So it turns out I was wrong. I’ve never questioned it before, but I never questioned a lot of things, and apparently I should have done. I stand there for a long time, lost in thought.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I spend the rest of the day in the flat. I don’t speak to anyone, I don’t know how to ring up Jay or Cathy and say the words out loud. ‘We’re splitting up.’ What happens next? Do we get a divorce? A solicitor? What happens to the flat, should we sel it, rent it, should I move out? The sun has barely come out al day, and it is dark by six. I have a glass of wine, and then another, and it goes straight to my head. And the more I think about things, the more I start to wonder, and the more I find myself thinking, just how blind was I? I think again about Oli’s birthday last September, the fact that I’d booked us into the Hawksmoor for dinner, and he didn’t show up til ten. The boys from work had taken him out for lunch, and in the evening he’d had to have a drink with a client. He was drunk, I knew it, though he tried to pretend otherwise. I’d been in the studio most of the day and then at home, waiting for the evening, waiting for him. I remember it now, as I pour myself another glass of wine and sit on the floor. I don’t know if he was sleeping with Chloe by then, but in a way it doesn’t real y matter. The fact is, he didn’t want to be with me. Because it wasn’t an isolated incident, it happened at least once a week, more like two or three times before he moved out and I just accepted it. I didn’t pretend to understand his job.

Was I so cold, so unresponsive, so uncaring of him? Am I real y this hard, hard person, who’s built a shel around herself so she can’t get hurt?

Is he right, have my family screwed me up so much? Should I try and find my dad? Should I confront my mum? Is Cathy right, did I want Granny’s approval too much, did we al ? It’s so strange, these events at the same time: Granny’s death, the end of my marriage. It feels like the end of things, and yet as this long, strange evening goes on, and I just sit there and think and think, my bottom sore from the hard floor, my eye keeps fal ing on the diary, and I sort of have to admit what I haven’t real y wanted to since I came home.

Perhaps Arvind is right. Whatever happened that summer in 1963, our family is poisoned, and one of them must know what happened, they were al there. But al I have is ten pages of a diary and that tel s me very little. So the question is, what happened to the rest of it?

Just before nine o’clock, I stand up. I make myself a sandwich and drink some water, and then I pick up the phone and dial.

‘Hel o?’

I hesitate. Of course she’s stil there. ‘Louisa?’

‘Yes. Who is this?’

‘Louisa, it’s – it’s Natasha. Hel o.’

The voice softens a little. ‘Natasha! How are you, darling?’ Her voice is comforting, it makes you feel safe. For a second, I wonder if I’m just being stupid. I take a deep breath, feeling light-headed from the wine.

‘I’m OK. OK. I was just ringing to see how Arvind is doing. Is he there?’

‘He’s here, but he’s pretty tired – we were about to go to bed.’ Apparently Louisa does not think this sentence sounds weird. She says loudly,

‘Weren’t we.’

I smile to myself. ‘Fine, I’m sorry. I know it’s a bit late to be cal ing. I only wanted to say hi. How’s – how’s it al going?’

‘OK, you know,’ Louisa says. ‘Oh, yes. We got a lot done yesterday, and today, we’re real y clearing a lot out, and the solicitors have been very efficient too, you know, it’s al going pretty smoothly.’ She clears her throat; she sounds tired. ‘It’s so sad, though.’

I feel a stab of guilt. ‘Why don’t I come down and help you? I feel awful I had to skip off on Wednesday.’

‘Oh, no, it’s absolutely fine, darling,’ Louisa says. ‘To be honest, Natasha, it’s actual y easier to just get on with it by myself.’ She pauses. ‘I mean, of course, your mother’s done a lot, so has Archie, but the nitty gritty – you know, I’m an old busybody! I rather like sorting it al out.’ She’s trying to sound light-hearted but I can hear that note in her voice again, and I’m not sure I believe her.

I wish I could go back and search through the house for the rest of the diary. But even my befuddled, tired brain knows it would look highly suspicious if I turned up again, so soon after leaving abruptly, to go through Granny’s things. And that’s not how I want to see Arvind again anyway, or the house. I feel like a criminal. So I say, trying to keep my voice casual, ‘Have you found anything interesting?’

‘Like what?’ she asks. ‘It’s al being properly catalogued, Natasha. There are a lot of items that need to be valued, and Guy’s coming down soon to do it . . .’

‘No, I don’t mean it like that—’

‘With a sinking feeling, I wonder what Mum’s been saying to her. ‘Just interesting things about the family, you know. Photos and al that.’

‘Oh.’ Louisa unbends a little. ‘Wel , there are a couple of things. Let me think. Oh – yes! I’ve found some old clothes of Miranda’s. Al just bundled up in a cupboard.’

