Hilary and Caroline completed the forms for the dating agency, but nothing happened immediately because of Christmas.  On Christmas Eve, Hilary turned up on Patty's doorstep, laden with presents and was greeted by a huge flowery apron, white with icing sugar.  “I'm trying to ice the Christmas cake,” Patty explained, as she led Hilary through the black and white quarry-tiled hall.  “We’re going to have a really traditional Water Langley Christmas!”  Watery, runny icing was dripping off the marzipan base and the Father Christmas and fir trees sliding down the sides of the cake with it.

They went to church twice.  As they were leaving the church after Midnight Mass, Patty’s husband, Jeremy, stopped to talk to Eric, a Foreign Office colleague.  Eric’s wife, Pam, making polite conversation to Patty, referred to Hilary as “your daughter” but, at one in the morning, nobody felt like correcting her.  For Christmas Day, Patty served turkey, roast potatoes and brussels, Christmas pudding with brandy sauce and mince pies - also sherry at every opportunity, very un-Water Langley, thought Hilary, remembering how Margaret used to force down the one glass of sherry and one glass of Chablis, which would be the only alcohol she would drink all year.  Patty kept asking Hilary, “Is this all right?” and Hilary reassured her that it was, but Jeremy, carving at the Christmas table, said he had never liked turkey, Peter (aged seventeen) wouldn’t touch the Christmas pudding and Tim (aged fourteen) scooped the mincemeat out the mince-pies and wouldn’t eat the (home-made) pastry.  All too soon, Jeremy, Peter and Tim went off to watch some war film on television, leaving Hilary and Patty amidst screwed-up serviettes, bits of cracker and the tacky bits of plastic from inside them. 

“Oh dear!” sighed Patty, grabbing some of the glasses and the wine bottle and walking into the kitchen.  Tears dripping down her face, as she stood by the sink, she poured what remained in the bottle into her smeared glass.  “They didn’t like it, did they?”

“I liked it, Patty.”

“I can't cook.  I find recipes in books and magazines and it always looks so easy.  You think you can't go wrong… but I always do.”

“I liked it.”

“Jeremy says I ought to have bought the Christmas pudding.  He says nobody makes their own anymore, or mincemeat.”

“Mum did, and Granny… and Constance.”

“I so wanted a Water Langley Christmas and…”  Patty upended the wine bottle again, in vain.  “We haven't had proper Christmas lunch for years.  In Teheran, we had Armeen, who cooked beautiful Persian food but not Christmas turkey.”

“It was fine.”  They washed up, in glum, weary silence.

“I don’t know what I'd do without you, Hilary!” sighed Patty, putting on the kettle after they had finished.

“It’s very kind of you to invite me.  I really didn’t want to go back and spend Christmas with Dad and Dorrie.” 

“I think he’s behaved terribly to you, Hilary.  He hasn’t rung you today, has he?”

Patty had said this several times.  ““Well, I haven't rung him either,” Hilary replied. 

Patty didn’t answer. 

The kettle was boiling.  Hilary poured water into the teapot and got out cups and saucers.

“Hilary,” said Patty, “there’s something I should tell you.”

“Oh?” 

“I've been meaning to tell you for weeks… ever since I first saw you in church…  In fact, I should’ve written and told you about it before… after Margaret's funeral, but… with Bill and everything…”

Hilary had almost forgotten that Patty had witnessed Bill Macready's car blowing up outside Chester.

“It was so… horrible.  I wasn’t well afterwards, not for a long time.  It’s a such a terrible world we live in.”  Patty shivered.  “The IRA… And when we went to Ireland in 1954, Margaret, Jeremy and I, it was so very… peaceful.”

“Mum went to Ireland in 1954?  I never knew that.”

“We had a lovely holiday, bit cold because we went in November, but everybody in Ireland was so warm and welcoming in the 1950s.  Like Water Langley used to be.  I was only in Water Langley for a few years, you know.  I arrived, with my mother and father, when I was seventeen.  My father was a bank manager.  He had just been transferred to Chenham branch, and I didn’t know anybody.  But, the very first Sunday we went to church, Margaret invited me into the choir.  Those were the happiest days of my life.  Water Langley is such a happy, straightforward place, isn't it?”

Hilary shrugged.  “Well…”

“Of course, it is!” 

Hilary poured the tea.  “I haven't been back there for over eighteen months.”

“It’s Connie’s boy, isn't it?  That’s why you don’t go back.”  She grabbed Hilary's arm as she sat down at the kitchen table.  “What happened there?  You never talk about him?”

