CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Louise looked up as rain started to lash against the boathouse windows. She put the paintbrush that she’d been holding down and stood up to stretch her back. There was no electric light in the boathouse and the gathering clouds meant it was far too gloomy for decorating. The paint was off-white and it was difficult enough to do a second coat when the light was good.

She pressed the lid back on the pot of paint and did what Gerry, one of the contractors, had shown her to do and wrapped the wet paintbrush in cling film. She stood back and surveyed her handiwork. The light reflected off the wet paint in patches, revealing that she hadn’t been as even as she’d thought with her strokes, but she still felt the warm glow of accomplishment.

She walked over to one of the windows and peered out. Further off, the clouds were pale and bright, and moving quickly in the stiff breeze. This was only a shower. Give it ten minutes and she might be able to continue.

Time for a tea break.

She reached for the large metal flask she’d filled with scalding tea before she’d walked down here and poured herself a cup, then she remembered the solar-powered lantern she’d rescued from the boot of her car and pulled it from a box near the door. Its dull blue glow was no help in the painting and decorating stakes, but it added a little light to the corner of the small room.

Louise took it over to the small desk that sat against the far wall, looking out over the river, and put the lantern on one side. She pulled a small, tarnished key from her jeans pocket and unlocked the small, central drawer, then eased it open and removed Laura’s diary.

She’d brought it back here. However, she had plans to use the fireplace once she’d finished redecorating, and she was worried she’d scorch the precious book if she put it back behind the tiles. The desk had seemed like a good compromise.

After retrieving her flask lid full of tea, she sat down and carefully parted the pages where she’d last left off.

28th May, 1953

I was doing so well, and then I dreamed of Dominic one night. Since then I haven’t been able to get him out of my thoughts, either sleeping or waking. I dreamed we were at Whitehaven, that somehow all the things keeping us apart had melted away.

I was standing on the front lawn in the sunshine, looking out over the river, and he came up behind me and folded his arms around me, kissed me in the hollow of my neck. I closed my eyes and just drank it in, even though it was just a dream.

We’ve never had that. The easy familiarity of that kind of affection. Even the stolen moments we had were played out in front of a film crew, and as much as we tried to disguise it, there was a tinge of desperation to every time we touched or kiss, knowing that time was short that we had to grab what we could while we had the chance.

It was both beautiful and terrible that my subconscious conjured up what I could never have. Beautiful to experience it so vividly, but terrible that I have not been able to tuck the thought away in the past where it should stay.

I keep going back to it, pulling it out from its hiding place, reliving it, embellishing it. Now it’s not just a moment, but a whole scene—a whole life—has begun to grow in that shadowy place. I imagine what our bedroom would look like, what meals we would eat in the kitchen, that our children are running down the lawn and building Indian forts in the woods.

If I can’t have Dominic, at least I can have this.

Maybe it’s because my stomach stays worryingly flat, that any nausea I have is just from forgetting to eat some days. Alex says he doesn’t mind, that I am enough for him. I wish I could respond in kind. I really want that baby, and I fear if it doesn’t come along that I will fall apart completely. It’s the only hope that keeps me going, keeps me giving the performance of my career in my own life.

Louise closed the diary and loving fingered the leather cover. She’d hug it to herself, somehow trying to comfort the sad, lonely woman in its pages, but she was scared she’d mar it with paint if she did.

She knew what that was like. That sense of encroaching loneliness that could not be completely kept at bay. Carefully, she placed the diary back in the drawer and locked it again.

Had Laura found the happiness she’d craved? Had she been able to find peace? Suddenly, Louise really needed to know.

Of course, she could go back up to the house and get on the Internet and find out within five minutes, but somehow that seemed like cheating. Reading it in Laura’s own words, making the journey with her, was somehow important.

She drained the last of her tea and put the lid back on her flask. While she’d been reading the wind had done its job and cleared the skies. She would just have to be patient. Laura would reveal her secrets in due time, and until then Louise had a boathouse to decorate.

