MERRYN ALLINGHAM was born into an army family and spent her childhood on the move. Unsurprisingly, it gave her itchy feet and in her twenties she escaped from an unloved secretarial career to work as cabin crew and see the world. The arrival of marriage, children and cats meant a more settled life in the south of England, where she’s lived ever since. It also gave her the opportunity to go back to ‘school’ and eventually teach at university.

Merryn has always loved books that bring the past to life, so when she began writing herself the novels had to be historical. Writing as Isabelle Goddard, she published six Regency romances. Since then, Merryn has set her books in the early twentieth century, a fascinating era that she loves researching. Daisy’s War takes place in India and wartime London during the 1930s and 1940s, and is a trilogy full of intrigue and romance.

If you would like to keep in touch with Merryn, sign up for her newsletter at www.merrynallingham.com.

Merryn Allingham

To my father, who spent the happiest years of his life in India, but who never went back

After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go,

and the river brings you home

—Joanne Harris, Five Quarters of the Orange

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

Endpages

Copyright

CHAPTER 1

Sussex, March 1948

Daisy ignored the doorbell when it rang. It had been a bad day and she’d no wish to entertain her prying neighbour. Half her nurses were down with influenza, but the ward was so crowded she’d had to order the few still on their feet to make up beds in the corridor. The row with Matron had been the last straw.

The bell rang again and she shut her ears to it. Until the third chime. Then she marched to the front door and flung it wide in exasperation. A man leant nonchalantly against the doorpost and she stared in amazement at him.

‘Grayson?’

‘It’s nice to see you recognise me.’ She didn’t think he meant it as a jest. And why would he? It was months since they’d seen each other.

She tried to pull her thoughts together. ‘But why are you here?’

‘I needed to see you. Can I come in?’

‘Yes, of course.’ There had been a momentary hesitation and he was quick to notice it. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not staying. I have a train to catch back to London.’

But why had he needed to visit, and without warning? There had been no letter, no telegram. That was worrying and she wondered what was coming. She hadn’t been wrong about the edge to his voice though. He was the man she’d loved, perhaps still loved, yet after so long apart, neither had made any attempt even to touch hands. He followed her into the small kitchen that gave straight on to the road and looked around him. She’d been here for nine months and this was the first time he’d walked through her door.

‘It’s cosy,’ he decided.

‘It’s affordable.’

‘Is Brighton so very expensive?’

He settled himself at the shabby wooden table. As always, he was completely relaxed. Only the slightly deeper creases around his mouth and the few grey hairs at his temple spoke the passing of years.

‘Not by London standards, no, but salaries here are low.’

‘And how is the job?’

She didn’t answer immediately but put the kettle on to boil. She knew the job was a source of irritation to him, and she couldn’t even boast that it was going well. Today had been the worst by far, culminating in a vitriolic exchange with her superior. For the first time, she’d answered the woman back and known immediately she’d done the wrong thing.

‘Beecham’s is a small hospital,’ she said, arranging cups and saucers on a tray. She was prevaricating, but if she showed her true feelings, she’d have to acknowledge the mistake she had made in coming to Brighton.

‘So?’

‘It can be a little insular, that’s all. Trifles can become too important. And the work itself is hardly challenging.’ She was willing to confess that much, but she wished she didn’t sound quite so weary or quite so frustrated.

‘I imagine the lack of challenge is inevitable. After the war, most nursing will seem humdrum.’

She poured the tea, trying to lose herself in the routine action, conscious she should fight a desire to confide in him. They were almost strangers now. Since she’d made the move to Brighton, they’d met only once. She’d gone up to London to spend the day with him just before Christmas. It had been a forlorn attempt to rekindle a love that had once burnt brightly. In determined fashion, they’d made their way around old haunts, exchanged opinions on the city’s new landmarks, chattered a little too much, told a few too many silly jokes, but there had been a hollowness to the day that neither could ignore. They hadn’t repeated the experiment. And now he was here, and she didn’t know how she should feel.

‘You could be right about the war,’ she said, carrying the tray to the table, her finger jabbing at a small spill of tea on the plastic tablecloth. ‘It was an extraordinary experience.’

She sat down opposite him and felt his eyes fixed on her. His gaze made her shift uneasily in her seat. He knew she wasn’t happy, she thought. As always, he knew, and she could feel herself getting ready to confess the truth.

