Violet watches her husband in the mirror as she brushes her hair. He’s checking the windows before bedtime, as he always does: the force of habit and suspicion. It reminds her of the long-ago night in the long-ago German barn, the night they made Charlotte. (Well, she can’t be quite sure, but the memory of that night is so particularly poignant, that connection so especially passionate, and this is what she likes to think.) She smiles at the reflection.
“I think she’s beautiful. And not just beautiful; she’s got such a spirit about her. I’ll bet you were enthralled.”
He abandons his windows and joins her before the mirror. With his good left hand, he lifts her hair and kisses her shoulder and replies as every wise husband should. “I am enthralled by you.”
She taps him with her hairbrush. “You can admit it. I’m not offended. She’s my great-niece, after all. And you’d have to be made of stone not to notice her, which you’re most certainly not.”
“Only because she reminds me of you.”
“Oh, she’s much braver than I was.”
He takes the hairbrush from her hand and tugs her to bed. “Brasher, maybe, but not braver. You are, and have always been, the bravest person I’ve ever known, Violet Mortimer.”
Violet follows him in and tucks herself into the familiar overhang of her husband’s body. She clasps her fingers along the abrupt end of his right arm, the rounded stump. “Richardson,” she whispers. How can she call him anything but Lionel when they’re lying together in their bed? In all these years, she never could.
“Mortimer.” He kisses her hair. “Why didn’t you tell her the truth?”
“Because she’s writing for her magazine. I didn’t want to ask her to hide anything. Anyway, I wasn’t ready.” She doesn’t need to say more; he knows what she means. This close and fragile secret between them, this intricate deception of which they, Lionel and Violet, form the living heart. Not even the children know the truth. This vivacious Vivian, this clever and radiant niece: Violet can’t quite bring herself to share the terror of that night in Zurich with her. Stitching Lionel’s skin together with her own shaking hands. Expecting the knock at the door, the shouts of police. Leaving the next morning, as if everything were quite normal, fearful of every glance at Lionel and his stiff gait, his glassy eyes. The fever that started the next day and lasted for a horrifying week, weakening him to a husk, not far from the hundred and sixty pounds his passport claimed. Jane’s untiring support, her massive strength holding them together. And everything, everything else. Everything, my God. A dozen lifetimes’ worth of everything.
How could she describe all this to Vivian?
Violet turns in her husband’s arms. She wants to see him with her own eyes.
“But you must tell her one day,” says Lionel.
“One day, I will.”
? ? ?
AND THE FOLLOWING APRIL, when Vivian and Paul return to Paris, this time to marry in a small ceremony in the front salon of the Mortimer Institute, where a dozen or so Mortimer grandchildren dash about unchecked and nobody except the bride’s mother minds that the bride’s belly appears a little rounder than is seemly beneath the empire waist of her knee-length ivory satin dress, Violet pulls her great-niece aside and tells her the truth in hushed and reverent tones.
Vivian. Sweeping of eyelash, velvet-pink of lip, birdcage of veil. She rolls her joyous eyes beneath the netting. “For God’s sake, Aunt Violet. As if we hadn’t figured that out by Christmas.”
A gentle trumpet sounds from downstairs. Vivian Senior calls out from the doorway, “Time to go, darling, before that impatient groom of yours gets a better offer.”
Vivian notices Violet’s astonished expression and laughs. She leans close and encloses Violet’s shoulders with her ivory-gloved hands and whispers, “Darling Violet. Lovely, lucky Violet. I am so very glad you told me today.”
HISTORICAL NOTE
Readers and interviewers often ask me where I get the ideas for my books, and the answer is simple: everywhere! I’m a literary magpie, grabbing historical nuggets here and characters there. The Secret Life of Violet Grant began with a family story, to which I added various bits and pieces: from a minor link in the chain of events leading up to the First World War, from the spectacular story of the men and women who explored the frontier of atomic physics a hundred years ago, and from a little-known Victorian sex memoir.