unkind. She wanted to convince Katy that her feelings for Jimmy were simply those of one friend for another.
Even if it wasn’t exactly true.
Vivien knew the moment that she’d fallen in love with Jimmy Metcalfe. It was when she was sitting at the breakfast table downstairs and Henry was telling her of some work he was doing at the Ministry and she was nodding along but thinking about an incident at the hospi- tal—something funny Jimmy had done when he was trying to cheer up their newest patient—and then she’d laughed, despite herself, and thank God it must’ve been at a point in Henry’s story that he found amusing, because he smiled at her, and came to kiss her, and said, ‘I knew you’d think so, too, darling.’
Vivien also knew that the affair was one-sided and that her feelings were not something she would ever share with him. Even if by some chance he felt the same way, there was no future for Jimmy with Vivien. She couldn’t offer him that. Vivien’s fate was sealed. Her condition didn’t cause her angst or upset, not any more; she’d accepted for some time the life she had remaining; she certainly didn’t need illicit whispered confessions or physical expressions of love to make her whole.
Quite the contrary. Vivien had learned early, as a child on a lonely railway station, on her way to board a ship to a faraway country, that she could only ever control the life she led inside her mind. When she was in the house on Campden Grove, when she could hear Henry whistling in his bathroom, trimming his moustache and admiring his profile, it was enough to know that what she had inside was hers alone.
Even so, seeing Jimmy together with Dolly Smitham at the play had been a shock. They’d spoken once or twice about his fiancee, but Jimmy had always closed up when the topic surfaced and so Vivien had stopped asking. She’d become used to thinking of him as someone who hadn’t a life outside the hospital, or family aside from his father. Watching him with Dolly, though—the tenderness with which he held her hand, the way he kept his eyes trained on her—Vivien had been forced to confront the truth. Vivien might have loved Jimmy, but Jimmy loved Dolly. Moreover, Vivien could see why. She’d found Dolly pretty and funny, and filled with a sort of zest and adventure that drew people to her. Jimmy had described her once as sparkling, and Vivien knew just what he meant. Of course he loved her; no wonder he was so intent on providing the mast for her glorious, billowing sail—she was exactly the sort of person to inspire that sort of devotion from a man like Jimmy.
And that’s exactly what Vivien planned to tell Katy—that Jimmy was engaged to be married, his fiancee was a charming woman, and there was no reason he and Vivien shouldn’t still—
The telephone rang on the table beside her and Vivien glanced at it, surprised. People didn’t call 25 Campden Grove during the day; Henry’s colleagues telephoned him at work, and Vivien didn’t have many friends, not the sort who made phone calls. She picked it up uncertainly.
The voice on the other end was male and unfamiliar. She didn’t catch the gentleman’s name, he said it too quickly. ‘Hel-lo?’ she said again. ‘Who did you say is calling?’
‘Dr Lionel Rufus.’
Vivien couldn’t think that she knew anyone by that name and wondered whether perhaps he was an associate of Dr Tomalin’s. ‘How may I help you, Dr Rufus?’ It struck Vivien sometimes that her voice was like her mother’s now, here in this other life; her mother’s voice when she’d used to read stories to them and it had become clipped and perfect and faraway, not her real voice at all.
‘Is this Vivien Jenkins?’
‘Yes?’
‘Mrs Jenkins, I wonder if I might speak to you on a delicate matter. It concerns a young woman I believe you’ve met once or twice. She lived across the road from you for a time, working as a companion to Lady Gwendolyn.’
‘Do you mean Dolly Smitham?’
‘Yes. Now, what I have to tell you is not something I would usually discuss—there are issues of confidentiality to consider—however in this case I feel it’s in your best interest. You might want to sit down, Mrs Jenkins.’
Vivien was already sitting down, so she made a small noise of assent, and then she listened closely as a doctor she’d never met before