Who would understand this? Must she keep pretending again – this time that she was sorry to give them away? Whatever normal mothers were, she wasn’t one of them. She loved her children, she must do, she’d felt the tug of them, she’d written and had moments of absolute confidence, but this – this solution – it hadn’t crossed her mind that it was possible. She’d given them up completely because to have them completely had killed her. She wasn’t a normal mother, but did she have to be? As long as they were safe, cared for, loved, as long as they knew she loved them, that she existed. They’d thank her in the end. She was certain of it.

“You’re giving him everything.”

“He’s giving me everything. He can run the house, the staff and I can live somewhere near. It will be exactly the same, except I can be—”

“Divorced,” said Ruby.

“You make it sound so dreadful.”

“It is dreadful.”

“Only to someone who’s never been married,” replied Enid.

She wrote back that evening.

Enid, 1926

23

Enid, 1926

The journey from Didlington Hall to Cherry Trees took her all day. Her decree nisi had arrived in time for her to get out of the Didlington Hall harvest festival, and all that was left to end her marriage as coldly as it had begun was for them to sign custody papers together. He had the files, and she had a pen in her purse, along with some boiled sweets for the children. By the time she walked up the hill to the wrought-iron gates, the sun had dipped below the trees.

The first thing she noticed was the chain. Its heavy iron links were slung through the bars of the gate and pulled down by a thick padlock. She rattled it, but it stayed put, locked. She could see a corner of the villa, the sitting room and her bedroom above, but there were no lights on. The air was still, and the evening filled with birdsong. Dandelions grew amongst the gravel of the drive. The lawns hadn’t been cut; the grass, long and straight, was thick with summer flowers gone to seed, cowslips collapsed, and hog weed that waved in the evening breeze.

This time the walk back to the station wasn’t sunlit and bold. It started to rain. The man behind the grill, in smart cap, looked at her with kindness. She sat in the waiting room for an hour, waiting for the train back to London. When it arrived, she had to run the stairs. She slept again as it rocked. It drew into Liverpool Street at ten forty-nine that evening. At the taxi rank she leant into the window and said, “Bryanston Square.”