Garden of Stars: A gripping novel of hope, family and love across the ages. Rose Alexander

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      It was impossible to answer with anything but the truth.

      “So what went wrong, my dear? You never told me.” Inês’s question hung suspended in the air between them like the rook that still circled above.

      “I guess I wasn’t ready to talk about it, then.”

      “Are you now?”

      Sarah lifted her blue-grey eyes to Inês and attempted a carefree laugh. “Now! Now there’s nothing to talk about.”

      Another silence, filled only by the wind. Inês had been a surrogate mother to Sarah all the years that her mother Natalie had worked so hard building up her business. Inês had always been there for her, tending for her, caring for her, picking her up when she fell, physically and metaphorically. They had always shared everything. Except this.

      Inês’s lips trembled slightly, and she struggled to steady them before responding. “Is it really that simple?”

      She held Sarah’s gaze as she spoke. Her black eyes, though age-paled and watery, were still piercing. “In my experience, that’s rarely the case.”

       No. No, it’s not that bloody simple.

      Sarah looked down at the bench and dug off a piece of flaking varnish with her fingernail. For a fleeting second she felt as if she were drowning, had to gulp for the air that the vicious gusts of wind seemed determined to deny her.

      “Simple or not, it’s the way things worked out.”

      It was a long time before either spoke again. Sarah found her thoughts drifting from her own dilemma, to which she had not yet worked out the solution, and towards the journal and to Inês’s youth. John, who she had loved so much, had joined up when war was declared and Inês hadn’t seen him for years.

      “Did you miss him when he went away?” she asked, as the thought occurred to her.

      Inês’s eyes were focused on the faraway dome of St Paul’s.

      “It was too far to go to him,” she replied, her voice strangely devoid of emotion. She seemed to understand what Sarah meant despite the lack of explanation. “Travel was difficult, then.”

      “Of course, during the war, I suppose it must have been,” Sarah concurred. “And anyway, he was fighting, wasn’t he?”

      The rooks in the belt of trees further down the hill began to caw cacophonously.

      “Fighting?” questioned Inês, suddenly seeming confused, even alarmed. “No, no, there was a gun but it was an accident…” She tailed off, gazing into space.

      Sarah frowned. John had definitely been a soldier, in a senior rank; Inês had his medals to prove it.

      “The Second World War, John went back to England, didn’t he?” she elucidated, trying to quell the panic in her voice. Inês seemed to have aged so quickly lately; was this misunderstanding an indication that she was losing her marbles as well?

      Realisation dawned on Inês’s face as she turned slowly to Sarah.

      “Oh, John. Yes, of course, John.” She sounded relieved, as Sarah felt. Just a momentary memory lapse, after all. “You’re right, I had to stay put until it was all over. I missed him, but he survived. So many didn’t.”

      There was a bluntness to her statement that Sarah put down to an unwillingness, common in that generation, to indulge personal memories of sadness when so many had sacrificed everything. The wind gathered strength and Inês shivered violently. Studying her closely, Sarah realised with a lurch of her heart how tiny, frail and very, very old she looked, all bundled up in her coat with strands of her hair, once ebony, now pure white, poking out from underneath her red beret.

      “We need to get home. Come on, take my arm.”

      Sarah escorted Inês back down the crumbling path, trying not to notice how painfully she walked.

       4

       London, 2010

      That evening, Sarah’s friend Lorna had organised a farewell dinner for her; overkill, Sarah felt, as she was only going for six days and hadn’t wanted a big fuss made but still, any meal she didn’t have to cook herself was always welcome. Sarah and Hugo had met Lorna and her husband Rich by dint of having children at the same school and in the same class; Lorna was as outspoken as Sarah was reticent.

      “But wasn’t Lisbon the place of your first love, Sarah?” demanded Lorna, true to form, as soon as they had settled into their seats at the pitted wooden table in their local pub. “Your grand amour?”

      She looked at Sarah questioningly, smiling broadly, proud of recalling and advertising something of such significance. Sarah gulped hard, blushed and glanced involuntarily towards Hugo. She couldn’t believe that Lorna had even remembered this fact, blurted forth one drunken evening years before when she had been wheedling out confessions, immediately regretted. Fortunately, Hugo was busy contemplating the menu and didn’t seem to have heard.

      “It was a long time ago,” she muttered, hoping the finality in her voice would put an end to the matter. “Really not important any more.”

      The waiter came to the table. He pulled the cork on the bottle of red they’d ordered, Portuguese in honour of the occasion, and poured a glass for each.

      “But darling!” exclaimed Lorna. “First love never dies. Isn’t that right, Rich?”

      She and Rich were childhood sweethearts; Lorna had confided to Sarah once that she’d never had another boyfriend and Rich was the only person she’d ever slept with. Sarah had not mentioned that Rich, when under the influence of alcohol, sometimes seemed to have a severe case of WHD, ‘wandering hand disease’ as they had called it in sixth form and that she, Sarah, had been the victim of it on more than one occasion.

      “What’s all this about?” Rich failed to endorse Lorna’s assertions about their everlasting love but instead turned to Hugo to question him. “You’re letting the wife go off cavorting unchaperoned in a city full of Lotharios?”

      Rich made the trip sound outrageous and Sarah feckless and irresponsible. Why was everyone suddenly so interested in what she was doing?

      “I guess so.” Hugo looked doubtful, as if he wasn’t quite sure where he had gone wrong, what he was supposed to have done or said. Everyone except Hugo, that was.

      Sarah contemplated the irony of the fact that she would have been furious if Hugo had dared to try to stop her going for anything other than purely practical, childcare-related issues. But on the other hand – should he care more, should he be more protective of her, more concerned about the possibility that temptation might cross her path? It seemed that this did not even cross his mind. If it had, would she feel differently? Would it show her that she still had the care and devotion of the man she had married, rather than the rather impatient near-disregard that was usually directed her way?

      Order pad rustling, the waiter came to the table and the distraction of choosing the dishes, selecting СКАЧАТЬ