They came to the front door and Diana turned to survey the garden and the distant view of the sea.
‘It is very special,’ she said. ‘But I’m getting older and I need to find the next generation to take it on. It’s a huge job for someone.’
‘You said you were choosing a winner for the house? Does that mean you don’t have family?’ Simon asked, hoping he wasn’t prying. He couldn’t help it though; Diana Graybrook-Moore was fascinating in every way.
‘No family,’ she said as she put the key in the door, turned it and stepped inside. ‘Just me now, and I’m not sure for how much longer either.’
Simon didn’t want to ask if she was unwell. She seemed fit, but there was a sense of melancholy about her. It must be lonely here, he thought as he followed her inside the house.
And he wondered where her friends were – she couldn’t have no one, could she? Everyone had someone. And then he thought of his own life lately. Perhaps she had chosen to be alone. That, he could understand.
Perhaps he would try and be some company to her while he was here for the summer and until the new owner had settled into the house. It wasn’t too much to do, not if you were a decent person, which he hoped he was. Bad things might have happened to him but it didn’t mean he had to be a bad person in return.
Diana looked at him as she stood in a doorway to a room that looked to be lined with bookshelves.
‘Daydreamer, are you coming?’ she asked, banging her stick on the floor a few times like the Serjeant at Arms in Parliament.
‘Yes, here, present,’ he said.
‘Good, pay attention, you have much to learn.’
‘Agreed,’ said Simon with a smile.
It was going to be an interesting summer.
*
Diana – 1960s
‘These shoes are killing me,’ Diana complained to her best friend, Helen, as they crossed the road towards the hottest club in Newcastle in the 1960s: La Dolce Vita.
Diana had borrowed Helen’s very narrow patent leather heels with a pointed toe. Her toes were crushed in the end of the shoe and she wondered if she would even be able to walk inside the place, let alone dance the night away.
It was two weeks after her eighteenth birthday party and while she’d had a wonderful time, it was, she realised, a party for her parents. There’d been so many older people who she smiled at and danced with, but she’d noticed her friends had looked bored. The alcohol had also been carefully distributed and so her plans to be drunk and carefree with her virginity were thwarted, which was disappointing. At this point, she felt like a silly little girl who couldn’t make a man interested.
Helen had done it three times – all with Joe, she told Diana, but she was considering branching out to a man she had met on the bus on her way to her job at Wegners department store.
Diana was in awe of Helen. She had the best clothes, courtesy of her job as a sales assistant to fancy ladies in Newcastle, and she was a modern woman. She smoked cigarettes and she had her own money she could do what she pleased with.
Diana was still getting an allowance from her father and was not allowed to wear shoes that had a toe like the ones she had on now. Perhaps he was on to something though, she thought as they stood in line for the club.
Truth be told, her parents didn’t like Helen. They said she wasn’t someone that Diana would stay close with over the years ahead, but Diana knew this was code for Helen wasn’t of their class. Her father was the gardener at Moongate, and Diana and Helen had been friends since they could remember. The first time Helen came to Moongate was when she was six and her mum was having another baby, so Helen had been sent to work with her dad for the day.
Diana remembered them eyeing each other up and then stepping forward and asking Helen whether she would like to come and look at the fish in the pond.
Helen asked if they could catch them and Diana had thought about it for a moment and then shook her head.
‘No, but we can give them names.’
‘Can I call one Roger?’ asked Helen.
‘I think so,’ Diana had answered, and a friendship was born.
Helen came to Moongate every Saturday after that, even though her father didn’t work on a Saturday. Diana’s mother had encouraged the friendship initially because then she didn’t have to entertain Diana, who she believed had far too much energy for a child. Lillian had told Helen that she didn’t remember having ever said, ‘I’m bored,’ when she was a child, the way Diana used to do before Helen came to play.
It didn’t matter that Helen went to the local prep school and Diana was sent to Dame Allan’s in Newcastle and then to Mowden Hall for boarding in secondary school; Diana and Helen picked up every weekend and holiday and kept in touch through letters in the meantime.
Helen was the very stylish and modern sister Diana had never had.
