Sense & Sensibility

14

‘We’re going out for coffee,’ Elinor said firmly to Marianne the next morning, ‘and you are going to listen to me. I mean listen. Not just gaze at me while you think about something quite different.’

Marianne was in front of the bathroom mirror, fixing her earrings. Her eyes met Elinor’s in the mirror, wide with innocence. ‘OK. But I don’t want to be lectured.’

‘You mean you don’t want to hear any point of view but your own.’

‘No, I mean I don’t want to be talked down to, and told – what’s that noise?’

‘Mrs J. on the phone. As usual.’

Marianne was suddenly very still. She said, ‘She’s screaming.’

‘She’s always loud.’

‘No, but—’

The voice down the passage to the sitting room stopped abruptly and there was the sound of heavy feet, almost running, towards them, instead. Seconds later, Abigail Jennings appeared in the bathroom doorway, her mobile phone clutched to her tremendous bosom.

‘Girls,’ she said. She sounded as if she could hardly catch her breath. ‘Girls—’

They stepped forward, towards her. Elinor put out an arm as if to support her. ‘Goodness, Mrs J., are you OK? Are you—’

Abigail pressed her phone into the folds of the cashmere scarf draped around her neck. ‘My dears …’

‘What? What – it is something awful?’

Mrs Jennings looked at the ceiling as if for divine sustenance. ‘Not exactly awful …’

Elinor and Marianne now both put steadying hands on their hostess and guided her solicitously across the bathroom to sit on the closed lid of the lavatory. She said, gasping slightly, ‘I just rang Charlotte …’

‘Yes! Yes?’

‘Because, you know, she was in such a state about the baby crying, and I said, Well, it’ll be colic, it’s so common and you need this divine Donovan man, the osteopath, to do a little cranial massage on the baby, and you’ll be amazed at the effect. It’s astonishing how many people simply do not understand how the plates of the brain get squashed on that grim journey down the birth canal, and then that compresses the nerve endings at the base of the skull, and hey presto, colic, poor little—’

‘Is that’, Marianne said, interrupting, from her kneeling position on the bathroom floor beside Mrs Jennings, ‘why you were screaming? Because of the baby and—’

Mrs Jennings gazed at her, round-eyed. ‘Oh no. No, dear. That was why I rang Charlotte. To tell her—’

‘Then why—?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why were you screaming?’

Mrs Jennings took a huge breath, lifted her plump hands and let them fall dramatically into her lap, still holding her telephone.

‘My dear, you will not believe what Charlotte told me. Such dramas. It’s like something out of a novel.’

Elinor knelt too. She said, ‘Please tell us!’

Mrs Jennings bent forward, as if to impart something confidential. ‘There’s been the most ghastly row. In Harley Street. Just this morning. Apparently Nancy Steele thought that everyone there was getting on so famously that it would be perfectly acceptable to tell your brother and sister-in-law that Lucy and the Ferrars boy – your sister-in-law’s brother, dear, the F-word boy, God help us – have been engaged for more than a year, and never told a soul because Mrs Ferrars senior has such fixed ideas about who her boys should marry, being so terrified, as she is, of fortune-hunters. Your sister-in-law went completely ballistic, Charlotte said, and rushed to wake Lucy up and tell her she was sick of cheap little gold-diggers sniffing round her family, and next thing we know, Lucy and Nancy are out on the pavement and round they go to Charlotte’s, straightaway, and Tommy found his kitchen was absolutely full of crying women and a screaming baby and Charlotte says he just went straight off to the office, even though it’s Sunday.’

Marianne was ashen. She sat back on her heels, her hand over her mouth. From behind it, muffled, she said, ‘Not Ed. Not—’

Mrs Jennings patted her. ‘Come on, now, dear. It’s lovely he’s stood by Lucy, isn’t it? I think to defy those money-obsessed Ferrarses takes some doing, I really do. I rather applaud him; I can’t bear people who think money is all that matters.’

Marianne’s gaze swung round to Elinor. She whispered, dropping her hand, ‘Did you know?’

Elinor nodded mutely. ‘When?’ Marianne said.

‘Weeks ago. Months.’

‘And you didn’t tell me?’

Elinor said, looking at the floor, ‘I didn’t tell anyone.’

Mrs Jennings heaved herself to her feet. She said, cheerfully, ‘It’s quite a story, don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ they both said politely, not moving.

She stepped clumsily over them. ‘I know she’s your sister-in-law, dears, but really, what a reaction! Poor Lucy. Sweet girl. It’s such a lovely story, especially in this day and age, don’t you think? Now, I’m going across to Charlotte’s, to see what I can do to help. Will you girls just help yourselves to breakfast? Croissants in the cupboard.’

‘Thank you.’

Mrs Jennings paused in the doorway. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘they might make a go of it. They really might. Love on a shoestring and all that. I’m sure I could help with some furniture.’ She glanced back at the Dashwood girls, still crouched on the floor. ‘I wonder what will happen when Ed’s mother knows! Fireworks won’t be in it and, I’m telling you, I don’t want to miss a moment!’

Elinor looked up at her. She managed a tired smile. ‘Give Charlotte our love,’ she said.

When her footsteps had retreated, Marianne said hoarsely to her sister, ‘You have known all along, Elinor Dashwood, that Ed and Lucy were engaged, all the time I’ve been like I’ve been?’

Elinor nodded reluctantly.

‘So,’ Marianne said, leaning forward to grip Elinor’s nearest wrist, ‘Ed is as much of a complete scumbag as Wills is?’

‘No,’ Elinor said, with vehemence. ‘No.’

‘Two-timing, choosing a complete little cow like—’

‘It’s different,’ Elinor said. ‘He’s different. He was neglected and bullied when he was little, and then all those people in Plymouth were kind to him, and Lucy was in the mix, and he felt this obligation …’

‘Huh,’ Marianne said.

‘She’s not a bad person.’

‘She’s a witch.’

‘And he’, Elinor said with an effort, ‘isn’t bad either.’

‘He’s pathetic.’

Elinor gave a little gasp, as if she was choking down a sob.

‘Ellie?’

‘What?’

‘Did you love him?’

Elinor writhed a little, on the floor. ‘I don’t know. Yes. No. I – I love quite a lot of people.’

‘Not men.’

‘Even some men.’

‘But not Ed!’

Elinor looked at her. She said seriously, ‘M, I don’t believe in a one and only love, like you do. But yes, I do have feelings for Ed, I do. And before you rubbish him any more, I just want to say that he’s never promised me anything, he’s never made me hope or believe in anything he couldn’t deliver. In fact, I think he likes me. I’ll go further. I know he likes me. But he’s trapped. By his mother and now by all these circumstances, and he’s got to assert his independence and he’s got trapped in how he does that, too. I don’t know if he wants to be with Lucy or not, but he’s not going to let her down because he’s been let down himself by so many people all his life that he can’t bring himself to do it to someone else, whatever the cost to him is. Don’t you see?’

There was a long silence. Then Marianne got slowly to her feet. Looking down at her sister, she said quietly,

‘You love him. Don’t you.’

Elinor sighed. She gave an imperceptible nod.

Marianne said fiercely, ‘All this time while I’ve been banging on about Wills and weeping and wailing and being a general diva pain to everyone, you knew about Lucy and Ed, and you never said a word to me.’

Elinor got to her knees, and then awkwardly to her feet. She didn’t look at Marianne. She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘I feel awful.’

‘Please—’

‘Ellie,’ Marianne said, her voice breaking, ‘I’ve been such a bitch. So selfish. I got so obsessed that I never even looked to see if you might be suffering.’ She reached out and took Elinor’s nearest hand. ‘I’m so sorry. Ellie, I really am. I’m so, so sorry.’

Elinor gave a little bark of half-laughter. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘It does. It does.’ Marianne dropped Elinor’s hand and put her arms round her instead. ‘God, Ellie. I feel terrible about how I’ve been to you, I could kill myself!’

‘Don’t do that. Please, don’t …’

‘What can I do? Ellie, what can I do to try and make it up to you in even the most minuscule degree?’

Elinor gently disengaged herself. She put her hands on her sister’s shoulders and regarded her gravely. ‘There is something.’

‘What? Anything, anything!’

‘M,’ Elinor said, ‘I want you to behave as if neither of us gives a stuff about any of this.’

‘What?’

‘I mean it. I want you to be nice to Lucy and like you always are to Ed. I want no one ever, ever, to suspect that I have any axe to grind. Lucy and Ed are just another happy couple we happen to be vaguely connected to, and no more. OK?’

Marianne said sadly, ‘But I want to murder her.’

‘It’s not about you. It’s not about her. It’s about me. I want you to promise to help save my face. I want you to do this for me. Me, Elinor. Do you get it?’

Marianne sighed. Then she smiled wanly.

‘I get it. Promise.’

In Elinor’s cardigan pocket, her phone began to ring. She pulled it out and peered at the screen. ‘Gosh,’ she said, ‘it’s John!’

‘Answer it,’ Marianne said. ‘Quick.’

Elinor put the phone to her ear. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘John?’

‘Elinor?’ he said. ‘Elinor. Do you have a moment?’

‘Of course.’

She motioned to Marianne to resume sitting on the floor beside her, their backs against the panels of the bathtub.

‘Something very – grave has happened,’ John said. ‘Fanny is really upset, terribly hurt, you know how trusting she is—’

Elinor said quickly, ‘John, we do know, if you mean—’

‘It’s appalling,’ he said, interrupting, his voice high with indignation. ‘It’s like wildfire these days. There’s a private family upset and the world knows about it in seconds. Fanny feels completely betrayed, of course, and who wouldn’t, after all she’s done for those worthless girls.’

‘Yes.’

‘Elinor, she took them in because she felt that her family owed their family for looking after Edward during his teens. She was behaving beautifully, and generously, as she always does, and then she finds that Lucy has got her claws into Edward and plans to marry him and when confronted with this – honestly, Elinor, you would not believe his sheer brazenness to his sister and mother – Edward has the utter nerve to say it’s all quite true and that they are going to marry.’

‘Oh,’ Elinor said. She was staring straight ahead. Marianne had taken the hand not holding the phone and was gripping it. ‘So – so Ed’s mother knows?’

‘She was distraught,’ John said. ‘Absolutely distraught. And you know what a wonderful woman she is – you met her. She only wants what is best for her children, that’s all she’s interested in, but when she pointed out to Edward what a lovely match Tassy Morton would be for him, and how happy she’d be to give them the family house in Norfolk, he just laughed. Can you believe it? He simply laughed.’

‘Good for him!’ Marianne called.

‘Who was that?’ John demanded.

‘It’s Marianne, John. She’s next to me.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said, “Good heavens”,’ Elinor said, not looking at her sister. Marianne put her face into Elinor’s nearest shoulder, shaking with giggles.

‘I should say so,’ John said. ‘It’s appalling conduct. Disgraceful. I’m not surprised that she reacted as she did. Not another penny his way, ever. Not one. He’s burnt every boat.’

Elinor said quietly, ‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing much, actually. Odd really, but I suppose silence is part of his defiance. Even when Fanny’s mother said – perfectly understandably, in my view – that she would do everything to stand in his way in the future, he didn’t really react. He just said he’d promised.’

‘He probably did.’

‘But come on, now. Promises to a girl like that?’

Elinor took a breath. ‘Mrs J. is very fond of Lucy, John. And Mrs J. has been really kind to us.’

‘Well,’ John said, beginning to bluster, ‘I know Lucy is some sort of connection of Mrs Jennings, and I’m sure she was never any trouble before, but it really isn’t on, is it, to make a boy you know is worth a fortune promise to marry you, when you don’t yourself come from much of a background. I mean, you can’t avoid thinking eye-to-the-main-chance, love-me-love-your-wallet kind of thing, can you? It’s no fault of Mrs Jennings that her late husband’s goddaughter or whatever behaves in a disappointing way, now, is it? I’d be the last person to think that. Just as I’m the last person to think Fanny’s mother has been other than exemplary – so fair, so generous. She offered him a six-bedroom house in Norfolk, Elinor, never mind the farm that goes with it! And he just threw it all back at her. Just like that. Well, he has made his bed, stupid boy, and he must lie on it.’

