‘Was it awful? Being sent away from home so young?’
‘Not awful. It would have happened anyway. But I missed my mother dreadfully. She was ill for a long time and they wouldn’t let me see her.’
‘What was the matter with her?’
‘I’m not sure. No one told me what was wrong. I suspect it was a tumour of some kind. They tried to keep her illness from me and when I had to know, my father said she was too ill to be troubled and wouldn’t let me go near her room.’
‘Oh Doug, that’s terrible. And you were only ten.’
‘According to my father, not too young to develop a stiff upper lip. I made the mistake of shedding tears when I heard Mama had died. My father struck me and told me to show some backbone. After that, I spent all the holidays at school. Even Christmas. He couldn’t bear the sight of me.’
Evie reached for his hand, but he drew it away and rolled onto his side. ‘Goodnight.’
After a few minutes he was asleep, but she could find no such solace herself.
18
One Sunday in early January, Mary Helston offered to take Evie, with Jasmine and her school friend Penny, to swim in the Jungle Pools at Taiping on the mainland. It was Evie’s first trip across on the ferry since arriving in Penang. Mary had borrowed her father’s motor-car and Evie was glad to escape from George Town and to do so without the company of Benny. Evie felt constantly under a microscope worried that the servants compared her with Felicity and found her wanting. And while the Malayan was always courteous and correct, Evie had never managed to accustom herself to being driven about in a large car by a servant. She felt out of place and uncomfortable, remembering her own years as a paid companion. Today would be a relaxing change, and she approached the trip with excitement and a sense of liberation.
It took almost two hours to get to the Taiping Jungle Pools. The place was in a magical setting in the hills, in the midst of thick rain forest. It was a marvel of Victorian construction – a series of three pools built into the hillside, connected by concrete steps and walkways and fed by a natural waterfall. The colonial administration had created it to keep civil servants, planters and other Europeans entertained and able to relax, away from the suffocating heat of the coastal plain. Up here, the water was cool, in contrast to other swimming pools where it was always tepid at best – although at times it could appear a little murky.
There was a water chute that older children took great delight in sliding down, diving boards and a third smaller, shallow pool for children where the two little girls could play more safely. Sunlight filtered through the canopy of trees, dappling the lush ferns and glinting off the surface of the water. The joyous whoops of frolicking children and the chatter of adults mingled with birdsong, the trilling of insects and the sound of water rushing over the falls.
After a leisurely swim, Evie and Mary sat down on their towels on the wood-topped concrete parapet that ran alongside the children’s pool, watching the two girls splashing about. Evie was glad to be in her friend’s company. Mary had never again mentioned the loss of her fiancé. While her eyes sometimes betrayed that her sadness was still close to the surface, she had found a way of keeping it concealed.
‘How are you settling in? It must be around six months you’ve been here now,’ asked Mary.
‘Five. To be honest, at first I thought I’d never settle. It’s been incredibly hard to adjust. I think I underestimated how much. But now… well, I’ve never been happier.’ She gave Mary a broad smile.
‘That’s super news. I’m so pleased for you.’
‘It wasn’t just acclimatising, although that’s been hard enough, but getting used to my new circumstances.’ Evie pulled off her swimming cap and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘I’d forgotten what it was like to be part of a family. Years of living and working as a paid companion to a kind but crotchety old lady had narrowed my horizons – not to mention living in a tiny village in Hampshire where nothing ever happened. And now I’ve been catapulted into a whole new world, as well as learning to be a wife and a mother.’
‘You and Jasmine seem to get along famously.’
Evie turned her gaze to watch her step-daughter as she jumped, knees bent under her, into the water, emulating the dive-bombing of the boys in the pool. The eight-year-old emerged, coughing and spluttering and rubbing her eyes. But before Evie had a chance to check that she was all right, Jasmine was clambering out of the pool and getting ready to repeat the manoeuvre. ‘Just look at her! She’s in her element. And I have you and the school to thank for that.’
‘No. You have to credit yourself. You’ve given Jasmine the love and care she’d obviously been craving since her mother died.’
Evie hesitated, before deciding if she couldn’t confide in Mary she had no one to confide in at all. ‘I sometimes wonder if she was craving it even while her mother was alive.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Just something Jasmine once said to me. She told me her mother was mean.’
‘Mean? In what way?’
‘I don’t know. It was clearly upsetting her so I didn’t press her.’
‘Can’t you ask your husband?’
Evie gave a little involuntary snort. ‘In a word, no.’ Seeing the dismay on Mary’s face, she decided to show the same trust in her friend as Mary had shown to her when she’d recounted the story of her fiancé. ‘What I mean is – that’s been part of the difficulty of adjusting. Doug and I were virtual strangers when we married. We’d met only once. Years ago. He asked
