Chapter 32

32

PROVINS, FRANCE, 1947

Evelina stared at the newspaper one last time, before discarding it. Reading what had been written about her final collection cut deep, but it wasn’t the worst she’d had to endure, and she would set fire to it later so she wasn’t tempted to reread it. She knew better than anyone that nothing good ever came from wallowing in one’s pain.

She walked through the house and out onto the veranda, staring down the overgrown driveway and looking out to the road, an unfamiliar dampness in her eyes, for it had been years since she’d last let herself cry. After giving up her daughter, it was as if she’d become numb to any other pain.

As she kept staring out, it didn’t feel so long ago that she’d run down that very path, determined to make a new life for herself, to leave everything she knew behind, never to look back. Yet now, here she was, back where she’d started, in the one place she’d vowed never to return to. Only it doesn’t feel as bad as I imagined it would .

When she’d returned to Paris after London, it hadn’t taken long before she’d realised that she would never find her love for design again, no matter how much she’d wanted to. Most of her critics or former fans blamed the war for stealing her creativity, and it had been a narrative that she’d been only too willing to go along with to save her from answering further questions; but of course the war had had nothing to do with her lack of performance. From the day she’d left Hope’s House, she’d tried to draw, but nothing would come to her no matter how hard she tried. She’d attempted to sketch before the sun came up in the morning, in the heat of the day outside at a quaint café, and with a glass of wine in hand late into the evening, but nothing worked. Once, her pencil had danced across the page the moment she’d picked it up without her even having to think; whereas now she could barely sketch a silhouette without thinking about her daughter, without seeing her face in her mind or imagining the feel of her soft skin against her own. So, when she’d forced herself to create a new collection in Paris on her return, it was no surprise that no one had been excited about her work, not after such an absence, and certainly not without her usual flair. It had only taken one dismal showing for everyone to lose interest in her, and another for her name to be forgotten entirely, except for one eager journalist who’d decided to make certain everyone knew what a failure she was.

When she’d contacted her sisters once she was back in France, she’d been surprised to hear that their parents had both passed away. A greater surprise was that they’d left their home to her, rather than to either of her siblings, and although she’d hoped to reconnect with her sisters, it wasn’t to be. She had hopes that they would slowly rebuild their relationship, but for now it seemed that they had grown up to believe that their father had been right, and their ambitious older sister had been in the wrong. And they’d both married men who were as suspicious of city life as her father had been.

For their part, her parents had left her no letter of apology for the way they’d cruelly turned her out when she’d been so young, or for their decision never to write to her or enquire as to her well-being; for never visiting her despite all the times she’d written and invited them. But she supposed that in death, they’d given her the one thing she truly needed. A home. They hadn’t attended her wedding, and at the time she’d barely cared, but now she wished that they hadn’t been estranged for so long, that things could have been different.

If only I’d known when I’d been in London. If only I’d known before I said goodbye to my daughter that we would have a home, that I would be coming back here .

A heaviness pressed on her chest then, a familiar almost burning sensation that struck her with no warning every day without fail. She would be pruning roses or washing dishes, and suddenly she would gasp, or sometimes she would simply go silent as pain racked her body, as her heart felt as if it were being torn from her chest, more violent than anything she’d ever experienced before. It didn’t matter when it happened; whenever she thought of her daughter, remembered her soft little body tucked to her breast, or the smell of milky newborn breath, it always stole the air from her lungs and left her empty. And then she would think about being there alone, in the house that had once felt like a prison to her but was now her refuge, knowing that she could have brought her baby home with her. They would have been safe, and as she lay awake at night, she imagined how easy it would have been to lie, to say that her husband had died during the war. To pretend that she’d been widowed. No one would have asked questions; instead they would have rallied around her to help. Her daughter would have been accepted and loved, and most importantly, she would have been raised by her mother.

That was what hurt Evelina the most. If only I’d been brave enough to keep her. If only I’d imagined this life for us .

She banished the thoughts from her mind as best she could and walked the gardens instead, admiring all the roses that had flourished despite the months and years of inattention since her parents had become incapacitated. Her father would have hated it; he craved order, after all. But she loved the slightly unruly, overgrown appearance of the gardens—it felt like a fresh beginning to Evelina, a way to make them her own rather than exist in her father’s shadow.

One day, she imagined visitors flocking to see the hectares of roses, to discover the inspiration for her perfume and see for themselves where the petals of their favourite scent were grown. She might not be able to design clothes, but she hadn’t let her dreams slide away completely, partnering with a perfumer and creating her first scent for House of Evelina. If she’d known the name given to her daughter, she would have named it after her, but still, this was her way of honouring her.

One day, she hoped one of those visitors might be her daughter, searching for clues about the woman who’d given birth to her, who’d broken her own heart in the hope that she’d give her daughter the life she deserved.

Evelina bent and plucked a single white petal from her favourite rose, inhaling the scent as it filled her nostrils.

Ma fille chérie, my love, the light of my life. One day we shall be reunited .

A mother could only hope.