‘Brighton might have been a mistake,’ she blurted out.

There, she’d said it, but his eyebrows barely rose at the admission. ‘I got the promotion I wanted, but the nursing is fairly basic, and though the patients are wonderful and most of my staff are well enough …’ The words were tumbling forth now. ‘It’s the pettiness that gets me down. It’s a small town and the hospital is a very small community.’

‘And who is being particularly petty?’ He was as perceptive as ever.

She allowed herself a small sigh. ‘Miss Thornberry—the matron.’

‘Ah!’

She read his exclamation rightly. A hospital’s matron was always key. They could be fiercesome women, but most were dedicated to their work and fair in their dealings. This one, though, had beaten her. The woman was constantly niggling; sly remarks that suggested that Daisy, as a newly promoted sister, wasn’t quite up to the job. For months she’d taken the criticisms in silence but today she’d had enough and let fly.

‘I expect the latest trouble will blow over.’ Her voice had a false brightness to it.

Grayson stirred his tea and waited for her to go on. He knew there was more to say and so did she. The job had certainly proved a disappointment, but the real heaviness in her heart came from elsewhere. For years, she’d lived a solitary life and felt proud of her independence. But a moment had come, and quite recently, when she’d had to accept the truth. She wasn’t just alone, she was lonely. A thirty-year-old woman who still hadn’t got life right. She missed the camaraderie of wartime, though it had taken her a while to realise it. And she missed the comfort of a good friend. If Connie were here, she could have confessed her loneliness. But Connie was now Mrs Lawson and living a new life in Canada with her doctor husband. Together they’d decided the old Empire offered better prospects than a ravaged and debt-ridden England. And then there was Grayson. How long had that taken before she recognised how large a void he’d left in her life? But that was something else she wouldn’t admit.

He’d been silent all this time and she felt impelled to speak, to fill the empty air with words, any words. ‘I’m sorry. None of this is important and you haven’t travelled miles to hear me moan. It’s only that today has been particularly difficult.’

‘Don’t give it a thought.’ His gaze finally relaxed. ‘Why have friends if you can’t complain to them?’ There was a studied emphasis on the word ‘friends’, and she was trying to think how best to respond, when a loud burst of music clattered through the adjoining wall.

‘Your neighbour?’

‘She has a gramophone and she likes to play it.’

‘Noisy as well as nosy then. She watched me as I walked along the road — every step of the way.

Next door, Peggy Lee was delivering her final flourish, making it impossible for them to speak. But when the last strains of ‘Mañana’ had died away, Grayson nodded his head towards the drab cream wall that separated the two cottages. ‘I take it you’ve tried to negotiate?’

‘I have, but it made little difference and unless I’m to have a stand-up row with her—look, Grayson, forget my neighbour, instead tell me why you’re here. You said nothing about coming.’

He rocked back on the hard chair, his hands in his pockets. ‘If I’d given you advance warning, you might have made an excuse for not seeing me.’

‘I wouldn’t have done that.’

He looked fixedly at her once more, and she found herself lowering her eyes. ‘Things haven’t been good between us, you must admit,’ he said. ‘And I wasn’t sure I’d see you. It was important that I did.’

‘You’re seeing me now.’

She knew she sounded impatient. She hadn’t liked the reminder of how bad things had become. And now she was over the first shock of his appearance, the first rush of pleasure at seeing again the face she’d loved so well, annoyance was uppermost. She was tired and hungry and, she thought confusedly, a little scared. Something bad was about to happen, else Grayson would never have made this trip.

He stood up and stretched his long frame. ‘Can we talk somewhere more comfortable?’

She thought it unlikely. The cottage was rented and the landlord a skinflint. What furniture he’d provided had almost certainly been bought at auction at rock-bottom prices.

‘Will this do?’ She gestured towards the narrow sofa crouching beneath the windowsill, its red moquette worn so thin as to be almost colourless. Grayson followed and perched precariously on the seat’s hard edge. He half turned so he was looking directly at her. ‘I’m going back to India. Not permanently, but I’ve no idea how long I’ll be. I thought it only courteous to a lover, or should I say a former lover, to bid her farewell.’

