The Secret Legacy: The perfect summer read for fans of Santa Montefiore, Victoria Hislop and Dinah Jeffries

I watched the Major follow the ambulance crew out of the house. He shot me a fleeting glance as he left. I mustered a nod that I hoped would reassure him Elizabeth was in good hands. New End Hospital emergency department was only a few streets away, and that was some comfort. The door closed behind him. I held the screeching baby closer to my chest. I’d never felt quite so alone.

Elizabeth wailed into my ear as I carried her down the darkened hallway toward the nursery. I found several glass bottles in a neat line upon the wooden dresser, left by the midwife earlier. I cared little for that woman, but now her disinfected approach to infants was the one thing that would carry me through the night with the child.

I laid Elizabeth into her cot. She protested, jerking her limbs with deepening cries, leaving intermittent gaps between wails where her breath filled those tiny lungs before the next blast for survival. I filled a glass bottle with the contents of one of the prepared cans, picked her up and looked at her tiny red face, contorted with anguish. I sat upon the nursing chair by the window and cradled her. She clamped her lips around the bottle’s teat and her cries gave way to the brittle silence of the house.

I tried to focus on the peace that washed over her tiny face, the dewy hair covering her cheeks that reminded me of the ripe peaches of my Amalfitani summers. For a moment the terror of the past hour faded. She gave into a milky sleep. I sat there for some time feeling the flutter of her heart gallop against my belly. I didn’t notice I was crying at first. Then I saw the itinerant droplets blot the muslin cloth covering her with little damp circles. I stood up and placed the bundle back into her cot. She stirred as she left the warmth of my arms but slipped back into her quiet as my hand smoothed away from under her. I watched her chest rise and fall, fitful and erratic. I’m not sure how long I stood there, making sure she was breathing, even if I knew my gaze alone would never ensure her survival. The brief escape from the image of Adeline’s crumpled face floating back into my mind was short-lived.

The minutes after her fall were already a blur. A flurry of panic, glass, blood. When we first reached her I was sure she was already dead. As the Major touched her, though, she let out a groan, her eyes rolling in her head. I couldn’t have hoped to sail through the shock as he did. I followed his every instruction, holding Adeline’s hand and doing my best to keep her conscious whilst he called for help.

Now, in the disquiet, my mind churned, longing for yesterday. Wishing there would have been some way to prevent this. Berating myself for not having the courage to alert the Major or midwife to Adeline’s erratic behavior. It was not my place. Now everything felt unsure. I was stood on floating ice watching small pieces break off around me.

I pulled the nursing chair close to the cot. Stripes of moonlight cut through the square panes. Shadows crept through the house as it creaked into the night. Every woody sound pierced my fretful sleep. Each time Elizabeth took in several snatched breaths in a row, I awoke. I wrapped her tiny fingers in mine. That night I dreamed of my mother. The newborn and I both woke up crying.

The next few weeks snaked on between shards of silence. The Major left promptly every morning after breakfast to visit Adeline, returned for a light lunch, retired to his study, then bedroom soon after.

One morning he stayed at the breakfast table longer than usual. I cleared his plate. When I closed the door behind me I heard him cry for the first time. I stood with my back against the old wood, listening for longer than I needed to. I waited, not knowing why. He did not call me, of course. I cleaned the deep ceramic sink more than I needed. I took a moment to polish the window ledge above it and take in the garden, the roofless glasshouse and its bare skeletal rusting frame. Below, the Major’s beloved tomatoes hung plump with fruit, oblivious to the tragedy that had crashed around them. I returned to the dining room to clear the rest of the dishes.

‘Santina?’ His voice was thin.

‘Yes, Major?’

He looked me in the eye. I don’t think he’d done so since that night.

‘I’m very grateful for your help at this time.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘This is a temporary arrangement, of course. You understand. Adeline will be returning home in a few nights.’

‘Yes, Major.’

‘I will require your extra assistance during the transition. I will, of course, reimburse you fairly.’

My brow furrowed before I could stop it.

‘I need more help from you,’ he clarified. ‘More than your usual jobs.’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘of course.’

‘Thank you.’

He took a deeper breath. I felt like he wanted to say something more.

‘That is all for now.’

I returned to the kitchen. He disappeared back into his solitary world.

Adeline returned a translucent shell. Her eyes were misty grey pools. I pretended not to notice the way her feet searched the floor, unsteady, someone trying to balance upon a moving ship. Her skin hung from her cheekbones like a fading memory. The Major wrapped his arm around her and led her to the guest bedroom, which he had overseen the nurses set up for hours before she came home, until it resembled a hospital room. A metal trolley stood by the window lined with paper and a small drugstore of medicinal vials and bottles. Crisp linen towels towered upon the dresser.

