her eagerness to see Archie to notice that Geraldine wasn’t simply being friendly. ‘She was a girl I grew up with—I suppose I must have met her for the first time when I was five or six, but I honestly don’t remember a time when she wasn’t around. She came to live with our housekeeper down in Sussex. Her mother had died and her father couldn’t raise her for some reason, so Mrs Price adopted her when she was four. She and her husband had been trying for a child for years without any luck, and my mother had her nose in a number of charitable causes, so she had no trouble laying her hands on a waif and stray to keep in with the servants.’ Her voice had taken on a hard, unforgiving edge, and Josephine had no doubt that Gerry blamed her mother for whatever had gone wrong in her life. ‘God, Josephine, those years felt like one long, glorious summer’s day. I’d always taken my home for granted, but she’d come from London and, as we grew up, I saw it through her eyes—the parkland and the woods, even the sky was different, and it all seemed to belong to us. We used to dream about the day when it would just be the two of us there—no parents, no servants, just us in the world.’ She laughed to herself. ‘The laws of inheritance and the workings of the English class system have never been my strong points. She was beautiful, though—so wilful and independent that I believed anything was possible. It’s funny—we laughed about my eye for an opportunity, but that Motley girl reminds me of her in some ways. She has the same spirit as Lizzie.’
‘Lizzie?’
‘Yes. The other night I found out that you knew her.’
Josephine was stunned. ‘Oh God, Gerry—I’m so sorry. She was at Anstey. Elizabeth Price …’
‘Elizabeth Sach, as it turned out.’
‘Please tell me you didn’t find that out from what I said.’
‘No, no, I’ve known about that for years. I knew before she died.’ Gerry reached across and squeezed her hand. ‘Look, Josephine, I haven’t brought this up to make you feel bad. How were you to know? But hearing her name like that just brought it all back, and I wanted to talk to you—to explain what really happened and to find out if there’s anything else you can tell me. Nobody would speak to me about her time at Anstey, but I’d trust you to be honest.’
Josephine nodded. ‘I’ll tell you as much as I can. But what did really happen?’
‘The usual stuff at first. It was fine for me to run wild with the servants’ daughter as long as everyone thought I’d grow out of it, but class kicked in when we were teenagers. By the time she was sixteen and I was about to turn eighteen, an embarrassment had become a problem. My mother decided it was time for us to be separated, so she got together with some do-gooding acquaintance of hers—Bannerman, I now realise—and arranged for Lizzie to go to Birmingham. There was no room for argument.’
‘That must have felt like the end of the world,’ Josephine said. ‘For you, obviously, but especially for her. I can still remember the shock of Birmingham after the Highlands. It was wartime as well, of course, which made things even grimmer. I longed for the air at Blair Atholl, and all I got was the smell of Kynoch’s steelworks.’ Gerry smiled. ‘It’s funny, no one seems to recognise how paralysing homesickness can be, but to my mind there’s no stronger emotion. I was devastated for weeks, and that was just for a place; I wasn’t leaving someone behind—in fact, my best friend from school went to Anstey with me—so it must have been so much worse for Lizzie.’
‘We had a terrible row before she went. She blamed me for allowing it to happen—that’s where the “too rich to care” comment came in. I’d never realised before that the class thing had seeped into our relationship, as well, but I suppose it’s so much easier to be oblivious to all that when you’re the one with the house and the money. Anyway, I was determined to prove her wrong, so I went to Paris with ten pounds in my pocket and drove ambulances for the Red Cross.’ She reached for another cigarette, but the case was empty and Josephine pushed her own across the table. ‘I couldn’t wait to get out of the place. It was as if Lizzie had packed up all its magic and taken it with her.’
‘Did you know all along who she was and what had happened to her mother?’
‘No. My mother knew, and the Prices, of course, but that was as far as it was supposed to go. I would never have found out if I hadn’t forced the issue.’
‘In what way?’
