Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming

‘You must do as you wish, Lily,’ Lady Irene said, signalling that the interview was over.

Lily escaped gratefully. She disliked Lady Irene so much and lately she found it harder and harder to hide her dislike.

Lily wasn’t sure when she’d lost respect for her employer: possibly round the time she was fourteen and her mother had fallen from her bike cycling home from Rathnaree late one night after having waited until two in the morning for the last of the dinner-party guests to go home.

The next morning, she’d been back at work at seven as usual, black and blue with bruises, and stiff from her fall. Lady Irene had mentioned finding some arnica for her – she’d never found it – and in the same breath had told Lily’s mother about an impromptu shooting party the Major was having that day.

‘Only seven guns, Mrs Kennedy, nothing too much really.’

Lady Irene called Lily’s mother Mrs Kennedy, as if respect was all about the correct titles and nothing to do with actually caring for the person.

She cared for no one. She didn’t even care for her precious belongings – her clothes were left strewn on the floor as she stepped out of them. Irene’s clothes were exquisite – undergarments of crêpe de Chine and finest silk, in peachy coral shades that flattered the skin, never the heavy woollen vests and vast interlocked gusset things the Kennedy women wore, greyed from washing, harsh against the skin, unflattering as could be.

If she ever had any money in her life, Lily swore she too would have silken petticoats and négligés that swept the floor carelessly. And if she ever had money, she’d have someone to help her around the house, but she would treat that person with genuine respect. Irene Lochraven, Lily felt grimly, firmly believed that birth had made her better than Mary Kennedy.

Unfortunately, Lily’s mum believed that too. Why couldn’t she see that the only thing separating the Lochravens and the Kennedys was money, nothing more?

‘You’ll write, won’t you?’ her mother asked now, sipping her tea quickly, the way she did everything.

‘Of course I’ll write, Mam,’ Lily said. ‘Just ‘cos Tommy’s a hopeless letter writer, doesn’t mean I will be. I’ll tell you everything.’

‘I’ll miss you,’ her mother added. ‘I’ll pray for you.’

‘I’ll pray for you too, Mam,’ Lily said.

She felt guilty to be going, but excited too. When it became plain that the war was far from the little blip the Lochravens had insisted it was, she and Dr Rafferty had talked about the opportunities for nursing in London. When Tommy had signed up, it had spurred Lily on. There was a whole world out there waiting to be discovered, and she was eager to be a part of it.

Two days later, Lily sat on the edge of the hard bed and patted the smooth coverlet washed to pansy softness. She was relieved that she only had to share a room in the nurses’ home with two other students. The formal letter from the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead had included few details of the residential arrangements, other than listing their new address: the scarily double-barrelled Langton-Riddell Nurses’ Home.

On the ferry to Holyhead, Lily had taken out the letter and smoothed it flat on her lap, wondering if she was doing the right thing. Yet when she’d reached London, she’d known she was.

It was her third city in as many days: Waterford, Dublin and now London, and instead of feeling scared in the crowded streets so unlike the rolling hills of Tamarin, she felt alive, excited, happy.

How could she have been scared? She loved this: all the people, the busy streets, cars and trams racing past, and vast elegant buildings that made Rathnaree look like a hovel.

Now that she was in the nurses’ home, Lily was glad to see that her visions of dormitories with trainee nurses squashed together were wrong. It was a relief to find this lovely albeit tiny room in the eaves. So far, only one of her two roommates had arrived, a woman who was probably only the same age, twenty-one, yet looked a lot more sophisticated – and a lot less impressed with their quarters.

The room had all that Lily needed: heavy curtains for warmth, a wash stand with floral bowl and matching jug, a rather elderly chest of drawers with a mottled mirror on top that looked quite serviceable as a dressing table, and beside each of the three iron-framed beds with their neat covers was a small stool, hastily conscripted into use as a night table. On either side of the door were nails for clothes to be hung on.

Lily had slept in much worse.

But the Honourable Diana Belton, who was now looking around her with something akin to shock, clearly hadn’t.

Vivi, who was impulsive and always rushing in, would have fussed over Diana, asking her if she was all right. And once, Lily would have too. But today she held back.

She’d grown up beside a big house, had learned at her mother’s knee that the people in big houses were different.

‘Special,’ her mother would say when she sat wearing her eyes out mending a frippery of lace for Lady Irene. ‘Isn’t this beautiful, Lily? Feel it – wouldn’t it make you feel like a princess to wear it?’

