while the drip was in place and washing her hair was next to impossible. Her long, thick curls, always difficult to manage, had insinuated themselves into a hideous frizz, whilst the hair on the crown of her head was greasy and flat. She was beginning to feel dehumanised. Fiercely proud and always a little uncertain about her appearance, she could have wept when she looked in the mirror. She hoped that Tim wouldn’t visit her today. But it wasn’t just Tim that she minded seeing her looking like a freak: she knew that she’d be acutely embarrassed when Louise Butler came back on duty. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind. It, too, made her feel uncomfortable.

She changed her position, hoisting herself further up in the bed whilst trying not to move her pinioned arm, and with her free hand reached across to the bedside cabinet to pick up Florence Jacobs’ journal again. Katrin was right: there was something distinctly odd about the way in which it’d been written, almost as if it was a parody of a young woman’s thoughts. Slowly, she flipped through the journal, taking care not to damage its stiff pages. It was a bulky tome, and quite heavy: it wouldn’t have been practical for a woman who travelled much, though evidently it had accompanied Florence on her rare excursions to seaside resorts. Of course, it hadn’t been intended as a journal: originally it had been a guest book. That in itself was odd. Mrs Jacobs had showered gifts on Florence and ensured that her clothes and jewellery were fitting for her station as a gentleman farmer’s wife. Why, then, did she choose to palm her off with a second-hand guest book in which to write her journal? Did Florence like the guest book? If not, she certainly had the means to buy herself a proper journal.

“Breakfast!” shouted the cheerful ward orderly who pushed his clanking trolley round the wards each day.

Juliet wasn’t hungry, but she’d been told that if she didn’t eat the antibiotics would make her sick.

She managed a thin smile.

“What is there?” she asked.

“I got Krispies, cornflakes, muesli and toast.” He consulted a clipboard, to which he’d fastened a sheaf of menu slips. “You didn’t order hot, did you?”

“No. Is there any brown toast?”

“Sorry, just white. Want some?”

“I’ll have muesli, thanks.”

He put the clipboard on the bed while he poured out the cereal. Juliet put down the journal beside it and pulled her swivel tray towards her. She gave an involuntary kick as she did so and sent the clipboard and the journal skidding across the bed on to the floor and scattering the little bundle of menu slips.

“Sorry!” she said.

“No problem. I’ll get them in a minute.” He placed the cereal on her tray. “Tea?”

“Yes, please.”

He bent down, retrieved the journal and handed it back to her and she watched as he dived for the menu slips.

“Can I just rest these on your tray for a minute? I need to make sure I get them in the right order.”

“Sure.”

He shuffled the pieces of paper around as if they were playing cards. They’d been inscribed with handwriting in many shades of blue, some of it flowing, some laborious and childish, some crooked and crabbed, painfully fashioned by arthritic fingers.

“Cheers!” he said, as he squared the bundle on the tray and clipped it back to his board. “See you later!”

He trundled off, the wheels of the trolley squeaking excruciatingly as he went.

Juliet picked at the muesli without enthusiasm and took a sip of tea. She flipped over a few pages in the journal again. The handwriting changed slightly over time, as she and Katrin had both noticed. What was strange was that the ink didn’t. She didn’t know much about how ink was made at the end of Queen Victoria’s reign, but she guessed that it was unlikely that the same exactly uniform colour could be obtained over a period of many years. Even modern ink varied a little in colour from one purchase to the next. Now that she thought about it, another curious thing about the journal was that, after the first couple of pages, it contained no crossings-out or blots. The subsequent pages followed on from each other, immaculate. The more she thought about it, the more she suspected that the journal had been written during a much shorter period of time than it tried to convey. The author had made some attempt to indicate that Florence had gained more proficiency in writing as she’d grown older, but the whole thing was a clumsy production from the point of view of authenticity. In particular, the author had made the assumption that a poorly-educated girl was also half-witted.

The author? It leapt to Juliet’s attention that the author of the journal was probably not Florence Jacobs. If it was her, then she’d probably written it under duress. If it wasn’t her work, who else might have concocted it? Lucinda Jacobs? Frederick Jacobs, even? Could either of them have had a motive for creating such an elaborate forgery? If so, what might it have been?

Juliet made a valiant attempt at finishing the muesli. When she pushed the bowl away, there were only a couple of spoonfuls remaining. She drank the tea and lay back on her pillows. Despite the throbbing in her arm, she drifted into a fitful sleep.