Marianne leaned closer to the phone. She called, ‘John, how did it end?’

‘How did what end?’

‘All this. This row.’

‘Well,’ John said, ‘Edward slammed out of the flat, and we have no idea where he is. Fanny just said to me, “Oh, John, get a taxi for those girls and get rid of them. Even put a cab on our account, anything to get them to go.” So I did. So generous of her, you know – and when you think of the circumstances! But where Lucy is now, I have no idea. I know she and her sister went straight round to the Palmers but I think Tommy threw them out again, sensible fellow. So we are just picking up the pieces here. Poor Fanny. She’s so cut up; you know how sensitive she is. She even said she wished she’d had you two to stay, not the Steele girls.’

‘Really …’

‘And, of course, Fanny’s mother is going straight to her lawyer in the morning. There’s no holding her, once she gets going; she’ll have her will changed by lunchtime. She’ll just stand over them till they’ve done it. Lucky old Robert. He’ll get Edward’s share now. And of course, there’ll be some for Fanny, not that she’s in the least interested in money.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘So Mrs Jennings knows all this?’

‘Yes,’ Elinor said. ‘She told us.’

‘And what do you think her reaction will be?’

Elinor smiled into the phone. ‘Oh, I expect she’ll be all for it, John. She’s very fond of Lucy, and she’ll hate to see someone like Edward thrown out of his family. She’s very family-minded, you know.’

There was a short pause. Then John said, stiffly, ‘I’m sure Fanny would love to speak to you, if she weren’t so upset.’

Elinor smiled more broadly.

‘Give her our love.’

‘She’s really so hurt. And of course you feel humiliated as well as hurt when someone you’ve been so kind to lets you down like this.’

Elinor suppressed a laugh. ‘Yes, you do, John,’ she said. ‘You really do. It’s so tough when people close to you turn out not to be what you thought they were,’ and then she clicked her phone off and turned to her sister.

‘You’re a star,’ Marianne said, laughing back. ‘You’re an absolute star.’

15

‘What are you doing?’ Margaret said.

She and Elinor were seated either side of the kitchen table in Barton Cottage with their laptops open. Margaret was supposed to be doing a biology project on hers – the digestive system, complete with diagrams and analyses of all the chemical interactions of the various digestive fluids, but was in fact having a Facebook conversation with a girl in her class who had a cool – and coolly remote – older brother.

Elinor said shortly, and without looking up, ‘My emails.’

‘Can I see?’

‘No.’

‘Why? Are they private?’

‘No.’

‘Are they from Ed?’

‘No.’

‘If they’re not private,’ Margaret said, ‘and they’re not from Ed, why can’t I see them?’

Elinor sighed. She turned her laptop round so that Margaret could see the screen.

‘They won’t interest you.’

Margaret lurched forward across the table, screwing up her eyes to see better. ‘Who’s Fancynancy?’

‘Nancy Steele.’

‘Yuck. Gross. Why’s she writing to you?’

‘To show off.’

‘She’s written pages. Is it all about the plastic surgeon?’

‘How do you know about him?’

‘I know’, Margaret said, ‘because she’s always on Twitter. She tweets about how he said this and how he said that and how he liked her pink handbag and all that gross stuff. Sad isn’t the word.’

‘No,’ Elinor said, ‘it’s not about him.’

Margaret wriggled back to her seat. She said, ‘Jonno says she has the attention span of a midge.’

‘He’s right.’

‘Well, why are you emailing her?’

‘I’m not,’ Elinor said patiently. ‘She’s emailed me. To tell me all over again about Lucy and Ed. And to make sure I get the message, Lucy has emailed me as well.’

Margaret put the end of a pen in her mouth. Round it, she said, ‘What message?’

‘That they are getting married.’

‘We know that.’

Elinor sighed again. She said, looking at the screen and not at Margaret, ‘Well, they want to rub it in. That Lucy felt she should offer to let Ed go if it meant a breach with his family and no inheritance, and that he wouldn’t hear of it and told her she was an angel.’

‘I bet he never said that.’

‘No,’ Elinor said. ‘That was me. In my crossness.’

‘Why are you cross?’

‘Because Ed is behaving so well. And because Nancy Steele is such an airhead and because Lucy only writes to me like this so that I will forward the email to Mrs J. and Mary and everyone, and they’ll think: Ah bless, what a lovely person Lucy is and how horrible the Ferrarses are.’

Margaret took the pen out of her mouth. She said, ‘Well, aren’t they?’

‘Some of them.’

Margaret began to roll the pen back and forth across the table.

‘Ellie …’

‘What?’

‘Does it matter about money? Does it matter whether Ed and Lucy have any?’

‘Well,’ Elinor said carefully, ‘they have to live.’

‘He hasn’t really got a job, though, has he? And she kind of faffs about doing courses and stuff. Not earning, really.’

Elinor looked back at her screen. ‘Lucy asks me to see if Jonno would give Ed a job. Or Tommy even.’

‘Crikey,’ Margaret said unexpectedly.

‘Yes.’

‘Would they?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Would Jonno or Tommy Palmer really give Ed a job?’

Elinor looked at her sister. ‘Well, what do you think?’

Margaret picked her pen up again. ‘I think’, she said, ‘that money is even more boring than love. But not quite as utterly boring as biology.’

In the bath above the kitchen – she could hear her daughters’ voices through the floor, even if she couldn’t make out what they were saying – Belle Dashwood lay in the hot water, her face stiffly blanked out by a face mask. Mary Middleton had been seized with an urge for clearance, and had emptied out the contents of her lavishly appointed bathroom cupboards, sending down to Barton Cottage a carrier bag full of expensive half-used pots of this and that, including a face mask which promised to leave your skin not just unlined, but dewy. Margaret had been very contemptuous of the idea of dewy. ‘They just mean wet. Who wants to look wet, unless they’re a fish or something?’

Belle had no desire to look like a fish. But she had discovered, in the last few weeks, she did have a desire not to look only like the mother of three grown daughters. She had begun to be anxious not to be seen only relatively, indeed to be acknowledged as a woman who amazed people by revealing how old her daughters were, a woman who was admired for what she still had, rather than was pitied for what she now lacked. Lying in the bath and feeling her skin tightening under the cracking shield of the mask, Belle reflected that although Henry was, and always would be, the love of her life, the heart was a muscle as well as an organ, and required exercise.

She had tried to suggest something of the kind on the telephone to Abigail Jennings. The conversation had started with Belle’s gratitude for all the kindness shown to Marianne for so long, and had then proceeded, on Belle’s part, to hint at that kindness being possibly extended to Marianne’s mother.

‘It’s wonderful here,’ Belle said, gazing out of the window at the rain falling as straight as stair rods on to the paved patio outside the kitchen window. ‘So beautiful. And Jonno’s so kind. And Mary. Everyone’s adorable. But it is – it is rather remote, you know.’

Abigail, no doubt surveying a very different view and prospect from her London window, chose not to get the hint. ‘Don’t worry, dear. I’ve no intention of forgetting Margaret. It’ll be her turn next, I promise you. Charlotte has persuaded Marianne down to her weekend place, with the baby, and I can’t make her return with me here afterwards, so I’ll be all bereft, won’t I?’

Belle threaded her fingers into the coil of the telephone cable. ‘I just wondered, Abi, whether I might …’

‘You, dear? What would you want with London, living where you do? Send me Margaret, in the holidays, and then there won’t be any jealousy, will there, between the sisters.’

Belle had taken a deep breath. ‘Abigail,’ she said, ‘you’ve been so kind, and so hospitable. But my daughters are my daughters. They aren’t library books. They’re not there just for anyone to borrow on a whim, you know.’

And then she had put the phone down. Abigail did not ring back. That was three days ago, Belle reflected, lying there in a no longer quite hot enough bath, and there had been absolute silence. Trying to communicate with Marianne – she was better, Elinor said, but very bruised still – was hardly easy and now Elinor was eluding her, too, declining, as she put it, to be a go-between any longer.

‘You’ll have to sort it yourself, Ma. I can’t do any more with Marianne. I can’t make things smooth with John and Fanny. I can’t always be the one who does all the bits of life you don’t want to be bothered with. I have got a job to do, which pays a lot of our bills, and keeping that going and getting Margaret to school is all I can manage right now. All. OK?’

Belle groped along the side of the bath for a face flannel, soaked it, wrung it out and began to wipe it across her masked face. The relief was indescribable. Was half the effect of beauty treatments the sheer deliverance when they stopped? She heaved herself up out of the bath and climbed dripping on to the mat beside it, reaching for a towel. What a mess it all was, suddenly – or had it been a mess, in fact, since Henry died? No money, John and Fanny’s behaviour, this cottage which they had to be so grateful for, Willoughby, Ed – Ed! Belle wrapped the towel round herself tightly, like a sarong. Was it Ed? Was that why Elinor was so distinctly unhelpful? Was Elinor, in truth, deeply upset about Ed and the Steele girl, even though she swore she wasn’t?

She crossed the bathroom and rubbed a circular space in the steam on the mirror. She leaned forward and peered at her post-face-mask complexion. Did she look dewy? Or did she just look – red?

Bill Brandon was waiting for Elinor in an Exeter coffee shop. He had rung in the morning to say that he was in Exeter that day, and could he give her lunch.

‘I don’t really eat lunch.’

‘You’ve got to eat something!’

‘I bring something. In a plastic box, from home.’

‘Sounds depressing.’

‘It is.’

‘Well, at least let me buy you a non-depressing sandwich you haven’t had to make yourself, then.’

‘Thank you,’ Elinor said, sounding suddenly grateful, even thankful, ‘I’d – I’d really like that.’

Now, Bill put a plate down on the table between them. ‘Crayfish and cream cheese and rocket. Smoked salmon. Chicken and salad, all on granary bread. Now, eat.’

Elinor said, sincerely, ‘Thank you. Really, thank you.’

Bill pulled out the chair opposite to hers and sat down. ‘And I ordered two cappuccinos with chocolate on yours. Yes. I hate cappuccino but I knew if I didn’t drink it, you wouldn’t drink yours, either.’

‘Am I being a pain?’

He smiled at her, holding out the plate of sandwiches. He said, ‘You’re allowed to be fed up, you know.’

‘I’ve always felt that it was fine to be fed up as long as you didn’t take it out on other people. And I’m not being very nice to Ma.’

Bill took a sandwich himself and regarded it. ‘She’s a lovely woman, your mum, but she exploits you.’

‘No, she—’

‘Yes,’ Bill said with another emphasis. He took a bite of sandwich. ‘Eat up,’ he said and then, chewing and grinning, ‘What would Mrs J. make of us now, eating lunch together in a public place?’

Elinor had bolted her first sandwich. Steadying herself with a second, she said, ‘Why would she make anything?’

‘Because she has it in her gossipy head that I’d come on to you if I dared.’

Elinor stopped eating. She said, ‘But …’ and paused.

He smiled at her. He said, ‘I do think you are wonderful.’

She smiled back. ‘And I think the same of you.’

‘But not …’

‘No. Not.’

He held out the plate of sandwiches again. He said, ‘Do you think you and I are the sort of people who are doomed to want what we can’t have?’

Elinor looked away. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Elinor?’

‘Yes?’

‘Ed Ferrars. And Lucy. What do you really feel about that?’

Elinor looked back and directly at him. ‘Fine,’ she said.

‘Really fine? Really?’

‘Bill,’ Elinor said, ‘I am determined – absolutely determined – not to waste my emotional energy in yearning. I don’t even entirely understand what’s going on, and yet I do see how he’s got himself into this place. It’s all to do with family, his family. And his mother. They are crashing snobs, his family, and he hates that. He’s defending Lucy; he’s being kind of old-fashioned, and honourable.’

‘But he can’t condemn himself—’

Elinor leaned forward. ‘Bill, I think he’d rather live, not particularly happily, in a way he thought was right, and not – not purely materialistically, like his family, than in a way that didn’t sit well with his conscience. I know it isn’t how people think now, but I think he’s got to do it his way.’

A waitress came over from behind the counter and put two huge thick white cups of coffee down in front of them.