Daisy’s mouth dropped open. She was stunned, too surprised to speak, too surprised to dwell on being demoted to a former lover. In any case, he spoke truly. Their love seemed to have gone missing somewhere along the way, and right now she hadn’t the energy or the will to try to recapture it.

‘But why?’ she stumbled. ‘Why go back? Why go now?’

She felt stupidly upset. Twice this week India had swum into her world, seemingly out of nowhere, and left her bewildered. Ever since the package from Jocelyn had dropped through her letter box, she’d felt it burdening her mind. And now Grayson had arrived with India on his lips and the burden had just grown heavier.

He leaned back against the unyielding sofa cushion and took his time to answer. ‘Why now? Because there’s trouble. And I’m needed.’

That did nothing to calm her nerves. ‘Trouble? What trouble?’

‘You must have read about the situation—what’s been happening in India since Independence.’

‘You mean the killings? Yes, I’ve read about them. It’s been awful. But what have they to do with you?’ An unspecified fear tightened her face, until she felt her skin drawn hard against her cheekbones. Her voice must have sounded panicked because he tried to soothe her.

‘Most of them have nothing to do with me and, at the moment, the country is generally peaceful. It was the speed of Partition that caused so many problems—huge swathes of the population suddenly on the move, Hindus and Sikhs going east, Moslems west. But people are more or less settled now. Most of them have got to where they want to be, and there are only a few areas where all the old horrors—murder, arson, rape—are still going on. But they’re going on in one spot that interests me in particular.’

If he was trying to soothe her, he wasn’t succeeding. ‘And where’s that?’ Somehow she knew without asking.

‘Yes, you’ve got it.’ He’d read her mind, as he so often did. ‘Jasirapur. At least not the town itself but an area of Rajputana some distance away—sorry, I should say Rajasthan now.’

‘I still don’t see what it has to do with you,’ she argued stubbornly. ‘The Indian authorities must be in charge.’

‘Javinder has to do with me. Do you remember him?’ Grayson smiled as he put the question to her. She knew he was recalling the time they’d spent together at the cantonment hospital.

‘Of course, I remember.’ Javinder Joshi had been Grayson’s assistant in Jasirapur. She had helped nurse him back to health after he’d been badly hurt in one of the riots that had been frequent before the war.

‘He’s gone missing and, since he’s one of our intelligence officers, London is interested in finding him. Which is where I come in. I was the SIS man in Jasirapur before Independence and a close colleague of Javinder’s. They reckon I have the best chance of discovering what’s happened to him.’

‘I don’t see that at all.’

Why was she so anxious to stop Grayson going, she wondered, when she’d allowed herself to drift from him with hardly a backward glance? And what could he do if he went to India? The country was vast, Rajasthan was vast. If the people on the ground hadn’t been able to find Javinder, why should Grayson be successful?

‘Surely, someone in the local office must have searched for him?’

‘In a desultory kind of way, I imagine. But they don’t have the manpower and the situation is confused. Thanks to Partition, we’ve had the greatest migration in human history and that includes the civil administration. Add in the fact that the Europeans have all but disappeared, and India has been left running the show on a skeleton staff.’

‘It still doesn’t make sense. Why send you? It’s years since you’ve been there. There must be someone else they could send, someone who’s worked in India more recently.’

‘Apparently not. The security service only ever had a small presence in Jasirapur and nearly all the ICS officers who worked alongside me have either retired or returned to England.’

‘Javinder can’t just disappear. He’s probably taken leave of absence. Maybe someone in his family is ill and he’s had to take off quickly, without notifying anyone.’ She sounded desperate, she knew. And there was a part of her that was.

‘Unfortunately, he has just disappeared. Javinder is responsibility itself. He would never simply take off. I’ve spoken to the current admin team and they’re pretty sure he was investigating an unusual spate of violence that broke out a few months back. They think he had a lead as to who was behind it, but naturally as his work is secret, he told them virtually nothing. They were guessing, though they can’t be sure, that he was travelling north.’

Daisy was silent for several minutes and, when she spoke, her voice was devoid of emotion. ‘It’s going to be dangerous, isn’t it?’

‘It could be. Javinder may have been a little too successful in discovering the culprits. That’s why I wanted to say a proper goodbye.’

