Maybe she had merely been born unlucky. That’s how it had felt when, back in 1938, and after only two and a half years of marriage, her first husband, Dieter, tragically died from TB. A German living in London, he’d left his country of birth because he was afraid of what Hitler was doing there. He had been the kindest and gentlest of men. Hope had met him during a lunchtime concert at the Albert Hall. When the recital had finished, and with a shyness that had touched her, he had struck up conversation and asked if he could accompany her to another concert one day. Charmed by his accent and impeccable manners, she had readily agreed. Before long they were inseparable. But then the genuine happiness she had experienced for the first time in her life was snatched away from her when he fell ill and died.
Everyone told her that in time the pain would lessen and despite not believing a word of what they said, they were eventually proved right when Edmund, her childhood friend, achieved the impossible and brought a lightness back into her life. They married when the war was over, and he had been her constant and loving companion ever since. But never far from her thoughts was the fear that she might lose him, just as she had Dieter. Or maybe he would simply tire of her.
She and Edmund had been staying at Island House for over a month now while work was finished on their new home. They had sold their old house surprisingly quickly and had to move out before Fairview was ready. Romily had come to their rescue by offering Island House as a temporary home. ‘I shall be away in America, so why not make use of it yourselves?’ she’d said with her customary logic, not to say generosity.
Technically Romily was Hope’s stepmother, having married her father, Jack Devereux, but being only a few years older than Hope, they had been more like friends, or even sisters. Romily had inherited Island House – so named because of the stream that fed the large pond and which skirted around the house down into the next valley – when Jack had died shortly before war broke out, but the family had always been made to feel welcome. Well, everyone except for Arthur.
Despite their initial reserve at having a stepmother not much older than themselves, Romily soon came to be a breath of fresh air in their lives. She was, even in her grief at being widowed, a tour de force and a great example to Hope, who was still mourning Dieter. But somehow Romily, with her can-do approach to life, had nurtured and encouraged Hope. It was thanks to Romily, too, already an established and successful novelist herself, that Hope had become a children’s author. She doubted she could have done it without her stepmother’s help and support. Kit often joked that the Devereux family could never do anything by halves. ‘Why have one bestselling author in the family when you can have two?’ he’d say.
It had been Hope who had wanted to sell their old house on the edge of Clover Woods. Edmund had been happy to stay, but she hated the way it was no longer so private. The woods she had played in as a child had been partly cleared to make way for the building of a new development of houses. It was just one of the many changes going on in the village. It was called progress and she didn’t like it. She blamed it on the war; it had altered things, not just here in Melstead St Mary, but everywhere. People’s expectations had changed; they were dissatisfied with the old, they wanted newer, bigger and better.
The main street in the village had seen a turnaround in shops. There was still Minton’s bakery and the butcher’s shop, but where there used to a hardware store, there was now a supermarket where customers wandered the aisles with a wire basket, filling it themselves. The choice of food available was greater, but the service was less personal.
The one addition that Hope actually approved of was the small library which she and Romily had helped to get off the ground.
Knowing how resistant to change she was, Edmund had been surprised when Hope announced that they should move. He had been even more surprised when she had suggested they build a new house to live in. He had gone along with her wishes, but hadn’t shown the same level of enthusiasm in the design process as she did. Her main priority was to find somewhere that was in no danger of being overlooked, and she had made doubly sure of that by buying the surrounding land from the farmer who owned it. Initially he had refused to sell, but when she offered an amount well over the odds, the farmer agreed. She kept that from Edmund because she suspected he didn’t always like the fact that her writing earned her the kind of money it did.
Throughout the war Edmund had worked as a hospital doctor in London. He had wanted to enrol as an army doctor, but with so many already gone, his skill was needed to treat all those injured servicemen who were sent home to be patched up. They married in 1945, three months after the end of the war, and he immediately left his post in London and took over the practice here in the village when Dr Garland moved to Norfolk.
Edmund had been keen to have a child of their own, but it was not to be. Tests proved that Hope was the one at fault, though no doctor used that word. She was secretly relieved. The thought of being weighed down by the needs of another child had frightened her. She had done her best with their adopted daughter, Annelise, but she knew deep in her heart, she was not the maternal kind.
In August 1939, just days before Hitler invaded Poland, and a year after Dieter died, Hope had travelled to Germany to visit his family. It was in Cologne when she went to see Dieter’s sister, Sabine, and her Jewish husband Otto Lowenstein, that they begged her to save their only child by taking her to England. Hope tried desperately to convince them to come with her, to escape the fear of living in Nazi Germany, but they wouldn’t leave Otto’s parents. With a heavy heart, and fearful of the enormous responsibility laid upon her, Hope returned to England by train and boat, pretending the ten-month-old baby was her own. It was the longest journey of her life. Sabine and Otto’s fear at what Hitler might do was justified; they both perished in the Holocaust. But thanks to her, Edmund would remind Hope whenever she felt she had failed Annelise, their precious child had survived.
Edmund had proved himself to be a wonderful father to Annelise and Hope would always be grateful for that. He was also an excellent uncle to their niece and nephew, Em and Pip.
Downstairs, she spotted that afternoon’s post on the hall table. She flicked through it, putting aside most of the letters that were for Romily, then found one that was for her. It was handwritten and with a local postmark. Absently, she tore it open as she began moving towards the drawing room. She had taken no more than a few steps when she stopped dead in her tracks.
Stunned, she realised she was looking at a poison pen letter. The words – in a jumble of cut out newspaper print – leapt off the page at her.
you need to be a better wife
and pay more attention to
your adulterous husband.
Chapter Three
Quince Cottage, Melstead St Mary
October 1962
Florence
Normally Florence Minton told her husband everything. Well, almost everything. Some things were best left unsaid. Was the letter something she should keep quiet about?