‘You understand why now.’ Octavia nods, as if to say, Good. She’s final y getting it.

‘No, I don’t believe it, Octavia. What I mean is,’ I say, breathing deeply, ‘I understand why you’ve always been so vile to us now. I mean, did your mother tel you this herself?’

‘Not in so many words,’ Octavia says. ‘You don’t sit down and explain something like that – we just always knew. Dad, too. And Uncle Jeremy.

That’s why he never comes back.’ She shrugs.

‘Wel , as you like. I don’t believe for a second, a second –’ and I raise my voice so I’m speaking as loudly as possible without shouting, and I can hear myself, high above the clinking masts in the harbour, above the train engine – ‘that my mother kil ed Cecily, or anyone. I don’t know what happened, but I know that much.’ I sling my bag over my shoulder.

‘Hey –’ she begins. ‘That’s just what they say. I’m just saying—’

‘No,’ I interrupt. ‘Let’s not go into it again, OK? I think I’m going to get on, now. See you around then. Thanks for—‘ I don’t know what to thank her for, but since I’ve started I think I’d better finish. ‘Er – thanks for sharing the taxi fare with me.’

Octavia nods back – what else can she do? – and says, ‘No problem.’

I don’t look back at her as I walk towards the train. I pray I don’t bump into her again, but I’m pretty sure she’l steer clear of me this time. She thinks she’s done me a favour. That’s what upsets me most of al . Pointed out how stupid I’ve been.

In the summer the buffet car is always ful ; people arrive as early as possible to get a seat so they’re not shut into their cabins, which are initial y cute but soon become claustrophobic. In winter, the car is nearly empty, and after I have dumped my bag in the single-bed cabin and admired the free set of toiletries, I settle down into one of the single seats by the window, with a table and a lamp, and put my bag in front of me. I look around hastily again, but Octavia hasn’t appeared. The diary pages are stil in my pocket. I sit there, and the train pul s slowly away from the station, and I don’t know what to feel.

There’s a Times on the opposite seat – the guard obviously missed it – and I pick it up. I order some tea and biscuits, even though I’m not hungry, and I start reading the paper. The news absorbs me. I read about a cabinet plot to oust the Prime Minister, the flooding al over the country, the travails of a minor sportsman and his ‘celebrity’ wife, what’s happening in a reality TV show, which MP has tried to claim an antique rug on expenses. I feel as if I’ve been away for a long time, and I am gathering information to piece myself back together, bit by bit.

I know before I turn the page to the Obituaries section that I wil see a photo of my grandmother, scarf in her hair, a broad smile curling over her perfect teeth, brush in hand, a mug of tea and painting paraphernalia – palette, brushes, rags, turps – cluttered around her, in the studio I was standing in over an hour ago. It looks completely different, crammed with canvases, postcards stuck on the wal s, pot plants, a gramophone.

Something catches in my throat. She is smiling out at me. It’s like Cecily’s face, shining out of the drawer.

Frances Seymour

Highly acclaimed observer of Cornish landscape who never painted after 1963

Frances Seymour, who has died at the age of eighty-nine, was what one would cal a star. Not for her the flamboyance, the tantrums and temperamentality, clichés of the artist: she was universal y beloved, charismatic and beautiful, a magnet for men and women alike; her house, the beautiful Summercove near Treen in Cornwal , open to al and a haven for friends and family. She lit up every room she was in and her company was a rare gift.

Because of her charm and force of personality it is easy to forget, therefore, the gap Seymour created when she abandoned painting after the death of her youngest daughter Cecily, in a tragic accident. Frances never forgave herself for her daughter’s death, and some have speculated this was her form of penance, for the events of that summer in 1963. This is not established. What it is important to establish, however, is the role Frances Seymour played before that in sealing the reputation of British painting in the mid-twentieth century.

Frances Seymour was not a Cornish painter, or a female painter. She was simply one of the most talented artists of the last century.

This was my grandmother, I want to shout. I want to wave the paper out of the window, like the Kind Old Gentleman in The Railway Children.

Look how clever she was, how bril iant!

Tears come to my eyes, and I’m crying, I can’t help it. I don’t understand anything any more. I keep hearing Octavia’s voice, and when I close my eyes I can see her large grey eyes, her pointy noise, looming at me in the dark, as she oh-so-careful y stabs my mother in the back, over and over again. I want to hate her, to laugh at her, but I can’t. I ask myself why I can’t.

Because, despite what I said to her only an hour before, I’m terrified that she’s right.

I look out of the window, as if I expect to see someone’s face there. We have been going fast, through a blur of nondescript-looking vil ages, but suddenly it is dark, a landscape with no lights at al . I can see my own reflection in the window, nothing more. My neck and the newspaper are both startlingly white against the blackness outside, the blackness of my coat and dress. I stare at myself; I can’t see the tears; I look like a ghost. In the black and white of the light, I look like Cecily.

Careful y, I tear the obituary out of the paper and fold it. The tearing sound is loud, and the couple at the table next to me look up, curiously. I stand up and smile, backing away towards my room and when I get there, I fal onto the familiar old scratchy blue blanket and the smooth white sheets. I take the pages out of my pocket and sit on the lower bunk, holding them in my hand, gazing at them, at the scrawling black handwriting, my finger and thumb poised to turn the first page. I close my eyes.

