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Back Goodnight Lady Save as PDF
Chapters (60)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Praise
  4. Dedication
  5. BOOK ONE
  6. Prologue 1989
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. BOOK TWO - 1925
  17. Chapter Ten - 1925
  18. Chapter Eleven
  19. Chapter Twelve
  20. Chapter Thirteen
  21. Chapter Fourteen
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. Chapter Sixteen
  24. Chapter Seventeen
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-one
  29. Chapter Twenty-two
  30. Chapter Twenty-three
  31. Chapter Twenty-four
  32. Chapter Twenty-five
  33. Chapter Twenty-six
  34. Chapter Twenty-seven
  35. Chapter Twenty-eight
  36. Chapter Twenty-nine
  37. Chapter Thirty
  38. Chapter Thirty-one
  39. Chapter Thirty-two
  40. BOOK THREE - 1947
  41. Chapter Thirty-three
  42. Chapter Thirty-four
  43. Chapter Thirty-five
  44. Chapter Thirty-six
  45. Chapter Thirty-seven
  46. Chapter Thirty-eight
  47. Chapter Thirty-nine
  48. Chapter Forty
  49. BOOK FOUR - 1968
  50. Chapter Forty-one - 1968
  51. Chapter Forty-two
  52. Chapter Forty-three
  53. Chapter Forty-four
  54. Chapter Forty-five
  55. Chapter Forty-six
  56. Chapter Forty-seven
  57. Chapter Forty-eight
  58. Chapter Forty-nine
  59. Chapter Fifty - 1970
  60. EPILOGUE

For my sisters, Maura and Loretta. We’ve held each other’s hands, wiped each other’s tears, supported each other, laughed together even when our world had collapsed around us and enjoyed every second of it. We are grown women now, but still at heart, we’re the Whiteside girls.

Remembering Jonathan Peake and Eric Lane, with love always.

Many thanks to Marlene Moore for all her help and information on Berwick Manor.

BOOK ONE

BOOK ONE

‘When I was a child, I spake as a child,
I understood as a child,
I thought as a child’

- Corinthians

‘The children of perdition are oft’times made instruments even of the greatest work’

Ben Jonson, 1637-1673

Prologue 1989

Prologue 1989

The woman in the bed was impossibly old. Her face, still showing subtle traces of a former beauty, was a mass of criss-cross lines. The thick powder she wore had cracked and flaked in the heat of the room. The red slash of her mouth was sunken and bent, emphasising her baggy jowls.

Two things were, however, very much alive: her eyes, still a startling green, despite the yellowing of her whites, and her hair. The thick redness seemed to crackle on the shrunken head, falling across bony shoulders in a shower of electric waves. It was this, and the eyes, which showed a casual observer that here lay a former beauty, a relic of another time, another era. A time when she was a show stopper, a woman of account. Now there was laughter in those eyes as she watched, beneath hooded lids, the two young nurses tidying her room.

She knew she was old and she accepted it. Death would just be another great adventure, she was sure of that. It was one of the prerogatives of great age that you made yourself ready to meet your maker. Well, she had a few things to say to him when the time came.

‘She was lovely in her day wasn’t she?’ The blonde-haired nurse picked up a photograph in a heavy silver frame. It showed a beautiful, doe-eyed woman, wrapped in fox furs, wearing a cloche hat. Her heavily lipsticked mouth formed a perfect cupid’s bow. She could have been a silent screen star.

‘Yes, gorgeous. Look at all that hair coming out from underneath that hat.’

The mousey-haired girl sounded envious. What she wouldn’t give for the old girl’s hair, even as it was now, speckled with grey.

‘Did you read about her? In the News of the World the other week? She had a life, she did. All those scandals in the ’sixties! Politicians and that, even Royalty!’ The girl lowered her voice now, as if remembering the old lady was in the room.

‘You don’t have to whisper, dears, I’m not dead yet!’

Both nurses jumped at the sound of her voice, low pitched and surprisingly strong. She looked so tiny, so tiny and vulnerable, until she opened her mouth.