Sara Alexander - The Secret Legacy - The perfect summer read for fans of Santa Montefiore, Victoria Hislop and Dinah Jeffries

‘James, I’ve listened to what you have to say. My wife will not be committed. She is sick, yes, but she need not be incarcerated. She’s my wife, for heaven’s sake!’ The Major rose to his feet, slamming the table as he did so.

The doctor rose to meet him. ‘We both want what’s best. I will do everything I can to support you, Henry, but it will not be easy.’

The Major nodded. His gaze bore into his hands.

‘I’ll give you a few days to think – then you’ll tell me what you’ve decided.’

I opened the door for the doctor. ‘That’s quite all right, I’ll see myself out, thank you.’

I heard the door close as I scraped the last few crumbs off the tablecloth. Adeline cried out. The Major reached the stairs before I.

‘I’ll go, Santina, you finish here.’

The next few nights bent into a fragile routine. The Major rose with Adeline, calmed her out of her night terrors, soothed the screams that tore me out of my own restless sleep, whilst I cradled her mewling baby, watching her mold into my arms as I fed her, then lulling her to sleep with swaying. Each feed bought me time to gaze at that tiny face, noticing the minuscule changes to the small pink mounds of her cheeks, an extra tuft of downy hair along her hairline, a second or two more of keeping her shiny slate eyes open. This temporary peace softened the house, till the next bout of unsettled cries of mother or daughter reverberated, all the louder for the deafening quiet that encased us. Sometimes Elizabeth would rip Adeline out of her rest and make her shake with panic. Other nights Adeline wouldn’t sleep at all, but insist on wandering the halls, or walk up and down the stairs in continuous motion.

The final night before the doctor returned to hear of Henry’s decision we found Adeline scrawling all over the walls. The pencil raced across the plaster, scrambling outpourings. The next day, as I tried my best to wash all the markings off, I read her stream of panic. She wrote about loving Elizabeth, of wanting to love her, of not being mad. The writing was jagged, void of punctuation. Reading her words in the cold light of day was more terrifying than watching the Major try to tear her away from it in the dead of night, as she screeched at him to not set one finger upon her body or she would kill him. When the doctor arrived, the Major was still asleep. I led him to the front room to wait.

‘How was the night, Santina?’ the doctor asked, catching me a little off guard.

‘I’m not sure,’ I lied, trying not to think about the red circles around Adeline’s eyes, or the withering panic the Major tried to bury from me as he wrestled her back to bed.

‘How is Elizabeth?’

‘Hungry mostly,’ I replied. My mind spun down the hall to the warmth of the kitchen where she slept in her rattan basket. I could sense she would wake soon to be fed. I would sit by the fire and the world would slip away, replaced by Elizabeth’s rhythmic suckling and an imperceptible smile I thought I could read in the peaceful slant of her closed eyes; the rise and fall of her swallows like wordless thanks.

The doctor smiled. I nodded and left the room.

After a while the Major came down. I placed a tray of tea between them and poured, wishing the uncertainty of the household would swirl up into thin air like the Earl Grey steam.

‘And that’s your final decision then, Henry?’

‘I don’t change my mind, James, you know me better than that.’

‘I’m afraid I do.’

‘Thank you, Santina – that will be all.’

I left the men, feeling like my life in London was once again an unchartered course, headed for the rocks.

That afternoon, whilst Adeline was sleeping, the Major called me into his study. Something about the usual considered chaos felt jagged today. A few more books left half opened, reams of abandoned words searching for their lost reader. Time had frayed since that night, forever an unfinished paragraph.

‘Santina, I must tell you something.’

My stomach tightened.

‘I have decided my family must move away.’

Memories of the New Piccadilly Café flickered before me, darker and sweatier than I remembered it. I nodded, furious about the tears clamping my throat.

‘I would dearly like you to come with us,’ he said, straightening.

Some hope after all, perhaps.

‘It is a big move. A different country in fact.’

My body refused to offer any reaction. I stood mute, looking as stupid as I felt.

‘Italy. I intend to return to the one town that has left the deepest impression on me since I first set foot there.’

I held the expectant silence.

‘Positano.’

He read my face quicker than I could recover my expression.

‘Yes, it is most likely a ridiculous shock to you, and I would understand entirely if it was the very place you would have no interest in returning to.’

Any town on the globe but my own. He was rolling back the carpet to his city, hooking me back into the place I’d longed to leave like no other. My heart curled into a tight fist.

‘I am under no illusion that the very reason you came to this city was as a gateway to America. Now, whilst I’m in no position to influence you, I must express that your help has been invaluable the last month. I should like to extend your time with us by one year, and, whatever the situation at that point, I will, of course, honor my promise to arrange your papers for America. As planned. I don’t need an answer today, of course. Tomorrow will be fine.’

He turned back to his desk. I nodded and left.

The click of the lock felt like I was shutting much more than a door behind me.

I tied a scarf around my head and left the house. My legs began marching downhill along Willow Road. I stormed past The White Bear, giving a perfunctory nod to the locals resting upon the wooden benches outside. I didn’t take the time to enjoy the Edwardian terraces this time, or the cluster of powdery colored homes, or the line stretching a little way down Flask Walk from the public baths where the poor families from the cottages on Streatley Place would take their weekly cleanse. Thoughts ricocheted in my mind, colliding for attention and answers. How on earth could I return home? It would be like an unfinished adventure, fleeing the dream that had brought me this far. I had become the third strand in the plait of this family’s drama. Perhaps it was the broken nights, the constant strain of having to cope with Adeline’s reliving of terrors only she could see, but I felt a sudden wave of claustrophobia followed by a great weight of tiredness, the like I hadn’t felt since my mother died.

I crossed East Heath Road and found Adeline’s muddy path toward the ponds. The mixed pond was in view now, intrepid swimmers gliding through the glassy green sending ripples across the surface. I was that net of duck weed, feeling the involuntary undulations rock me this way and that. The trees grew thicker and the trail wound deeper into the trees, narrowing through elder and yew. The trodden leafy paths were still cooked with summer, only the yellowing tinge to the tips of occasional leaves hinting at the relentless promise of autumn. What was the sense in defying the inevitable change? Would starting a new London life alone be surrendering to the diverted path or resisting it? Was this the freedom I’d been charmed by? An unknown world, unencumbered by family dramas, a newborn’s demands? Now might be the very crossroads I needed to find the courage to start again.

I bent down under a low-lying branch and sank onto a fallen trunk. For a moment my mind drew a misty silence. I heard the birds celebrate high up in the trees above me. Straws of light shafted onto my feet. I let the damp sunny air cocoon my restless mind. Could I admit to myself that I had fallen in love with someone else’s child? That in the month-long care of this helpless human I had been consumed by the desire that she survive? That the first time her eyes focused on mine I was filled with the thrill of being the first human she had connected with? That the helplessness I felt in the face of Adeline’s catastrophic decline was ploughed into making sure this motherless child was cared for? That I loved her on behalf of the Major, who I could see found it all too painful to express his feelings toward the tiny babe? Selfish perhaps, this decadent desire to save.