The threat hung in the air and her stomach cramped with tension. He had been in danger before and she knew how that felt. She didn’t want to feel that way again but here she was, before he’d even left the country, feeling sick at the thought that he might once more be walking towards serious trouble. She swallowed hard.

‘And you’re going alone?’

‘No.’ His face had grown sombre but now it broke into a warm smile. ‘That’s the good thing. I’m taking Mike.’

‘Mike Corrigan?’

‘The very same.’

‘But surely he’s never had anything to do with India? I remember you telling me that he’d always worked in Eastern Europe.’

‘True enough, but wherever he’s worked, he’s a good operative and a good friend. And the trip will be a kind of swan song for him.’

She tried mentally to calculate Corrigan’s age. ‘He’s retiring? I wouldn’t have thought him old enough.’

‘Not retiring. He’s being moved. New brooms are sweeping through the security service and his injury has made it difficult for him to work in the field. He’s been seconded to another part of the organisation. To a section that’s strictly admin—so no more adventures.’

‘I know his leg was bad, but he seemed to manage.’ Mike’s limp hadn’t appeared to impede him when Daisy and he had met during the Sweetman crisis. But that might no longer be the case. Sweetman had forced him into crashing his car and Mike had ended up with broken bones and a split head.

‘He’s managed okay, more or less,’ Grayson agreed. ‘But by the time you met him, he hadn’t worked abroad for some years. And since the incident with that fanatic, his health has become more of a problem. His leg has always given him stick but now he’s experiencing giddiness, fearsome headaches, that kind of thing. Smashing into a lamp post head on isn’t to be recommended.’

‘So why are you taking him? I know he’s been a very good colleague, but if it’s going to be dangerous, surely you need someone who’s completely fit?’

‘Mike will stay in Jasirapur. He’ll be my man in the office while I travel further afield. I need someone back at base that I can trust absolutely. And it will be easier to hunt for Javinder on my own. That way, with luck, I won’t draw too much attention to what I’m doing.’

It seemed a little too pat. It was unlikely Grayson would take a man who had no experience of India whatsoever, on a journey that could be extremely dangerous.

‘Is that the real reason he’s going with you, or is there something else?’ She knew how close the two friends were.

His blue eyes lit with amusement. ‘You’ve got me well and truly taped, haven’t you? I suppose I want to do Mike some kind of favour. He’s been dealt a rotten hand and I feel sad for him. He makes the best of it, but there’s no disguising that being forced out of ops and into pen-pushing has come as a real blow. He jumped at the chance of a last grab at the old life.’

‘I imagine that having a close friend with you might be helpful.’ She couldn’t quite keep the doubt from her voice.

‘Enormously helpful. With Mike in charge, I won’t have to worry what’s happening in Jasirapur while I’m up country. And he’ll make sure I get everything I need, when I need it.’

He’d already planned his strategy. He was determined to go and nothing would dissuade him. But why that was making her so dejected, she couldn’t understand. It was natural to worry for a friend about to embark on a perilous journey, but in her heart she knew there was more to it than that.

CHAPTER 2

She stood up and began mechanically to clear the teacups. She’d been too shocked before to think clearly, but now her mind brooded over the way in which India had once again assumed centre stage in her life. After months of silence, Grayson had appeared out of the blue and with startling news. And this just days after the package from Jocelyn had arrived, stirring recollections she would rather be without. It all seemed too coincidental and she didn’t believe in coincidence. Was fate dealing her another of its ugly hands?

She felt him watching her closely again. ‘Is there something else? Something bothering you?’

She tried to formulate the words that would make sense to him, but found it impossible. Instead, she swooshed the cups beneath the tap with unnecessary vigour. He came to stand behind her and she felt his warmth immediately. She wished she wasn’t so susceptible. This was the time, if any, to have a hard head and a hard heart. He was launching himself into some insane exploit and there was at least a likelihood that she would never see him again.

‘What’s bothering you?’ he repeated.

‘Apart from your intention to go adventuring in a country swirling in blood?’

‘A wild exaggeration. It’s been bad, very bad, but these last few months, things have been relatively quiet. Gandhi’s death seems finally to have brought Hindus and Moslems together. A paradox if ever there was one. A man who used prayers rather than guns to stir the masses, but then meets a violent death himself. Still, his murder seems to have clinched the peace, though it’s the last thing his assassin would have wanted.’