‘Enjoy,’ she said, without enthusiasm.

When she had gone, Bill said, ‘And you?’

Elinor looked at the fat cushion of foam on top of her coffee. She said, without complete conviction, ‘He’s never promised me anything. And he’s got to do what seems right for him to do. I’d be the same, in his place. You’re stuck with yourself, so you might as well try and be someone you can stand to live with.’

Bill said gently, ‘You must be honest with me. Would you mind if I tried to help him?’

Elinor’s head jerked up. ‘Help him!’

‘I’ve got a vacancy at Delaford. It’s a managerial job, but more people-orientated than admin- or finance-based. We’ve tried several people with fantastic social-science qualifications, but they all seem a bit theory based, a bit academic, for what we need. So many of the people at Delaford are truly chaotic and we need someone who doesn’t expect either order or miracles. Someone for the staff to turn to, really. Do – do you think that might appeal to him?’

Elinor felt herself growing pink. She put a hand out and grasped Bill’s nearest one.

‘His family sound so grim,’ Bill said, ‘and – and what you say about his conscience really hits home with me. I’d like to help, if I can, even though I don’t know him very well. There’d be accommodation, too, of course. A flat. Nothing special. But I wouldn’t even suggest it, if you – if he—’

Elinor gave Bill’s hand a little shake. She said, fervently, ‘You – you are fantastic.’

‘But you—’

‘I’m fine,’ Elinor said resolutely. ‘Fine. Promise.’

‘As long as you really are?’

Elinor leaned back. She smiled at him. She said, ‘You know, Bill, that I think you can get used to anything as long as you know exactly what you are getting used to. And if I know what lies ahead for Ed, then I can get on with my own future.’

He laughed. ‘I wish Mrs J. was right. About you and me.’

‘But she isn’t.’

He sighed. He said, ‘I must try and copy your supreme good sense. I wish I wasn’t such a hopeless old romantic.’

Elinor picked up her coffee cup. She said, ‘I ought to be more of one.’

‘Never wish that. Will you do something for me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Will you tell Ed to call me?’

She looked straight at him again. She said, ‘You should do that directly.’

‘Elinor, I hardly know him. I know of him, thanks to you, and I have a strong instinct that he’s right for Delaford, but I can’t call him out of the blue. It would seem weird.’

Elinor looked down into her coffee. ‘I’ll text him. I’ll text him your number and tell him to ring you.’

‘And Mrs J.?’

‘What about Mrs J.?’

‘Will you tell her that even if I haven’t proposed to you, I have made a proposal that might benefit her goddaughter?’

Elinor smiled broadly at him. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes. I’d like to do that.’

‘It’s Ed,’ Edward Ferrars said Elinor, sitting in the orange car waiting for Margaret to come out of school, her phone clamped to her ear, stared straight ahead.

‘Hello,’ she said flatly.

‘I got your text.’

‘Yes.’

‘Something – something about ringing Bill Brandon?’

Elinor tried not to sound too wooden. ‘Yes. He asked me to give you his number. He asked me to ask you to call him.’

Edward said diffidently, ‘Do – do you know why?’

She let a small pause fall, and then she said, ‘Yes.’

‘Elinor?’ he said. ‘Elinor, can you tell me why?’

She closed her eyes briefly. Then she opened them and made herself smile, so that he would hear the warmth in her voice. ‘He wants to offer you a job.’

There was a stunned silence.

Then Edward said, incredulously, ‘He wants to offer me a job?’

‘Yes. At Delaford.’

Edward said, with real feeling, ‘I would adore to work at Delaford.’

‘Yes,’ Elinor said, ‘I know.’

‘But I – I’m not really qualified.’

‘I think he’s looking for qualities not qualifications.’

‘Oh, wow,’ Edward said. His voice was shaking. ‘Oh, wow. Did he say—’

‘Ring him. Ring him and ask.’

‘Ellie?’

She put a hand up to her mouth. He’d called her ‘Ellie’. ‘Ellie,’ Edward said again, ‘did – did Bill talk to you about this?’

She took her hand away. ‘Yes.’

‘Did he ask you if – if you thought I’d like it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he knew, and so did you, that I don’t have a job and nor does Lucy, really?’

‘Yes.’

‘And – and you – you didn’t stand in my way? You said you’d pass his number on?’

‘Of course.’

‘Oh my God,’ Edward said. His voice was now really unsteady. ‘Oh, Ellie.’

She could see Margaret now, dawdling out of the school gates, fifty yards away, bent sideways by the weight of her bag.

‘You’d have done the same,’ Elinor said. ‘Get on and ring him.’

‘He’s so generous. He’s amazing. So – so are you.’

‘Get on and thank him, Edward.’

‘Ellie—’

‘I’ve got to go. Margaret’s here, I’m picking her up.’

‘Mags?’ Edward said, almost longingly.

The car door opened. ‘Bye,’ Elinor said. ‘Bye. Good luck,’ and clicked her phone off.

Margaret crashed into the passenger seat. ‘I hate this car.’

‘I know.’

‘Who were you talking to?’

Elinor leaned across to drop her phone into her bag in the well by Margaret’s feet. ‘Someone who I won’t see again, till he’s married,’ she said. ‘And I do not, not, want to talk about it.’

Margaret put her seat belt on. She gave a theatrical shrug. ‘Whatever,’ she said.

‘Now,’ Belle said, folding her arms. ‘Now. What is going on?’

Elinor busied herself with the kettle, her back to her mother.

‘And don’t say nothing,’ Belle said.

‘I wasn’t going to.’

‘I have Abi on the phone saying Bill is fantastic and Lucy is so happy, and then John saying Fanny is too upset still to be happy about anything, and they think Bill’s offer is very strange, to say the least, and then Jonno rings to say Mary saw Robert Ferrars having a very cosy dinner with the Morton girl Ed was supposed to marry, and then you come in, cool as a cucumber, and won’t tell me anything!’

Elinor began to look for mugs. She said steadily, ‘I will tell you. I was going to. I just need tea.’

‘I’ll make tea,’ Belle said. ‘You talk. Where’s Mags?’

‘She went up to her room.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘She got seventy per cent for her biology.’

‘But that’s wonderful!’

‘Ma—’

‘Sit down. Tell me. Tea tea or a herbal?’

Elinor sat down by the kitchen table and leaned on it. She said, ‘Ma, Bill’s offered Ed a job at Delaford.’

Belle swung round from the kettle, her mouth agape. ‘Darling! He never! How wonderful. Or is it?’

‘Oh, I think it is. It’s the kind of human, helpful job he might be just brilliant at.’

‘And Miss Lucy?’

‘Well,’ Elinor said, ‘I don’t imagine either human or helpful is exactly on her wish list, do you? But she’d like the status of the house and Bill’s connections and all that.’

Belle poured boiling water into Elinor’s mug. ‘And you, darling?’

‘I’m fine with it, Ma. I told you I am OK and I am not discussing it further.’

‘But it’s so sad for you. We all thought—’

‘Ma!’

Belle put Elinor’s mug on the table in front of her. She said, ‘That explains John.’

‘What does?’

‘Bill offering Ed a job. It completely explains John. I couldn’t think why he was ringing – he never rings – and then I couldn’t think what he was on about, Fanny this, Fanny that, Fanny so hurt and betrayed, and her mother such a marvellous mother, and them both being so brave when they heard about Ed and how we ought to know how brave they were even though we mustn’t even mention the subject because it is so painful for both of them. And d’you know what?’

‘No,’ Elinor said. She blew into her tea.

‘D’you know what John said? What he had the nerve to say?’

‘Nothing’, Elinor said, ‘would surprise me.’

‘He said,’ Belle said, ‘he said that Fanny was so appalled by his choosing the Steele girl that she would have even preferred it to be you! Can you believe it? He said that of course it was all too late for that now, but if she were given the option, Fanny would rather have had you for a sister-in-law. I could hardly believe my ears. I said, “John, you have an absolute nerve to say any such thing after the way you and Fanny behaved to Elinor and me,” but you know what he’s like, he just swept on telling me how brave and wonderful Fanny was, and then said that the only consolation she had was Robert, who finds the whole situation hilarious and did a send-up imitation of Edward dealing with all Bill’s loonies and made her laugh. I suppose he must be very amusing.’

Elinor took a gulp of tea. ‘He’s idiotic.’

‘John said he really took to you!’

‘Maybe.’

‘But he said that Robert didn’t think Ed could cope with Delaford, he’d be completely out of his depth, and in Robert’s view, Lucy is deeply, deeply ordinary.’

‘Ma, I really don’t want to know.’

Belle took the chair next to Elinor’s. ‘And Fanny has invited us all to Norland!’

Elinor turned to stare at her mother. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Not very warmly. In fact, I would describe her invitation as very faint. But she did say it. She did! What an afternoon!’

Elinor said reflectively, ‘I suppose Lucy will run rings round Bill Brandon.’

‘He’ll get wise to her. He’s not a fool. Darling …’

‘What?’

‘Do you – do you think he still carries a bit of a torch for Marianne?’

‘Yes,’ Elinor said shortly.

‘Of course,’ Belle said, ‘I’ve always liked him.’

‘Have you?’

‘Just as I always was a bit wary of Wills. He might have been a god, but there was something about his eyes that I didn’t like. I always said so, didn’t I?’

‘Ma,’ Elinor said, ‘on the subject of Marianne—’

‘I wish she could think of someone like Bill. A good person, a good man, like Bill.’

‘Ma,’ Elinor said again, ‘she is leaving London.’

‘What?’

‘She’s leaving Mrs J.’s. Charlotte’s persuaded her to go to their weekend place. Near Bath or Bristol or something. It – it’ll kind of break her in to coming home.’

Belle regarded her daughter, suddenly sober. ‘Ellie, is that progress?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Poor little Marianne.’

Elinor took one hand away from her mug and put it on her mother’s. ‘She’s changed, Ma. She’s different.’

‘Is she?’

Elinor leaned forward and kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘She’s doing things her own way, in her own time. But she’s trying very hard to grow up. You’ll see.’

16

Marianne stood very, very still in the middle of the bedroom at Cleveland that Charlotte had assigned her. It was a pretty room with two beds in it and two windows facing west, through which the April sun was now streaming in all its clear mercilessness: spring light was, in Marianne’s opinion, brilliant but cruel. And it was almost cruel, too, to have to look west out of those windows, west towards Devon, where Barton was, where Allenham was, and where Wills had been born, he’d told her, in a place called Combe Magna.

She crossed the room slowly and stood by one of the windows. She could feel a weight of depression settling on her again, despite the sunshine, and the spring garden below her window, and the domestic sounds of Charlotte and her mother and her baby coming from other parts of the house. It wasn’t really the depression of a broken heart any more, but more the recollection of what she had felt like, what she had been, before she went to London, the memory of that violently happy girl who had been possessed of a complete, untarnished innocence of heart, and who would never be recaptured. The girl who had last looked at the West Country with such rapture did not exist any more, and the one who looked at it now was not just sobered, but somehow diminished, reduced as if a huge emotional lung had been removed and replaced by a grim little nugget of disillusion.

The window was open, a high sash window between white linen curtains striped in grey and pink. Marianne folded her arms on the sill and leaned out. The gardens below her were extensive, and even if Cleveland Cottage called itself a cottage, it was an affectation, really, because it was a house. A considerable house, with stands of mature trees round it, and a gravel sweep, and a prospect of hills to the south-east with even a little folly as a focal point, some distance away, a faux Greek temple, which Tommy said some ancestor of his had put up when the house was built.

‘In 1808, 1810, thereabouts,’ he said. ‘We Palmers may never win a Nobel Prize, but we have a knack with money.’ He’d glanced at Marianne. ‘I s’pose you think I shouldn’t mention money, let alone boast about it.’

Marianne had given him a small smile by way of reply. As the chief witness of her public humiliation, she could never quite forgive him, nor see in him the good heart and good sense that Elinor insisted were there. It had been a relief to her that Tommy was not coming down to Cleveland until later, bringing, apparently, Bill Brandon as another weekend guest, and by the time they both got there, Elinor would have arrived too, from Barton, and would, as usual, take responsibility for both herself and Marianne, leaving Marianne free to read, or go for a walk, or generally absent herself from the well-fed, deep-drinking jollity that Charlotte was plainly planning.

