The Hidden Years Read Online Free PDF

are our opposites, who relish the thought of doing
so. I have no idea
why
Mother wants us to read
the things…
I
don't want to do it any
more than you do, but I gave my promise.' She paused, hesitating about
confiding to Faye her ridiculous feeling that if she didn't, if she
broke her promise, she would somehow be shortening the odds on her
mother's survival and then decided against it, feeling that to do so
would be to somehow or other attempt to escape from the burden of that
responsibility by putting it on to Faye's so much more fragile
shoulders.
    'I suppose I might as well make a start. We may as well
get it over with as quickly as possible. We can ring the hospital again
at eight tonight, and hope that all of us will be able to visit
tomorrow… I thought that as I read each diary I could pass
them on to you, and then you could pass them on to Camilla, once you've
read them.'
    'Where will you do it?' Faye asked her nervously. 'In
here, or…?'
    'I might as well use the library,' Sage told her. 'I'll
get Charles to light the fire in there.'
    Even now, knowing there was no point in delaying, she was
deliberately trying to find reasons to put off what she had to do. Did
she really need a fire in the library? The central heating was on. It startled her, this insight
into her own psyche… What was she afraid of? Confirmation
that her mother didn't love her? Hadn't she accepted that lack of love
years ago...? Or was it the reopening of that other, deeper,
still painful wound that she dreaded so much? Was it the thought of
reading about that time so intensely painful to her that she had
virtually managed to wipe her memory clear of it altogether?
    What was she so afraid of…?
    Nothing, she told herself firmly. Why
should
she be… ? She had
nothing
to
fear…
nothing
at all. She picked up
the coffee-coloured linen jacket she had been wearing and felt in the
pocket for her mother's keys.
    It was easy to spot the ones belonging to the
old-fashioned partners' desk in the library, even if she hadn't
immediately recognised them.
    'The diaries are in the drawers on the left side of the
desk,' Camilla told her quietly, and then, as though sensing what Sage
thought she had successfully hidden, she asked uncertainly, 'Do
you… would you like us to come with you?'
    For a moment Sage's face softened and then she said
derisively, 'It's a set of diaries I'm going to read, Camilla, not a
medieval text on witchcraft… I doubt that they'll contain
anything more dangerous or illuminating than Mother's original plans
for the garden and a list of sheep-breeding records.'
    She stood up swiftly, and walked over to the door, pausing
there to ask, 'Do you still have dinner at eight-thirty?'
    'Yes, but we could change that if you wish,' Faye told her.
    Sage shook her head. 'No… I'll read them until
eight and then we can ring the hospital.'
    As she closed the door behind her, she stood in the hall
for a few minutes. The spring sunshine turned the panelling the colour
of dark honey, illuminating the huge pewter jugs of flowers and the
enormous stone cavern of the original fireplace.
    The parquet floor was old and uneven, the rugs lying on it
rich pools of colour. The library lay across the hall from the
sitting-room, behind the large drawing-room. She stared at the door,
and turned swiftly away from it, towards the kitchen, to find Charles
and ask him to make up the fire.
    While he was doing so she went upstairs. Her bedroom had
been redecorated when she was eighteen. Her mother had chosen the
furnishings and the colours as a surprise, and she had, Sage admitted,
chosen them well.
    The room was free of soft pretty pastels, which would have
been far too insipid for her, and instead was decorated in the colours
she loved so much: blues, reds, greens; colours that drew out the
beauty of the room's panelled walls.
    The huge four-poster bed had been made on the estate from
their own wood; her name and date of birth were carved on it, and the
frieze