‘Gandhi’s peace doesn’t seem to be operating where you’re going,’ she said tersely, concentrating hard on hanging the tea towel square on the roller.

He linked his arms loosely around her waist. His breath was on her cheek and his voice in her ear. ‘It’s not just my journey that’s worrying you, is it? So what is it? Be brave and tell me.’

She eased herself from his hold and began to stack the china into a cupboard. She was oppressed by a sense of impending trouble and the stirring of emotions she thought she’d lost, the memories she couldn’t lose. But he deserved some kind of explanation, and she must find one.

‘A few days ago a package arrived. It came from India and was completely unexpected. For some reason I found it upsetting and I haven’t been able to forget about it. And now you’ve arrived and I wasn’t expecting that either. Then, without warning, you tell me you’re going back there …’ She shook her head, the tears pricking dangerously. She was glad she had her back to him.

He took her by the shoulders and swivelled her around. ‘Who sent this package?’

‘It was from Jocelyn, Jocelyn Forester. Though that’s not her name now, of course.’

‘She’s living in Assam, isn’t she? I think you told me she married a tea planter.’

Daisy’s eyes were stinging with unshed tears but she took a deep breath and said levelly, ‘She did and Assam is miles away from Jasirapur. But she went back there recently. Her parents are leaving after twenty years—imagine—and they’re returning to England. She travelled down to help her mother pack up the bungalow and clear all the unwanted stuff they’ve accumulated. It’s amazing what you hoard over twenty years.’ She felt on firmer ground now.

Grayson frowned. ‘Is Colonel Forester leaving the army then?’

‘Yes. Leaving or maybe retiring early. The Indian Army has been disbanded, I believe.’

‘Well, there’s a new Indian army. But you’re right, the old regiments have been divided up.’

‘Jocelyn said in her letter that as the 7th Cavalry was a mixed regiment, the Hindu soldiers had to join the new Indian army and—’

‘—and their Moslem brothers-in-arms had to leave for Pakistan,’ he finished for her.

‘She said her father was very cut up about it and it made him decide to leave the military altogether.’

‘I heard it was the same for most of the British officers and you can’t blame them. Showing a preference for one faith or the other goes against the IA’s founding principles. It’s a miserable business though. You can divide equipment easily enough, but not people.’

He drifted away towards the window and seemed to be watching the small boy on the pavement opposite trying to launch his new kite on a near windless day. But she knew he wasn’t seeing the child; in thought he was back in India and very soon he would be there in body too.

‘Sorry, daydreaming,’ he said apologetically. ‘You still haven’t told me what was in this mysterious package.’

She joined him by the window and, side by side, they stood looking out on the now empty street. She was back in control of her feelings and able to tell him calmly what she knew.

‘When Jocelyn finished working on the bungalow, the colonel asked her to sort out the regimental stuff. Not the obvious things that were to be shared between the two countries—equipment, furniture, pictures, the mess china—those kinds of things. But the odds and ends that no one knew what to do with. It’s not only bungalows that collect unwanted stuff.’

At the thought of those odds and ends, that unwanted stuff, the tight control she’d forced on herself began to waver and it was a little while before she could go on. ‘Anish’s belongings were there.’ Even now it hurt to mention him.

‘I see.’

She knew that he did. More than anyone, Grayson was aware of how Anish’s death had haunted her over the years.

She struggled to find a lighter note. ‘The adjutant was tired of trying to find someone who would take them, so he was delighted when Jocelyn put in an appearance. Apparently he’d spent a lot of time attempting to trace relatives, only to discover when he found them—I believe the mother’s family live not too distant from Jasirapur—that they wanted nothing to do with it. Anish may have been a hero to his regiment, but he was someone his family wished to forget.’

‘That’s hardly surprising, is it? You told me yourself there was a deep rift between Rana and his uncle.’

‘There was, but it’s still painful to think of.’ The silence stretched between them before she began again. ‘After that, the adjutant looked for someone in the father’s family. But that failed too. The Ranas are somewhere in Rajasthan, but he couldn’t locate them. Captain Laughton sent several messengers around the region, but no one came forward. I don’t believe Anish had any contact with his family, not after his father died.’

