She smiled into the pillow, had to fight the urge to laugh out loud in delight. She thought she could smell Diana’s perfume in the fabric of it.

She grabbed her phone and scrolled through to the selfie they had taken, lying back against the pillow, hugging, Diana looking straight at the camera but Lydia unable to peel her eyes away from Diana’s face.

Then she frowned and her stomach bubbled with anxiety as she remembered what they had talked about just before Diana left.

What Diana had asked Lydia to do.

26

THEN

I sit on the bed and carefully unwrap the paper around each bundle. The letters tied with a pink ribbon are in my father’s handwriting and addressed to my mother; those tied with a blue ribbon written by my mother to my father. I sort them into date order, curiosity overcoming any feelings I may have of guilt at intruding into their private correspondence.

The letters all date from the months leading up to when my mother was pregnant with me. I remember hearing that my father had been sent to work in the Netherlands for some time. He had stayed for six months, travelling backwards and forwards when he could, my mother waiting patiently at home. She was doing what many privileged, bored women did then, hosting society events in the name of fundraising for charities, but if I know my mother, it was the excuse to host an event and show off that appealed more than the causes she was supposedly championing. I have never known her to be selfless.

I page through the letters, feeling a sense of disbelief and curiosity at the voice narrating the words – my mother’s proclamations of affection that border on obsession, asking endless questions about who he is spending his days and nights with, proclaiming that she can’t live without him, begging him to reconsider the job, yearning for him, her loneliness seeping into the page in blue ink.