A Midwinter Promise

  To my mother

  Contents

  Prologue

  PART ONE Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  PART TWO Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  It’s there in the darkness. Her secret. Her unmentionable.

  I must be wicked. I must be terrible. I must be evil.

  There’s no other explanation. How else could she keep this awful, awful secret?

  If I were stronger, I would be able to do what I know must be done.

  She could take her secret out into the night, when there is nobody about. She could take it down to the boathouse, where the old skiff lies rotting. She could untie the skiff, climb in and push it out so that it floats silently into the middle of the lake. And then, at the deepest point, where she knows thick, entangling weed lies like an underwater jungle beneath her, ready to snare her and hold her down, she could take herself over the edge, and the secret would go with her.

  Then, at last, I would be free.

  But right now she is afraid. She is too weak. The secret will kill her somehow. That is the only thing she knows for sure.

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  ‘Hello, lovelies! Let’s see how you’re coming along.’

  Alex pulled on the dangling light switch, feeling the grit of cobwebs under her fingers, and the drying room burst into a musty yellow light. Now she could see the row upon row of bunches of flowers hanging from the attic rafters, hundreds of tiny petalled heads in shades of red, purple, pink, yellow, orange and white, suspended upside down over the dusty floor. They had been carefully bunched, tied and strung up in the summer, when their petals were full of vivid colour. They were now slightly faded, brittle rather than yielding, and their stems dry and hollow. But they were still beautiful.

  ‘Ooh, you look gorgeous!’

  She pulled down a bunch from the nearest rafter to inspect. The little starry heads, like miniature chrysanthemums in yellow, orange and magenta, had changed beautifully from silky smooth to straw-dry petals. Lack of sunlight had kept most of the colour intact; the darker ones had lost some pigment, but their colour would be reawakened by putting white blooms among them to bring out their jewel hues, and her careful handling meant that most of the petals were still in place.

  Excellent. They’re definitely good enough for baubles.

  She looked about at her hoard. The other rafters were strung with a bounty of flowers: the white and yellow pom-poms nicknamed billy buttons; long delphiniums in purple, lilac and cream; fragrant lavender in big bunches; hydrangeas with their huge fluttery heads in pale green and soft pink; love-in-a-mist, hollyhocks, roses, baby’s breath, lady’s mantle. The poetry of their names was enough to make her love the flowers, even without their delicate, dried-out beauty, with its almost melancholy memory of summer now gone.

  Taking down half a dozen bunches, she carried them downstairs and out into the potting shed where a long wooden table was ready and waiting. She began to pull her supplies from the row of battered oak cupboards along one wall of the shed – florist’s oasis, wires, scissors, ribbons, glue – and made a mental note to order more. As well as making her usual stock, she had promised to supply a London department store with enough floral baubles for all its Christmas windows and that would mean a huge boost to the business. It was exciting, after all these years of slogging, to feel that she was beginning to get somewhere.

  The potting shed was always where Alex felt calmest, and today she relaxed into the work, taking the dried heads of helichrysum, snipping them, wiring the stems and pressing them into the sponge orbs that would hold them in place. The work was repetitive but engrossing; simple but creative and satisfying as the bauble took shape. Soon she had several in shades of plum, pink and red, strung with green ribbon and ready to hang.

  They’re so pretty.

  She had a flash of memory of Mum at the top of a ladder, frowning, her tongue between her teeth, as she stretched to hang a canary-yellow bauble on the upper branches of the great Christmas tree that took pride of place in the hall at Tawray.

  ‘There!’ she had cried with delight, when it was successfully in place. ‘Doesn’t that look fabulous?’

  It did. Alex had gazed up at the enormous tree with its spectacular load of flower baubles in dozens of gorgeous colours. ‘Lovely,’ she breathed.

  ‘Who’s got the star? Ali Pali?’

  Alex ran up the stairs so she could lean over the banister and pass the star to Mum to put on the top. She’d helped to make it: bending coat hangers into the right shape, stuffing them with foam which was studded with dozens of tiny dried daisies. Mum had even let her spray it with the can of paint, releasing a cloud of silver that drenched the petals, giving them a satisfyingly metallic finish. ‘Here you are!’

  ‘Thank you, Angel Ali.’ Mum took it and with more frowning and tongue biting, managed to get it settled on the top. ‘Tiny bit off,’ she said, squinting. Her tawny hair was scrunched up into a wild bun, skewered with a pencil and a piece of florist’s wire, and she pushed the loose bits out of her eyes. ‘But no one will notice! Come on, let’s do the festoons.’

