But as she thought about friendship and what it meant, she realised that Hélène and Élise had always been her very best friends and now one of them was not and that made her sadder than she could ever have imagined.
The days soon passed and once Christmas was over Élise and her daughter went back to France and Rosalie left for London. The house had been packed to the rafters with laughter, and tears, but was so quiet now it left Florence feeling low. She put a brave face on it for Jack’s sake, because with the unfinished apartment to complete in Malta, in January he’d be going too.
‘You could come with me,’ he said on their last evening.
She shook her head. ‘I’d rather just stay here. I have my job at the manor. I was lucky they agreed to take me back. And I have my writing. After everything, I need to feel settled.’
‘I’ll only be gone for a few short weeks and when I’m back, we can plan the wedding.’
She smiled. ‘Our lovely summer wedding. Actually, Rosalie offered to help and to pay.’
He looked surprised. ‘She didn’t need to.’
‘She really wants to. And isn’t it traditional for the bride’s family to bear the cost?’
He laughed. ‘I suppose it is. Summer still sounds good to you?’
‘Absolutely. I’d hate it to be cold and wet.’
He touched her cheek. ‘It will work out you know.’
She frowned, unsure, and then realised why he wassaying that. The argument with Hélène. She’d been trying to put it to the back of her mind but had failed miserably. She’d tormented herself over a letter she’d written but when both Jack and Élise had insisted it would be best to leave Hélène alone for now, she had torn it up. But she hated feeling so helpless.
The morning of Jack’s departure came round quickly, with a grey sky and the wind and the rain beating hard on their bedroom window.
‘Bugger,’ he said. ‘I was hoping we’d get out for one last walk before I leave.’
‘There is something I’d rather do,’ she said with a suggestive laugh, then she climbed on top of him and leaning over, kissed him hard on the mouth.
As the winter dragged on, Florence longed to speak to Hélène with love and hear her sister reply in the same way as she used to do. Instead, all she could see was her Hélène’s tight, pale face when they’d spoken beside their mother’s grave. It had been awful. Her sisters had been the ones who’d loved and accepted her funny little ways. Teased her. Called her their little witch when she spent hours stirring a pot on the stove, her days growing and pickling vegetables, and the moments when, balanced precariously on the table, she reached up to hang herbs to dry from the ceiling hooks. She sifted through layer after layer of happy memories. And terribly sad ones too. Victor’s death, Violette’s suicide. She missed her sisters with such an ache inside her and tried to nurture the hope that Hélène would come round, accept what hadhappened, forgive her. But would she even come to the wedding?
Jack wrote by airmail to say he missed her and asked if she was all right.
‘I’m fine,’ she’d written in her reply, for how could she tell him how she really felt?I’m bloody lonely and very sad.
Of course, being married would be an ending of sorts for the sisters, although an ending had already happened when she’d been forced to leave the Dordogne. She began to think more seriously about the wedding because Hélène would not be her only problem. Should she invite her father Friedrich and her half-brother Anton? Both German, they’d hardly be welcome so soon after the war.
The January days stretched out cold and hard, the need she had for forgiveness becoming corrosive. When she should have been happy about her love for Jack, she felt guilty, although Rosalie was coming down for a few days and Florence was looking forward to planning the details of the wedding with her and Gladys.
February was strangely less depressing than January and then towards the end of the month, not long before Jack was due back, Florence realised she had missed a second monthly period. She had assumed the first absence was because of her grief over Claudette’s death and despair over Hélène’s coldness, but the second? There had to be a different reason for that. She made an appointment with the doctor where she supplied him with a urine sample and then went home. Two weeks the doctor had said, then call me.
It was the longest two weeks of her life. Florencehugged the possibility to herself, didn’t tell a soul what she suspected, and all the time she was thinking of Jack’s face when she told him. She saw the first wild snowdrops in the woods and grew excited, then some early daffodils came up in the garden. They’d have to bring the wedding forward of course if … if … if.
Then early one morning she called the doctor from the telephone box at the crossroads and he spoke in a cheerily brisk voice. ‘Congratulations, my dear,’ he said. ‘I’m assuming your fiancé will be pleased. A bit cart before the horse, of course, but since the war everything is pear-shaped. You’ll make a wonderful mother. Come in and see me soon for a physical examination.’
‘Well, I’d better get weaving,’ she said, ‘and thank you. Thank you so much.’ Once outside, delirious with excitement, she laughed and laughed, and then as she walked down the track towards Meadowbrook and home, she cried tears of joy.
CHAPTER 55
A few days later she heard the taxi bringing Jack home from the station. She raced down the stairs and outside to the brook, where she ran through the water, grasped him by the arm and as the taxi took off, dragged him indoors.
‘Well, I’m delighted you’re so pleased to see me, but I have left my bags outside. It is raining.’
‘Get them then, go on, get the damn bags. I’ve got something to tell you. Something important.’
He smiled at her and shook his head in amusement. ‘Whatever it is, you look mighty pleased.’
‘Go on,’ she said, holding her secret tight for just a tiny bit longer.
