Love Always: A sweeping summer read full of dark family secrets from the Sunday Times bestselling author. Harriet Evans
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who gaze upon our visages. Mummy has ‘it’ – I don’t know what ‘it’ is, but she can put on her overalls or an old shirt & look stunning. I just look like a boy.
No dinner bell yet, what’s going on? I’m ravenous.
Sometimes I wonder about where Dad came from, too, I imagine palaces made of gold & the burning heat & markets with silk & exotic foods, like in The Horse & His Boy by C.S. Lewis. Dad says it is a bit like that but not really. He is from Lahore. It is a fortress town, Akbar lived there, he was one of the greatest Indian rulers, we did him in school & I could say that was where Dad came from. It was in the Punjab, now it is in Pakistan. It is because India is not ours any more. I love the idea of it, the Mughal emperors & the forts & bazaars. I want to go to India. I will one day, when I am grown up & a famous writer. I shall have a scarf from Liberty, & smoke those Russian cigarettes, and do my hair like Juliette Greco –
We have been called for supper, I must go. I have been writing for well over an hour, it is nearly seven & my left hand hurts, a LOT.
I will add my exercises after I have done them tonight.
Bust exercises: 30
Nose squashing exercises: 5 mins
Love always, Cecily
Sunday, 21st July, 1963
Dear Diary,
After yesterday’s writing marathon my hand STILL hurts so I will be brief. I feel we have made a good start. It is lovely being home but it is funny how the things you forgot about that are always there start to come back after a few days. It is even funnier, reading them as you write them down. Perhaps I shouldn’t, but if I didn’t record what happens and what I think about my family I wouldn’t be being truthful, would I.
I was out all day at the beach & then went for a long walk with Jeremy to Logan’s Rock. Very tired now. We talked about his walking holiday in Switzerland, it sounds most interesting. I tried to sound like an interesting person back, but I have never really been anywhere and done anything, and it’s hard. I expect Jeremy is all the time with wonderful interesting girls up in London. I rather hate to think about it.
Had another sitting with Mummy this morning. We are in her studio, I never go in there so it’s interesting only from that point of view. It’s very white & quiet & she wasn’t like my mother when we were in there.
I can’t explain it. She is much more . . . definite. Tells me how to sit & what to do. Doesn’t care I’m her daughter. She asks questions to be polite, like Sandra, the hairdresser we go to in Penzance. It is uncomfortable after a while, staying still like that. I like it because I get to wear the ring I love so much round a chain on my neck. It is Mum’s ring, she let me take it to school last year and look after it. She says I can have it one day, if I’m good.
The only thing I should record is that Mummy kept asking about Miranda. If there was anything I thought we could do about her that we weren’t doing, as she has left school & has nothing in sight. I don’t know what to say as it’s been decided that Miranda is a ‘problem’. By Mummy. (I don’t think Dad has noticed any of us is actually back from school, let alone that M has actually finished school & needs something to do). They think she ought to know what she’s doing, but to be fair to Miranda they’ve never asked her before, I don’t know why they’re worried about it now. I said they should make her join the French Foreign Legion. Mummy didn’t laugh.
She plays jazz up there, Chet Baker & John Coltrane & she smokes while she paints, which is strange because she doesn’t anywhere else. And she is different. I can’t explain it.
Very tired & not making awful lot of sense so going to bed or as Jeremy always says, Off to Bedfordshire. Oh Jeremy. xxx
Bust exercises: 5
Must try harder with this & all things. Tomorrow!
Love always, Cecily
Monday, 22nd July 1963
My dearest Diary,
I hate Miranda. Sometimes I think I would like to smash her face in, carve my nails down her skin till it bleeds. She is ugly & nasty & I HATE HER. She makes me feel stupid and tries to make me look like a baby. She is the stupid one. I HATE her. Today, she stuck a leg out while I was coming back from my bath, just because I told her what Mummy had said yesterday. I was trying to help! I tripped over, and fell in a sprawl on the floor, & she just sat on the bed and laughed at me, and then called me a baby for crying. She is always saying I’m a baby for my age. I’m not, I’M NOT. I’m just not a vamp like she is.
Oh thinking about her puts me in such a bad mood. She makes me not like our family, or being here, she makes it all rotten. She doesn’t like it here. She hates the holidays. She wants to leave home and go to London. Well I wish she would.
Anyway.
I left off my proper favourite book off my list. It is very important. Emily Brontë is amazing. This summer term, we read Wuthering Heights at school. It is a most wonderful novel, full of insight into that most miraculous of emotions – that of human love. (I must say though, if I met Heathcliff I would just hide in a cupboard. He is frightening). The story is terribly, terribly sad, & I felt, when he saw her lifeless dead body, that I should cry so much my heart would break.
It’s much better than Jane Eyre, I thought Mr Rochester was boring & I wanted more descriptions of how the first Mrs Rochester drooled & everything.
After my bustup with Miranda I didn’t do very much today, swam by the sea & read, sat for Mummy again. We talked about our favourite films. She loves Gregory Peck too. It was a bit better today but she still snapped at me when I scratched my arm and goodness gracious me, I’m allowed to scratch my arm, aren’t I?
We had jam roll for tea today which was delicious. I read about the autumn fashions in the papers outside while the others went swimming. I do not want to wear a hat shaped like a cone, whatever anyone says. Miranda has some nice clothes this summer. I don’t know where she got them from, but she’s started trying them on in our room. Mummy hasn’t noticed yet, but she will. It’s funny. They’re expensive, and they’re grown-up, and they . . . I think they suit her. Miranda gets them out when she thinks I’m not looking. Where did she get them from? There’s a black gros-grain dress I am particularly in love with, she’s hung it at the back of our wardrobe but she keeps opening it to stare at it. She is pretty stupid.
Yesterday was the sixth Sunday after Trinity. I wish it wasn’t like this any more. I am starting to think everyone is in an awful mood this summer, apart from Jeremy.
Bust exercises: 45!
Nose squashing exercises: 5 mins
Love always, Cecily
Tuesday, 23rd July 1963
Dear Diary
I fear I did not make a good beginning to this journal. There is too much silliness and feeling sorry for oneself in it. I need to show everyone eg Miss Powell, Jeremy, Miranda & others that I am a grown-up young woman, because sadly some people still treat me like I am five years old and when I am dead & they read this I want them to know how wrong they were.
It is a bit like that at our school, but not as bad, because everyone is nearly the same age. I don’t actually mind school, Miranda hates it. I like English, Drama & History. Also I can’t wait to see Miss Powell again in September because she treats you like a person. However I am also dreading having to listen to awful Annabel Taylor’s descriptions of her ghastly family’s holiday in St Tropez or wherever it will be. She is such a show-off. Miss Powell says one should never advertise one’s wealth or status & I agree. I don’t go around school boasting that my father is an OBE & writes extremely important books, & lectures at the Sorbonne, & that my mother has had an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, do I? No, I do not. AT is so vulgar too. What matters to her is how blonde your hair is, or whether you have a tennis court at home & are allowed to drink champagne by your family. She