Marianne turned to face the room again. She would let Elinor choose the bed she preferred; she would let Elinor take the lead, dictate the pace. She was trying very hard – hard enough for Elinor not to fail to see – to adjust herself, to be less self-absorbed, less wilful, more mindful of what other people (Elinor in particular) were bearing with a stoicism she had to acknowledge, even if she didn’t want to imitate it just yet. She was striving to change, she was, but it was hard, all the same, to let go of the glory of her past certainties, of her belief in passion, and surrender, and the seductive power of giving in to inclination. But she was trying, and she would go on trying, and agreeing to a weekend in Charlotte and Tommy’s country house was proof of her real intention to be different. Wasn’t it? She sneezed suddenly, shivering, and looked for a box of tissues. They’d be somewhere. Charlotte was the kind of hostess who, even with a new baby, would never overlook the details.

The tissues were there, of course, hidden in a white wicker cube in the bathroom, beside a graded pile of snowy towels and a new cake of pink soap shaped like an egg. Marianne snatched a handful from the box and blew hard. Maybe it wasn’t depression she was feeling but something altogether simpler. Maybe the aches in her joints and head were not psychological at all, but merely the physical portent of a heavy approaching cold. She blew again and then put her palm against her forehead. Did she, she wondered, have a temperature?

Elinor, driving the seventy miles from Exeter to Cleveland after work, watched the evening deteriorate. She had left Exeter in late-afternoon sunshine, but as she drove up towards Bristol, the clouds ahead darkened and lowered, piling up into great bruised masses until, ten miles from her destination, the rain suddenly crashed down on to the motorway as if a bath had been tipped sideways, and she found herself battling both to keep the car steady, and to see. She had Heart FM on the radio – Margaret’s preferred choice – but even that was drowned out by the drumming of rain on the car roof. She leaned forward in an effort to see better, and, not for the first time, wondered what it was in Marianne that made her requests so difficult – even impossible – to refuse.

‘Just a weekend at Cleveland,’ Marianne had said. ‘Two nights. Please. Don’t make me go alone.’

‘But I don’t see why you want to go at all. Why don’t you just come straight home?’

Marianne said, sadly, weakly, ‘I can’t quite do that …’

‘But what’s the difference between coming straight home on Friday or, via a weekend you don’t want to do, on Sunday afternoon?’

There was a pause. Marianne was silent and Elinor, at her desk in Exeter, was in no mood to help her. Then Marianne said, in an even smaller voice, ‘It’s a kind of test.’

‘What? What is?’

‘Going to Charlotte’s. I’ve got to make myself be normal again. I’ve got to – to train myself to be more ordinary. I’ve got to go to Charlotte’s and be a good guest and take notice of the baby and be appreciative.’

‘If I were Charlotte,’ Elinor said, ‘I’d be pretty insulted by an attitude like that. Luckily for you, she’s too nice and cheerful to care, even if she notices.’

Marianne said, ‘It came out wrong.’

‘Did it?’

‘I didn’t mean to sound superior. I don’t think I’m superior. I think you are superior. I just meant that – that I was trying. Not – to be like I was being.’

Elinor relented a little. ‘OK.’

‘If it’s a big deal when I get home, Ellie, I’ll know it’s because I made it a big deal. I really don’t want melodrama, or even drama drama. I want to get home and plan my future and be – well, something like I should have been. But I would so … value it, if you came to Cleveland.’

So here she was, battling up the motorway in a spring storm with a weekend ahead among people who were all, with the exception of Charlotte’s baby and Marianne, not only older than she was, but who had a completely different take on life. Life, she thought suddenly, and almost bitterly. Is life what I’m having? Even if I fairly powerfully do not want pubs and clubs and getting wasted, surely life for someone of my age should be just slightly more fun?

‘She got soaked,’ Charlotte said. ‘I mean, drowned. She wanted to walk up to the temple and I said, Oh, do wait for Tommy to show it to you, it’s his pride and joy, he’s even had a Wi-Fi connection put in there, but she wouldn’t, she said she had to have some exercise after all those weeks in London, and next thing we knew was this absolutely deafening crash of thunder and the heavens opened and Marianne, of course, was drenched, and then I could not make her take off her jeans and put on something dry, and nor could Mummy, and really, honestly, Ellie, it’s no wonder she feels ghastly. Aren’t these little pea shoots just adorable? I’m going to put them in the salad. I put nasturtium flowers in salad in the summer, and it’s completely worth it, just to see Tommy go ballistic. He can’t bear savoury food with fruit or flowers in. Too funny.’

Elinor was leaning against one of Charlotte’s artfully distressed painted cupboards, nursing a mug of tea. She said, ‘I’ll go and see her. Did she go to bed?’

‘Well, I hope so. I told her to, and so did Mummy, but she waved away Lemsip and Nurofen and, quite frankly, I didn’t want her sneezing all over poor little Tomkins, so I said go to bed and stay there.’

Elinor glanced across the kitchen. Inside a playpen on the carefully flagged floor, little Tom Palmer, dressed in bibbed dungarees and a miniature check shirt, was lying in a bouncing chair, feebly waving his arms and legs like a stranded insect. She said, ‘I do hope she hasn’t given him anything.’

‘Never fear,’ Charlotte said, competently slicing a fennel bulb, ‘I didn’t give her the chance. Bundled her upstairs at the double.’ She looked across at her son. ‘Didn’t we, baby buster? And won’t Daddy go apeshit when he sees you dressed up like that? It’s so funny, but Tommy thinks all babies should be in white nighties for months. So we’ll just hide the new cashmere baby cardi from Daddy, shall we? Ellie, you must be exhausted. Go and have a bath. The men won’t be here till nine and Mummy’s glued to the telly news, as ever. I keep saying to her, Isn’t it better not to know, when it’s all so ghastly, but she says not knowing makes her feel worse. Ellie, what am I going to do with her in London without your sister to fuss over?’

Marianne was lying on her side, on her bed, not in it, with her knees drawn up and her eyes closed. Elinor bent over her. ‘M?’

‘Oh,’ she said, not stirring. ‘Oh, Ellie. I’m so glad you’ve come.’

Elinor put a hand on her sister’s leg. Her jeans were damp, almost wet, and the strands of her hair snaking across the pillow were clearly not dry, either.

She said, almost crossly, ‘What are you doing?’

Marianne said, gritting her teeth against her shivering, ‘I don’t feel too great.’

‘No,’ Elinor said, ‘of course you don’t. You look awful. Have you got a temperature?’

‘Probably.’

‘And you are an asthmatic. And you lie there in wet clothes with a fever. You are not a baby, Marianne.’

Marianne said weakly, ‘Please don’t be cross. I just suddenly felt so awful, and then a bit caged, and I got caught in the rain—’

‘Sit up,’ Elinor said.

‘I can’t …’

‘Sit up!’

Marianne, her eyes still closed, struggled into a sitting position.

Elinor grasped the hem of her sweater and began to pull it over her head. She said, ‘Help me.’

‘I’m trying …’

‘Now your shirt.’

‘Ellie, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just can’t—’

‘Jeans,’ Elinor said. ‘Socks. Everything. God, you are so clueless.’

‘I didn’t want it to be like this.’

‘Have you got your inhaler?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘In my bag,’ Marianne said. She crouched on the edge of the bed in her underwear, shaking. Elinor dug her own pyjamas out of her case and held them out.

‘Put these on. I’ll get your puffer.’

‘I don’t need—’

‘M,’ Elinor almost shouted, ‘if you have a cold and it’s anywhere near your chest, what will happen? What? What?’

‘I didn’t want it to be a drama—’

‘There’s always a drama round you!’

‘I’m really sorry,’ Marianne said. ‘I am, I am. I needed you to come, I wanted you to come, but I didn’t mean this to happen.’

‘I’ll get you a hot-water bottle.’

‘Ellie?’

‘What?’

‘Have Bill and Tommy come?’

Elinor paused by the door. ‘Why should that make any difference?’

‘I don’t know. It’s – it just seems to be a bit reassuring when Bill’s around, doesn’t it …?’

‘Heavens,’ Elinor said tartly, ‘there’s a change of tune. I thought you thought he was old and boring.’

Marianne said, with as much dignity as she could muster struggling into Ellie’s pyjamas, ‘I’m – trying to think differently. I was trying to be different. I don’t want to have a cold. I’m sorry, Ellie. I’m sorry.’

Elinor looked across at her. The pyjamas were very old, made of brushed cotton and patterned with teapots. They had always been too big. But even dressed in them, with her hair in damp ropes on her shoulders, and her eyes circled with fatigue, Marianne looked, well, outstanding. Elinor sighed.

‘Get into bed,’ she said. ‘Right in. Properly. I’m going to get a hot-water bottle and some paracetamol and you are going to swallow it.’

Marianne attempted a smile.

‘Of course,’ she said.

Bill Brandon tried to make Elinor have some whisky. ‘Just a weak one. Medicinal. You look worn out.’

‘I don’t really like it.’

‘Even if I add ginger ale?’

‘Even then.’

‘I suppose I couldn’t take some up to Marianne …’

Elinor smiled at him. She said, ‘I hope she’s asleep.’

Bill Brandon said, ‘I don’t want to fuss but shouldn’t we get a doctor? Or ring NHS Direct or something?’

‘She’s got a cold,’ Charlotte called from the other side of the kitchen, where she was feeding the baby, a cream pashmina shawl draped decorously over the child and one shoulder. ‘She’s not dying, you old fusspot.’

‘She’s asthmatic.’

Tommy came across the room, put a glass of wine into Elinor’s hand and clumped Bill Brandon on the shoulder. ‘Don’t be an old woman, Bill. She’s got a cold. Listen to the sister lady.’

Elinor took a sip. She said to Bill, ‘I’ve lived with asthmatics all my life. Honestly. She’s got a cold because I expect her immune system’s a bit shot after everything this winter, and she just needs to sleep. She’ll be fine in the morning.’

‘I still think—’

‘Too awful,’ Mrs Jennings said, sweeping into the room. ‘Why do I watch the news when it just makes me despair? I’m sure the Greeks hate austerity but your father, Charlotte, always maintained that if you haven’t got it, you shouldn’t borrow to spend it. I’m with Mrs Merkel, all the way. Now, Tommy, it’s a Friday night so I think something serious is called for.’

‘Gin and serious?’

She gave him a wide smile.

‘Lovely. Just go easy on the serious. Elinor dear, you look a wreck. How is that sister of yours?’

‘I want them to get a doctor,’ Bill said. ‘She’s asthmatic.’

‘She’s OK,’ Elinor said. ‘She’s asleep. She’ll be fine by the morning.’

Mrs Jennings nodded towards her grandson. ‘Let’s hope she hasn’t given him her lurgy, poor mite.’

‘Not while I’m feeding him, Mummy. He’s immune to everything. Tommy, is that glass just neat gin, really?’

‘Pretty well.’

‘Perfect,’ Abigail Jennings said with satisfaction. She raised the glass towards the assembled company. ‘Chin chin dears. Happy weekend to us and happy futures all round.’ A thought suddenly struck her. ‘Bill,’ she said. ‘Bill. Wonderful of you to give that boy a job. Wonderful.’

‘And a flat,’ Charlotte called.

‘Which I’m doing up,’ Bill said, smiling. ‘I couldn’t ask any girl to put up with it as it is. I was going ask Elinor to help me, as it happens.’

‘Oh—’

‘Perfect,’ Abigail said again, swinging round to beam at her. ‘The perfect person. Our tame architect! Ideal. And the more you two see of each other, the happier I shall be.’

‘Abi—’

‘Mrs J.—’

She waved a plump hand at them. ‘Oh, get on with you both. We need cheering up in the romantic department after all we’ve been through.’

Elinor put her wine glass down on the nearest kitchen counter. Tommy Palmer, she noticed, was holding his son’s tiny feet and smiling down at what the cream pashmina hid from view. She said, ‘I’ll just go and check on Marianne.’

Bill touched her arm. ‘Can I help? Can I do anything?’