Why did money and land and silken lace make them different? Lily wanted to know. Weren’t they all the same, all God’s people?

Here, in London, she wasn’t Tom and Mary Kennedy’s daughter, who had made a very good lady’s maid. Here, she was the same as the Honourable Diana: a trainee nurse. She had no plans to strike up a conversation or to apologise for their quarters to this girl in her tweed suit, necklace of pearls, and fur collar. The Honourable Diana might very well flick back her improbably blonde hair and snub Lily: snubbing her inferiors was no doubt something she’d a lifetime’s experience of.

Diana had remained coolly silent when the trainees had been welcomed by the stern Sister Jones.

‘Up at six, breakfast at twenty past and on the wards at seven,’ Sister Jones had read out, in her cool voice. ‘There will be lectures in the preliminary training school in the basement here and you will be issued with your timetables for those tomorrow. For the first two months, you will work until eight at night with one day off every fortnight. Students are expected to be in the home by ten, when the doors will be locked. Late passes may be given at Matron’s discretion, but only for special occasions: you will then be permitted to stay out until eleven. There are to be no visitors. Understood?’

‘Yes, Sister,’ everyone had murmured.

Then the room assignments had been read out. Lily and Diana had climbed the stairs with their bags in silence, and Diana hadn’t spoken a word since.

She could suit herself, Lily thought irritably.

She got to her feet and took off the very plain worsted wool coat that had never clung to her figure the way Diana’s suit did to hers, even when it was new. And it was far from new now. Lily had bought it three years ago from Quilian’s Drapers in Tamarin, which in itself had felt like an act of independence, because for years she’d bought her clothes under her mother’s supervision in McGarry’s Drapery. She’d felt pleased every time she saw the coat, pleased at that symbol of adulthood, and satisfied with her first purchase, chosen by herself and paid for with her own money. But now, faced with the glamorous Diana in marvellously cut tweed, she felt lumpen and ugly in it.

She hung her coat up and began to unpack her small cardboard suitcase.

When Diana spoke in a soft, hesitant voice, Lily was so surprised that she actually jumped.

‘I’m Diana Belton. Awfully sorry, we weren’t properly introduced earlier. You must think me a complete boor, but I feel terribly out of my depth here.’

Diana formally held out her hand, still in its suede glove.

‘Lily Kennedy,’ said Lily, proffering her own hand stiffly.

‘You’re from Ireland! Oh, I love Ireland, wonderful hunting. Do you hunt?’

‘No,’ said Lily evenly.

‘No, sorry, no, of course,’ muttered Diana.

‘Why “of course”?’ demanded Lily. ‘Why shouldn’t I hunt?’ She’d been on Lady Irene’s hunter once, a huge roan named Abu Simbel. She’d only ridden him round the yard, and she’d been scared stiff the whole time. Lord knew how people raced over hedges and ditches on horses, galloping wildly after some poor fox. It was beyond her.

‘I’ve offended you – I am so sorry.’ Diana clapped her hands to her perfectly red mouth. ‘I’m so frightfully sorry.’

And she started to cry. ‘I have to make a success of this. My father says I’m behaving like a silly child and he’s very angry with me. Can’t understand why I didn’t stay at home and go into the Auxiliary Territorial Service, says he’s going to cut my allowance and, oh, all sorts of ghastly things, so I have to do this. I have to stick at it. This is what I want, to do something with my life.’

Lily sat down beside Diana. They were almost the same size, she realised. Diana had narrow hips, long legs and a considerable bosom, as she did. She’d got Diana all wrong, she realised now. That cool poise had hidden terrible nerves.

‘My father didn’t want me to come either,’ Lily offered. ‘Wants to know why I’m going off to nurse people in a war he says shouldn’t have happened in the first place. He’s not keen on war: we’ve had a fair bit of it at home. But this is the only way I’d be able to train as a nurse properly, and I wanted to do something too.’

‘Goodness, Daddy thinks war is the only answer,’ said Diana. ‘He’s simply furious his gammy leg prevented him from rejoining his old regiment. He’s stuck with the Home Guard. He doesn’t believe I’ll be any good at nursing. He won’t disinherit me, though – nothing to leave.’

Suddenly they both began to laugh, and Diana was wiping tears away with a silk handkerchief.

‘There’s nothing for me to inherit, either,’ Lily said.

The door opened and a small, freckled face with a mop of fair curls peeped round.