‘So Jocelyn sent you his things?’

‘Not things in the plural. Just one thing. The rest were auctioned for regimental funds. She sent me something she thought I might like. She said she knew how close I was to him.’

Her voice had dropped to little more than a whisper. ‘It was a purse, a small pink purse made from the softest leather and fastened with a crimson drawstring. When I unpacked it, it smelt of India. The purse was very pretty,’ she went on quickly, ‘though not terribly practical. But I don’t believe it was ever supposed to be. It must have belonged to Anish’s mother, perhaps the only thing of hers that he kept.’

Grayson looked at her for a moment and then said gently, ‘I can see that Jocelyn’s letter has dredged up bad memories for you.’

She was grateful for his understanding. ‘I’ve pushed them away, you know. The memories. All these years since I left India. Tried not to think what happened there, tried to keep those months separate from the rest of my life. But opening that package brought it rushing back.’

‘It is just a purse,’ he reminded her.

She shook her head. ‘It’s more than a purse, more than a keepsake. It’s a jab in the ribs, a reminder that I always intended to go back. To exorcise the ghosts, wasn’t that what you said?’

They fell silent, remembering the pledge they’d made to each other when their love had been new and intoxicating. ‘But you chose Brighton instead,’ he joked, trying to dispel the tension.

She turned away from the window and switched on the battered standard lamp that hunched in one corner. The small windowpanes let in little light and the day was already waning. Then she looked across at Grayson and spoke the thought that had been gathering in her for weeks. His arrival had only sharpened its edge. She knew she had to get out of this poky cottage, away from her noisy, nosy neighbour, away from Miss Thornberry and her constant carping.

‘I’m thinking of going back to London.’

‘Back to London?’ He sounded bemused but angry too. ‘You’re going back to town the very moment I’m leaving?’

The light was dim but it didn’t stop her seeing the bitterness in to his face.

‘But how convenient for you. I won’t be in London, so you won’t need to find an excuse for not meeting me. Did you plan this stroke of genius while we’ve been talking? I’ve got to hand it to you, Daisy, you can be utterly ruthless when you need to be.’

The injustice stung her. She stood back from him, her small figure stiff with outrage. ‘That’s unfair, dreadfully unfair. If you must know, the idea has been in my mind for weeks. I wasn’t sure whether I should cut my losses and leave, but when I saw you today, I knew I had to.’

‘Why?’ His tone was pugnacious.

‘I don’t know. I came to Brighton for the wrong reasons, I guess. I knew my mother had nursed here and I had some stupid idea that if I followed in her footsteps, worked in a local hospital, lived close to where she’d lived, I would feel her presence. That somehow I’d discover more about her. More about me. But it was a crazy idea and it’s been a wretched failure. I haven’t felt her near me for one minute and I’ve found nothing to remind me of her, nothing to say she was ever even in the town. Except the entry we saw years ago in the Pavilion archives.’

He looked at her measuringly. ‘So Brighton wasn’t about promotion after all?’

‘Only very slightly,’ she confessed. ‘And that hasn’t worked either.’

The bitterness had vanished from his face and, in its place, there was the beginning of warmth. He reached out and took her hand and she felt it lying cold in his palm. ‘You won’t want to hear this, but it seems to me that your drive to uncover a past you can’t know has brought you nothing but upset. I wish you’d get this identity thing out of your hair. It’s messing up your life.’

‘Not any longer. When I go back to London, that will be the end of the story.’ But, even as she spoke, she knew herself unconvinced. The identity thing, as Grayson called it, was just too important. That was something he couldn’t understand, would never understand, but it didn’t make her need to discover the past any less compelling.

‘You won’t give up, whatever you say.’ His contradiction was point blank and his blue eyes held a bleak expression. ‘I can’t see an end to it. It comes between us all the time, and it will go on doing so.’

‘I don’t see how.’

‘Neither do I—at least not clearly. I just know that it will. In your mind, it seems mixed up with India. The fact that an Indian purse can send you into a spin is proof of that. You talk about bad memories, but I think you’ve forgotten most of them. You’ve coped with being kidnapped, you’ve coped with Gerald dying—twice. You may even have coped with knowing that he betrayed you. But Anish Rana is a different matter and it’s evident his death still troubles you. I’ve no idea how it’s connected in your mind with parents you never knew, except for the fact of loss. But I do know it’s a barrier between us and has been ever since Jasirapur.’

