I do not know if he loves me, and I cannot bring myself to ask because I do not want to know the answer.
• DIANA •
SEPTEMBER 1944
People. She was never without people, now. Staring at her or—even worse—sitting next to her. They all wanted to hold her hand, but she didn’t want that even if she hadn’t the energy to push them away. Instead, she simply sat with one of Robin’s little jumpers spread over her lap and stared at a spot on the wall.
It was ink, she was almost certain. She’d become intimately acquainted with its shape over the last three weeks. In another time and place, she might have asked Mr. Gilligan to scrape that bit of wallpaper and replace it, but now she found the spot made things easier. When she focused on it, she didn’t have to think.
She needed space away from all of it—but a heavy fog hung around her, squeezing her so tightly sometimes she struggled to breathe. It made the world so very slow.
Somewhere from the depths of that fog, Diana registered the opening and closing of the nursery door. China rattled on a tray. The scent of toast and eggs drifted to her. Two women whispered to one another.
“Diana, Miss Adderton is here with your tray.”
Diana looked up from her spot and found her sister-in-law standing over her, hands clasped and face pinched.
“I have some eggs for you, Mrs. Symonds,” Miss Adderton said with forced cheeriness. “Real eggs.”
“Isn’t that a treat?” Cynthia asked.
Diana let her eyes fix back on the spot, her hands knitting into the yarn of the jumper again. “I am not a child.”
Her sister-in-law straightened in surprise. “No, you’re not a child.” When Diana didn’t respond, Cynthia continued, “However, you are acting like one.”
Diana’s fists clenched tighter.
“You’ve suffered a great loss, and everyone understands that. However, many people are suffering as well. Some at this very hospital. You have a duty—”
“I had a duty to my son. I was supposed to keep him safe,” she said.
“What happened to Robin was a great tragedy,” Cynthia tried again.
“He died because of my garden. Because I was too lax about hiding the keys. He died because I didn’t rip out the monkshood, even though I knew how deadly it could be. He died because of me.”
The room fell silent.
“You aren’t yourself, Diana,” Cynthia said.
No, and she might never be again. Robin had been what was good in her life—a reminder of before the war, but also a harbinger of the future. She’d poured her love into him. She told herself she kept him close to her because Murray had hated his time at school, but her reasons went deeper than that. She’d thought that if she was near, he would be safe.
In the end, there’d been nothing she could do.
Robin never regained consciousness. The doctors hadn’t been able to do anything to save him. Neither could a manor full of nursing staff. Her beautiful boy had died with her head bent over him, keeping silent vigil through the night.
“I would like to be left alone, please,” she whispered to the nursery wall.
She heard Miss Adderton set down the tray, but only one set of footsteps left the room.
“This isn’t going to be like Murray all over again, is it?” Cynthia asked.
Diana slowly turned her head. “Like what?”
Her sister-in-law huffed out a breath. “The way you go about your grief, Diana, is really too much. All of this haunting the nursery like Miss Havisham. Miss Adderton tells me that you haven’t eaten a proper meal in weeks, and if the state of your hair is anything to go by, you clearly are no longer caring for your appearance.”
“Weren’t you the one trying to push us all to make do and mend for the war effort?”
“This is unseemly,” said Cynthia.
“I’m mourning my son,” she said.
Cynthia threw her hands up. “And just as selfish about it as ever!”
Diana shot to her feet, Robin’s jumper nearly sliding to the floor before she caught it up and brandished it before her. “He’s gone!”
“And so is my brother, and Private Welthrope’s sister, and Mrs. George’s son, and the loved ones of a whole number of people,” Cynthia argued. “It isn’t natural the way you lock yourself up for weeks when something bad happens.”
“You do not get to tell me how I should mourn my son,” she bit out.
“I’m not—”
“Murray should be here.” Diana’s voice broke. “He had no right to go join up without discussing it with me first. He didn’t give Robin or me one moment’s consideration, and by the time he told me what he’d done, there was no changing it.
“My husband had so little regard for my opinion that he went off to fight and then got himself killed. And now my son is dead, and you think I’m being selfish because I’m taking time to grieve? How dare you.”
“I didn’t realize Murray hadn’t spoken to you before he joined up,” Cynthia said quietly.
Diana lifted her chin. “If you had once bothered to ask, I would have told you.”
“I’m sorry for Murray’s sake and for Robin’s sake.” The words sounded drawn out and painful on her sister-in-law’s lips, but they were there. “I will leave you.”
Diana turned away to the window.
The fog of grief again hugged her in too close. A few moments later, she heard the open and close of the door once again.
* * *
“Good evening, Mrs. Symonds,” said Miss Adderton as the hallway clock chimed half past seven. So regular was the cook’s habit of bringing up a tray that Diana normally hardly noticed, except this time she couldn’t keep Cynthia’s words from echoing in her head.
Selfish.
“Thank you.”
She looked over in time to see Miss Adderton’s shoulders stiffen under her blue dress. It was, Diana realized, probably the first she’d spoken directly to the cook in weeks.
Miss Adderton folded her hands behind her back and then turned, a pleasant enough smile fixed on her face but one that showed pain around the edges.
“Dinner is a pork medallion with beetroot and potatoes,” said Miss Adderton.
Diana didn’t care about dinner. She cleared her throat. “How is your nephew?”
The cook’s gaze dropped immediately to the floor. “Bobby is as well as can be expected.”
“Given what he has been through, I would assume that means he isn’t very well at all,” she said.
“He doesn’t sleep very well. He often has nightmares,” Miss Adderton admitted.
“I see.”
The cook hesitated but then said, “He’s quiet now, too. Like when he first arrived, before he started playing…”
Diana’s heart squeezed as Miss Adderton trailed off. Before he started playing with Robin.
The other woman was looking at her, waiting for her to say something. She knew she should. This was when a lady was meant to offer some sort of platitude. But Diana couldn’t find it in herself to be dignified any longer. Instead, she said, “Thank you, Miss Adderton. You may go.”