come from, the early ones, I mean?”
“Yes, darling, it is. It’s beautiful there too. Though at the time it was the last place I wanted to be.”
“So what happened? Why did Gramps take you there? How long were you there for?”
Her grandmother held up her hand. “Slow down, Eve. Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Yes—but should we put it in the book? Should I get the recorder?” Though Grams had begun their notes for the book with her first experience of climbing, Eve hoped that whatever her grandmother was about to reveal might help the reader understand what drove her to scale mountains, to endure the cold and the altitude when she could have been comfortably at home looking after her two small children like any normal housewife would have been doing in the 1950s and ’60s.
“I’ll tell you what happened and you can decide, for it will affect you too.”
Eve didn’t know what to make of that comment, but kept quiet, letting her grandmother speak.
“A long time ago, when I was a young woman, I did something unforgivable. A crime in many people’s eyes. Certainly a sin.”
Eve could scarcely imagine it. Her grandmother had always been the embodiment of respectability and honor. A woman who was as steadfast as the mountains she loved to climb. She found it impossible to believe that her grams was capable of a criminal act, let alone one that had remained a secret for decades, and how could it have consequences for her? She wasn’t even born then. Were her grandmother’s memories becoming muddled again? However unlikely such a statement, Eve did her the courtesy of not dismissing it out of hand. “Sins can always be forgiven, Grams,” she said gently.
Her grandmother gave Eve a wan smile, then continued. “I didn’t know it then, but I was suffering from what they call postnatal depression. John—your gramps—knew something was wrong. Of course there were pills, but they only did so much.”
Eve’s eyes widened even further.
“Your grandfather tried everything to help me, believe me, he did. Then he took me away. To Little Embers. And left me there.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Little Embers, Autumn 1951
Two weeks had passed since Esther had first woken at Embers, bound and confused, and she found herself surprised by the return of her old energy, the energy she’d had before the exhaustion of motherhood overcame everything. She spent her days largely unbothered by the cloud of dread that had hovered over her in London, her eyes were brighter, and her appetite had recovered itself, with the result that her skirts no longer swung loosely about her hips. It would likely be a couple of weeks more before she heard from John, but she comforted herself with the thought that her letter must surely have found its way to him by now and he must be planning her return at that very moment. She tried not to miss Teddy too much, but still slept with his woolen cap under her cheek. She had nightmares that he was calling to her, but when she went to hold him her hands would not stretch to meet his; he was always out of reach. It was only first thing in the mornings, the moment before her eyes snapped open, that she felt dragged down by loss again, when she remembered why John had brought her to Embers in the first place.
One morning, waking earlier than normal, she had gone outside for some air and in the fog she almost convinced herself that she heard something—a half-strangled, bleating cry. A shadowy form loomed out of the mist and her breath caught in her throat. It looked like the figure of a young boy. Teddy? As she raced closer, a shrub emerged and her heart slowed its thunderous beat. She was seeing him everywhere, her mind playing tricks.
She’d fallen into a routine, breakfasting with the men and then helping Robbie in the kitchen garden when the weather was fine. The repetitive act of weeding and digging and the sheer physical exhaustion was working a subtle magic, keeping her focus in the present and with little opportunity to rake over the past, during daylight hours at least. The grimness of the previous months faded from her memory, as if the dawn was finally breaking after a long, dark night.
She had even come to trust the doctor, disarmed by his charm and steady good humor. She was surprised to find herself laughing, more than once, in their sessions together. She