The Lost Sisterhood Read Free Page A

mother—true-blue American that she was—never lost her craving for that sweet manor house, even after all the bitter disappointments. So many years of volunteering for Milady’s charities in the hope of recognition; so many years of meticulously pruning some twenty feet of Ligustrum hedge that happened to separate the remotest part of the manor park from our backyard cabbage patch … all for nothing.
    By the time I moved to Oxford for my doctorate degree, I was sosure she and I had long since been cured of our fruitless nonsense that it took me over a year to grasp her secret agenda in coming up to visit me every three weeks or so and insisting we explore the wonders of Oxford together.
    We had started out by seeing every single college in town and had actually had quite the grand old time. My mother could never get enough of those Gothic quads and cloisters, so unlike anything she had known growing up. Whenever she thought I wasn’t looking, I could see her bending down to sneak little souvenirs into her handbag—a random pebble, a lead pencil left on a stone step, a twig of thyme from an herb garden—and I was almost embarrassed to realize that, after so many years, I still knew very little of what went on in her inner universe.
    After our round of the colleges, we began going to concerts and events, including the odd sports affair. My mother suddenly developed an unnatural interest in cricket, then rugby, then tennis. In retrospect, of course, I should have seen that these seemingly impulsive pursuits were very much part of a campaign that had always had but one single objective.
    James.
    For some reason, it never occurred to me how perfectly systematical our movements around town had been, and how determined my mother had been to map out our routes beforehand and stick to them regardless of the weather … not until the day she finally grabbed me by the elbow and exclaimed, in the voice of a crusader face-to-face with the grail at last, “
There
he is!”
    And indeed, there he was, coming out of Blackwell’s on Broad Street, balancing a stack of books and a cup of coffee. I would never have recognized him had it not been for my mother, but then, I had not spent the last ten years keeping current with the maturing process of our target through binoculars and gossip magazines. To me, James Moselane was still a pubescent prince in an enchanted forest, while the person emerging from the bookstore was a perfectly proportioned adult—tall and athletic, though completely unprepared for the ambush awaiting him.
    “What a coincidence!” My mother strode across Broad Street and cut him off before he saw her coming. “Didn’t even know you were at Oxford. You probably don’t recognize Diana …”
    Only then did my mother realize I was not right beside her, and she twisted around to shoot me a grimace that said it all. I had never been the spineless sort, but the horror of suddenly understanding that this, precisely
this,
was what we had been chasing for so long nearly made me turn and run.
    Even though James could not see her livid expression, he most certainly noticed her frantic wave and my own crushed demeanor. Only someone uncommonly slow would not have read the situation within the blink of an eye, but to James’s credit he greeted us both with perfect cordiality. “And how are you enjoying Oxford?” he asked me, still balancing his coffee on top of the books. “I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
    “Diana Morgan,” said my mother. “As in Lady Diana. Here, let me write it down.” She dug into her handbag and pulled out a scrap of paper, oblivious to my nudges and muttered pleas. “And her college, of course—”
    “Mommy!” It took all my willpower to prevent her from jotting down my telephone number as well, and she was extremely cross with me for pulling her away before we had exhausted all her brazen hoopla.
    Not surprisingly, we saw neither hide nor hair of James after that. In all