‘How’s it going with Mums and the new house?’ she asked.
Now a fully trained architect, Stanley had designed Hope’s dream house. It was Edmund’s house as well, of course, but he had sensibly left most of the decisions to Hope. He was all for an easy life.
‘Haven’t they told you?’ said Stanley.
‘Oh, I get the usual thing from Mums, that it’s all going much too slowly.’
He glanced sideways at her. ‘She’s not unhappy, is she?’
‘Come on, Stanley, you know as well as I do, Mums is not the greatest of advertisements for the state of happiness. She just can’t allow herself to be truly happy. And don’t look like that.’
‘Like what?’ he said.
‘As though I’m a fine one to talk.’
He smiled. ‘If the cap fits.’
He was right, of course, the cap most certainly did fit. She might not be biologically related to the woman who had brought her up, but she did suffer from the same inability to enjoy life to the full. Always there was the feeling that she didn’t deserve to be happy. How could she when almost every member of her family in Germany had perished at the hands of the Nazis during the war?
Annelise had no memory of her mother and father. Everything she knew of Otto and Sabine Lowenstein was what she had read in official reports during trips to Germany to uncover the truth about her family. Hope had also helped to fill in the blanks.
Hope’s first husband, Dieter, had been Sabine’s brother and while their parents – supporters of Hitler and the Third Reich – had disapproved of Dieter’s choice of bride, an English girl, they had been horrified that their daughter wanted to marry Otto Lowenstein, a Jewish doctor. When war became increasingly more likely, and with Jews being regularly rounded up and sent to labour camps where they were never heard of again, Sabine and Otto had pleaded with Hope, not long widowed, to take Annelise to safety.
On her tenth birthday and with Hope now married to Edmund and knowing that Sabine and Otto had not survived the war, they legally adopted Annelise. They also changed her name from Lowenstein to Flowerday. In the preceding years, before knowing the fate of Annelise’s parents, Hope had wanted to believe that they might have survived the death camps and would one day claim their daughter.
It pained Annelise to wonder how she might have reacted if that had happened, when she had known no other life than the one in Melstead St Mary. How would she have coped with being uprooted to live with strangers, to leave behind all that she knew and loved? To be parted from those who had enriched her life beyond measure?
One of whom was Romily. Without doubt Romily had been an enormous influence in her life. The extraordinary woman had been friend, aunt and mentor all rolled into one. There had been times as a young child when, in need of help or advice, Annelise had turned to Romily instead of Hope or Edmund. More often than not, Hope was unapproachable, the door to her studio firmly shut, blocking out all distractions.
Annelise knew that she had a similar tendency to distance herself from others. It took a lot for her to open up to people. Recently she had begun to do just that, and with one person in particular. His name was Harry, and such was the strength of her emotions for him, he would dominate her thoughts far too much if she allowed them to.
She was twenty-four and some would say laughably inexperienced when it came to matters of the heart. Until now romance had not been a priority for her. She was a scholar first and foremost and loved her work as a junior research fellow in German History at St Gertrude’s College in Oxford. Which was where she had studied, just like her aunt Evelyn.
She was proud of what she had achieved, but viewed it very much as the start of greater things. She wanted to make Hope and Edmund proud of her. Romily too.
Nothing annoyed her more than not being taken seriously. It happened a lot, primarily because of the way she looked. She was blonde with a petite build that made her appear younger than she was.
‘So, tell me, how is the new house coming along?’ she asked, feeling Tucker nudging her elbow with his nose, as though letting her know that she had let her thoughts wander.
‘It should be finished within a month,’ replied Stanley.
‘I can’t wait to see it.’
He briefly turned his head. ‘We could take a detour and go and see it now, if you’d like? I don’t have a key on me, but I could show you the exterior.’
‘Why not?’
For answer, he checked the way ahead was clear and put his foot down to overtake the bus. She had joked earlier about him turning into Stirling Moss behind the wheel of his new car, but he was actually one of the safest drivers she knew. She trusted him implicitly, and in all things. She always had. If she was brave enough, she might even tell Stanley about Harry, having told no one else about him.
Chapter Six
Fairview, Melstead St Mary
October 1962
Stanley
The house was approached via a long straight driveway flanked by lawns and newly planted beech trees. Hope and Edmund had bought the three acres of land because of its convenient proximity to Melstead St Mary and unrivalled views of the softly undulating landscape. Hope had insisted that the house be positioned squarely in the middle of the plot, as though deliberately isolating it from everything around it. With its partially white stucco walls resplendent in the autumnal sunshine, it stood majestically before Stanley and Annelise.
‘It’s very impressive,’ Annelise said after a lengthy pause. ‘And bigger than I thought it was going to be.’
‘It was always going to be this big,’ Stanley said, watching Annelise carefully to see what she really thought. Her opinion always mattered to him. As did the need to please her and gain her approval. If he could only convince himself that he had her total respect and admiration, he might believe he stood a chance of being her equal. Which in his heart of hearts he knew could never be. Just as he knew it was futile to hope that one day they would be more than just good friends. To Annelise, and many others, he was destined always to be Stanley Nettles, the grubby illiterate evacuee from the East End of London who’d made good.
The plain truth was, despite the education he’d been given and then the long hard years studying to be an architect – all thanks to Romily’s generosity and encouragement – a girl like Annelise would always be out of his league. They moved in very different circles. While she mixed with academics in the rarefied atmosphere of Oxford, a world which, if he were honest thoroughly intimidated him, he preferred his life here in Melstead St Mary with his old village friends.
London had been fine when he’d been studying, and for a brief period after he was qualified and working for an architectural firm, but it hadn’t felt like it would ever be his true home. He was happiest here in the Suffolk countryside, where he’d lived since being put on a train as a nine-year-old boy and subsequently deposited at Island House. He’d hated it initially; he’d been terrified of the big empty sky, the wide-open spaces and the unnerving silence. He hadn’t missed his cruel and sadistic mother, though, and when he realised he wasn’t going to be beaten or locked up by anyone at Island House, he grew to love the place.