  That was Alex’s favourite bit. The tree looked amazing, of course, but there was something about the festoons that spoke of ancient revels and Christmases past. Mum made them, weaving all the joyous summer flowers into the dark green ivy skeins, putting in holly and old man’s beard, and all manner of pagan greenery alongside the delicate beauty of the petals. Alex loved the blue ones best – cornflowers, nigella and delphinium – and after that, the ones that looked like plum velvet: roses, hellebore, dark tulips. But they were all beautiful, how could she pick a favourite? Mum took the ropes of flowers and made a lavish display of them along the tops of the chimney pieces, winding them around thick, waxy church candles; she strung them over the great gilded picture frames in the drawing room, draped them over mirrors, and wound some along the banister of the oak staircase. She even hung garlands around the necks of the suits of armour and put laurel crowns on their helmets.

  ‘There you are, Sir Rupert,’ she said, patting one of them on the bottom. ‘Happy Christmas.’ She winked at Alex. ‘Not fair to miss them out,’ she said gravely, and Alex giggled.

  Every year of Alex’s early childhood it was the same: out came the dried flowers carefully harvested in summer, and after hours of careful construction, up went the floral displays. When they appeared, it meant Christmas was truly on its way.
Then, when the house was opened up, the visitors came to admire the flowers. When she got old enough, Alex earned a few pounds helping to serve tea in the orangery, and made lots more in tips. Johnnie made his money washing up all the teacups and plates sticky with cake crumbs.

  She smiled to think of it now.

  But then, the flowers stopped.

  After Mum died, there was no one to do the decorations. The flowers wilted in the gardens, turned brown and then rotted. Alex was too young. No one else seemed interested.

  Certainly not Sally. She was probably glad not to have the mess – all those dropped leaves and petals. She always liked things nice and tidy.

  When Alex was eighteen and languishing in post-exam lassitude, she’d suddenly been inspired to cut the harvest of blooms in the gardens and meadows of Tawray, and set them to dry as her mother had. When autumn came, she taught herself to make the decorations in the old way, and started the tradition again. It was smaller than it had been – Sally wouldn’t permit it on the same scale – but the house was still opened for an afternoon so that people could see the flowers in all their glory. And Alex had found her calling.

  Alex realised that her fingers were numb; the potting shed’s gas heater wasn’t really strong enough to cope with the afternoon chill. She put her finished stock carefully into tissue-lined boxes and stored them away, then cleared up her tools. When that was done, she went out, locked the door and crossed the yard to the barn that was now her house. Halfway across, she stopped and took a deep breath of crisp air, inhaling the sharpness of autumn with a sense of pleasure and reawakening. The lazy warmth of summer was all but gone, the leaves were on the turn and she could see copper and russet lights in the trees across the park that stood between her and Tawray. She stared at the gracious house nestled into its nook of green, wreaths of evening mist wrapped around its turreted roof like a veil.

  The one benefit to not living there now was being able to see it like this, in a way that was impossible when actually in it.

  ‘Gorgeous Tawray,’ she murmured. It was a strange thing to love a place so much, to feel so much a part of it, as though its character and essence swirled through her bloodstream, feeding her cells and nourishing her at some vital level. Perhaps that was why she had never been able to leave, not like the others. They had made their way elsewhere, following jobs and studies, and finding new places to belong. But she had always been here, tied to it by invisible ropes of love and longing.

  And loss.

  The sight of the old house brought an ache of grief: it was there, and yet it was gone. Someone else had possession of its beauty, its solidity and the past that inhabited its walls. Someone else looked out over the gardens, towards the woods, the cliffs and the sea. Someone else walked past the lake, the old tree that overlooked it, the boathouse . . .

  But Sally wanted it gone. So that’s what happened. Sally gets what she wants, no matter how the rest of us feel – that’s just a fact.

  Alex pulled herself up, shivering slightly in the chill afternoon air. ‘Come on, no point in dwelling on it. Tawray is sold. That can’t be changed.’ She spoke aloud to make sure she was firm with herself. ‘And I don’t expect they’ll want the flowers either.’

  It was years since the family had lived in the house. Long before it was sold, Sally had declared it was too big for her and Pa to live in, with the children grown up and gone. That was fair enough, Alex could see that two people rattling round the great place on their own was not ideal. So it had been rented out to Major Reynolds and his wife, Lady Clare, and their four teenage sons, who quickly grew up, left and, it seemed, began producing grandchildren almost immediately. And they had wanted Alex to carry on doing the flowers.

  ‘It was one of the reasons why we wanted to rent Tawray in the first place,’ Lady Clare said. ‘We saw the gorgeous Christmas flowers here. We can’t imagine the place without them.’

  Alex had been touched, and profoundly happy that she could carry on Mum’s tradition. It didn’t have to end now that they no longer lived at Tawray themselves.

  She gazed at the house, with its chimneys and turrets. But I have no idea if the new owners will want me to carry on. Who knows if they have any idea the tradition exists? She sighed. Sometimes it feels as though I’ve spent all my life fighting to keep something of my past alive, while everyone else is determined to let it go.

  Alex was peeling potatoes for mash when she heard the door open and the clamour of voices and footsteps as the girls came in.

