The Hidden Years Read Online Free Page A

She was so
precious to them all in different ways, this child of David's. 'Only
because she wanted to see
me
, Camilla…
The surgeon was worried that with something preying on her mind she
would—'
    'Something preying on her mind… What?'
    'Camilla, let Sage get inside and sit down before you
start cross-questioning her,' Faye reproved her daughter gently. 'It
isn't a very comfortable drive down from London these days with all the
traffic… I wasn't sure what your plans are, but I've asked
Jenny to make up your bed.'
    'I'm not sure either,' Sage told her sister-in-law,
following her inside and then pausing for a moment as her eyes adjusted
to the dimness of the long panelled passageway that led from the back
to the front of the house.
    When her mother had first come to Cottingdean this
panelling had been covered in paint so thick that it had taken her
almost a year to get it clean. Now it glowed mellowly and richly,
making one want to reach and touch it.
    'I've asked Jenny to serve afternoon tea in the
sitting-room,' Faye told her, opening one of the panelled doors. 'I
wasn't sure if you would have had time to have any lunch…'
    Sage shook her head—food was the last thing she
wanted.
    The sitting-room was on the side of the house and faced
west. It was decorated in differing shades of yellow, a golden, sunny
room furnished with an eclectic collection of pieces of furniture which
somehow managed to look as though they were meant to be together.
Another of her mother's talents.
    It was a warm welcoming room, scented now with
late-flowering pots of hyacinths in the exact shade of lavender blue
of the carpet covering the floor. A fire burned in the grate, adding to
the room's air of welcome, the central heating radiators discreetly
hidden away behind grilles.
    'Tell us about Gran, Sage,' Camilla demanded, perching on
a damask-covered stool at Sage's feet. 'How is she?'
    She was a pretty girl, blonde like her mother, but, where
Faye's blondeness always seemed fairly insipid, Camilla's was warm and
alive. Facially she was like her grandmother, with the same startlingly
attractive bone-structure and the same lavender-grey eyes.
    'Is she really going to be all right?'
    Sage paused. Over her head, her eyes met Faye's. 'I hope
so,' she said quietly, and then added comfortingly, 'She's a very
strong person, Camilla. If anyone has the will to fight, to hold on to
life…'
    'We wanted to go to see her, but the hospital said she'd
asked for you…'
    'Yes, there was something she wanted me to do.'
    Both of them were looking at her, waiting…
    'She said she wanted us…all of us, to read her
diaries… She made me promise that we would.' Sage grimaced
slightly. 'I didn't even know she kept a diary.'
    'I did,' Camilla told them. 'I came downstairs one night
when I couldn't sleep and Gran was in the library, writing. She told me
then that she'd always kept one. Ever since she was fourteen, though
she didn't keep the earliest ones…'
    Ridiculous to feel pain, rejection over something so
insignificant, Sage told herself.
    'She kept the diaries locked in the big desk—the
one that belonged to Grandpa,' Camilla volunteered. 'No one else has a
key.'
    'I've got the key,' Sage told her gruffly. They had given
it to her at the hospital, together with everything else they had found
in her mother's handbag. She had hated that… hated taking
that clinically packaged bundle of personal
possessions…hated knowing why she had been given them.
    'I wonder why she wants us to read them,' Faye murmured.
She looked oddly anxious, dread shadowing her eyes.
    Sage studied her. She had got so used to her
sister-in-law's quiet presence in the background of her mother's life
that she never questioned why it was that a woman—
potentially a very attractive and certainly, at forty-one, a relatively
young woman—should want to choose that kind of life for
herself.
    Sage knew Faye had been devoted to David… that
she had adored him, worshipped him almost,