He let go of her hand and stood looking at her, his expression marked by disappointment. ‘You shake your head, but I’m right. You were plotted against and you were frightened. Gerald died and you were angry. But this is different. This is something we can’t seem to get over. I thought we had. I really thought we’d made a breakthrough. Right here in Brighton.’

‘We had.’ But she knew she sounded insufficiently certain.

‘It didn’t turn out that way though, did it? I accept the war made things difficult, but since then? Month by month, you’ve slipped away. Maybe not deliberately, but that’s what’s happened. Moving to Brighton might have been an attempt at reconnecting with your mother, as you say, but it was also a way of escaping.’

‘It wasn’t an escape,’ she protested. ‘It was a new start or that’s what I thought.’

‘Without me.’

‘Without the pressure.’

‘And what pressure would that be?’

‘You wanted something I didn’t.’

‘I asked you to marry me. After years of separation, was that so unreasonable? I wanted you with me—for always. But before you answered me with a word, I had only to look at your face to know that a wedding was the last thing you desired. You made me feel as though I’d suggested something shocking. Yet marriage between two people who have loved each other as long as we have—surely that’s the most natural thing in the world?’

She lowered her head, studying the worn carpet intensely. ‘You have every right to be angry, but I was happy as we were. And you wouldn’t let things be.’

‘So you escaped down here—yes, it was an escape, whether you’re willing to acknowledge it or not. And it hasn’t worked out.’

‘No.’ She subsided onto the sofa, her complexion ghostly in the evening light.

He came to sit beside her and she smelt the sharp tang of his cologne. It was a smell she’d always loved and the urge to nestle into him was strong. But that was one stupidity she wouldn’t commit. As he’d pointed out, she had made an escape of sorts and she should keep to it.

‘So come back to London,’ he was saying. ‘Find a different job—something that challenges you in the way Beecham’s doesn’t. But don’t cut me out of your life. If I promise no more persuasion, no more pressure, will that help? We could try it when I get back from Jasirapur.’

When she didn’t respond, he got up from the sofa and pulled her to her feet. ‘I’ve missed you—enormously. And you’re probably right about marriage. I don’t really know why I was so keen. No doubt a reaction to having survived some very dangerous years.’

He kissed her gently on the cheek and picked up his coat to go. ‘Until we met, I never thought I’d want to marry and I know very well that you’ve had your fill of weddings. So probably not my brightest idea. But if you come back into my life, I’m willing to sue for terms - whatever you decide.’

The offer was attractive. To be back in the hum and thrum of London again, the city of her birth. To be working in a busy teaching hospital, learning something new every day, growing in confidence again. And, once he was back from India, and he would come back she promised herself, Grayson would be there, close by. Nothing too heavy. Nothing too committed. Just there.

She thought about it and was still thinking when he reached the front door. He turned on the threshold, a wry smile on his face. ‘If you do make the move back to town, leave your address at Baker Street. But be prepared to see me on your doorstep as soon as I get back.’

‘There’s no “if”,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m handing in my resignation. Tomorrow.’ She’d known for weeks it was the right thing to do but Grayson’s visit had proved the spur.

‘What good news to take away with me.’

She wondered if he’d think so when he knew what she intended. Her plans had just been radically revised and weren’t quite as he imagined. A new job in London was certainly tempting, but something else was more tempting still. Something that could lay to rest her fears, her doubts. Her obsession, as he called it. Finally.

He was half in and half out of the door, when she said, ‘I’ll be giving in my notice, but I’m not going to London.’

He stopped in surprise. ‘Why ever not? Surely, the pick of nursing jobs are there. Or have you decided to give work a miss altogether? I know what it is—the purse Jocelyn sent was a magic one and you have all the money you’ll ever need.’

‘It was magic,’ she said slowly. ‘But not in the way you mean. Magic because it’s helped me discover what I really want to do.’

A deep crease cut across his brow. ‘I thought we had a decision on what you wanted to do.’

‘You had a decision,’ she pointed out. ‘I was still deciding. And now I have. Mine is to go back to India. I’m coming with you and Mike.’