  ‘We’re back!’ called Di, and she came into the kitchen clutching book bags and a music case. ‘Something smells nice.’

  ‘Casserole. Where are the girls?’

  ‘Where do you think?’ Di rolled her eyes. ‘In front of the telly before they had their coats off. They’ve been very good. No problems.’

  ‘Thanks, Di.’ Alex smiled at her. They had a good arrangement of childcare swaps so that they both had clear work days a couple of times a week. As Di’s daughters were the same ages as Scarlett and Jasmine, and in the same years at school, it worked well. ‘Tea?’

  ‘I won’t say no.’ Di slipped down into a chair. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine, fine.’ Alex switched on the kettle. ‘Same as usual. Trying to keep things on an even keel.’

  ‘How’s Tim? Were you right? Does he definitely have a new lady friend?’

  ‘Yup. He confirmed it the other day.’ Alex rolled her eyes. ‘Exactly as I predicted.’

  ‘You did, you wise old bird.’ Di eyed her carefully. ‘How do you feel about that?’

  Alex chopped another potato and slipped the pieces into the saucepan of water on the stove. ‘All right, I suppose. It was bound to happen. He was on dating apps before he even moved out. But the break-up was my call, so I can hardly be angry if he gets a girlfriend.’

  She remembered how Tim used to splutter with outrage when she told him he would find someone else.

  ‘No way!’ he’d declare. ‘That’s it for me. I don’t expect to find someone else. The failure of this relationship has destroyed me, I’m done.’

  ‘You’ll have a girlfriend within six months, I guarantee,’ she’d said firmly. ‘You’ll probably be remarried within eighteen months.’

  He’d huffed at that thought. She’d ruined him, that was the implication. He was a broken man. What did he have left to give when he’d given his all to her?

  ‘Well, you should do the same!’ Di declared. ‘You should find someone else. Have a bit of fun, even. You deserve it.’

  ‘Hmm. Maybe. I’m not sure if I’m ready for all that. I’m still in recovery from relationships. Tim only moved out six months ago. We’re still finalising the divorce terms.’

  ‘Yes, but let’s be honest. From what you said, it was over for a while before that.’

  Alex nodded. The kettle came to the boil and switched itself off, and she went over to make the tea. ‘It was. We married too fast and too young, before we really knew each other or ourselves. I just didn’t realise how different we were.’

  Di nodded sympathetically. ‘At least you found out now, while there’s still time for the two of you to make fresh starts. You’ve both been very mature about it – I’m sure you’ll take the new woman in your stride.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely.’ Alex smiled as she handed Di a mug of steaming tea. ‘I don’t mind. Really.’

  Deep down, though, she wasn’t quite so insouciant. Something tasted bitter when she thought about Tim with another woman. Am I jealous? She searched her heart. No, it wasn’t that. She didn’t want Tim back and while she was still fond of him, she had long ago ceased to love him as a husband.

  We shouldn’t have got married. I was so desperate to find a home and to be loved, I didn’t see that Tim wasn’t right for me at all.

  The reasons why she had craved a place of safety so much were painful to look at with too much intensity and she pushed that thought away quickly.

  I’m not jealous of the new woman. I’m just s
ad it ended up this way.

  Yes, that was it. That was natural, wasn’t it? After all, she’d tried for years to make it all right, for the sake of Scarlett and Jasmine. They were so little, still only seven and five, and they deserved that she do everything in her power to keep their family together. But the fissures between her and Tim grew deeper, and the unhappiness more profound. They were two such different personalities and when the excitement of their initial passion had worn off, they’d found themselves mystified by one another. That had grown into baffled resentment and then into undercurrents of hostility that soured life for them all. When Tim went away on a long trip to America, it had been impossible not to see the difference. In his absence, calm had descended on the household, along with the sense that they could breathe, as though the windows and doors had been flung open and fresh, brisk air had flooded in. At first, Alex felt guilty, as though she needed to try harder to accept Tim and everything he wanted and give up her own wants and needs, so that life at home could be this calm and pleasant when he was there. But she knew that was impossible.

  When Tim returned and she told him her decision, he’d behaved exactly as she’d thought he might: injured, offended, refusing to listen to her, or to talk seriously and sensibly. He’d shown no regret or sadness for the end of their marriage, just outrage at being ‘ordered out of my home’, as he put it. She watched him packing, wishing that just once he could act like an adult. She longed to sit down and talk to him, to discuss with him calmly what had gone wrong. Couldn’t they treat each other with acceptance and love even as they admitted it hadn’t worked out? But the Tim who could do that would have been someone she could stay married to.

  In the end, though, he had calmed down and they had handled it as well as they could, considering there were two small children involved, the beings that would tie her and Tim together for the rest of their lives and to whom they owed the utmost consideration. Thinking of Scarlett and Jasmine had kept her together many times when she’d considered drastic options or longed to let rip at Tim in the way that would probably destroy all future relations between them.