The Promise Read Free

away and left her, never to be seen again?
    He’d visited them once, she seemed to recall, about the time he was called up at the start of the war. She must have been eleven or twelve at the time. He’d felt like a stranger to her after all those years of silence, and Chrissie knew she hadn’t exactly been very friendly towards him. Young as she was, she hadn’t been prepared to forgive him for deserting them. Now, knowing he’d been killed at Dunkirk, she felt guilty, as that was the last time she’d seen her father.
    Chrissie slid the albums back into the sideboard drawer, not even bothering to look at them. She’d given up showing any interest in their yellowed contents years ago, when she’d failed to get any answers to her youthful questions. It was as she was closing the drawer that she realised a folded sheet of paper had come loose and was sticking out from the pages.
    About to tuck it back into place so that it didn’t get torn, her curiosity suddenly got the better of her and she opened it.
    It was nothing more exciting than her mother’s marriage certificate.
    Chrissie shook her head in sad resignation. How dreadful that the loss of this man, a runaway husband, had so blighted both their lives. What a tragic waste. Yet Vanessa must still be passionately in love with him as she’d never remarried, despite her many amours. She complained about the debts she’d been left with, but never once had Chrissie heard her mother utter a single word against Aaran. She was undoubtedly a bitter woman but her venom seemed to be directed entirely against her own parents, as if they were the ones at fault. Perhaps she hated them for being proved right in their assessment of a straying husband. But despite his betrayal, Vanessa had remained steadfast in her loyalty to him. How blind is love?
    Chrissie’s eyes filled with tears as she thought of her own love for Tom, a passion she did not expect to ever experience again.
    But this was the first time Chrissie had set eyes onevidence of her parents’ marriage and she smoothed the certificate out, staring at the names: Aaran Richard Kemp. Again she desperately tried to recall her father’s face. Occupation – businessman, and an address in Chelsea. No doubt the art gallery he owned, of which Chrissie had no recollection. That was back in the halcyon days of her mother’s youth. No occupation was listed for her mother, who was given the usual description of ‘spinster’, and the same address in Chelsea. Good heavens, were they living together? How deliciously sinful. Chrissie glanced then at her mother’s full name: Vanessa Margaret Cowper.
    Cowper?
    But wasn’t her maiden name Shaw? Chrissie was almost certain that was what she’d been told. Frowning in puzzlement she began to look for something to prove her theory. She searched everywhere, including the little bureau, but nowhere could she find evidence of any birth certificate. And then Chrissie found the rental agreement for the flat. And there it was: Mrs Vanessa Kemp, née Shaw. How extraordinary!
    Folding the marriage certificate and carefully replacing it within the leaves of the album, Chrissie closed the drawer and went to bed. Although not to sleep.
    For some reason she found it oddly disturbing to discover that her mother wasn’t whom she claimed to be. And if her maiden name was Cowper and not Shaw, as she’d always believed it to be, then who did that make Chrissie herself? Yet there was something vaguely familiar about the name Cowper. Where had she heard the name recently?
    It was sometime in the early hours of the morning that she remembered, and sat bolt upright in shock. Of course, it was in the advertisement for Rosegill Hall in her mother’s copy of the Westmorland Gazette .
    What had it said? Ah yes, The owner, Georgia Cowper, offers a warm welcome to guests .
    Vanessa had been born in the Lakes, where this Hall was apparently situated. So if she carried the same name as this woman, one she