PROLOGUE
18 June 1933
Outside, the horizon had been lost to the darkness, with sky and sea both black as the underside of a dead man’s eyelids. No stars shone and the moon was hidden behind the clouds. Only the white foam that curled away from the sides of the ocean liner revealed movement, as the prow forged through the water.
Inside, on deck B, in the drawing room of cabin seventeen, a man stood by a mirrored drinks cabinet and stared dully at the bottles before him. They hadn’t been sailing many nights and already most of them were half-empty. He poured a slug of whisky into a glass tumbler that he couldn’t be absolutely certain was clean. On the gramophone player, a woman was singing a song about her lover going away. The room was comfortable enough. It could have been the front room of any mock-Tudor house in the suburbs but for the smell of the sea and the occasional lurch of the ground beneath his feet. On the sofa was a pillow and a folded blanket. There was a woman merely yards away, on the other side of the thin wall, clattering in the bathroom, and soon she would sleep in the comfortable bed.
Curtains were drawn across the French windows – as grandly described in the brochure – leading out to a narrow balcony, large enough for a table and two chairs, where the cabin’s residents could enjoy watching the sunset with an expertly mixed cocktail. It wasn’t mentioned in the brochure, but there was also enough room for a person to hide, bent down in the corner.
The man sat down on the armchair that faced into the room, away from the pitiless dark beyond. He was tired, he had drunk too much, fought too much and knew he had lost too much. He’d made mistakes and felt too old to put them right. Besides, he’d already tried, and failed.
He heard the door to the cabin open, but it was out of sight and he couldn’t be certain whether someone had come in or was leaving. He wondered briefly if he should get up and check, and that was the last thing he thought before he dropped his glass, as pain blew through him and blood filled his mouth.
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
15 October 1932
When the morning arrived, Louisa Cannon, as she still was, lay for a while between the sheets, looking up to the ceiling as she studied the contents of her mind. She had slept deeply in an unfamiliar bedroom and wondered now if this was perhaps not a good thing. Weren’t nerves expected, possibly even necessary? A display of excitement and trepidation for what lay ahead was conventional, even if one was hopeful and optimistic. Yet Louisa was sure that she felt completely calm and safe, as if she knew she had been away too long and was at last on her way home. At that moment she heard noises on the landing, a shuffling of feet and fervent whispers beyond her door. Louisa smothered her laughter as the brass doorknob turned slowly and a voice of protestation was hushed severely. She saw three sisters standing in the doorway, looking at her with huge eyes, the smallest girl hopping from foot to foot with her usual impatience.
‘It’s all right,’ said Louisa. ‘You can come in.’
‘Nanny said we weren’t to disturb,’ the tall blonde said. ‘But I knew you wouldn’t mind.’ This was Jessica, known to all as Decca, fifteen years old and with a determined set to her mouth, hardly different in temperament from the three-year-old with long curls Louisa met when she arrived to work for the Mitford family. Then, there had been five young sisters and one brother; the youngest, Deborah, had not yet been born. She came up now to Louisa’s bedside, her blonde hair cropped to just below her ears, and handed over a piece of folded card.
‘I pressed some cornflowers for you,’ said Debo. ‘Something blue.’ She smiled shyly and Louisa smiled back.
‘Thank you, Miss Deborah. I shall keep them in my pocket and they’ll bring me luck. I suppose I had better get up, there’s somewhere I’ve got to be, isn’t there?’
The younger girls giggled at that, told her Nanny had made breakfast and they were going to go next door, to see their muv and farve, Lord and Lady Redesdale, the former of whom was likely tapping his watch as they spoke. The eldest of the three had said nothing throughout but watched Louisa with a steady gaze.
‘Miss Unity?’ Louisa reflected that while the other sisters wore their hearts – and their tempers – on their sleeves, Unity tended to the more unsentimental approach. As a small child she had often retreated alone to corners, and when she spoke it was usually to Decca, in their own secret language.
‘Do you really love him?’ she asked simply, her eyes still fixed on Louisa. But Louisa was able to reply with a steadfast look of her own.
‘I do.’
Unity nodded solemnly and left the room, ushering her sisters before her.
* * *
Louisa savoured her breakfast with Nanny Blor, elderly now with her red hair faded to a rusty grey, though stalwart and bustling about the place as comfortingly as ever. Afterwards, Louisa put on her only ‘new’, a steel-coloured silk hat with a silvered veil. She pinned it carefully and was buttoning her coat up in front of the mirror in the small hall – she was staying in the mews cottage at the back of the Mitford’s London house in Rutland Gate – when the front door banged open noisily. Nancy and Tom, the first and third in the line-up of siblings, came rushing in, bringing some of the cold October air with them.
‘Lou-Lou,’ said Nancy affectionately, kissing her on the cheek. She was only a little younger than Louisa and not yet married herself, though she had been nothing less than generous when Louisa had told her about her engagement. ‘Don’t you look divine.’ She shot her brother a look, nudging him to approve the compliment.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Tom. ‘Very good indeed. Marvellous hat.’ He was tall, dark and handsome, like a hero in a romantic novel, and, Louisa knew, had women all over Europe longing for him to ask them to dance. With Louisa’s father long dead, she had nervously asked Tom to walk her down the aisle. Her mother wasn’t even coming up from Suffolk for the wedding, feeling too frail to do so, even if she was happy for her daughter. Although Louisa had been a maid of some kind for them over several years, the Mitfords were as close to family as anything she had. They maddened her half the time, but she felt she owed something of her happiness to them and she’d wanted them to be a part of her wedding.
Nancy fidgeted in her bag and pulled out a lipstick. ‘Here,’ she said and advanced on Louisa. ‘The finishing touch.’
Louisa submitted and allowed Nancy to apply the red colour to her lips. She even accepted dots of scent at her wrists and behind her ears, too.
‘Now shall we go?’ said Louisa. She felt a flutter in her stomach and, with it, a slight wash of relief. All was as it should be.
Nancy went next door, as she was going to share a taxi with her sisters Unity, Decca and Deborah, while their parents were driven by the second oldest daughter, Pamela, who had a passion for motoring and whose pride and joy – other than the herd of cows she managed for her brother-in-law – was her dark green Austin 10. Their other sister, Diana, would be making her way separately with her own two young boys, Jonathan and Desmond, from her house in Cheyne Walk. Diana’s husband, Bryan Guinness, was down at their country house, Biddesden, as he more or less had been in recent months. There were rumours of an impending divorce but nothing officially declared, and Louisa knew better than to ask the question.