“I want you to have my recipe book. You’ll find it in my old room, on my desk.”

The handwritten book was the most precious thing she owned. It contained her life’s work, her recipes, each with notes that showed her continual urge to perfect it. Pages added, slips and pamphlets tucked in, recipes crossed through and referenced to new ones. Nell had never been allowed access to it, only to look at pages as they were needed. The book was the essence of Mrs. Quince.

If there was a greater confirmation of her coming death, it was this: that she was handing over her recipe book to the young woman to keep safe in her physical absence.

Nell looked at the old lady, her teacher for all these years, the person she looked to for instruction and expertise. Now she would no longer be there to help and guide her. She would have to cook by herself, using her own expertise, with only the treasured recipe book for guidance.

“I can’t do it,” she gasped.

“You have a gift for cooking, child. I helped to teach you, but you have the skills within you.”

“But you…you were the only one who had faith in me. How can I cook without you?”

Her breathing had slowed. “You must try.”

There was a long pause, Nell waiting, watching, but the old woman’s eyes had closed, her breathing slowed. Her lips fell, as if no longer needing to stay taut.

“Mrs. Quince,” Nell cried, grabbing her hand, stroking it. Then, leaning forward, she smoothed back the hair of the old woman. It was the first time she had made such a gesture, as if she were looking after her, and not the other way around.

Then she did something else she had never done. She bent over and gave the old lady’s cheek a kiss.

It was soft, caring—a final gesture of the love between them.

Beneath her lips, she felt a small movement, an acknowledgment of the kiss—or at least she thought she had—and then, almost impossibly, the life seemed to drain away from her dear old friend, the energy gone.

    Nell felt a shudder run through her. She turned quickly to beckon the nurse over. “There has to be something you can do!” she whispered urgently.

The nurse quietly took Mrs. Quince’s pulse, felt for her temperature, leaned her head down to listen to her breathing.

Mrs. Quince, with one final breath, as long and as gentle as a midsummer mist, seemed to just slip effortlessly away from her body, which remained, still and warm, in the hospital bed.

The nurse, her fingers on the old woman’s pulse, only said, “I’m sorry, dear.”

She didn’t need to say anything else. Who needs to speak when the painful reality is as clear as day?

The nurse quietly stepped away to fetch the doctor, leaving Nell alone.

“What am I going to do without you?” she whimpered, scooping up her old friend’s hand. “You’ve been everything to me: my teacher, my best friend, my mentor, my”—she gasped at the words—“the only mother I ever had. Why did I never tell you that? Why couldn’t I have said it?”

Tears thrust through her eyes, and she wanted to scream, roar, shout with the pain that was wrenching her insides apart. “How could you leave me?”

She leaned her head down into the bedsheets and buried the cry that reached out from deep inside her.

“How can I ever get over this?”

“You will, in time.” A voice came from beside her, a soft hand on her back.

“Audrey.”

“It struck me you might want someone here with you.”

She took a chair from the next bed and pulled it over, sitting down, her arm around Nell as the girl turned and wept into her shoulder.

    “Shh,” Audrey murmured softly. “It takes a lot of time to get over someone. At first, it’s like your world has stopped turning, like everything has gone into black and white and all that matters is that they have gone. But slowly, the unstoppable scream of pain becomes a howl, and then it becomes a cry, then a moan. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but new life will begin to fill in the gaps.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to get through it. She was at the very heart of my life all the years I was at Fenley Hall.” She found herself smiling at a memory, but then the smile trembled, and a forlorn wail came tumbling out of her, unstoppable, inexorable. “She taught me everything I know: how to make the smoothest roux and the lightest pastry, how to survive a life downstairs, how to enjoy the small things in life, even when you have nothing.”

“She was a complete dear, wasn’t she,” Audrey agreed sadly. “And an incredible cook. You were lucky to have had her as a teacher.”

“The worst thing is that I’m sadder now than I’ve ever been before, and she’s not here to help me.” She turned to the old woman lying on the bed, taking her hand with both of hers. “Why can’t she put her arms around me, give me that big smile of hers, tell me ‘Everything’s going to be all right?’ Because it’s not. It never will be.”

“No, it’s true, your life will be different, a new type of world without her.” Audrey pulled back so that she could look Nell in the eyes. “But at least you have us now.” She smiled warmly as if Nell were her own child. “We are your new family, Nell, and you ours. Zelda’s all alone, Gwendoline, too, and as for me, well, all I have is the three boys. All four of us could do with any extra family that we can get.”

Nell put her arms around Audrey. “Thank you for coming to find me, Audrey, and for taking me in. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

“You need to be brave. It’s going to be painful at the start, but if you hold on through the bad parts, one day you’ll find a whole new world opening up.”

Gwendoline

The following morning, Gwendoline received a telephone call at Willow Lodge. It was Sir Strickland’s lawyer informing her that Sir Strickland had been taken into police custody.

“I don’t suppose you have any knowledge of how this came about?” He had a clipped voice, arrogant and impatient, which was probably why her husband had picked him. “We’ll need to arrange a meeting to discuss what is to be done to have him released.”

She sighed loudly. “Since you were the one who issued me with divorce papers, you of all people must understand that I am no longer obliged to support Sir Strickland. Indeed, you can expect to see me siding with my employer, the Ministry of Food, and with the rest of the population who has to live with food rationing. They’re the ones he’s cheating.”

Quick as a flash, he was onto her. “Were you the one who told the ministry about the farm?”

“Do you really think I would do something like that?” She gave a laugh, then bid him a smart goodbye.

Yet as she paused in the hallway by the telephone, she couldn’t help dwelling on the enormity of it.

Her thoughts were disturbed by Zelda, coming through the front door having walked the younger boys to the village school. It was their first day back after the long summer.

    “You look as if you’ve had some bad news.” Zelda looked at Gwendoline, standing alone in the hallway beside the telephone table.

“Not bad precisely. They’ve taken Reggie into custody.”

“Why, shouldn’t that be good news? Our meeting at the ministry must have done the trick!”

But Gwendoline was looking pensive. “I suppose it had to happen—it would have happened eventually with or without our help. Only, it means something else to me, too.”

“What?”

There was a pause, and then she replied, “It’s the end of an era.”

Gwendoline’s eyes went to the window, where the towers of Fenley Hall could be seen above the trees. “I wonder,” she murmured, then looked around. “Zelda, could you spare me an hour or two?”

“Now? Today I was going to get back to cleaning the outbuilding, even though a cat’s had kittens in there and the boys will howl if I turf them out. There are five of them and—”

Gwendoline interrupted her. “I need to go to the hall, collect some clothes and things.” She turned, her eyes beseeching Zelda to come. “I’d rather not go on my own, that’s all.”

The walk was a brisk one, an autumnal wind bringing the musty scent of yellowing leaves and the harvest. “Audrey says this is her favorite time of the year,” Zelda said, kicking a few leaves. “It’s the end of the farming year, marking the start of the rest and recuperation over winter, the magic of renewal. She loves to talk about the seasons, your sister.”

Gwendoline laughed. “We could all do with renewal. That’s why I have to go back to the hall. Sometimes you need to make peace with the past before you can move into the future.”

“You’re already different, Gwendoline, far more relaxed.” Zelda smirked. “You’re even quite fun these days.”

    Gwendoline gave her a look, and then she grinned. “I suppose I should take that as a compliment.”

“So being a lady wasn’t as great as it seemed?”