stand waking up feeling the way I’ve been feeling, so I’ve decided that last night was the last time. That’s it. Today no more alcohol.”
I wait for her relieved smile, but it doesn’t come. Instead, she is still frowning, and now she is looking down at the table, as if she is figuring out what to say next, and I know it’s something bad when she finally gives a big sigh before meeting my eyes.
“Cat,” she says slowly. “There’s something I’ve never told you. Something I should have told you years and years ago, but I could never find the right time. I am so sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing for you, but now I think I’ve done you a great disservice in keeping this from you.”
My heart is pounding. What on earth is she talking about?
“What is it?” My voice sounds strange given the buzzing in my ears, the pounding in my chest. Whatever is about to come next, I have the strangest sense it will be life altering in the most unchangeable of ways.
She sighs again before looking up.
“It’s about your father.”
Three
London, 1969
Audrey gazes out the car window at the lines of redbrick semidetached houses, all identical, all built after doodlebugs dropped on London during the Second World War destroyed lines of houses, as she tries to suppress the tiny jolts of excitement in the pit of her stomach.
She turns to look at her husband, his large hands resting on the steering wheel, his elegant jaw as tense as always. “You must be nervous, darling,” he says, not taking his eyes off the road.
“A little,” she lies, as he reaches over and pats her leg reassuringly, briefly turning his head to give her an indulgent smile.
“I might try to come out for the third week,” he says. “Although with work right now it’s terribly difficult. I know you don’t want to go, but your aunt needs you. This is absolutely the right thing to do.”
“I know,” says Audrey, who cannot believe she is being allowed to go back to her country, to America, for almost an entire summer, on her own, with no husband for whom she has to perform.
* * *
Five years ago Audrey left New York, as a nineteen-year-old single girl, to come to Buckinghamshire in England, to work as an au pair. Just a few miles away, in London, everything was swinging, life was being lived at a pace never seen before, none of which was apparent to Audrey, out in the suburbs of Gerrards Cross, minding children while their parents drank G&Ts and hosted dinner parties for neighbors and friends.
Audrey had always delighted in everything English, had grown up losing herself in the books of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, had wanted nothing more than to find herself a crumbling stately pile and a dashing lord of the manor to go with it.
It wasn’t that she planned to meet the love of her life when she first signed up with the au pair agency, but she couldn’t deny that every night leading up to her departure was filled with elaborate fantasies. She stepped onto that Pan Am flight at JFK, her head positively exploding with hopes and dreams.
The Wilkinsons—Pam, Tony, and their two children, Stephen and Lizzy—were delightful; their large, detached, Edwardian house on Mill Lane equally so, it was all a little quieter than Audrey had expected.
She had a room under the eaves on the top floor, thick white carpet and a record player in the corner of the room, a window that looked out over the trees, a view that made her happy.
The children—Stephen, ten, and Lizzy, eight—were delicious, and her evenings, initially spent curled up in her bedroom reading a book, soon grew busy.
She became friends with another au pair who worked up the road; Anna from Sweden. The two of them would dress up and go into Uxbridge for a night out, or pop into town for a drink at the Packhorse Inn. Which was where, one night, Richard found her.
Despite not being lord of the manor, he was dashing, and charming, and so fantastically handsome in his slim-cut suits and narrow Italian shoes. He swept her off her feet, even without the stately pile.
He treated Audrey like a princess, clearly adoring her, affectionately teasing her about her American accent, which she tried hard to eradicate, managing to soften it to a Mid-Atlantic drawl.
Richard was an estate agent, moving into commercial property as Audrey met him,