‘This is superb timing.’ He releases my belt while kissing my neck. Timing. We don’t have time, but I don’t care. It has been too long to wait another moment. This is exactly what I need.

50. Diana

50

Diana

4 August 2018, 5.15 p.m.

Diana sat on the bed rocking back and forth clutching Ben, the bear, and the Guernsey. The ancient motion of soothing she’d seen the world over as mothers who had nothing left to give rocked to try and provide solace. Not sure what to feel but feeling it anyway, her fingers worried Ben’s ears and she recalled sitting on a bed reading to him with a call to prayer in the background. She must have been very young, but now the memory was sharp and it cut, leaving a gash and allowing tears to find their exit.

For years she’d tried so hard to remember and when nothing appeared, she’d convinced herself it was unimportant. She didn’t need her past, her mother, or Boskenna – but at this moment she wanted her mother in a way that ripped through her.

Taking Ben, Diana walked down the hall seeing the peeling paint. She stopped, seeking a map that wasn’t there. She touched the wall looking for evidence that the old map of Cornwall wasn’t purely from her imagination. Opening another bedroom door along the hall to allow the early evening light to flood in, she ran her free hand over the wall. There was an empty nail hole. A vision flashed. She saw the map and she’d held her father’s hand. Closing her eyes, she prayed this was true, not a creation of her imagination because she’d seen the old snapshots. But there had been no picture taken in this hallway. Last night she had gone through each and every photograph trying to create a past from them. But it hadn’t worked for she didn’t have the stories that went with them.

Walking to her mother’s room, Diana longed for the stories but her mother lay on the bed, eyes closed, barely breathing. She stared. With the life force leaving her, the body only vaguely resembled the woman Diana had known. Her eyebrows were so like Lottie’s but other than that, her daughter’s appearance reflected her father’s genes. This had made her striking, but every time Diana looked at her daughter, she saw the man who held her captive in so many ways. That wasn’t Lottie’s fault, but Diana blamed her anyway.