I sit down on the sofa, hugging a cushion against my body. ‘How do you know they’re Miranda’s? I mean, Mum’s?’

‘Wel , I remember she bought them with the money her godmother sent her. She’d never real y been a clothes horse before, and suddenly she started turning up for dinner in these absolutely amazing dresses and things. And they’re al there, just stuffed into a bag and hidden in the back of a cupboard. I’d forgotten al about them! And there’s an hilari ous picture of Julius and Octavia I found in a kitchen drawer, when they were children down on the beach, covered in sand and wearing buckets on their heads. Ever so funny.’ Louisa laughs heartily, and leaves a pause for me to laugh heartily too which I do, even though my heart is beating so fast it’s painful.

‘Oh, that’s funny,’ I say unconvincingly. ‘Anything else?’

‘No,’ says Louisa. ‘Franty, your grandmother, she was a very organised woman. There’s hardly anything left, real y. I think she got rid of a lot . . .

a lot of things.’

I think back to my room at Summercove, which used to be my mother’s and Cecily’s, and know Louisa is right. When I think about it, it is rather odd. There is nothing in the wardrobe now – I know it by heart – apart from an old backgammon set, some old books, and a moth-eaten fur that Granny never wore. Certainly no diary. And yet somehow this makes me even more convinced she must have kept the rest of it somewhere. Out of sight. I take a deep breath.

‘What about the studio? I went in, just before I left.’

‘Wel , it is strange, having it open again, being able to go in,’ Louisa says. ‘I was never al owed to before. But no,’ she says, ‘nothing there real y either. So, you’re OK then?’ She changes the subject. ‘Al al right? I was worried about you, Natasha dear.’

When I was thirteen, I was running back towards the house from the beach and my newly long legs betrayed me, and I fel over, dislocating my shoulder in the process. The pain was excruciating, but Louisa took me to the hospital as I wailed and screamed loudly, al pretence at maturity abandoned. She waited with me for a doctor for what seemed like hours, and fed me sweets and read out extracts from her new Jil y Cooper novel to keep me entertained. I’m sure she’s forgotten it, but I never have. I don’t want her to worry about me, but it’s comforting to know she cares. Like I say, she is a comforting person, and I feel real y guilty about how mean I’ve been about her, these last few days.

‘Actual y – Oli and I have split up. Permanently,’ I say. ‘You and Oli? What?’ Louisa makes a querying sound at the back of her throat, as if she doesn’t understand. ‘When?’

‘Earlier today.’ It seems longer ago than that, this morning. Like a morning from a week ago, a year ago.

‘Oh, Natasha,’ Louisa says, her voice sad. ‘Oh, that’s awful.’

‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘Real y, it is. I mean, it’s not, but – you know.’

‘My dear. Where are you, at home?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘On your own?’

‘Yes,’ I say again. ‘That’s not very good. Do you want – should I get Octavia to come round? Keep you company? She’s only in Marylebone, you know.’

Yes, I want to say. Do send Octavia round. Her cheery face and happy modes of passing the time are just what I need. ‘Oh – that’s very kind, but don’t worry. I’m better off on my own.’ This is probably true. I’m on my own, for the first time in years. ‘I need some time by myself.’

‘Have you told your mother, or Jay, or anyone?’

‘No, actual y,’ I say. ‘Er – you’re the first person. Sorry, I didn’t mean it to be that way. I was real y just ringing to find out how Arvind is and – I don’t want to bother you with it al .’

‘It’s not a bother,’ she says. ‘Darling, it’s no bother at al . You poor thing.’ I have to remind myself that Louisa’s not a fusser, though she so often acts like one. I wish again that I’d known her when she was eighteen, before she became this person who does things for other people al the time, when she was the pretty girl in Cecily’s diary with a new lipstick and a scholarship to Cambridge, dreadful y ambitious and clever. And it occurs to me now that I’ve never heard her mention Cambridge or university or anything like that. Did she not go in the end? Where did she go, that girl?

She’s always pretended she loved her Tunbridge Wel s life. What if she didn’t? What if that wasn’t the life she’d expected for herself?

‘Look,’ she says, breaking into my thoughts. ‘Your grand-father’s just about to go to sleep, and he’s going into the home on Monday. I want him as rested as possible before then, it’s going to be strange at first, I’m sure.’

‘It is,’ I say. ‘I mean, I’d love to stay down here longer, but you know, I can’t. I’ve been here for two weeks, and he can’t stay here on his own, it is for the best,’ Louisa says, al in a rush. ‘Frank needs me back at home, too, I don’t like being away from him for too long either.’