‘Oh, blame it on Paris.’ Josephine looked curious. ‘It was terrible in so many ways,’ she explained. ‘The city was bombed and people were dying in the streets, but we helped them, too, and there was nothing more exhilarating than saving a life. It made me think I could do anything; if I could stop people dying, I could certainly make a life for myself and Lizzie there, whether I had my parents’ support or not. So I came home and told my mother what I was going to do when the war ended. By that time, Lizzie would have finished at Anstey and we could be together. She could have nursed and I—well, I would have found something to do to make a living.’
‘And that’s when your mother told you?’
‘Yes. For some reason, she thought it would change my mind and put an end to the matter. And I suppose, to her credit, it did—but not in the way she intended.’
‘You told Lizzie what had happened to her mother, didn’t you?’
Gerry nodded. ‘It was my fault that she killed herself. I wrote to her straight away. I was so angry, Josephine—I’d always been brought up to believe that birthright was everything. My parents had shoved a long line of distinguished Ashbys down my throat from the moment I was old enough to understand, and here they were, trying to deny Lizzie the knowledge that was rightfully hers. It seemed so hypocritical to me at the time—actually, it still does. I know I’m all over the place and my life’s a mess, but I’ve always known who I am and where I fit in. Everyone deserves that much, at least.’ Josephine waited for her to continue, trying to imagine how she must have felt on Thursday evening as she listened to her past being reworked by two comparative strangers, neither of whom had the slightest idea what they were talking about emotionally. ‘I still think they were wrong not to tell her, but I wish I’d done it differently. I wish I’d waited to tell her myself rather than let her read it in a letter, but I underestimated the impact it would have. I honestly thought if I offered Lizzie a future that she could believe in, it would cease to matter where she came from.’ She shook her head, as if she were still unable to believe her own naivety. ‘I was a stupid, arrogant little bitch and I thought I was enough for her. Not too rich to care, never that— but too rich to understand.’
Josephine tried to think of something to say that wasn’t either patronising or cliched. There was little point in reminding Gerry that nobody of that age could have been expected to deal with the situation any more successfully: too young to understand was no better than too rich. Gerry seemed to appreciate the honesty of her silence. ‘Tell me about her time at Anstey, Josephine,’ she said quietly. ‘Anything you can remember. I know so little about the last few weeks of her life.’
How easily the scars of silence were passed on, Josephine thought: Elizabeth Sach had been denied the chance to come to terms with what her mother had done and, by taking her own life, had condemned someone who loved her to years of guilt and self-recrimination. ‘I didn’t know her very well, Gerry,’ she said gently, wishing that she could find some small thing to ease the pain. ‘I was in my final year and she was in her first, and our paths didn’t cross very often. I could tell you what the college was like, how she’d have spent her days, what she saw when she got up in the morning—but that’s not what you want, is it?’
Gerry shook her head. ‘So you remember her for her death, and not her life.’
‘Yes, I suppose I do. And you’ve already heard everything I know about that, although I wish to God you hadn’t.’
‘I could kill Bannerman for what she’s done, you know—for meddling in Lizzie’s life but not seeing the job through. I heard what she said to you about keeping an eye on her from time to time, but she wasn’t there when it mattered, was she?’
‘She did what she thought was right.’ It was said half-heartedly, and out of habitual rather than genuine loyalty; privately, Josephine shared Gerry’s opinion of Celia Bannerman’s fated interference.
‘And I suppose the college was paid handsomely for taking on a child killer’s daughter.’
‘You don’t know that. I’m sure it wasn’t a mercenary thing.’
‘Really? I know how these women work, Josephine, and they’re all the same. Bannerman only tolerates my presence because the Ashbys contribute so heavily to the Cowdray coffers. She’s never been comfortable with my being here—I used to think it was because my louche behaviour threatened the club’s precious reputation, but now I know why.’
‘Will you tell Celia what happened? How Lizzie found out, I mean.’
‘Oh, don’t worry—I’ll make sure that Celia understands everything perfectly. And there’s something you need to understand, too. You said Lizzie was hard to like, but that isn’t true. She was just sad, Josephine. Her world had been torn apart for the second time, and she was lost—utterly lost. Who wouldn’t lash out at a time like that?