She shook her head. ‘No. But thank you.’

‘Just call me. If you need anything …’

‘Of course.’

He looked at her, suddenly intent. ‘Give her my love,’ he said.

Across the room, Charlotte and Mrs Jennings rolled their eyes at one another. ‘Not a hope,’ Charlotte mouthed at her mother.

Tommy Palmer turned his gaze from his son’s shrouded head to his wife’s face. His expression was reproving. ‘Don’t you, either of you,’ he said clearly, ‘be so sure.’

Someone, somewhere in the cloudy confusion of Bill Brandon’s dreams, was knocking. He couldn’t tell where the knocking was coming from, or what it was made by, but it was persistent, on and on, and then somebody was calling as well as knocking, calling him by name and suddenly his eyes were open and he was abruptly awake, staring into the darkness of the single bedroom at Cleveland Cottage where Tommy Palmer kept his weekend clothes.

He was, as a soldier, alert and out of bed in a second, grateful to have remembered – being in someone else’s house – to have put on at least pyjama bottoms the night before. The knocking was on his bedroom door, and the voice was Elinor’s. He flung it open and said, in a voice that was not quite as steady and purposeful as he had intended, ‘Marianne?’

Elinor was dressed in an oversized T-shirt and her eyes were enormous with distress. ‘Oh, Bill, thank goodness, so sorry to wake you, but she’s awful, awful, can’t really speak, all blue round her mouth, like Dad was, like—’

He put a hand out and gripped her shoulder. ‘We need an ambulance.’

‘Her nebuliser doesn’t seem to be working. We’ve tried and tried. I think she needs oxygen, like – like Dad did. And that beta agonist stuff. Bill, I’m frightened—’

He stepped forward and, oblivious to his naked chest, put his arms round her. He said, as reassuringly as he could, ‘I’m going to ring the B.R.I. – the hospital in Bristol. I’m going to do it right now. Is she wheezing?’

‘Hardly at all.’

He let her go. ‘Then it’s severe.’

She gazed at him. ‘How do you know that?’

He gave her the ghost of a smile. He said, ‘I’ve learned a lot about asthma since I met your sister. I – I made it my business to. Now scoot back to her. I’ll come in the minute I know an ambulance is on the way.’

The far end of the landing, another door opened. Mrs Jennings, upholstered in a quilted dressing gown patterned with peonies, her hair endearingly on end, emerged into the dim light Charlotte now left burning all night as there was a baby in the house.

‘Elinor?’

Elinor swung round. ‘Is it Marianne?’

Elinor nodded, unable to speak. Mrs Jennings came quickly down the landing. She put her arms round Elinor as Bill Brandon vanished back into his bedroom to find his phone. She said, ‘You poor child.’

‘It’s Marianne that’s poor—’

‘It depends’, Abigail said, patting Elinor’s back, ‘on who you think has really borne most.’

Elinor relaxed a little against the comfort of the peony quilting. ‘Oh, Mrs J …’

‘I know, dear,’ Abigail Jennings said, still patting, ‘I know.’

‘I’m going to cry.’

‘Why don’t you?’

‘It’s just – just like Dad, hardly speaking, battling for breath …’

‘There, there, dear.’

From the bedroom, Tommy Palmer’s Madras bathrobe now added to his pyjamas, Bill Brandon emerged, his phone in his hand. He looked at Mrs Jennings with approval. He said, ‘Ambulance is on the way.’

Elinor tried to speak, and nothing happened. Her throat seemed to be full of something that obstructed her muscles, and tears were pouring out of her eyes and soaking into Mrs Jennings’s shoulder.

‘There, there,’ Mrs Jennings said again, patting. ‘There, there. Poor girl.’

Bill Brandon put his phone in the bathrobe pocket. ‘Fifteen minutes,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back to the patient, shall we?’

‘Oh my God,’ Charlotte Palmer said to her mother. ‘Intensive care! I can’t believe it! One minute she’s got a cold coming, and she gets wet in the rain, the next it’s ambulances at dawn. Mummy, I didn’t hear a thing. Not one thing. Isn’t that awful? But when Tomkins sleeps through, which is practically never, we all sleep like the proverbial. But honestly. All that drama and we hear not a dicky bird.’

Mrs Jennings, still in her peony dressing gown, but with her hair combed into its customary bouffant, and her pearl earrings added for dignity, was cradling her grandson.

‘There was nothing you could do, Char. Nothing. Elinor sensibly alerted Bill and there was an ambulance here in seventeen minutes – I timed it – and she got whisked off. Elinor and Bill went with her, thank goodness, Elinor looking simply terrible, poor lamb. I don’t think she’d even brushed her hair.’

Tommy Palmer was absorbed in reading the weekend edition of the Financial Times on his iPad. He said, without looking up, ‘And who would have noticed or cared if she had?’

Mrs Jennings continued to look down at her grandson. She said imperturbably, ‘She never thinks of herself, that girl. It’s time she did. Do too much for other people and all they do is take you for utter granted. At least Bill sees what a darling she is.’

‘Mummy,’ Charlotte said, hunting for coffee in her well-stocked cupboard. ‘Mummy, just give over on that topic, would you? Bill Brandon only has eyes for Marianne.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘He thinks Ellie is wonderful, Mummy. Which she is. But he doesn’t fancy her.’

Mrs Jennings said firmly to her grandson, ‘It isn’t all about sex.’

‘It mostly is,’ Tommy said, his eyes still on his screen. ‘And if it isn’t, it should be.’

‘Ignore him,’ Charlotte said. She put a new packet of coffee down beside the kettle. ‘It’s all he thinks about. When he isn’t thinking about money.’

‘You’re a lucky girl,’ Abigail said. ‘What else d’you want in a man? Or expect, for that matter. I always said to your father—’

‘Listen,’ Tommy Palmer said suddenly. He was staring at his BlackBerry. ‘Text from Bill.’

Charlotte turned to look at him, the empty kettle in her hand. Mrs Jennings raised her eyes from the baby.

‘“High-flow oxygen,”’ Tommy read. ‘“Nebulised salbutamol and …” something or other, can’t read it, “… bromide, systemic steroids, all ongoing. Not responding so far. Collecting Belle from Barton soonest. Elinor staying put. More anon. B.”’

He stopped reading. There was a shocked and complete silence. Charlotte put the kettle down and crossed the kitchen to take her baby from her mother. She bent over him, her face against his.

‘Poor little Marianne,’ Abigail Jennings said softly.

Tommy Palmer stared out of the window. ‘Poor buggers,’ he said, ‘the whole bloody lot of them. What a nightmare.’

There was a small visitors’ room where Elinor was told she could wait. It was furnished with unwelcoming vinyl-covered armchairs, a low plywood table bearing a scattering of outdated and well-thumbed magazines, and its walls were meagrely hung with small sentimental watercolours of generic country views and clusters of cottages. The air of the room held the same density of accumulated tension and apprehension that she remembered from a similar room at Haywards Heath Hospital less than two years before, and she knew that, whatever privacy the room might offer, a chair in the corridor, or the hospital coffee shop, would actually be a great deal more bearable as places to pass the time.

And bearing was what she had now to do. In there – in that little, dramatic, concentrated ward – Marianne was being given everything she remembered as necessary to be given in the case of a severe asthma attack. A young consultant – he looked to her only student age – had explained punctiliously that the maximum inhaled beta 2 agonists might need supplementation with IV aminophylline, and if there was respiratory arrest, some adrenalin as well, and she had gazed at him and nodded and been absolutely unable to say please don’t list all these drugs for me but please, please just tell me if she’s going to die? She had felt sick with panic, looking at his young, pale, serious face, sick with helplessness, sick with a terrible, engulfing loneliness that had nothing to do with being by herself in a strange hospital and everything to do with the unendurable possibility of a future life without Marianne. This last prospect was so truly crushing that, for the moment, it left no room for remorse, even though she knew it was just waiting to swallow her up, reminding her of her irritation with Marianne, her lack of sympathy and empathy, her exasperation with her sister’s intensity, her resentments, her impatience – the list was endless. But it was not for now. Now was just a kind of terrible paralysis, on a plastic chair in a hospital corridor, picturing Bill Brandon speeding down to Devon like a man possessed to collect her mother and Margaret.

He’d been wonderful. He’d masterminded the ambulance and the hospital arrival, somehow forcing immediate attention in A and E, never raising his voice or taking no for an answer. He’d been like that for the first turbulent half-hour, and then, suddenly, had turned to Elinor with a face of utter anguish, and said, ‘I’d stay with you, I really would, but I’ll go round the bend if I don’t do something. So would it be OK by you if I go and get your mother?’

Elinor had swallowed, nodding violently. She said, ‘I’d be so glad, so grateful, I’d—’

‘Have you rung her?’

‘Not yet. I haven’t rung anyone.’

‘Ring her,’ Bill said. ‘Ring her now. Tell her I’ll be there in a couple of hours. If—’

‘Don’t!’

He flinched and put his hand briefly to his face. He said indistinctly, ‘They do wonders, now …’

‘Go,’ Elinor said.

‘Will you be all right?’

‘We’re neither of us all right. Go and get Ma. Please. Thank you.’

‘Text me. Ring your mother—’

‘Go!’

He’d whirled round and started running. Somebody stopped him, almost at once, a nurse somebody in a dark blue uniform, and Elinor had seen him pause for a second, and then race on towards the lifts, leaving the nurse watching him, shaking her head. And then Elinor had taken her phone out of her pocket and rung her mother, standing in the corridor looking down at an asphalted space between the buildings, dotted with concrete tubs of tired, serviceable shrubs, and had a conversation of a kind that seemed as surreal as if it were happening in a hideous dream, and not on a Saturday morning in real-life April.

‘Bill’s coming,’ she kept saying through Belle’s tears. ‘He’s on his way. Bill’s coming.’

Then Margaret had taken the phone from her mother, and Elinor had had to say everything all over again and Margaret – oh, bless her, really bless her – had sounded calm and together, and reassured Elinor that they would be ready for Bill, whenever he came, and only at the end had said, suddenly and desperately, ‘Will we be too late?’

‘No,’ Elinor said, crossing her fingers automatically, idiotically. ‘No. Of course you won’t.’

She looked at her watch now. Her wrist was bare. She hadn’t had time to put her watch on, hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t brushed her teeth even! She should do that. She should go and buy a toothbrush and a comb and some coffee, and go through the inevitably reassuring rituals of starting the day. An abrupt pang of agony about Marianne hit her so hard that she gasped and bent over, her head hanging, staring at the grey and shining vinyl floor, muttering to herself, ‘Please, M, don’t die, don’t leave me, fight, M, please fight, please, just for me, I’ll do anything, I will, I will—’

‘Are you Marianne’s sister?’

On the shiny grey floor, right in her field of vision, were a pair of large white medical clogs. She took a second or two to absorb the sight; then she straightened up, her gaze travelling up a pair of jeaned legs to a checked shirt and a white medical coat. Above that was a face, Elinor thought distractedly, possibly an Iraqi face or an Iranian face or even a Syrian face or a Turkish face, but Middle Eastern anyway, wonderful hair, so dark it almost had a blue sheen to it, navy blue—‘Marianne’s sister?’ the doctor repeated.

He was smiling. Smiling! Elinor shot to her feet. ‘Yes! Yes? Is she—’

‘She’s responding,’ he said. ‘She’s breathing. Bronchodilation weak still, but it’s happening.’

Elinor goggled at him. ‘You mean—’

He held up two crossed fingers. He nodded. ‘I mean’, he said, ‘not out of the woods, but on her way. You did right to bring her in.’

‘Can – oh, can I see her?’

‘Not yet. Later, maybe. When we’re sure we’ve stabilised her.’ He looked at her. He was older than she’d first realised, older than the other, earlier doctor, maybe a father even, someone who might understand about families, understand that even if you sometimes wanted to murder them, you couldn’t do without them, couldn’t imagine life without – ‘Why don’t you’, the doctor said, ‘go and get yourself something to eat?’