A regular stream of doctors passed through the house for the next week. It was impossible to not overhear their conversations with the Major because each ended in the same heated manner, with the latter crying out for the medical men to leave. The strain spread over the Major’s face like a drought. One morning, the more patient of the doctors sat beside him at the breakfast table.

‘Henry, you must listen to our advice. Adeline will not improve. Not for a very long time. If at all. This is not an episode of hysteria. She is experiencing the trauma of postpartum psychosis. You can’t just brush this off. The way you’re behaving, it’s like Adeline’s broken her leg and you’re hoping a sticking plaster will do the trick.’

The Major took a long breath.

‘What you’re doing is cruel,’ the doctor added.

‘What I’m doing is commonly known as a basic respect for humanity! This is the woman I love! You will not experiment on her, do you hear me?’ the Major yelled. ‘How can I possibly expect any of you to understand that? We have been through this again and again—’

‘And each blessed time I pray to God you’ll heed my advice. You have a peculiar respect and contempt for my professional opinion.’

The Major wiped his mouth and flung his napkin onto the table.

‘Henry,’ the doctor began, in a familiar tone, which made me think this was more than a professional relationship, ‘if you insist on caring for her yourself, then at the very least take her somewhere she can find peace. Somewhere with a temperate climate. Sea air perhaps? Somewhere she can live housebound but with some semblance of tranquillity – which, in my learned opinion, would be with us in an institution in Epsom, especially equipped for women suffering from bad nerves. You are not able to deal with this alone. You and I know this more than anyone else.’

‘James, I’ve listened to what you have to say. My wife will not be committed. She is sick, yes, but she need not be incarcerated. She’s my wife, for heaven’s sake!’ The Major rose to his feet, slamming the table as he did so.

The doctor rose to meet him. ‘We both want what’s best. I will do everything I can to support you, Henry, but it will not be easy.’

The Major nodded. His gaze bore into his hands.

‘I’ll give you a few days to think – then you’ll tell me what you’ve decided.’

I opened the door for the doctor. ‘That’s quite all right, I’ll see myself out, thank you.’

I heard the door close as I scraped the last few crumbs off the tablecloth. Adeline cried out. The Major reached the stairs before I.

‘I’ll go, Santina, you finish here.’

The next few nights bent into a fragile routine. The Major rose with Adeline, calmed her out of her night terrors, soothed the screams that tore me out of my own restless sleep, whilst I cradled her mewling baby, watching her mold into my arms as I fed her, then lulling her to sleep with swaying. Each feed bought me time to gaze at that tiny face, noticing the minuscule changes to the small pink mounds of her cheeks, an extra tuft of downy hair along her hairline, a second or two more of keeping her shiny slate eyes open. This temporary peace softened the house, till the next bout of unsettled cries of mother or daughter reverberated, all the louder for the deafening quiet that encased us. Sometimes Elizabeth would rip Adeline out of her rest and make her shake with panic. Other nights Adeline wouldn’t sleep at all, but insist on wandering the halls, or walk up and down the stairs in continuous motion.

The final night before the doctor returned to hear of Henry’s decision we found Adeline scrawling all over the walls. The pencil raced across the plaster, scrambling outpourings. The next day, as I tried my best to wash all the markings off, I read her stream of panic. She wrote about loving Elizabeth, of wanting to love her, of not being mad. The writing was jagged, void of punctuation. Reading her words in the cold light of day was more terrifying than watching the Major try to tear her away from it in the dead of night, as she screeched at him to not set one finger upon her body or she would kill him. When the doctor arrived, the Major was still asleep. I led him to the front room to wait.

‘How was the night, Santina?’ the doctor asked, catching me a little off guard.

‘I’m not sure,’ I lied, trying not to think about the red circles around Adeline’s eyes, or the withering panic the Major tried to bury from me as he wrestled her back to bed.

‘How is Elizabeth?’

‘Hungry mostly,’ I replied. My mind spun down the hall to the warmth of the kitchen where she slept in her rattan basket. I could sense she would wake soon to be fed. I would sit by the fire and the world would slip away, replaced by Elizabeth’s rhythmic suckling and an imperceptible smile I thought I could read in the peaceful slant of her closed eyes; the rise and fall of her swallows like wordless thanks.

The doctor smiled. I nodded and left the room.

After a while the Major came down. I placed a tray of tea between them and poured, wishing the uncertainty of the household would swirl up into thin air like the Earl Grey steam.

‘And that’s your final decision then, Henry?’

‘I don’t change my mind, James, you know me better than that.’