She tipped her head on one side and surveyed the drying paint on the other wall.

Yep. That was a shocking attempt at a second coat.

The next couple of weeks disappeared in a frenzy of activity. The builders and decorators stepped up their schedules, determined to be finished well before Christmas, and the landscaping began in the garden. Louise just took herself off down to the boathouse, slowly continuing her restoration job. It wasn’t as slick and professional as the work in the main house, but she liked its slightly rustic, haphazard style. It was all hers.

When it was finished, she was going to get a sofa or a daybed to put in here, along with a couple of comfy chairs and a rug. In the summer, it might even be nice to sleep down here, close to the river, where she could hear the gentle waves licking against the jetty when high tide was up.

But as her project neared completion, she began to feel restless. Even more so, when, up at the main house, the flurry of vans and men in work boots diminished to just a few painters and a sole carpenter.

For a couple of months, making Whitehaven a welcoming home for her and Jack had been her priority. What was she going to do when it was finished? She couldn’t just sit around all day and stare at the wallpaper, no matter how nice it was.

Around her, everyone else moved with purpose. Aside from the contractors, Jack was busy studying and fitting in at school. Ben was overseeing the landscaping of the more formal gardens near to the house. From the plans he’d shown her, she knew he was very good at what he did. Even, Laura, whose presence Louise felt through the diary, had excelled at something. She’d been one of the leading British actresses of her day.

But what was Louise good at? What was she for?

She’d been a successful model once, but her body had expanded and her looks no longer held the glow of youth many clients preferred. She liked baking, but it was hardly a life’s calling.

It was odd, she thought, as she passed the main lawn and headed up round the side of the house—just to walk, to take in the transformation just a lick of paint and some deftly applied plaster had made to Whitehaven’s exterior—she wasn’t used to having nothing to do.

For most of her life she’d been running at full speed. First keeping her family together, and then being the wife of a Hollywood actor and all the extra drama and patience such a role involved. And then she’d been a mother. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she hadn’t hired a nanny, preferring to be hands-on with Jack herself as much as she could. Even though she’d wished it otherwise sometimes, after sleepless nights and harried shopping trips, she just hadn’t been able to leave Jack with a stranger and waltz off on her own. That was what she’d done to her father, and she’d always, always regretted it.

She reached the top lawn, where the greenhouse was, and walked past it. There was a bench leaning against the wall of the garden and she paused and sat down on it, breathing in the chilly air and soaking up the meagre warmth of the frosted winter sun.

As she sat there she thought about her life with Toby.

She’d thought he’d needed her, but that hadn’t been true, had it? She’d just been convenient to have around, to put up with, while he found his fun elsewhere.

But she’d made it easy for him, she realised. She’d walked into that relationship and taken on the only role she knew how to play: carer, giver. Just as she’d had to be a grown-up well before her time at home, she’d had to be the grown-up in her relationship with Toby too, and she’d fallen into looking after him the way she had her father and her brothers and sisters.

However, where her family had needed her love and indulgence to get them through tough times, by the time she’d met him Toby really hadn’t needed another person indulging him. She’d done it anyway, hadn’t she? Because she hadn’t known how to be any other way. It was all so clear to her now. Why hadn’t she been able to see this before?

She’d helped Toby take her for granted.

Of course, that didn’t mean she deserved what he did to her, but maybe, if she’d been a little stronger, asked more of him, things might have been different. That should make her sad, but it didn’t. It just made her puzzled.

She got up and wandered in the direction of the old stable block, not too far from the kitchen door. Now there was a real project, something she could really get her teeth into. Horses obviously hadn’t been at Whitehaven for decades, because this building would need more than just a lick of paint and a little remedial plastering to see it right. Louise got quite excited at the thought, until she realised she already had a house with more rooms than she could use, and that, really, this would just be a great way of stalling, of filling in the time so she didn’t have to think about the one question that had been hounding her since she’d walked out the door of Toby’s house and had never looked back.

What on earth was she going to do with the rest of her life?