Hilary withdrew her hand and took a gulp of extremely hot tea.  She wouldn't discuss Andy with Patty.

“Plenty more fish in the sea,” said Patty, after an awkward pause.  “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Hilary thought this saying trite and had always thought it so.  Andy would be celebrating Christmas in Water Langley with his new girlfriend, Arabella.  Hilary had found out her name through overhearing Alice speaking on the phone to Constance - a doll’s name, as Hilary had commented to Caroline.

The telephone rang, the sound of the bell startling Hilary, even though it was in the hall.  Jeremy answered it.  “Eric and Pam have invited us to drinks tomorrow,” he called out, afterwards on replacing the receiver.

“Boxing Day drinks?  Oh!”  Patty exclaimed.  “Where do they live?”

“In Samuels Road.  That’s only half a mile away.”

“We get so few invitations nowadays, Hilary,” she went on.  “When Jeremy was working abroad, there was always an ex-pat community, and a club, and we used to be out all the time!”  For several minutes, Patty rattled on about what she was going to wear and Hilary wondered how the unassuming couple they had met in church the previous night would receive a plump, over-dressed diplomat’s wife. 

Hilary cut her short.  “What is it you were going to tell me?”

Patty frowned for a moment, then she replied, “Oh… yes.”  She got up and poured Hilary another cup of tea, then tried to refill her own cup, but the tea left in the pot was luke-warm and mahogany-coloured, so she sat down again at the kitchen table.  “Margaret's diaries…  When you were clearing out, what did you do with Margaret's diaries?”

“Er… I put them with all her other books, in Granny’s house.”

“At your house, after Margaret's funeral… I took four of her diaries”

“So it was you!”

“You realised that some were missing?”

“1952-55.”

“I was standing in the dining room.  I saw them all on the bookshelves and I just couldn't bear to leave them for Frank to read, not those years anyway.”

Hilary got up from her chair and tipped her tea slops down the sink.  She felt she had to do something.

“Oh, Hilary, are you mad at me?”  It was an American expression.  Patty had been away from England for a long time.

 “Did you read them?” Hilary asked.

Patty opened her eyes wide with horror.  “No, of course not!  Diaries are private!”

“I was concerned when I found them missing.  I was really worried that Dorrie had them.  1952-55 were the years Mum was with Bill… well, 1952-3, anyway.  She married Dad in 1954.  It seemed that the person who took those diaries knew full well what they were doing and I didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”

Patty fiddled with the lace frill on her cuff, stained with wine and Christmas pudding.

“People in Water Langley gossiped about Mum and Bill, didn’t they?”

Patty pushed her gold bangles up and down her arm.  They were a Christmas present from Jeremy.  “The people in the village, they didn’t know anything.  Margaret and Bill, they were the two most wonderful people in the world.  I was close to both of them during the time they were together… if they really were ever together, that is.  Bill had this thing about being celibate.  My mother used to say he was too Catholic.

“When Bill finished his curacy at St Catherine's, Water Langley, he was sent to this parish in Northern Ireland.  Margaret wanted to go with him, as his wife.  But then he reminded her about being celibate.”

“Poor Mum!”

Patty's eyes narrowed.  “Yes, yes, she was terribly upset.  Not that she showed it, of course.  She was at the organ and taking the choir as usual.  Music was a great comfort to her.  Then she married Frank… and I was her bridesmaid.”

Hilary nodded.  She had seen the wedding pictures many times.  “You say Mum went to Ireland.  In November 1954?  She was married by then.”

“Oh yes.  Bill had invited us to Ireland at the time he left Water Langley.  So we went.”

“Did Dad go too?”

“No.  He had to go to work.  It was just Margaret, Jeremy, and I.  We stayed in this guest-house run by a Mrs McBride.  You ought to see the breakfasts she prepared for us, porridge, then egg and bacon, then toast…”

“Yes, yes, but…. Mum was with Bill again, in November 1954?”

Patty stared at the rings on her plump fingers.  “Look, Hilary, I'm sure it wasn’t like that.  I mean, I don’t know.  I was with Jeremy most of the time.  He had just come out the army.  We hadn't seen each other for six months.  You know we got engaged in Ireland?...”

Again, Hilary felt the need to get up and walk around.  She had been born on 4 August 1955.  She could do the arithmetic.  But she wasn’t shocked anymore.  She turned round.  “Could I have Mum’s diaries back, please?”

Patty shook her head.  “No, of course not.  They were in Bill’s car.  They were blown up.”