Half an hour later, fortified by a blueberry muffin, a mug of coffee and ten minutes in a discouraging hospital washroom, Elinor was back on her chair in the corridor. That corridor, which had looked to her, earlier, like some sort of living tomb, now appeared almost cheerful, with sunlight slanting in through the dusty windows and casting sharp shadow stripes on the grey floor. The row of blue plastic chairs was still empty, although there was a middle-aged man in the visitors’ room leafing restlessly through the magazines, and, rather than join him and feel an obligation to talk to him, Elinor thought she would turn one of the chairs to face the window and the sun and merely sit there, with her eyes closed, and bask in the unspeakable joy of sheer, pure, unfathomable relief.

She had texted everyone as she ate her muffin. It was the dullest of muffins, studded here and there with synthetic blueberries tasting of nothing but an indefinable bland sweetness, but nothing Elinor could immediately recollect had ever tasted so wonderful. She ate and drank with her left hand and texted furiously with her right, texts to her mother and Margaret, and Bill, to Mrs Jennings and the Palmers. ‘It’s OK,’ she wrote, ‘OK!!! She’s breathing! She’s breathing!’ She lay back in her chair now, eyes shut, her hands on her own ribs, feeling them rising and falling, rising and falling, letting her mind bob gently like a boat on little waves in the sunshine, over the miracle of her relief, the extravagant immensity of her gratitude, the intense and marvellous sense of being alive, herself, and able to relish that because Marianne was still alive, Marianne was breathing, breathing—

‘Elinor,’ someone said.

She opened her eyes, and looked up.

There was a man standing beside her, a vaguely familiar, dishevelled-looking man in a suede jacket with too long hair. She stared at him.

He sat down beside her. He was holding a showy modern car ignition key, the kind where you press a button—‘It’s Wills,’ Wills said. He tried a smile. ‘Don’t you recognise me?’

‘God,’ Elinor said, instinctively drawing back. ‘God, how dare you—’

He put a hand out. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Charlotte.’

‘Charlotte?’

‘She rang me. At seven o’clock this morning. She said it was an emergency.’ He looked down at the key in his hand. He said, with quiet emphasis, ‘She knows how I feel.’

Elinor edged on to the next chair, away from him. She said, ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘Please, Elinor. I won’t stay long, I promise. But I have to know, I have to know … Is – is she going to be OK?’

Elinor looked out of the window. ‘Yes,’ she said shortly.

He gave a kind of shuddering sigh, a gasp of thankfulness. ‘Thank God. Thank God. I couldn’t have borne it. I couldn’t—’ He stopped. He glanced at Elinor, and then he said, ‘D’you think I’m a shit?’

She continued to look out of the window. She said, ‘Are you drunk or something?’

He sighed. He said, ‘I got in the car at seven ten this morning and drove here like the clappers. I haven’t even had a coffee.’

She turned to glare at him. ‘I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing. I don’t care if you drove from – from Aberdeen. You have no business to be here. Charlotte had no business to ring you.’

He let a moment or two pass before saying, ‘Will – will you give me five minutes, just five minutes?’

‘I don’t see why I should. I can’t think why you should imagine I’d give you a second’s thought, let alone any time.’

He leaned forward. He said, with naked earnestness, ‘I did behave like a shit, Elinor. I did. I’ll never forgive myself. But can I just try and explain, can I just …’ He stopped again. Then he said, almost in a whisper, ‘I want to say sorry.’

Elinor said nothing.

He said, ‘I can’t hope that she’d ever forgive me—’

Elinor said quietly, ‘She already has. That’s another reason why you never deserved her.’

He almost sprang to his feet. ‘She has? She’s forgiven me?’

Elinor looked away again. ‘Long ago.’

He said fervently, ‘She’s amazing. I’ve never known anyone like her. And I never will.’ He said, almost desperately, ‘You must believe me. Your sister is the most wonderful person I have ever known, or ever will.’

Elinor turned her head again and looked at him, stonily. He was still beautiful, but he looked disreputable today, slightly jowly, unshaven, with his hair straggling over his collar and bloodshot eyes. She said coldly, ‘What about the others?’

‘Others?’

‘Little Eliza,’ Elinor said, enunciating with deliberation. ‘And I bet she wasn’t the only one.’

He said with difficulty, ‘No.’

‘Busted by the police, in a pub lavatory.’

‘I didn’t know that, till after it happened.’

‘Which absolves you?’

‘No. No, of course it doesn’t. But it doesn’t make me culpable—’

‘You started it. You gave her drugs, in the beginning.’

He winced. He said, ‘You sound like Aunt Jane.’

‘Good,’ Elinor said, ‘I mean to. And she was pregnant.’

‘Not by me.’

‘Huh!’

He said sadly, ‘Would it satisfy you to know that that’s why Aunt Jane threw me out and changed her will? I always thought Bill Brandon had—’

‘Leave him out of it!’

Wills licked his lips. He said, ‘I was in such debt. Utterly maxed. Every card.’

Elinor said tartly, ‘Well, you aren’t now, are you. You dug for gold, and’ – she glanced pointedly at his wedding ring – ‘you found it.’

‘I was in real trouble. I had to.’

‘Like you had to publicly humiliate my sister? Like you had to send back everything she had given you as if it was the contents of a – of a waste-paper basket?’

He said, in a low voice, ‘That was Ally.’

‘So none of this is your fault really. Your godmother, your wife – your poor wife – they’re all instruments of your great misfortune, are they?’

He raised his head and looked at her. He said, ‘I’ve only been in love, truly in love, once, and that was with M – with your sister.’

Elinor said nothing.

He said pleadingly, ‘Will you tell her that? Will you tell her, when she’s better, that I came and that – that she wasn’t wrong. I did care. I do care. And Ally knows that. Ally knows why I married her.’ He stood up and looked down at Elinor. ‘Will you tell her that?’

‘I might.’

‘Do – do you still think I’m a shit?’

Elinor sighed. ‘I think you’re a car crash. A destructive car crash.’

‘I’ll take that as one degree more approving than a complete shit.’

She shrugged. He bent over her. He said, ‘Can I ask you one more thing?’

‘One more.’

‘Is – is there anyone else in Marianne’s life? Anyone else will be bad enough, but there’s a particular person—’

Elinor stood too. ‘Get out,’ she said.

He said, persisting, ‘You know I’ll never forgive myself, don’t you? You know I’ll be punished all my life—’

Elinor looked at him. She said, ‘If your worst punishment is Marianne never giving you another thought, as long as she lives, then yes, you will,’ and then she turned on her heel, marched down the corridor to the visitors’ room and shut the door of it behind her with a bang.

17

Belle Dashwood came out of Marianne’s bedroom and closed the door quietly behind her. Elinor was halfway down the stairs. She turned. ‘Is she—?’

Belle put her finger to her lips. ‘Sleeping. Or on the verge of it. D’you know, she nearly has pink cheeks?’

Elinor smiled. They had been back at Barton for a week now, and, after an initially tearful response to being home among everything that was familiar – and painful, for the very reason of being familiar – Marianne had set herself to recover with a purposefulness that astonished all of them. She had even, Elinor discovered, been online, researching a guitar foundation course at the Bristol branch of the Brighton Institute for Modern Music.

‘I could even apply for a scholarship, Ellie. Your family income has to be below forty thousand pounds, and ours easily is.’

Belle came down the stairs towards Elinor. ‘I still can’t believe it.’

‘Nor me.’

‘That drive. That ghastly drive to the hospital – till your text came, of course. And the waiting for Bill, before, and feeling I shouldn’t ring you again, because I’d only howl. Mags was so brave. Every time I looked at her, she smiled even though her poor face was a mask of tragedy. Thank God she isn’t asthmatic. Or you, darling.’

‘Ma?’

‘Yes, darling?’

‘Can we talk?’

‘Of course! But maybe not on the stairs. Shall we even open some wine? Jonno’s sent enough to float a ship. He thinks red wine is an absolute cure-all and I haven’t the heart to tell him that Marianne doesn’t really like it.’

‘But Bill sent some white, didn’t he?’

Belle smiled fondly at the thought. ‘Darling Bill. I’ve never met a man so thoughtful.’

In the kitchen, Margaret had left her school bag on the table. She herself was nowhere to be seen, and was no doubt in her Thomas-made tree house, messaging her friends. Since Marianne’s recovery, her relief had manifested itself in a permanent state of contempt for her family, and every time she was asked not to do something – play her music at anti-social volume, monopolise the bathroom for hours, stare mutely and moodily at whatever was on her plate at mealtimes – was inclined to shout, ‘Ruin my life, why don’t you?’ and stamp out of the room.

‘Ought she to be doing her homework?’ Belle said now.

‘Probably.’

‘Shall we – not make her, just for the moment?’

Elinor subsided into a kitchen chair. ‘Oh, please yes,’ she said tiredly.

Belle opened the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine. She put it on the table and glanced at Elinor.

‘Are you all right, darling?’

‘Yes. I’m fine. I just wanted to tell you that – Wills came to the hospital. Just before you did.’

Belle seemed neither surprised nor especially interested to hear this. She inserted a corkscrew into the neck of the bottle. She said, non-committally, ‘Did he now.’

‘Yes, Ma. He drove down from London because Charlotte alerted him to Marianne’s asthma attack.’

Belle wound the screw in with great concentration. She said, ‘That was very silly of her.’

‘I know. I’ve told her so. But she says he’s still mad about Marianne, and always was, and never stopped being, and she thought he ought to be allowed to say that in such a crisis, and even more that Marianne ought to know it.’

Belle drew the cork out very slowly. She said, almost dismissively, ‘Water under the bridge, darling.’

‘Ma. Should I tell Marianne?’

‘Why bother?’

‘Well,’ Elinor said, pushing the two glasses Belle had put on the table towards her mother, ‘might it not be a bit consoling for M to know that he did mean it, and that she was right to insist that he did?’

Belle began to pour the wine carefully into the glasses.

‘Lovely colour. Look at that! We’re so lucky that Bill knows about wine. D’you know, darling, I don’t think we need bother Marianne about Wills any more. That’s history. He’s history. She’s got far better fish to fry now.’ She stopped pouring and pushed a glass back towards Elinor. ‘I didn’t tell you …’

‘Didn’t tell me what?’

Belle sat down on the opposite side of the table. She took a deep and appreciative swallow of wine. ‘My journey with Bill. We were all in such a state at the beginning, of course we were, and I thought he was just being grim and silent because he was respecting how upset we were, but then your text came, and I suddenly saw that he was fighting back tears, real tears, and I didn’t actually mean to say anything specific but before I could help myself, I said, Oh, Bill dear, are you more than just relieved for the girls and me? And he nodded and couldn’t speak and then he suddenly swerved the car on to the hard shoulder and put his arms on the steering wheel and his head on his arms and honestly, Ellie, he just wept like a baby. And Mags and I patted him a bit, like you do, and then he gave a kind of gasp and said it was hopeless, he was so boring and why would anyone like Marianne ever even think of an old fossil like him, and we said, There, there, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and he said we weren’t to mention it to anyone, ever, and blew his nose, and off we went again. But wouldn’t it be wonderful?’

‘He’s the nicest man.’

‘I know. And very attractive.’

‘You mean well-off.’

‘No, darling. Of course, it’s lovely he’s got money and a house and a business and all that, but it’s beside the point. The point is that when you look at him, you think, Oh, very attractive. A very, very attractive man. What does Marianne think?’

Elinor ran a finger round the rim of her glass. ‘I don’t think she’s thinking about men just now—’

The door to the hall opened.

‘I might be,’ Marianne said.

‘Darling!’

She came into the room in her rosebud and plaid pyjamas, pulled out a chair and sat down. She looked at the wine.

‘Can I have some of that?’

Elinor said, ‘Were you listening at the door?’

Marianne smiled at her. ‘Yes, I was.’

‘For how long?’

‘To hear enough,’ Marianne said. She looked at the wine again. ‘No sharing?’

Elinor regarded her. She said coolly, ‘Get a glass.’

‘Darling,’ Belle said, ‘I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. Especially Bill’s.’

Marianne got up and went round behind Elinor’s chair to the cupboard where the glasses were kept. She said casually, ‘He’s a lovely man. A really lovely man. And you’re quite right, he’s attractive.’

‘And’, Elinor demanded, ‘Wills? Is he attractive?’

