Turning on the bedside light, she sat on the top of her bed and opened the notebook. A yellowed page from The Daily Telegraph with a recipe for ‘Chicken à la King’ stared at her. Her grandmother was an excellent cook and hostess. The best in the Duchy, according to Gramps. Not that they had done much entertaining recently. A wave of sadness arrived with the thought that there would be no more entertaining for Gran.

On the first page Gran had written Damascus, Syria and the date, 30 September 1955, the menu and the guest list. On the flipside she had jotted down things like need more salt in the sauce and Mrs Phelps didn’t eat the fish.

Lottie kept turning the pages. It was amazing in the detail. Her grandmother had noted down whose parties she’d been to and what they served. Her thought process began to emerge. There was even a list of guests with food dislikes and drink preferences.

Lottie’s stomach rumbled. Tonight’s dinner of chilli con carne didn’t stand up to beef wellington and salmon en croute. She loved Gran’s little comments about seating plans gone awry and who had bored her silly at ‘away matches’. She even noted what dresses and jewellery she wore to each event. It must have been hard to have that much pressure to look fabulous and to keep the dinner parties fresh. It was clear she’d made sure that no one had been served the same meal twice. Well, that wasn’t quite true. The French ambassador clearly enjoyed her lemon soufflé, so whenever he was invited, she served it and he was always seated beside her. Lottie concluded he was either a very difficult guest or an easy one.

Yawning, she placed the notebook back into its box on the floor. Her head was spinning just having read the entries for September to December 1954. Her mother had been born in late December; how did Gran do all of this while pregnant? Before she married Allan, Lottie knew she had been a secretary at the embassy. She must have transferred her organisational skills to being a good hostess. Maybe it had been a way to combat the boredom. No, that was making a judgement on what she thought life as a Fifties’ housewife must have been like. It had to have been challenging to source everything and make it all appear easy so far from home. But of course she would have had help. It would be the last thing on earth Lottie would want. Even if things had worked out as planned with Paul, cosy domesticity would never have been on the menu. Her career as a designer was paramount – or had been. Life could change very quickly if you trusted the wrong person.

22

Diana

3 August 2018, 11.55 p.m.

She stood staring out of the windows in her grandmother’s old room at the north end of the house. Due to the darkness Diana saw a reflection of herself on the glass. Tall and lean. There was nothing comforting about her appearance. The lights from the tanker in the bay added highlights to her greying hair. The image was framed by the old chintz curtains.