Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

She was aware of his breath close to her neck as he reached over to touch the book’s cover.

‘Alexander Werth kept this diary while Paris was falling. I’m giving it to you because it shows how important it is for people to write what they see. Particularly in days like ours. Otherwise people don’t know what’s really happening, do you see that, Meredith?’

‘Yes.’ She glanced sideways and found him looking at her with such intensity that she was overcome. It happened in a matter of seconds, but for Meredith, stuck in the moment’s middle, everything moved like a film reel on slow motion. It was like watching a stranger as she leaned closer, drew breath, closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his in an instant of sublime perfection…

Tom was very gentle. He spoke kindly to her, even as he removed her hands from his shoulders, even as he gave them a squeeze, unmistakably of the friendly sort, and told her not to be embarrassed.

But Meredith was embarrassed; she wished only to melt into the ground. To dissolve into the air. Anything but to be still sitting beside him in the stark glare of her horrible mistake. She was so mortified that when Tom began to ask questions about Juniper’s sisters – what they were like, the sorts of things they enjoyed, whether there were any particular flower they favoured – she answered as if by rote. And she certainly didn’t think to ask him why he cared.

On the day Juniper left London, she met Meredith at Charing Cross Station. She was glad of the company, not only because she was going to miss Merry, but because it kept her mind from Tom. He’d gone the day before to rejoin his regiment – for training first, before being sent back to the front – and the flat, the street, the city of London itself, was unbearable without him. Which is why Juniper had decided to take an early train east. She wasn’t going back to the castle though, not yet: the dinner wasn’t until Wednesday, she still had money in her suitcase, and she had an idea that she might spend the next three days exploring some of those swirling paintings she’d spied from the window of the train that had brought her to London.

A familiar figure appeared at the top of the concourse, breaking into a grin when she spotted Juniper’s eager wave. Meredith scuttled through the crowd to where Juniper was standing, directly beneath the clock as they’d arranged.

‘Well, now,’ said Juniper, after they’d embraced, ‘Where is it then?’

Meredith held her thumb and forefinger very close together and winced. ‘Just a few last-minute corrections.’

‘You mean I won’t have it for the train ride?’

‘A few more days, honest.’

Juniper stepped aside for a porter pushing an enormous pile of suitcases. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘A few more days. No more, mind!’ She shook a finger with mock sternness. ‘I’ll be expecting it in the post by the end of the week. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

They smiled at one another as the train let out a mighty whistle. Juniper glanced over and saw that most of the passengers had boarded. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose I should be – ’

The rest of her sentence was smothered by Meredith’s embrace. ‘I’m going to miss you, Juniper. Promise you’ll come back.’

‘Of course I’ll come back.’

‘No more than a month?’

Juniper smoothed a fallen eyelash from her young friend’s cheek. ‘Any longer and you’re to presume the worst and mount a rescue mission!’

Merry grinned. ‘And you’ll let me know as soon as you’ve read my story?’

‘By return of post, the very same day,’ Juniper said with a salute. ‘Take care of yourself, little chicken.’

‘You take care, too.’

‘As always.’ Juniper’s smile straightened and she hesitated, flicking a stray hair from her eyes. She was deliberating. The news ballooned inside her, pressing for release, but a little voice urged restraint.

The guard blew his whistle, blocking out the voice, and Juniper was decided. Meredith was her best friend, she could be trusted. ‘I have a secret, Merry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t told anyone, we said we wouldn’t until later, but you’re not just anyone.’

Meredith nodded keenly and Juniper leaned in towards her friend’s ear, wondering if the words would feel as strange and wonderful as they had the first time: ‘Thomas Cavill and I are getting married.’

Darkness had fallen by the time I reached the farmhouse, and with it a fine drizzle was settling, net-like, across the landscape. There was still a couple of hours until dinner would be served and I was glad. After an unexpected afternoon in the company of the sisters, I was in need of a hot bath and time alone to shake off the cloying atmosphere which had trailed me home. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, only that there seemed to be so much unfulfilled longing within those castle walls, frustrated desires that had soaked inside the stones only to seep back out with time so that the air was stale, almost stagnant.

And yet the castle and its three gossamer inhabitants held an inexplicable fascination for me. No matter the moments of discomfort I experienced when I was there, as soon as I was away from them, from their castle, I felt compelled to return, and found myself counting the hours until I could go back. It makes little sense; perhaps madness never does. For I was mad about the Sisters Blythe, I see that now.

As soft rain began to fall on the farmhouse eaves, I lay curled up on my bedspread, a blanket draped across my feet, reading and dozing and thinking, and by dinnertime I felt much restored. It was natural that Percy should wish to spare Juniper pain, that she should leap to stop me when I threatened to open old wounds; it had been insensitive of me to mention Thomas Cavill, particularly with Juniper sleeping nearby. And yet the fire of Percy’s reaction had piqued my interest… Perhaps if I was lucky enough to find myself alone with Saffy, I might probe a little further. She had seemed agreeable, eager even, to help me with my research.

Research that now included rare and special access to Raymond Blythe’s notebooks. Even saying the words beneath my breath was enough to send a shiver of delight rippling down my spine. I rolled onto my back, thrilled to the tips of my toes, and gazed up at the joist-crossed ceiling, envisaging the very moment when I would glimpse inside the writer’s mind: see precisely the things he’d thought and the way he’d thought them.

I ate dinner at a table by myself in the cosy dining room of Mrs Bird’s farmhouse. The whole place smelled warmly of the vegetable stew that had been served, and a fire crackled in the grate. Outside, the wind continued to build, buffeting the glass panes, gently for the most part, but with occasional sharper bursts and I thought – not for the first time – what a true and simple pleasure it was, to be inside and sated when the cold and the starless dark spread out across the world.

I’d brought my notes to begin work on the Raymond Blythe article, but my thoughts would not behave themselves, drifting back, time and again, to his daughters. It was the sibling thing, I suppose. I was fascinated by the intricate tangle of love and duty and resentment that tied them together. The glances they exchanged; the complicated balance of power established over decades; the games I would never play with rules I would never fully understand. And perhaps that was key: they were such a natural group that they made me feel remarkably singular by comparison. To watch them together was to know strongly, painfully, all that I’d been missing.

‘Big day?’ I looked up to see Mrs Bird standing above me. ‘And another tomorrow, I don’t doubt?’