The Light Over London(87)

They both looked at the storefront, but there was nothing to indicate that it had once been a grocer’s. No charming painted sign, no wide, antique counters that the real estate agent’s office had kept to preserve a sense of the space’s history. It was just a building.

“It’s a little disappointing,” she said.

“Things change.”

“Still.”

“Hopefully Kate will be more helpful,” he said, starting the car again.

Cara sat through the drive to the care home with her hands clasped together. She’d flipped through the last pages of the diary again at the hotel when Liam had been in the shower, thinking back on all she’d read. Paul was the kind of man who Cara might’ve fallen for when she was younger—had fallen for, if she was being honest. He’d swept Louise off her feet in a whirlwind romance, just as Simon had done. Yet when Paul was deployed, Louise hadn’t sat at home and let the worry and waiting consume her. He and the fight with her mother may have been the push she needed to enlist and leave Haybourne, but the decision had been Louise’s alone, and Cara admired her for that.

Liam pulled into the care home’s parking lot and put on the brake. “Are you ready?”

“I think so,” she said.

“Nervous?”

“More than I thought I’d be. I want to know the answers, but I’m also worried about what happened to Louise. I know that sounds ridiculous but—”

“You’re invested,” he said.

She nodded.

He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

The wind picked up Cara’s hair as they walked to the front door hand in hand. She stole a glance at Liam, glad he was here with her. Glad Nicole had brought up the diary in an obvious bid to throw the two of them together. She owed her friend a phone call after all of this, or at least a text to say she’d snogged the professor.

A short, thin woman with a bob of silver hair rose from an armchair in the reception area. “Miss Hargraves, I’m Laurel Mathers.”

“Please, call me Cara,” she said, extending her hand.

“Then call me Laurel.” Kate’s daughter slid her gaze over to Liam with curiosity, no doubt having caught the two of them walking hand in hand into the building.

“This is Liam McGown,” Cara said. “He’s been helping me with figuring out who the diary belonged to. We’re neighbors.”

“How nice it must be to have such good neighbors,” said Laurel, making Cara blush. “If you want to follow me, my mother’s having one of her good days.”

“Is her health very delicate?” Liam asked.

“As delicate as one can expect for a woman of her age. But the doctors tell me that her heart is strong and she’s as lucid as she’s ever been. She’s excited that you’re coming. She’s been asking after you for the past three days.”

Laurel led them through brightly lit corridors painted in soothing neutrals that gave one a sense of being in a very calm hospital or hotel. Finally, they reached a door on which Laurel knocked softly and opened. “Mum, Cara Hargraves and Liam McGown are here to see you.”

“There’s a man too?” Cara heard a voice from the room inside. “If I’d have known, I would’ve put on a bit of lipstick.”

Laurel pushed the door wide, revealing a big open room with a cluster of chairs around a hospital bed. In the middle of it, looking at them with blatant curiosity, lay Kate. Her hair had been curled in a set, and she had on a bed jacket tied with a pink silk ribbon over a plain white nightgown.

“Mrs. Mathers, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” said Cara, extending her hand.

“So you’re the one who found my cousin’s old diary,” said Kate, her eyes sharp. “Where was it?”

“Hidden away in a house I was clearing out. I work for an antiques dealer and sometimes we go in and help families figure out what they can sell.”

“Whose house was it?” Kate asked.

“A woman named Lenora Robinson,” she said.

Kate’s brows jumped. “Now that is a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”

“You know her?” Liam asked.

“I know of her, and the fact that the two of you don’t makes me think that we might be here for a while. Why don’t you sit down? Laurel, could you see if we could have some tea for our guests?”

They took two of the maroon upholstered chairs and pulled them closer to Kate’s bed as Laurel went off to find a staff member.

“She’ll be gone for a little while, because asking for tea at eleven o’clock in the morning is going to throw the staff into a tizzy. They’ll have to find the matron and it will take an age, which is good,” said Kate.

“You don’t want your daughter to hear what you have to say?” Cara asked.

Kate shook her head. “Laurel and Margaret, my eldest, loved Louise dearly. They called her their auntie. But because Louise lived so far away they rarely saw her and she became something of a mythic figure. I think it would be too painful to either of my girls to find out what really happened, so I’m going to tell you what I know as quickly as I can.

“You said there was a diary,” Kate prompted.

Cara opened her purse and pulled it out of the plastic bag she’d put it in to protect it. Kate’s eyes warmed as she took it.