A cold rain was falling by the time the train pulled up to the buffers. Doors opened and slammed shut, and a snaking line of passengers made their way toward the exit, some taking their time, making sure they had their belongings, others rushing, knocking shoulders as they passed, tickets held out ready to submit to the collector. Soon the train was taking on passengers for the next journey, and though Maisie was not exposed to the elements as she waited to board, it felt as if the damp air had seeped into her clothing and was forming a film across her skin. She shivered and pulled her collar up around her neck. A guard opened the door for her, and touched his cap as she thanked him. Soon she was in the warmth of a first-class carriage, seated on heavy deep red velvet upholstery, a small cast-iron stove pumping out heat to keep the South Eastern Railway’s better-heeled passengers in relative comfort. She pulled a small notebook from her new black document case and began to make notes.
According to Lorraine Otterburn, her daughter had fallen pregnant and given birth to a boy just over two months before she left the country. She had been living with her husband at the family’s estate in Northamptonshire. Maisie imagined the spirited Elaine languishing in a cold mansion with many rooms and no heat. Elaine was a colorful person, filled with spirit and energy—she must have felt crushed. Granted, her father had indulged her, but he had also given her a purpose—she was an accomplished aviatrix, and he had drawn her into his covert work on behalf of the British government. Admittedly, he had his reasons—keeping such work in the family as far as he could meant keeping plans close to home. She wondered to what extent he trusted James, who was not family, though Otterburn had obviously pegged him as loyal to his country, a man who understood aviation and who knew what it was to be at war. Maisie suspected that perhaps Elaine had felt less than able to be a mother, not suited to play country wife to a tweedy peer-of-the-realm landowner. Opening fêtes and judging flower arrangements at the county show would not have gone down well with a woman used to finding parties wherever she was in the world. So she had left her child and her husband and absconded from a place she must have considered a prison.
She must miss her little man, thought Maisie, though she wondered if she were not attributing her own imagined feelings to a woman who was quite different. And why had she not just taken the boy with her to her parents’ house? It was clear they adored the child, and without doubt John Otterburn would have thrown a protective fence around his daughter. Then it occurred to her that in London, their paths would cross. Perhaps Elaine would also have found a meeting difficult in the extreme. But was such fear enough to push the younger woman so far away?
The ticket collector interrupted Maisie’s thoughts.
“Change at Tonbridge, madam.”
Maisie thanked him and settled back into her seat. Change at Tonbridge. She smiled to herself, though it was an expression of irony, not one of amusement. So many times in the past, Tonbridge had seemed to mark the place where she had to change who she was, from the London woman to the girl coming home to her father and, earlier, from the nurse who had seen so much to someone who told those who loved her, “Oh, don’t worry about me, I’m all right.” Now she would be a daughter again—ready to assure her father and stepmother that she was doing very well indeed, was thinking of the future again. She would tell them about the flats she’d seen, and that she fully intended to return to Chelstone at every week’s end, and for long periods over the summer.
On Saturday afternoon Maisie and her father pulled themselves away from a warm log fire to walk a favorite route through the village, then out along a country lane and across winter-sodden fields, close to the edge where the mud was shallow. On the other side of a stretch of land in the midst of being tilled, a farmer was encouraging his horses to pull harder against the traces, while the plowboy led the team around a corner to carve another row. They stopped to watch for a while, each with their own thoughts. Then father and daughter strolled on in silence for a few moments.