And now I can see myself, suddenly, back at Summercove. There are voices I recognise, but they’re different somehow, thinner, higher. Bright sunshine is streaming into the living room, the smel of sea and grass and something else, something dangerous, almost tangible, rushing towards me . . . And Cecily’s face, as it was in the oil sketch. Come with me! Come with me, she is saying. And I do. I take a deep breath and I fol ow her, down to the sea.

The Diary of Cecily Kapoor, aged fifteen. July, 1963.

St Katherine’s School for Girls

Denmouth

Devon

England

If lost please return

Saturday, 20th July 1963

Dear Diary,

First day of holidays. That is – count it, my dears, count it –

SEVEN WEEKS of blissful beautiful no school!! !!

My summer project starts NOW.

I am writing this sitting on my bed at Summercove. On the patchwork quilt Mary sewed me when we first moved here and I was scared at night. One of Mummy’s sketches is on the wall, of our little cove down on the beach. There is a cupboard for our clothes built into the wall with sweet little plastic handles dotted with stars. What else? There are two shelves painted white with all my books on them (I share this room with my sister Miranda. But she only reads Honey magazine). I have everything from My Friend Flicka to Pride & Prejudice & they are all mine.

Today is the first proper day of the holidays. I got home yesterday. I love the luxury of the beginning of the hols, where time seems to stretch out before you, for ages & ages. We go back 8th Sept. It seems a lifetime away.

I have never kept a diary before. Two days ago, the last day of classes, Miss Powell gave everyone in our class ten pages of paper, tied together with string and our names on, and told us to keep a record of our summer holidays: she said to write down what we did, who we saw, and what happens. Everyone groaned when Miss Powell said it, but I was glad. I want to be a writer when I grow up & this is good practice.

No one else was that excited about it, only me really. Annabel Taylor, who can barely write in joined-up writing, looked completely appalled.

I have laid a wager with myself. It is that she will write 2 pages over the summer, and those will be about the boys she knows.

(that is not very nice of me).

Miss Powell says she will not look at our diaries herself, but she wants us to read some sections out to the rest of the class when we come back in the autumn. She says, in years to come, we will find them and read them and remember the summer of 1963. She says it is a year we will want to remember. I thought she meant because of Mr Profumo and the scandal. We’re absolutely not allowed to talk about it at school. Still, I hoped she might mention it. She just said something instead about the wind of change blowing. I like Miss Powell. She is younger than most of the teachers, and she has fantastic cropped hair, and she likes Bonjour Tristesse. Rita dies for Miss Powell, she cries about her at night.

Anyone’s better than Miss Gilchrist, say I. Awful woman with meaty hands, I’m sure she used to be in prison. Miss Powell isn’t like that.

Anyway, enough of silly school. It’s hard sometimes, to get back into the swing of life here after being away at St Kat’s for months on end.

One’s head is full of drear things like plimsolls and kit bags and hymnals. I’m back now. It’s over! (for a while).

So what shall I tell you, diary? I shall start by describing where I am and what’s happening.

It is after tea & the house is quiet, but there are sounds, all dear & familiar to me after months at school. Mary is in the kitchen, cooking supper; I can hear her feet on the floor & the pans clattering.

Dad is humming in his study. It sounds like wasps, buzzing. Dad is a famous sort of writer. He wrote a book people always want to talk about, called The Modern Fortress. I haven’t read it. But lots of people have. It is an IMPORTANT BOOK. Miss Green, our headmistress, said that to me last year. ‘IMPORTANT BOOK CECILY.’ That means she hasn’t read it, I absolutely bet.

(must be kind & what if they do read it even though they said they wouldn’t?) My cousins Louisa & Jeremy arrived today. They are playing with Claude, our dog, on the lawn. Louisa is wearing a beautiful striped bathing costume, I covet it. She has a new lipstick and she is terribly pleased with herself, for she has been offered a scholarship to Girton, and she is dreadfully ambitious and clever. Jeremy is at medical school in London. Jeremy is my favourite cousin, there are only two of them that I know, I don’t know my cousins in Lahore, in Pakistan, but perhaps I would like them more than Jeremy. I doubt it. He’s awfully nice.

Jeremy has been for a swim & carried the table outside for supper after the rain. That’s enough about them for the moment.

My sister & brother (Archie & Miranda other way round) are gossiping in their secret annoying way, about who knows what as they walk round the edge of the lawn together, like Jane Austen heroines taking a turn about the garden. They are twins, 2 yrs older than me. They have just finished at school. Though Archie is staying on an extra term, to do the exam for Oxford and Cambridge, though he says he won’t go.

Miranda is not doing that exam. She is not doing anything.

They are strange, the twins. I am not sure if My hand hurts already. But I must go on!

Finally Mummy. Mummy is painting. She is in her studio, down at the end of the corridor. She is a famous painter. ‘Famous painter’ – I am not sure if that is a good thing or not, but it is how she is always referred to by people. The Picture Post did a spread on us a couple of years ago.

‘Famous Painter at Home with her Family’. As if her fame is as important as her painting. I wonder if it annoys her. Mummy has an exhibition this autumn & she is making me sit for a portrait. I don’t like sitting for her except we talk, which I like. I sat for her this morning. The exhibition is soon & she is painting furiously, she is behind. She is short with Dad, but he doesn’t notice. She smokes & looks out of the window a lot, & I hear her pacing up & down in the studio when I’m in my room. She’s doing it now.