She had a feeling that Romily had guessed that she was doing a lot more than mere clerical work, because she once asked if Evelyn had ever come across an old chum of hers called Max Blythe-Jones. In fact, Evelyn knew Max well, but all she said to Romily was that the name rang a bell. As for everyone else, they took her at her word, that it was tedious filing she mostly did.
She still missed those days at Bletchley. She missed the camaraderie and the knowledge that she was doing something vital. Marriage and motherhood, and a return to teaching, had been life-changing and rewarding, but it wasn’t the same as being part of a close-knit team put together to decode ciphers and save lives. Nothing else she had done before or since could compare.
Had she not married Kit, she would have continued working at Bletchley Park. Her old tutor had even contacted her again in 1949, hoping she might like to join in with what he referred to as ‘the fight against the USSR’. Despite the temptation to be a part of something important and potentially exhilarating, she had to decline: she was a wife and mother by then. The Cold War would have to be fought without her assistance.
The whistling of the kettle on the gas ring roused her from her reverie. She made the tea in the largest pot they had, and mentally counted how many mugs she needed for the workforce in the garden. She then added the biscuit tin from the pantry, recalling all those years of rationing when the humble biscuit had been such a treat.
She was about to take the tray outside when she remembered the post. It probably wasn’t anything important, but she might as well open the letter before Pip and Em arrived and it was lost in the melee of party preparations.
Taking a knife, she slit the envelope open and took out the piece of paper. She frowned at the sight of the glued-on letters cut from a newspaper. Was it a prank of some kind?
But when she read the words she knew it wasn’t a joke. It was deadly serious.
you’re a harlot! what would your
husband say if he knew he wasn’t
the father of your children?
Chapter Two
Island House, Melstead St Mary
October 1962
Hope
Hope had lost track of the time. Something her husband, Edmund, frequently complained that she did. It infuriated him, especially if she forgot they were going somewhere, or had guests coming for dinner.
She never used to be like this, but her busy work schedule meant that every minute of her day was devoted to the children for whom she wrote. If she wasn’t writing her books for them, she was replying to the hundreds of letters she received from all around the world.
Her various publishers and agent applauded her for her prodigious output, but it was the children’s applause that mattered most to her. When she received a letter from a young child thousands of miles away in Nairobi, she knew then that she had done her job.
She hadn’t always been a children’s author. In what felt like another life, she had been an illustrator after going to art school. Her early work had included illustrating wildlife books for children. It was during the war that she had changed direction and commenced writing the series of books which was to make her name. Based on Stanley, their young evacuee billeted at Island House, and his devoted dog, Bobby, she had created Freddie and his faithful mutt, Ragsy.
Of course, in the end Freddie had to grow up and she had to find new characters with which to amuse her readers. Her agent urged her to be more like Enid Blyton and feature a group of friends who together solve mysteries. She went along with the suggestion, but on the understanding that she would include two girls within the storyline who would show just as much pluck and intelligence as the boys, if not more. After all, hadn’t women shown their mettle during the war just as much as their male counterparts, women such as Hope’s sister-in-law, Evelyn, and her stepmother, Romily? While they had been away doing their bit, Hope had had the job of maintaining order at Island House and writing her books. For some of her storylines she rifled her own childhood for inspiration – ghastly Nanny Finch; the mother Hope had never really known; the distant father who was always away and the siblings who found it so difficult to get on. Although thankfully she and Kit had never fallen out with each other.
As well as this hugely successful series of books, Hope also wrote for much younger children, featuring imaginary woodland folk who inhabited Sweet Meadow Wood. These shorter and much simpler stories were influenced by the imaginary world into which she had escaped as a child, and they soon became as popular as her other books. Next she devised a range of board games and jigsaws based on Sweet Meadow Wood, and in recent years she had created a new series of Tales from Pepper Brook Farm.
Everything she had written had been an attempt to entertain and brighten the lives of the children for whom she wrote. It had been to lighten the darkness they had endured during the war, and long after it was over. The relief that the fighting had stopped had soon given way to another battle, that of the country rebuilding itself while still making do with rations. The thorough drabness of it all had worn people down. Maybe not so much for the Romilys and Evelyns of this world who always seemed to bounce along with whatever was thrown at them. But for someone like Hope, who didn’t have the same resilience, it was a bleak and depressing time.
She could remember in the harsh winter of 1947 sitting at her desk, and wrapped in so many layers she resembled a barrage balloon, feeling unutterably miserable. Through the window, and listening to their happy laughter, she had watched Edmund playing in the snow with Annelise and envied his ability to enjoy life in a way she found so difficult. Sometimes she wondered if she’d been cursed by being given the name Hope, she seemed to have so little of it.
Removing the completed page from her faithful old Corona typewriter, she placed it in the box file along with the rest of the chapters she had already written. If the coming days weren’t going to be so busy, she would be able to complete this latest Pepper Brook Farm book and send it off to her agent, but it would have to wait for now.
Reluctantly she stood up and looked out of the window at the garden and the large pond and recently rebuilt boathouse. She was a middle-aged woman in her late forties, but when she looked at the garden of her childhood home, and despite the changes Romily had made to it during her ownership, Hope was a girl again remembering how she and Kit used to hide in the bushes from their older brother, Arthur. How he used to love to torment them. What sport he made of exploiting their weaknesses for his own sick pleasure. She had never forgotten what he’d done to her pet canary. He never admitted it, but she knew that he had crushed the little bird and left it for her to find.
Undoubtedly his wanton cruelty played its part in shaping Hope as she grew up, but essentially, she had already been marked out as being destined always to think and fear the worst. Losing her mother at a very young age could have been the start of her problems, and certainly her widowed father had been ill-equipped to cope with three small children, but then why did her younger brother, Kit, not suffer in the way that she did? Yes, he lacked confidence at times, but invariably he was the most positive and cheerful person she knew.