The Secret Wife(11)
And then it came to her: the documents making her the owner of the cabin on Lake Akanabee had come through just a few days earlier and the cheque had cleared in her current account. Why not fly out to see it? It felt like a suitably dramatic gesture in response to such a huge betrayal.
She grabbed a suitcase and threw in whatever came to hand: outdoor clothing, a sleeping bag, some toiletries, a few basic tools, all the paperwork relating to the cabin. Tom would never remember the name of the lake. Now she thought about it, he’d been distracted these last few months. Perhaps he was in love with Karren. Tears pricked her eyes and she shook herself, before picking up her laptop and mobile phone, leaving Tom’s phone in the middle of the kitchen table. She debated leaving a note but decided against it. Let him work it out for himself.
She drove to Heathrow, parked the car in a long-stay car park then went to the British Airways desk and booked a ticket on a six o’clock flight, which would land in New York at nine o’clock the same evening, due to the five-hour time difference.
‘You need a return ticket within ninety days if you don’t have a visa,’ the carefully made-up saleswoman explained, beige shellac nails tapping on a keyboard.
Kitty ran her finger along the desk calendar and picked a date just before the ninety days would be up. She was paying full price so she could always change the flight if she decided to come back sooner.
In the departure lounge she used her laptop to book an airport hotel room in which to rest on arrival, then organised a hire car for the next ninety days, which cost an eye-watering sum. By focusing on practicalities, she tried to stop herself thinking that Tom would already be home. He’d probably be wondering why she wasn’t there to prepare lunch – unless Amber had called to warn him that Kitty knew his secret. What would he do next? Which friends would he phone? Would he notice that her passport was missing?
On the flight she drank four miniature bottles of white wine, ate a re-heated dinner and dozed off in front of the new Ridley Scott movie. The time passed quickly, although she felt nauseous with sleep deprivation when she queued to get through customs in John F Kennedy airport. She conked out in the anonymous hotel room and slept for a few hours, waking as dawn broke outside the hermetically sealed windows.
She went to collect her car from the rental agency, typed the zip code of the cabin into the Sat Nav and let the woman’s confident voice guide her off Long Island and due north towards the Adirondacks. It was 254 miles, she was told, and would take over four hours. Kitty was a confident driver, and she hoped to get there around lunchtime to give her time to decide in daylight whether the cabin was habitable.
The traffic thinned after she left the interstate and for a while the road skimmed the shores of Great Sacandaga Lake before heading up into the mountains. It was warm and sunny and the views were glorious: hills covered in forests like plush green velvet, a flash of blue denoting a lake between the trees, a few white clouds against a bright sky. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding though. She tried to find a music station on the radio but the reception was too crackly. She hadn’t eaten breakfast and her stomach growled, but she was pretty sure she would throw up if she ate anything. You bastard, Tom, she thought from time to time, but mostly she tried to keep her mind blank and focus on the driving.
Chapter Seven
Eastern Front, Prussia, January 1915
Postal deliveries to the front line were erratic but Tatiana wrote so frequently that Dmitri seldom had long to wait between her letters. He thrilled at the sight of her handwriting on the envelope, at the way she always called him ‘Malama sweetheart’, at the faint hint of her scent that he imagined he could detect on the pages, and at her sentiments, which became more affectionate with each exchange. She wrote that Ortipo’s snoring kept Olga awake at night, and that she had been playing a game called ruble with her sisters; she told him of her patients on the wards, of books she had read, and always she told him that she missed him.
Dmitri found it easier to overcome his natural reserve and express his feelings in letters than he had done in person, and Tatiana reciprocated his endearments. They became bolder and he felt he learned more of her character with each letter. He imagined she must seem very private and reserved to those who didn’t know her, but to him she wrote with a straightforward honesty that was unprecedented amongst the women of his acquaintance. There were no games, or sulks or flounces.
Was there a chance he might one day be her husband? Or did her parents have other suitors in mind for their eldest daughters? He plucked up the courage to ask and was overwhelmed by her reply:
Malama sweetheart,
You asked about the marriages my parents have considered for Olga and me and now I think I will make you laugh because we have endured so much speculation on the subject based on virtually no substance.
First of all, I am told that David, the eldest son of the British King George V, is believed to have taken a liking to me when we visited there in August 1909. Of course, I was only twelve and far too young to be aware of it, although I remember dancing with him at a ball on the Standart, while fireworks lit up the sky. He was rather a good dancer, and I recall he was wearing a uniform because he was at naval college, but I can’t remember making conversation. Mama said to me afterwards that she was only twelve when she first met Papa, and that it is possible to know your own mind at that age. I think she was keen that either Olga or I should one day be Queen of England but nothing came of it. We haven’t seen David since then and I imagine he must be terribly busy with the war.