When Simone walks through the door, I feel myself welling up. Although I had vowed I wouldn’t cry, I am so relieved to see her I can’t stop. She drops her bag on the floor and within a moment I’m enfolded in her arms. I can’t explain how grateful I am that she still cares.
‘Diana,’ she says and, pulling away gently, scrutinizes me. ‘How are you?’
‘Come to the window,’ I say, wanting her to understand how this precious window on to the world is my lifeline and I don’t want anyone to take it away. ‘My whole world is out there.’
We walk over to look out at the park. It’s turned into a beautiful spring day with a generous blue sky and fluffy white clouds. So still. So soothing. Like the sea on a sweet summer’s day when the waves roll in so lazily the whole world feels at peace. Every summer I remember our cook packing a hamper filled with cream buns, cucumber sandwiches, chicken pies and jam tarts. All my favourite things to take down to the beach at Bantham in Devon.
I glance at Simone’s perfect straight-nosed profile as she stands waiting for me to say something.
‘Have you spoken to Douglas?’ I ask, hoping the answer is no.
‘I have.’
‘So, he has told you about the dreaded Grange?’
She nods and puts an arm around my shoulders. ‘Darling, don’t you think it might help to be away from here for a while? I don’t think being cooped up for hours on your own is doing you much good.’
I scowl at her, more aggressively than I intended. ‘I’m not going.’
‘It might help. You’d receive expert nursing care. There’d be things to do.’
‘Basket work,’ I snort and shake my head. I don’t tell her I’ve heard about these terrible places where husbands send their once-loved wives. ‘I would be left to die.’
‘That can’t be true. Douglas wouldn’t let it happen.’
I try to halt it, but pain rips through my chest. ‘Douglas wants rid of me and you know what he’s like. Once he’s decided on something he never changes his mind.’
‘Darling, he doesn’t want rid. He loves you.’
I look for the truth in her tone and shake my head again. For the first time I notice the grey in her blonde hair. ‘I’m so sorry about Roger,’ I manage to say. ‘He was a good husband.’
She nods. ‘I miss him terribly.’
We exchange looks and I feel comforted that we still understand each other.
‘He loved you,’ I say.
‘Yes.’
‘And Douglas used to love me. Now he wants me locked away. I’m an inconvenience. They want something to call my illness, so they say I have psychotic depression, you know, because of …’ I stumble over my words.
‘Because of?’ she says gently.
‘The voices I hear.’
I stare at her. She’s always been such a good friend to me so I reach out a hand. ‘Talk to Douglas for me. Tell him I’m taking the Veronal.’
Her brow puckers. ‘And are you? Truly?’
I can’t lie to her and suck in my breath before I own up. ‘It makes me feel terrible. But I will take it, I promise.’
‘He’s worried about you going off somewhere unaccompanied or wandering the house at night while everyone is asleep.’
I feel a flash of rage and my heart speeds up. ‘I’m not a child.’
‘He’s afraid you might fall. At least at the Grange there would be somebody on duty.’
There is a short silence and I wonder what else she’s thinking. Eventually she asks me if I feel awful all the time and I tell her it comes in waves. She smiles and looks hopeful.
There is a short silence while I wonder whether to speak.
‘He had an affair,’ I say eventually, and look into her beautiful amber eyes, so kind, so loyal, and wonder if she knew, but her hand flies to her mouth and she looks genuinely shocked.
‘When I was pregnant with Elvira.’
‘You never said.’
I think back to the day I confronted him when he came home smelling of another woman’s scent and with an awful look of shame in his eyes. I’d thought he could do no wrong until then. At least he had the decency to look embarrassed at being caught out but, in a way, I wish I hadn’t known because once he’d so diminished himself in my eyes I couldn’t feel the same. There was always the feeling from then on that something had been broken. I don’t know if Douglas felt it too. I suspect he did. But even when I screamed at him he wouldn’t tell me who the woman was.
‘It was the shame,’ I say.
‘His shame?’
‘Both our shames. I was a woman who couldn’t keep her husband.’
‘So, did he confess? How did you find out?’
I shrug. I had suspected all the women in Rangoon, all but Simone, even that bloody awful woman, the Governor’s wife. So damned self-righteous, the very worst kind of Englishwoman.
‘All water under the bridge now,’ I say. ‘Lots of men had affairs, didn’t they?’
Simone sighs.
‘He used to write me a note every morning, you know, and I’d find it in an envelope popped on to the tray when the silent-footed butler brought my early tea and toast.’
And, at the beginning, life had been sweet indeed. Nothing could touch us, cocooned together as we were. Douglas, my rock, my love, my everything. But in time I had felt horribly constricted, had begun to feel as if I couldn’t breathe.
‘Oh, those early days,’ I whisper.
‘You miss them and yet you don’t.’
‘That’s it. That’s it exactly.’
We are silent for a while.
‘Darling, you’re not even dressed,’ Simone says at last, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Shall I wash and set your hair, and then pick you out something pretty to wear? Maybe afterwards we could go out to the café in the park for afternoon tea.’
I smile at her and, although I am terrified, I tell her I couldn’t ask for anything better. But going out? I breathe in. I breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. And then, in that moment, and entirely unexpectedly, I feel I might be able.
‘How long is it since you were last out?’
‘Weeks. Months maybe.’
‘Too long. Darling, you really could do with someone to watch over you.’
‘Maybe you could do it?’ I laugh as if I hadn’t really meant it.
She regards me carefully, choosing her words. ‘Diana, I honestly believe you can get better. We underestimate what the mind can do.’
‘You think?’
‘I more than think. You’ll see.’
I smile at her and a bubble of hope rises in me.
‘There. You’re already feeling better. I promise we will find a way. All you need is a better place of safety.’
Simone’s cheerful presence has lightened my heart and, infused by the sudden startling wish for something new, I see the slanting shadows of the trees. A place of safety. Was there such a place?