Free The Secret by the Lake by Louise Douglas Page B

Caroline’s name on the headstone?’
    ‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’
    Julia would know, but it wasn’t the kind of thing I could ask her at present.
    I moved away from Viviane, reading other inscriptions. There was the grave of Thomas Sale, killed in Normandy in the Second World War, and brothers Harry and Jack Burridge who had lost their lives in the First. Mary, Violet and Herbert Jamieson, aged two, three and six had been taken by the angels within three weeks of one another in 1867. I found a cluster of Aldridge gravestones, far grander than the others and in more prominent positions – look-at-me graves with urns and railings and statuary, even an angel with an outstretched arm holding a rose. I wasn’t thinking about where I was going, but I found myself on the far side of the church, in its shadow, out of the sun, where the ground was frozen amongst the brambles and the weeds. That was where I found Caroline’s grave, alone and almost hidden.
    Her gravestone was a small, plain one, set away from the others. There was no stone urn, no marble slab or monument or memorial. Just the headstone amongst the frost-blackened weeds and brambles with the name Caroline Anne Cummings and the dates of her birth, in April 1914, and her death, aged seventeen, on the last day of August 1931.
    A single yellow rose lay on the grave, the edges of its petals frilled with pink. The rose was fading but it was not dead, despite the frost on the ground and the cold on this side of the church. Somebody had been to visit Caroline that morning, somebody had brought her the flower.
    A cloud moved over the face of the sun and Bess, at the gate, suddenly began to bark, a throaty, warning bark. I could see neither the dog, nor Viviane.
    ‘Vivi!’ I called. ‘Where are you?’ I pushed myself up and began to stumble back around the church. There was no path and the icy ground was uneven, lumpy with ancient, unmarked graves and rabbit holes, brambles that caught around my ankles. ‘Vivi!’
    She came slowly round the corner, looking terribly sad and small and vulnerable.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
    I felt foolish. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’
    I put my arm around Vivi’s shoulder and led her back towards the footpath and the sunlight and Bess. I held her very close, keeping up a stream of reassurances and endearments, wishing that love alone was enough to make the child less sad and confused. I told her that nobody ever really dies, because they live on in the memories and hearts of all the people who loved them.
    ‘What about people who aren’t loved?’ Vivi asked. ‘What about them?’
    I looked at her hopelessly. I did not know how to answer that. Viviane pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to push the tears back.
    By this time we had returned to the grave of Cora and Beinon Cummings. The flowers that had been so carefully arranged had been taken out of the little metal urn, torn into pieces, and scattered about the grave. The holly and ivy was kicked and scattered.
    Viviane looked at me through her tears and I did not have the heart to tell her off.
    We walked to the gate, unhooked Bess’s lead and walked out into the fields where sheep were grazing the sparse winter grass and tiny grey moths fluttered amongst the arms of the old apple trees, bare of leaves now but heavy with boulders of black mistletoe in their crooks and frost-silvered on one side. Beside me, Viviane was pale and broken, a lost and frightened little girl in mourning for her father. I held on to her. I was determined that I would not let her suffer. I would rescue her from her loneliness and bring her back to the place where she knew she was safe and loved. I would help her come to terms with Alain’s death. I would hold on to her, I would not let her drift away.
    And the lake shone green and still as it had shone when Caroline had been alive, and the robin sang on the bough and everything was peaceful and quiet.

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