had to do. Someone she had to see. How easy it would be not to. How easy it would be to forge ahead with her plans regardless, and leave that particular door closed for ever, never knowing what lay behind it. Forgiveness, Elodie knew, was the way to make her soul, and therefore her happiness, complete. Because without forgiveness, she couldn’t forget, and unless she could forget …
She pulled the card out of her handbag. It had taken a bit of dissembling to get it. The address for all the conveyancing had been care of the solicitor, so that had given her no clue. But if there was one thing Elodie had inherited from her distaff side, it was the ability to give off the air of being someone. And when Elodie chose to pretend to be someone, she was hard to resist, especially if you were a gullible and rather bored estate agent in a small seaside town. He’d been easily foxed by airy hints of a bunch of thank-you flowers for the vendor.
‘I know how hard it must have been for her to give up the house. And I want to reassure her it’s in good hands,’ Elodie had gushed, wide-eyed with sincerity. Moments later, she’d had the address of the nursing home in her hand.
And it wasn’t a lie. Not really.
July 1962
Lillie Lewis was the mistress of ceremonies at The Grey House. Of that there was no question. It was her playground and her guests were her playthings. More than one person had compared her to Marie Antoinette, and not just because she was French.
Every year she decamped to Everdene for the summer, and had free rein and a limitless budget to entertain whomsoever she liked. Her husband Desmond came down at the weekends, for the factory he owned, which churned out jam and money in equal measure, couldn’t stop just because the sun was out. On the contrary, this was its busiest time, when strawberries and raspberries and apricots burst their skins and begged to be transformed into sweet, sticky preserves. The air around the factory smelt intoxicating in summer – to anyone who didn’t actually live near it, that is. After a while, you longed to go to sleep without the scent of hot sugared fruit invading your sleep. It got into your nostrils, your hair, your dreams.
There was money in jam. Oh yes. More than even Lillie Lewis, not known for her pecuniary restraint, could burn through (although she could drive a hard bargain, as those who dealt with her knew). And there were some – many, in fact – who observed afterwards that money is no substitute for attention.
Lillie far preferred summer at The Grey House to the rest of the year in the Lewis’s ugly, sprawling Gothic monstrosity in Worcestershire; a former lunatic asylum which Desmond felt had the stature and grandeur he needed to prove his social standing. For, like many people who made a lot of money very quickly, he felt the need to prove his wealth over and over again, as if it might disappear if he didn’t ram it down people’s throats. It had been a pleasant surprise to him, his ability to turn a profit, but it became something of an addiction – an obsession, almost.
The Grey House had been Lillie’s choice; an impulse purchase she had seen in Country Life . It hadn’t taken her two minutes to persuade her husband that a summer home was the ultimate proof of your success. She relished her guests’ delight in the setting, overlooking Everdene Sands, the most glorious bay on the north Devon coast. The house slept twelve comfortably, but as many as you liked if you weren’t worried about bunking up, which children, especially, weren’t. Tents, bunks and hammocks abounded, all in the spirit of summer fun. Four or five families would descend at a time, some related to the Lewis’s, some not. Some whom Lillie barely knew, but had taken a fancy to at a point-to-point or a dance. She collected people. And then she entertained them. As a hostess, she was unbeatable. No need was left untended; she asked nothing of her guests but for them to do just as
She pulled the card out of her handbag. It had taken a bit of dissembling to get it. The address for all the conveyancing had been care of the solicitor, so that had given her no clue. But if there was one thing Elodie had inherited from her distaff side, it was the ability to give off the air of being someone. And when Elodie chose to pretend to be someone, she was hard to resist, especially if you were a gullible and rather bored estate agent in a small seaside town. He’d been easily foxed by airy hints of a bunch of thank-you flowers for the vendor.
‘I know how hard it must have been for her to give up the house. And I want to reassure her it’s in good hands,’ Elodie had gushed, wide-eyed with sincerity. Moments later, she’d had the address of the nursing home in her hand.
And it wasn’t a lie. Not really.
July 1962
Lillie Lewis was the mistress of ceremonies at The Grey House. Of that there was no question. It was her playground and her guests were her playthings. More than one person had compared her to Marie Antoinette, and not just because she was French.
Every year she decamped to Everdene for the summer, and had free rein and a limitless budget to entertain whomsoever she liked. Her husband Desmond came down at the weekends, for the factory he owned, which churned out jam and money in equal measure, couldn’t stop just because the sun was out. On the contrary, this was its busiest time, when strawberries and raspberries and apricots burst their skins and begged to be transformed into sweet, sticky preserves. The air around the factory smelt intoxicating in summer – to anyone who didn’t actually live near it, that is. After a while, you longed to go to sleep without the scent of hot sugared fruit invading your sleep. It got into your nostrils, your hair, your dreams.
There was money in jam. Oh yes. More than even Lillie Lewis, not known for her pecuniary restraint, could burn through (although she could drive a hard bargain, as those who dealt with her knew). And there were some – many, in fact – who observed afterwards that money is no substitute for attention.
Lillie far preferred summer at The Grey House to the rest of the year in the Lewis’s ugly, sprawling Gothic monstrosity in Worcestershire; a former lunatic asylum which Desmond felt had the stature and grandeur he needed to prove his social standing. For, like many people who made a lot of money very quickly, he felt the need to prove his wealth over and over again, as if it might disappear if he didn’t ram it down people’s throats. It had been a pleasant surprise to him, his ability to turn a profit, but it became something of an addiction – an obsession, almost.
The Grey House had been Lillie’s choice; an impulse purchase she had seen in Country Life . It hadn’t taken her two minutes to persuade her husband that a summer home was the ultimate proof of your success. She relished her guests’ delight in the setting, overlooking Everdene Sands, the most glorious bay on the north Devon coast. The house slept twelve comfortably, but as many as you liked if you weren’t worried about bunking up, which children, especially, weren’t. Tents, bunks and hammocks abounded, all in the spirit of summer fun. Four or five families would descend at a time, some related to the Lewis’s, some not. Some whom Lillie barely knew, but had taken a fancy to at a point-to-point or a dance. She collected people. And then she entertained them. As a hostess, she was unbeatable. No need was left untended; she asked nothing of her guests but for them to do just as
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