CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Louise still daydreamed about Ben, even that night, after she’d returned home after eating supper with him and Jas. Even the following morning, when she wandered down to the boathouse just as it got light.

Unlike Laura, who’d been wishing for someone she couldn’t have, Louise was seeing a man who was free to be with her. That made it different. Safer.

But now her dreams didn’t just involve significant looks and first kisses; they’d moved on, matured. These were no seedling fantasies. Now they were putting down roots, burrowing deep inside of her and they stretched far into the future.

She and Ben living at Whitehaven, talking easily in the kitchen, eating round the large oak table with Jas and Jack …

Waking up with Ben in her bed, a circle of gold on his finger …

Sitting outside on the lawn on a bright summer’s day, the squeals of the children ringing out as they chased each other in and out of the woods …

Okay, she’d borrowed that last one from Laura a little bit. But Whitehaven was the sort of house that should have children running on its lawns.

She reached the boathouse and went instantly to her destination: the desk.

7th November, 1954

I know I shouldn’t be surprised. In fact, I’d steeled myself for the news already, eerily sure of what the doctor wanted to tell me. I thought I was ready.

And yet, when he said the words—so kindly—when he told me I probably wouldn’t ever have children, I fell apart and made a terrible scene. It was the one thing I’d been hanging onto, you see. The one thing that could keep me cemented to Alex.

I don’t know what to do now. There is nothing left to hope for.

19th February, 1955

My marriage is dying a slow and painful death. The sad thing is that it wasn’t until I said to Alex that I wanted to leave him that I realised how much he truly cared about me. He’s always so quiet, always so restrained.

And yet my big, stocky businessman of a husband wept when I told him I couldn’t go on any more.

‘What?’ he begged me, ‘What more can I do for you to make you stay? I love you, Laura. I have always loved you.’

I didn’t say anything. What could he do to make me stay?

Be Dominic. That’s all I could give him, and even I am not cruel enough to say that.

He told me he knew he wasn’t good with words, but that he did his best, that he tried to tell me how much he cared in all the ways he knew how. That’s true, I suppose, when I think back. Alex likes to give gifts. He’s bought me more diamonds than I could ever wear, but I always thought they were just window-dressing for his trophy. I learned to despise them.

But I can’t say that about the other things, the things I’d hardly noticed and taken for granted—the way he always opens the door for me, or that he’ll fetch my coat if I so much as shiver. But you can’t build a marriage on little civilities. There has to be adoration. There has to be passion.

For me, there has to be Dominic.

And if I can’t be with him, I don’t want anyone else. It’s not fair to Alex to keep him tied to a woman who doesn’t love him. As much as he says he doesn’t want me to go now, he’d just end up hating me in the future. I’m doing this to save both of us from that.

Louise put the diary down and frowned. It all sounded so romantic, this desperate love for Dominic, but she couldn’t help feeling sorry for poor Alex. She had a feeling he’d been a good man, that he’d loved Laura far more than she’d realised.

Louise knew she’d never have divorced Toby if he’d been half as attentive and kind as Alex had been to Laura. Good men like that were hard to find.

She looked at the closed diary and shook her head.

Poor Laura. No chance of being with the man she adored, and no desire to stay with the one who just might have adored her. But that still left a question hanging.

If there had been a husband with Laura at Whitehaven, who had it been?