Marianne went back to her seat and put the wine glass on the table.

‘I – I can’t answer that,’ she said quietly. ‘Not yet. You shouldn’t ask me.’

There was silence. Belle pushed the wine bottle towards Marianne. She picked it up, poured, and put it down again. Then she said, more hesitantly, ‘What would make a difference to how I think about all that is just to know that I wasn’t duped, that I didn’t imagine it all, that I didn’t make something up because I so wanted it to be true. I would love to know he wasn’t cynical, on top of everything else.’

She stopped. Belle looked at Elinor. Elinor leaned towards her sister.

‘You didn’t overhear that bit, then. He wasn’t cynical.’

Marianne took a sip of her wine. ‘How d’you know?’

‘Because he came to the hospital.’

Marianne put her glass down with a small bang. Her cheeks suddenly flamed and she put her hands up against them.

‘He – he what?’

‘He dashed down from London, the day you were in hospital.’

‘But – but how did he know?’

‘Charlotte rang him. She thought he deserved to know because he’s still crazy about you. Always has been. He asked me to tell you.’

Marianne took her hands away from her face and laid them on the table. She sighed. She said simply, ‘Oh.’

Belle leaned forward. She said, ‘It’s what I always said, darling. That he wasn’t to be trusted.’

‘Ellie,’ Marianne said, as if her mother hadn’t spoken, ‘why didn’t you tell me he’d been?’

‘I was going to—’

‘Did you think it would start me up again?’

Elinor said hesitantly, ‘Well, I did wonder.’

Marianne smiled at her a little sadly. She said, ‘So you could say, like Mags, that he is just a shagbandit?’

Belle gave a little jump. ‘Where does she get such language?’

‘School, Ma.’

Belle looked round. ‘I suppose I should summon her out of her tree …’

‘In a minute,’ Elinor said. She leaned towards her sister.

‘M. M – are you OK?’

Marianne nodded vehemently. ‘I am. I am. I’m – going to be.’

‘Don’t force yourself,’ Elinor said.

Marianne said a little desperately, ‘Believing in a bastard takes a bit of getting over.’

‘Of course.’

‘But I’ll do it, Ellie. I’ll get there. It just – just shakes your self-belief a bit, doesn’t it?’

There was a flash of someone running past the kitchen window.

‘She’s coming.’

The door flew open. Margaret stood on the threshold, panting, her school tie, with its carefully uneven ends, under one ear.

‘You’ll never guess …’

‘What, Mags?’

‘I just saw Thomas,’ Margaret said. ‘He came to put that other plank in, so I’ve got more floor space, and he said he’d seen Lucy in Exeter today, all dolled up and stuff, and she flashed a ring at him, a wedding ring.’ She paused, and then looked at Elinor, and her expression was one of intense distress. ‘Ellie,’ she said, ‘Ellie, I’m so sorry. I really am – but they’re married.’

Elinor lay wakefully in the dark. Marianne had wanted to stay with her and be comforting, but Elinor had said that she needed to be alone, quite alone, and Marianne hadn’t persisted but had simply slipped back to her own room without saying anything further, just squeezing Elinor’s shoulder as she left.

So, Elinor thought, here I am, here we are, all of us, roughly where we were when we left Norland, except that Marianne has survived an adventure – or, you could say, had an amazingly lucky escape – and I have had my hopes raised and lowered so many times that now that they are finally dashed, I’m so battered by the seesaw that I hardly know what I feel. Except I do. If I’m honest, I know that I went on hoping, hoping and hoping, that Edward’s good conduct would finally see a bit of good sense too, and he wouldn’t actually marry her. Of course, she’d want to marry him, as fast as possible, in case he got away, but I really thought – no, I really hoped – that he would realise that if he went through with it, he was committing an act of utterly idiotic nobility, and the end result would be misery all round. A gigantic pratfall, and the biggest prat would be him.

I don’t want him, Elinor thought, twisting restlessly on to her side, to look a prat. I don’t want him to be miserable. I don’t want him and Lucy all mixed up with Bill and Delaford and everything, so that I can’t avoid them, and have to go on pretending I’m OK. I’m not OK. Even Ma saw I wasn’t OK tonight and made a very un-Ma-like speech about taking me for granted and how sorry she was. I don’t think I was very graceful about what she said. I think I just grunted. I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t quite summon up the energy to behave as I ought to have done. Poor Ma. I’ll say sorry tomorrow. I’ll do a lot of things tomorrow, like starting to emulate Marianne in putting loving a waste-of-space man behind me. It’s so – so disappointing. Disappointment is so hard to bear – why don’t we make more allowance for it? Dashed hopes, resigning oneself, learning to bear, to endure – why is there so much of it, all the time?

Sleep was clearly out of the question. She got out of bed and went to the window. It was completely dark at Barton at night-time, and the only lights she could see now were the security ones in the stable yard down at the Park, no doubt triggered by a passing fox. They’d been so concerned, everyone at the Park, about Marianne, sending flowers, and a basket of mini muffins, and the children had drawn pictures for her, and signed them with hearts and smiley faces. And when Elinor had gone to find Thomas at suppertime to ask him the details of meeting Lucy in Exeter, he’d looked so grave and sorry, and told her what had happened with the most profound reluctance.

‘I didn’t want you to know,’ he said. He was holding the high-pressure hose he used to wash mud off Sir John’s Range Rover. ‘But I didn’t want you not to know, either.’

Elinor looked away. She said, with difficulty, ‘Did you see him?’

‘No,’ Thomas said. ‘To be honest, I was glad not to. She said he was waiting in the car. I don’t know where they were going. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know.’

Elinor wrapped her arms round herself for consolation. She said sadly, ‘Thank you for telling me.’

He sighed. He yanked out a length of hose and let it slap on to the garage floor.

‘I wouldn’t have,’ he said, ‘if she hadn’t shown me her ring. I wouldn’t have believed her. But there was the ring, and her saying – laughing, she was – that she was Lucy Ferrars now.’ He’d glanced up at Elinor. ‘Pardon my French, but he’s a bloody idiot.’

And that, Elinor thought, will be the general opinion. That gormless Ferrars boy, captured by a gold-digger. Those silly Dashwood girls, blighted by a universally hopeless taste in men. No wonder they’re single. Their poor mother. The lights in the stable yard went out suddenly and the whole valley below vanished into darkness. Elinor shivered. It might be almost early summer, but the night air was still quite sharp. Was it easier to detach yourself emotionally from a real bastard, like Wills, or from a basically lovely man who’d got so screwed up by his childhood that he persisted in doing the wonderfully right thing in the totally wrong way? Whichever, it hurt. It hurt and hurt. And she was going to have to get used to living with that hurt because she was not the kind of person who gave her heart away at all easily. Damn him. Damn them all. Instead of lecturing Marianne about facing herself rather than seeking a rescuing soulmate, she was going to have to eat her own patronising words, syllable by syllable.

She ran back across the room and leaped into bed, whirling the duvet over her head and letting it settle softly round her. ‘Serve you right,’ she said to herself in the shrouded darkness. ‘Serve you completely right, stupid, stupid Miss Sensible.’

One of the advantages of Barton Cottage was its position. Not only were there spectacular views, but you could see anyone approaching: in fact, nobody could get to the cottage by one of Sir John’s estate roads without being visible for the last mile at least. But that visibility, Belle had decided, after nine months of living without neighbours, noise or light pollution, also served to remind her how astonishingly isolated she was. She remembered once reading an interview with a man who had retreated to live on a remote Hebridean island and who, when asked if he wasn’t lonely, replied robustly that luckily he wasn’t afraid of the inside of his own head. It wasn’t that Belle was exactly afraid of what was inside her head, but more that she was rather bored by it. Life at Norland had always been busy with all those rooms and people to look after. There wasn’t a day, she reflected, without more people to feed than just the family, and if it wasn’t guests, it was the garden. The garden at Norland had been insatiable. The garden here at Barton Cottage was negligible, being laid out with holiday lets in mind, and whatever trimming or mowing needed doing was done by Thomas with a kind of park-keeper’s competence that was not at all to Belle’s taste. Sometimes – and even with a convalescent Marianne in the house – Belle would stand at her sitting-room window, between the old damask curtains brought from Norland, and gaze at Sir John’s well-maintained and virtually empty roads laid out below her in the valley, and feel an isolation so intense that she wondered that a booming voice didn’t issue from the clouds above the hills and ask her if she was all right?

‘I can’t spend all summer doing nothing,’ she said to Marianne. ‘And nor can you.’

Marianne was in a chair by the sitting-room window with her laptop balanced on her knee. ‘I’m not,’ she said, without looking up. ‘I’m checking courses.’

‘Oh, good,’ Belle said. ‘Not—’ She stopped.

‘Not checking Facebook to see what Wills is up to, you mean?’

‘Well, I—’

‘Ma,’ Marianne said, ‘I think I am pretty well over John Willoughby.’

‘Really, darling? Really?’

Marianne raised her head to look at her mother. ‘I’m over him enough to see I had quite a lucky escape, and that just fancying someone isn’t enough, especially if you can’t trust them or respect them. I can’t say I don’t still fancy him a bit, if I’m completely honest, but I do see that he was bad for me, and bad to me, and made me far more miserable than he ever made me happy. So I’ve come a long way, Ma, don’t you think? And don’t start crying. Don’t. Just tell me something nice – like what plans have you been making?’

‘Darling, I never—’

‘Yes, you do, all the time. You’re always planning something. What have you got in your little Ma mind now?’

Belle said, sniffing slightly but with an elaborate air of casualness, ‘I thought we could ask some people to stay.’

‘Like?’

‘Well …’

‘Not like Fanny and John, please, Ma.’

‘No,’ Belle said. ‘Certainly not Fanny and John. More like – Bill, actually.’

‘Bill,’ Marianne echoed, without emphasis.

‘He’d be a lovely guest.’

‘He usually stays at the Park, Ma.’

‘He’s been so sweet, ringing to ask how you are. He was horrified when you came out of hospital, you were so pale and drawn. It was pitiful to see.’

Marianne looked up, smiling. ‘Who was, Ma? Me or him?’

Belle took no notice. ‘Well, I’ve asked him to come and stay, and he hasn’t said he won’t.’

Marianne went on smiling. ‘Good,’ she said.

‘Will you be nice to him, darling?’

‘Of course. As long as you don’t watch us.’

‘Darling! Would I?’

‘Yes,’ Marianne said. She looked back at her screen.

Belle went on staring down the valley. Then she said, ‘That could, of course, be his car.’

Marianne refused to look up. ‘What a surprise.’

‘I thought he drove a Range Rover.’

‘He does,’ Marianne said.

‘Well,’ Belle said, peering, ‘this car coming isn’t a Range Rover, but it’s quite big, bigger than—’

‘Ma,’ Marianne said, ‘I think you knew he was coming all along. He can sleep in Ellie’s room and she can move in with me.’

‘It isn’t a Range Rover,’ Belle said. ‘It’s quite big and dark, one of those four-wheel-drive things.’

‘Maybe it isn’t coming here. Or it’s one of Jonno’s estate people, a surveyor or something.’

‘It is coming here,’ Belle said. ‘It’s coming up the hill, quite fast. It won’t be a woman driving; women don’t drive like that – have you noticed? – they don’t sort of gun the engine.’

Marianne put her laptop on the floor and rose to stand by her mother, peering too. After a few moments she gave a little gasp.

‘Ma!’

‘What, darling?’

‘I – I think it’s Edward!’

‘It can’t be …’

‘I think it is. It’s his hair. And the way he’s sitting. He’s – he’s coming here!’

‘Ellie’s not back from work!’

Marianne drew a huge breath and stared down the valley again.

‘Ed,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Ed. How dare he?’

Edward Ferrars pulled up in front of the cottage and got slowly out of the car. He looked terrible, thinner than ever and as pale as if he’d been under a stone for a month.

Belle said at once, ‘I must go and greet him. Poor boy.’

Marianne tried to clutch her.

