Page 152 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
February 1816
How long it is since I have written here – and how relieved I am that the terrors of childbirth are now a thing of the past!
I felt increasingly unwell and uncomfortable over the Christmas season and then, well before the time, my labours began and I gave birth to twin boys, who, although very small, were healthy enough and thrived once a wet nurse had been found for them.
For myself, I was in a high fever for a fortnight and knew nothing.
It is such a relief to have that behind me, and although I have now seen my babes, they do not feel at all a part of me, nor do I feel the love everyone thinks I should towards them, and which Sophia, who has taken on the role of doting mother, seems to feel.
No, I am strangely detached … and determined never to gothrough that experience again. I wish only to be well enough to make my return to London, one way or another.
*
My appetite has returned and, although the weather is cold, I take a turn in the garden every day.
My mirror also tells me my looks are not forever lost to me and I may yet one day take flight again as Titania on the London stage.
*
Guy too has been leaving his rooms more often and this morning happened to come into my chamber when I had got Sara to put me into the Titania costume, to see if it still fitted me – and I was laughing and pirouetting around the room like a giddy girl, when he came upon us, perhaps attracted by the unaccustomed sound of my laughter.
He flew into an irrational fury and said I should forget my former life and strive to be a good wife to him, instead – and then, to my horror, declared that if I was well enough for such nonsense as play-acting, I could resume my wifely duties …
I was so horrified by this that I said straight out that I would never do so: that our marriage was a mistake, for I was not fitted by nature for childbirth. Then I begged him to let me return to London.
This made him even more furious and he said he would not stand for the dishonour of having a wife leave him and go back on to the stage. Then he struck me with such force that I was sent flying across the room and did not know where I was until I came to my senses sometime later, with Sara bathing my bruised face with lavender water and crying.
I have locked my bedroom door against him, and once more, as I did so many years ago, I am planning to run away. Sara now wholeheartedly agrees that this is the only course I can now take.
*
Sara has been sent back to London again, but that suits us very well, for she is to arrange with Letty, to whom I have appealed, how I may be conveyed to London. She will return and stay in the nearest town once everything is in train, and send word when a carriage will await me by the Hall gates, once all is arranged, by means of the young maid, Mary. I gave her the little gold I have stowed away, although she said she would in any case have helped me for the affection and pity she had for my situation, for, of course, the whole household knows that my husband was violent towards me.
I have begged Sara and Letty to make the arrangements at the first opportunity, for fear of what Guy will do if I continue to deny him.
*
1 March
It is tonight! I am both excited and fearful.
Mary will help me slip out of the house at midnight and there will be a carriage – and Sara – waiting for me by the gates.
I can carry little, just one small valise, but that does not matter. Nothing matters except to get away.
I did go to look at my babes in their cradles this evening – they thrive, despite being so small – and wished them well, but did not feel truly that they were mine. Sophia will find her fulfilment in taking my place as their mother.
I will take this journal with me, but dare not go up to theattic, where the box containing my Titania costume has been banished, in which I hid the first volume.
I feigned sickness this evening and did not go down to dinner, but stayed in my room instead, for I feared they might see my nervous state and wonder at it.
And now it is almost time to leave. Mary is here, ready to help me into my cloak and see me safe through the dark house to the side door on to the shrubbery – and the freedom that beckons beyond …
*
That was the last entry. When I’d finished reading it, I looked up and waited for the others to reach the end, too.
Honey, Viv and I were first, probably because we had read her previous journal and were used to her handwriting, but when the others, one by one, looked up, I said, ‘So it seems we’ll still never know exactly what happened to Rosa-May – only that she never left Up-Heythram Hall.’
