moment of contact, standing beside her mother’s bed, it had been for one terrifying millisecond of time as though their souls were one and she had felt as though it were her own her mother’s fear and pain, her desperation and her determination; and she had known as well how overwhelmingly important it was to her mother that she kept her promise.
Because her mother knew she was going to die? A spasm of agony contracted Sage’s body. She ought not to be feeling like this; she had dissociated herself from her mother years ago. Oh, she paid lip-service to their relationship, duty visits for her mother’s birthday in June, and at Christmas, although she had not spent that Christmas at Cottingdean. She had been working in the Caribbean on the villa of a wealthy French socialite. A good enough excuse for not going home, and one her mother had accepted calmly and without comment.
She turned off the motorway, following the familiar road signs, frowning a little at the increased heaviness of the traffic, noting the unsuitability of the enormous eight-wheel container trucks for the narrow country lane.
She overtook one of them on the small stretch of bypass several miles east of the village, glad to be free of its choking diesel fumes.
They had had a hard winter, making spring seem doubly welcome, the fresh green of the new hedges striking her eye as she drove past them. In the village nothing seemed to have changed, and it amused her that she should find that knowledge reassuring, making her pause to wonder why, when she had been so desperate to escape from the place and its almost too perfect prettiness, she experienced this dread of discovering that it had changed in any way.
She had rung the house from the hospital and spoken to Faye, simply telling her that she was driving down but not explaining why.
Whoever had first chosen the site for Cottingdean had chosen well. It sat with its back to the hills, facing south, shielded from the east wind by the ancient oaks planted on the edge of its parkland.
The original house had been built by an Elizabethan entrepreneur, a merchant who had moved his family from Bristol out into the quiet and healthy solitude of the countryside. It was a solid, sensible kind of house, built in the traditional style, in the shape of the letter E. Later generations had added a jumble of extra buildings to its rear, but, either through lack of wealth or incentive, no one had thought to do anything to alter its stone frontage with its ancient mullions and stout oak door.
The drive still ran to the rear of the house and the courtyard around it on which were the stables and outbuildings, leaving the front of the house and its vistas completely unspoiled.
Sage’s mother always said that the best way to see Cottingdean for the first time was on foot, crossing the bridge spanning the river, and then through the wooden gate set into the house’s encircling garden wall, so that one’s first view of it was through the clipped yews that guarded the pathway to the terrace and the front entrance.
When her mother had come to Cottingdean as a bride, the gardens which now were famous and so admired had been nothing more than a tangle of weeds interspersed with unproductive vegetable beds. Hard to imagine that now when one saw the smooth expanses of fresh green lawn, the double borders with their enviable collections of seemingly carelessly arranged perennials, the knot garden, and the yew hedges which did so much to add to the garden’s allure and air of enticing, hidden secrets. All this had been created by her mother—and not, as some people imagined, with money and other people’s hard work, but more often than not with her own hands.
As she drove into the courtyard Sage saw that Faye and Camilla were waiting for her. As soon as she stopped the car both of them hurried up to her, demanding in unison, ‘Liz…Gran…how is she?’
‘Holding her own,’ she told them as she opened the door and climbed out. ‘They don’t know the extent of her injuries as yet. I spoke to the surgeon. He said we could ring again tonight…’
‘But when can we see her?’ Camilla demanded eagerly.
‘She’s on the open visiting list,’ Sage told them. ‘But the surgeon’s told me that he’d like to have her condition stabilised for at least forty-eight hours before she has any more visitors.’
‘But you’ve seen her,’ Camilla pointed out.
Sage reached out and put her arm round her. She was so precious to them all in different ways, this child of David’s. ‘Only because she wanted to see me, Camilla…The surgeon was worried that with something preying on her mind she would—’
‘Something preying on her mind… What?’
‘Camilla, let Sage get inside and sit down before you start cross-questioning her,’ Faye reproved her daughter gently. ‘It isn’t a very comfortable drive down from London these days with all the traffic… I wasn’t sure what your plans are, but I’ve asked Jenny to make up your bed.’
‘I’m not sure either,’ Sage told her sister-in-law, following her inside and then pausing for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the long panelled passageway that led from the back to the front of the house.
When her mother had first come to Cottingdean this panelling had been covered in paint so thick that it had taken her almost a year to get it clean. Now it glowed mellowly and richly, making one want to reach and touch it.
‘I’ve asked Jenny to serve afternoon tea in the sitting-room,’ Faye told her, opening one of the panelled doors. ‘I wasn’t sure if you would have had time to have any lunch…’
Sage shook her head—food was the last thing she wanted.
The sitting-room was on the side of the house and faced west. It was decorated in differing shades of yellow, a golden, sunny room furnished with an eclectic collection of pieces of furniture which somehow managed to look as though they were meant to be together. Another of her mother’s talents.
It was a warm welcoming room, scented now with late-flowering pots of hyacinths in the exact shade of lavender blue of the carpet covering the floor. A fire burned in the grate, adding to the room’s air of welcome, the central heating radiators discreetly hidden away behind grilles.
‘Tell us about Gran, Sage,’ Camilla demanded, perching on a damask-covered stool at Sage’s feet. ‘How is she?’
She was a pretty girl, blonde like her mother, but, where Faye’s blondeness always seemed fairly insipid, Camilla’s was warm and alive. Facially she was like her grandmother, with the same startlingly attractive bone-structure and the same lavender-grey eyes.
‘Is she really going to be all right?’
Sage paused. Over her head, her eyes met Faye’s. ‘I hope so,’ she said quietly, and then added comfortingly, ‘She’s a very strong person, Camilla. If anyone has the will to fight, to hold on to life…’
‘We wanted to go to see her, but the hospital said she’d asked for you…’
‘Yes, there was something she wanted me to do.’
Both of them were looking at her, waiting…
‘She said she wanted us…all of us, to read her diaries… She made me promise that we would.’ Sage grimaced slightly. ‘I didn’t even know she kept a diary.’
‘I did,’ Camilla told them. ‘I came downstairs one night when I couldn’t sleep and Gran was in the library, writing. She told me then that she’d
