Libby had known that the conversation wasn’t over, merely deferred.
The following Wednesday, when she left lessons early because she had a queer sort of headache and her limbs felt heavy like they were made from sandbags, there was a letter waiting for her.
It had a London postmark, her name and address written in a hand that Libby recognised but that most definitely wasn’t Freddy’s, so it had escaped Millicent’s curious scrutiny, though Libby wouldn’t have put it past her to steam it open.
Libby headed straight for the garden in the hope that the fresh air would clear her head. There was a patch of grass between the apple trees at the bottom where she could sit in shade while she read.
Darling girl
I have to write this so that you have unassailable proof of my feelings, my regard.
I love you. I want to marry you. I must make plans for our future.
Not just the future that we’ll spend together but for those six months, after our divorces, when I must not even drive over to Hampstead to gaze up at your windows like a lovesick schoolboy.
It would make me happy, set my mind at ease, if you’ll agree that it’s for the best if you move out of your mother-in-law’s house.
If it suits, I could start arrangements to purchase the flat in Highgate.
All I ask is that if you do return even a fraction of my love, and if you could bear to spend the rest of your life with me, will you write to Freddy? Make him understand that he needs to return to London to start divorce proceedings.
Such a sordid business, isn’t it? But if we can get through these few ugly months then our days ever after will be golden.
All my love
Hugo
Libby folded the piece of paper with a sigh. Her head was swimming, clouded with thoughts, stomach churning. The air was so heavy and close that she wondered if it might storm.
She would have to write to Freddy, there was nothing else for it. As it was, their marriage was long dead. But that didn’t mean Libby had to rush into marriage with Hugo. Perhaps it was just as well they’d have to wait six months after their respective divorces before they could reunite. All sorts of things could happen in six months. Hugo’s ardour could cool. He might meet someone else, fall in love with them… it wouldn’t be unprecedented.
Just the thought of it was enough that there was a very real possibility Libby might be sick in the nearest overgrown flowerbed. But fighting her way through the weeds was Hannah, eyes squinting against the glare of the sun, as she carried a loaded tray towards Libby.
Libby didn’t have the heart to tell Hannah that the sight of the cheese sandwich and slice of fruit cake that had been placed on Millicent’s finest bone china made her feel bilious. Instead she smiled wanly. ‘Tea? What a sweetie you are.’
Despite the heat of the day, Hannah looked pale and pouty. Even though fires no longer needed to be lit, the sun brought its own tasks, showed up the dust and grime that collected in every corner of the house. Libby couldn’t remember the last time that Hannah had been given an afternoon off.
‘Why don’t you stay?’ she suggested. ‘Here, have a sandwich.’
With an anxious glance at the house as if she expected to see Millicent suddenly burst through the kitchen door in a righteous fury, Hannah arranged her sturdy limbs on the grass. She took a sandwich from the plate Libby was proffering and anxiously nibbled the edges.
‘She said that when she was my age, she’d never have dared to be as ungrateful as I am,’ Hannah said through a mouthful of bread and very thinly sliced cheese. ‘Says that she’ll have to dock my wages because I broke the milk jug. It was chipped anyway. Chipped before I even got here!’ she finished on an aggrieved note.
‘Oh dear.’ Libby tucked a lock of Hannah’s unruly brown hair behind her ear. ‘Let’s talk of something happier. If you showed me a picture of a style you liked in one of your magazines, I could cut your hair for you.’
She was tempted, Libby could tell, but then Hannah stuck out her chin.
‘There won’t be time to cut my hair before I run away,’ she declared. ‘First chance I get, I’m off!’
‘Well I wouldn’t do that.’ Libby had to bite her bottom lip to hide her smile. ‘You might get abducted by white-slave traders and you wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?’
‘I’m sure they couldn’t treat me any worse than Mrs Morton.’
‘Oh, I’m sure they could. I knew a girl, was in rep with her, who was abducted by white-slave traders when she wasn’t much older than you,’ Libby said, lowering her voice for dramatic effect. She did love to spin a yarn and Hannah did love to listen to yarns being spun. ‘They packed her off on a steamer boat to Morocco and there they beat her savagely until she learned to do the dance of the seven veils, then they changed her name to Salome and she was forced to perform that salacious dance every night, sometimes twice a night, for all sorts of louche, debauched men who’d stare at her nubile body with their opera glasses until all seven veils had been removed.’
Libby had known a girl who’d performed the dance of the seven veils twice a night in a less than salubrious club in Soho but white-slave traders had nothing to do with it. Monica had been left high and dry by her husband who’d buggered off with a chorus girl half her age and poor old Monica had two kids to feed and rent to pay.
Hannah didn’t know that. ‘Being abducted by white-slave traders sounds marvellous,’ she breathed.
‘My friend was beaten savagely,’ Libby reminded her with a grin and Hannah, gloomy no more, grinned back. She was only sixteen and if Charlotte had lived she’d have just celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday, but still Hannah was a small reminder of what it had been like to have a little sister.
Hannah scrambled to her feet. ‘Mrs Morton wants me to take the kippers back to the fishmonger. Says they’re not fresh and he’s trying to ruin her.’
Though true vegetarians eschewed fish, Millicent wasn’t one of them. Alas. The mere thought of kippers, fresh or otherwise, brought up a mouthful of bile and Libby had to wash it away with a hasty gulp of tea, which made her feel sicker. ‘Could you take the tray? I’m really not at all hungry.’ She clumsily got to her feet though suddenly being upright made her head swim and sparkling spots dance in front of her eyes. ‘I have things to do. Can’t be lazing the rest of the day away.’
As Libby hauled herself up the stairs, the higher she climbed, the sicker she felt, she resolved to write to Freddy to ask for a divorce right away.
When one had a decent man pledging his undying love to you, it was best to hang onto him as hard as one could.