CHAPTER TEN

Louise walked down to the boathouse again after she got back on dry land. When she entered she went straight to the fireplace, removed the two tiles and pulled Laura’s diary out.

She’d lived here for decades. How had she managed to come and go as she pleased without being stalked?

She pulled one of the dusty cane chairs over and sat down and began to read, without even cleaning it off first. Her life was a mess and she’d dearly like to lose herself in someone else’s for a bit.

17th July, 1952

I don’t know how I am ever going to go home again and act as if everything is normal and that this was just another job. Today was the last day of filming. I had a lump in my throat all day. Twice I had to take a break just to compose myself. I told Sam I was just tired because it was the end of the shoot.

And Dominic and I didn’t even have any big scenes to shoot—just a couple of plain conversations in a corridor. I couldn’t hold him. I couldn’t touch him. And I wanted to so much.

There weren’t many of us left behind, because most of the bigger scenes had been filmed earlier in the week. Only five of us actors remained. So, Sam has planned a big wrap party back in London next week. We stragglers went across the river to the little Ferryboat Inn for a drink. I had to sit there with my gin and tonic, looking across the table at the man I loved, knowing it might be the last time I’d ever get the chance to talk to him properly, all the while listening to some dull sound man drone on about all the fishing he’d wanted to do, but hadn’t had time for. Very romantic! In the end I had to get up and walk out. I felt as if I just couldn’t breathe.

The beach at Lower Hadwell is small and stony, but it was a clear moonlit night and the warm air was a pleasure to walk in after the smoke and air of the Ferryboat Inn. I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to wish the clock backwards, so I could just have one more day with Dominic.

That was how he found me.

For the longest time we didn’t say anything to each other. Even if I’d had the words, I’m not sure I’d have been able to get them out.

‘I don’t want to lose you,’ I eventually told him.

He didn’t need to agree. His face said it all.

‘I can’t see you again, not after the party next week’ was all he said, and I know it half-killed him. It certainly half-killed me.

I nodded. ‘I know,’ I said.

He reminded me that we’d made other promises to other people. He didn’t say much about her—Jean—only that she was fragile, that he couldn’t leave her.

I nodded again, wishing those promises undone from both our lips. I’d known his wife, a well-known singer, had had a troubled history. There had been rumours of instability before she’d married Dominic, but everyone thought that was in the past now she had such a devoted husband. But if anyone knows that what you read in the papers doesn’t always reflect the truth at home, it’s me. Why would I want to escape my ‘fairy tale’ otherwise?

‘I promised her I wouldn’t leave,’ he told me. ‘She needs me.’

I wanted to be selfish then, to tell him I needed him too, but I didn’t. What right did I have? And I was sure that Alex would not make it easy for me to break free. There’d be a scandal that could end both our careers and I couldn’t do that to Dominic. I wouldn’t want to be the reason everyone hated him.

But then he surprised me by stepping in close, pulling me into his arms. I hung onto him, just hung onto him, wishing the night could last forever. And then he bent down and kissed my hair with such tenderness. I could feel him shaking beneath my hands.

‘But I can promise you something, too, Laura,’ he whispered. ‘I will never forget you, and you will always, always be in my heart.’

And then he ripped himself away from me and strode back up the beach, not looking back, leaving me to sit down untidily on the damp shingle and cry.

Why? thought Louise. Why does love always have to die? Why does it always have to end badly? She had been hoping for something more than this, some hope, really. Unable to read any more, she tucked the diary back into its hiding place and returned to the house.