They were married at the local church just after Annie turned five, and Lucy twenty-three. She felt ready to take on a husband and all that it entailed. They fixed up his cottage together, and he painted a bedroom pink for Annie, who said it was her favorite color. They were married in the presence of their coworkers and employers, and everyone was happy for them. He was such a lovable man, and Lucy was a good woman, even though she was quiet and not as gregarious as he was. The wedding breakfast afterward in the church hall was a lively occasion. They left Annie with his mother, and went to Brighton for the weekend for their honeymoon. Rationing had finally eased up, and life had almost returned to normal, so traveling was possible. Lucy was nervous about their wedding night, because she didn’t want Jonathan to realize she was a virgin. She told him it was her time of the month when they got to the room, and he said he didn’t mind, and hoped she didn’t either. She gritted her teeth and didn’t let herself make a sound. The pain was sharp and brief, Jonathan was unaware that she’d lost her virginity to him, and when they made love again in the morning it was easier.
The war had ended four years before. The memories of tragedy had dimmed, and the scars had begun to heal. She no longer had nightmares about her parents dying in the bombing, which she never spoke of but were very real. She’d had them all during the war. She still dreamt of Charlotte sometimes too. Lucy’s worst fear was that Charlotte’s family would find out what had happened, learn of Annie’s existence, find them, and take her away. She couldn’t have survived losing Annie. They had lived with the story Lucy told for four years now, and Lucy had almost come to believe it herself. She knew she could never say anything to Jonathan about it. He would never understand, and he would be shocked. He still knew nothing of the real circumstances of Annie’s birth, and Lucy had no intention of telling him. It would be too difficult to explain, and he didn’t need to know. He still believed the fantasy of her being married to a man named Henry, and Annie being their child. He could never have imagined that Annie was a royal princess and another woman’s child. It was a secret Lucy intended to take to her grave. As Lucy planned it, no one would ever know, not even Annie when she grew up. Lucy was afraid that one day, if Annie found out, she might feel that Lucy had cheated her of a better life. She had done it purely out of love for her, and to some degree out of love for Annie’s father, but Annie might not understand it and long for everything she’d missed, grandparents, aunts, cousins, a family, and a royal life.
After their honeymoon, they settled into real life, as a working couple. His mother came to take care of Annie every day, or they dropped her off at her cottage. Jonathan’s mother loved having a grandchild.
Lucy had spoken to a local doctor about how to avoid getting pregnant at first. He had recommended condoms or a diaphragm. Jonathan agreed to use condoms for a while, and she tried to avoid conception with the rhythm method, avoiding sex at times. But six months after they married, fate intervened. They enjoyed a particularly energetic night of lovemaking, when Annie stayed with her adopted grandmother, and Lucy discovered afterward that the condom had broken. Her greatest fear was realized a month later when she missed her period and realized she was pregnant. It seemed so unfair to her that with only one slip she had conceived, and she cried when she told him. Jonathan could see how frightened she was, which made no sense to him since she’d been through it before. And all Lucy could think of was Charlotte bleeding to death hours after the birth, and she was terrified it would happen to her, perhaps as retribution for taking a child that wasn’t her own. But she had given her a good life, and a wonderful father in Jonathan, which she told herself compensated for what she’d done.
Jonathan had found her locked leather box when she moved into his cottage, and he asked her what it was. He wasn’t a nosy person, but it was an imposing looking box and beautifully made. She responded brusquely that it was some old letters, and mementos of her parents, and she put it on a high shelf at the back of a closet and left it there. He forgot about it. She kept the key hidden and no longer wore it around her neck. She thought of destroying the papers and letters in it at times so no one would ever see them, but for some reason never did, and gave no further thought to the contents of the box. There was no question in her mind now, no matter who had given birth to her, Annie was hers. And her other family ties were irrelevant, since Lucy had chosen to keep her away from them, for life. And she had convinced herself that Annie’s life was happier the way it was now, with Jonathan and her, and a brother or sister on the way.