‘Ma, don’t—’

But Belle had gone, running out of the room, out of the front door. Marianne saw her go up to Ed and put her hands on his upper arms and look up at him. She was probably, being Ma, saying something sweet, something welcoming. He just stood there and stared down at her, looking wretched. Had he, in a typical, clumsy, good-hearted, wrong-footed Ed way, come to say sorry? If he had, what the hell good would he think it would do, with a ring firmly on Lucy’s finger and Elinor’s heart in pieces on the floor? What was he doing there, what was he thinking, if indeed he was thinking anything at all, having made such a massive mess of so many lives?

A flash of colour caught her eye. Down the valley below the cottage, making its lurid way across the park, was Elinor’s car. Elinor and Margaret were on their way back, would be up the hill and at the cottage within minutes.

Marianne hurried out on to the drive. Ed was still standing gazing distractedly down at Belle, who was saying, in a way that made Marianne briefly despair, ‘Of course we hope you’ll be happy, Ed, of course we don’t wish you anything but a happy future—’

Marianne shouted, ‘Elinor’s coming!’

Ed’s head jerked up. He said, almost gasping, ‘She’s who I came to see.’

Marianne looked at him, unsmiling. She said grimly, ‘I bet you did.’

‘No, I—’

Belle gave him a little pat. ‘I’m sure she won’t be cross with you.’

‘And I’m sure’, Marianne said, ‘that she should be.’

The orange car was climbing up the hill.

‘Just listen to that poor old engine!’ Belle said with determined gaiety.

‘Shush,’ Marianne said. ‘I vote we none of us say anything till Ellie gets here.’

‘But, darling …’

Marianne folded her arms and stared down the hill. Ed glanced at her, stepped away from Belle and looked at his feet. Belle retreated a step or two and put her hands in her trouser pockets. Slowly, unevenly, the orange car toiled up the hill and crunched to a halt beside Ed’s car. Immediately, the passenger door opened and Margaret climbed out, scattering her possessions. She glared at Ed.

‘Where’s the Sierra?’ she demanded.

‘I – I haven’t got it any more.’

‘New car?’ Margaret said. ‘New wife?’

‘No,’ he said distractedly. ‘No. I – The car’s Bill’s. Bill lent me the car. It’s a Delaford car.’

Elinor had emerged slowly from her side of the car, and now stood with one foot still inside it, looking at Ed across its roof. She said, wonderingly, ‘Ed?’

‘Yes.’

‘What – what are you doing here?’

He shifted a little on the gravel. He said unhappily, ‘All this stupid Twitter stuff …’

‘What of it?’

‘I came …’

‘Yes?’

He took a step forward, and then another, and then, in a stumbling rush, got as far as the orange car and leaned on the roof, stretching out towards Elinor. He said, almost shouting, ‘Ellie, it isn’t me who got married!’

Elinor gave a little cry. She put a hand over her mouth.

‘What?’ Margaret said.

Edward said, ‘I was worried you’d think from Lucy’s tweets that it was me she’d married. It’s not me. It – it was Robert.’

Elinor’s face was as white as paper. She whispered, ‘But I thought Robert was – is …’

‘He is,’ Ed said. ‘He wanted a beard, or whatever you call it, for some reason. No, not for some reason. Because – because, oh, I’ll tell you. Another time. And Lucy doesn’t care. Lucy wanted money. They just did it, on impulse, like – like celebrity kids do. For a sort of laugh.’

‘Oh, Ed …’

He put his foot on the sill of the passenger door and stepped up, so that he could almost touch Elinor across the car roof.

He said, ‘I’m so relieved. I was in such a state in case you thought—’

Elinor stretched a hand out to meet his. She said, shakily, ‘So – so you aren’t with Lucy, you aren’t married—’

‘No,’ he said, and his face broke into a wide smile. He made a kind of dive across the car roof so that he could grasp both her hands. ‘No. Thank all the gods. But, Ellie – Ellie, I really would like to be. Please?’

18

Margaret stood in the landing window of Barton Cottage, looking out into the dark garden. She was supposed to be in bed – she was wearing the T-shirt and American flannel pull-on trousers she slept in – and had done a lot of door-banging and lavatory-flushing and shouting, in order to convince everyone downstairs that she was on her way to bed, but had actually crept out on to the landing again, so that she could look out at her tree house for a bit longer.

It was softly illuminated by several candles in old jam jars, illuminated enough, anyway, for her to see Ed and Elinor up there, huddled together under a blanket. She couldn’t quite see their faces, but sometimes she caught the gleam of Elinor’s hair, or the shine of the wine glasses they had taken up there, and if she leaned out of the window, she could hear the murmur of their voices and occasional little bursts of laughter. They sounded very happy.

Margaret felt rather proud of their happiness. They had been absolutely glowing with it at supper – Ed was like a different man: he said he’d been so sure Elinor would send him away with a flea in his ear that he’d felt extremely sick when he first arrived – and Margaret had found herself wanting somehow to augment all this joy and so she’d said, out of the blue, ‘Why don’t you two go up to my tree house? There’s masses of space now.’

Elinor had beamed at her. ‘Oh, Mags! Could we?’

And Ed had looked as if she’d given him a present or something, and had got up, and come round the table to hug her, and said, ‘You’re a complete star, Mags Dashwood. D’you know that?’

Margaret had felt not only a glow of satisfaction, but also a novel sense of having done something both good and useful. She’d got up from the table then and found a basket, and Belle had put a bottle of wine in it, and glasses, and a new packet of chocolate biscuits, and some apples, and a piece of cheese, and they had all processed out into the dusky garden and helped the two of them climb up the ladder Thomas had made. It was Marianne who put the candles in the jars, and Belle who produced the old rug from the back of the sofa, and then they’d left them there, on the platform in the tree, with each other and their future and the ring Ed had actually had, all along, in his pocket.

It wasn’t a diamond, Margaret was told, it was an aquamarine. Same difference, Margaret thought, except it was sort of blue, not white, but it sparkled, and it made Elinor cry, even if in a way Margaret could see was very different from the kind of crying they usually went in for. Elinor kept looking at it, on her hand, kissing Ed, and then laughing. Ed had talked more at supper than Margaret had ever heard him, describing how he’d kept going back to Lucy’s family when he was a teenager, because they were cosy and welcoming, and didn’t make him feel an utter failure, like his mother and sister did, and he’d thought Lucy was quite pretty, then, because he didn’t know any better – ‘Only a moron would think that,’ Margaret interrupted, and he’d laughed and said, ‘Moron’s the word, Mags!’ – and how he’d got so defeated by his mother insisting on him training to be things he couldn’t bear to be that he’d got himself in a hopeless state, on the very edge of doing something that would cause him the keenest regret all the rest of his life.

Margaret strained her eyes to see them both in her tree. She thought she could make out that Ed had his arm round Elinor, and that their heads were very close together, probably touching. It was so great, it really was. Not just because it was what Ellie had wanted all along, but because Edward would be very susceptible to her, Margaret’s, nagging him to teach her to drive. After all, if he was part of the family, he’d have no escape.

‘Are you cold?’ Edward said.

‘I’m too happy to be cold.’

‘Me too. It’s like paradise here, in Mags’s tree, with you. I can’t believe it, I can’t believe my luck, I can’t believe you said yes.’

‘You knew I’d say yes.’

‘I didn’t, I was terrified.’

‘You had the ring in your pocket.’

‘I wanted you to know I meant it; I wanted to prove to you that you were it. For me. If you’d have me.’

‘I’ll have you,’ Elinor said.

‘That’s what I can’t believe.’

Elinor shifted a little, so that her left shoulder was tucked right under Edward’s arm. ‘What I can’t believe’, she said, ‘is Lucy.’

‘Do we have to talk about her?’

‘Only enough to satisfy my curiosity.’

‘About what?’

‘About’, Elinor said, ‘what she was doing, marrying your brother Robert, who is—’ She stopped.

He kissed her nose. ‘Gay,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘He knew he was gay when he was tiny. I remember him coming down to breakfast once, when he was about seven, in a necklace of Fanny’s and a huge hat with a feather. And my parents didn’t blink. Did not blink. They used to describe him to other people as being very much his own person. That was their phrase. Very much his own person.’

‘So – your mother doesn’t know?’

Edward captured Elinor’s left hand and held it out to see the ring glinting by the light of the nearest candle.

‘I have no idea if she knows. But she won’t acknowledge it if she does. She won’t discuss it. She just says he’s unusual.’

‘So – he can’t talk about it, with her?’

Edward raised her hand to kiss it. ‘You can’t talk to her about anything. Except money. Stocks and shares and house prices.’

‘Poor Robert.’

‘He doesn’t care. He lives his own life and milks her for money when he needs it.’

‘But Lucy,’ Elinor said, ‘Lucy must know he’s gay, she must have known all along.’

‘She won’t care, either,’ Edward said.

‘She must, she can’t not mind that her husband is just using her as a shield—’

Edward said flatly, ‘She’ll be fine with it.’

Elinor turned to look at his shadowed face. ‘But—’

‘Ellie,’ Edward said, ‘don’t judge everyone else by your lovely and right standards. Lucy is only out for Lucy. If there isn’t trouble, she makes it, like snowballing me with texts threatening to tell my mother we were an item, as she put it, so that I had to text her back saying please don’t, please, please don’t. God, Ellie, I was so drunk that night, and of course that played right into her hands. She’s got exactly what she set out to get, even if not with the brother she first thought of. Don’t waste an iota of concern on her. Lucy’s got her hands on a pile of money, and Robert’s got a cover as far as my mother is concerned to do whatever he wants. They’ve done a deal. It suits them both. They’re as selfish as each other. They’ll live their own lives and probably enjoy the joke of being married. And I – lucky, lucky me – have got you.’

‘But—’

‘I want to kiss you, Ellie, I want to just—’

‘One more thing,’ Elinor said.

‘What?’

‘How did you know you were off the hook with Lucy?’

Edward gave a bark of laughter. He said, ‘You’ll never believe it. An email.’

‘An email?’

‘Yes.’ He looked back down at her, and bent so that he could kiss her on the mouth. ‘She wrote me an email,’ he said, his face almost touching Elinor’s, ‘saying that she couldn’t marry me when she was in love, actually, with someone else. Who just happened to be my gay brother. Who, I wonder, did she think she had a vestige of a hope of fooling?’

‘Perhaps she didn’t care?’

He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up to his.

‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I don’t care about her or Robert or my family or anybody. I can’t tell you how much I don’t care about them. All I care about, lovely Elinor with my ring on your finger, is you.’

‘What?’ Mrs Ferrars said. She held the telephone a little distance from her ear, as if it might scorch her.

Fanny Dashwood, ringing her mother from her new sitting room cum office at Norland Park, raised her voice even further.

‘It’s not good news, Mother. Are you sitting down?’

‘I hear better if I’m standing up,’ Mrs Ferrars said, as if explaining something to someone extremely stupid. ‘You know that.’

‘Mother,’ Fanny said, ‘it’s about Robert.’

‘What?’ Mrs Ferrars demanded, suddenly alert. ‘Is he ill?’

‘No, Mother,’ Fanny said. ‘No. He’s perfectly fine. But – but he’s got married, would you believe …’

There was a pause. Mrs Ferrars adjusted something in her mind. Then she said, ‘Nonsense.’

‘It’s not nonsense, Mother.’

‘If Robert were married,’ Mrs Ferrars said firmly, ‘he or the Mortons would have told me. He tells me everything.’

‘Mother,’ Fanny said, raising her voice again, ‘he hasn’t married Tassy Morton.’

‘He must have.’

‘He hasn’t, he hasn’t, he’s married – oh God, Mother – Robert has married Lucy Steele.’

There was a further pause. Then Mrs Ferrars said, ‘Who?’

‘Lucy Steele. The girl with the teeth and the sister. You know, Mother. She was going to marry Edward.’

Mrs Ferrars gave a little scream. ‘You’re making it up!’

‘I’m not, Mother. I’m not. They got married in Devon or something, from Lucy’s home, on an impulse.’

‘Why?’ Mrs Ferrars wailed. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, Mother, who knows? He’s always been a law unto himself.’

‘How could he do this to me?’ Mrs Ferrars cried. ‘How could he treat his own mother like this?’

‘It’s not about you, Mother,’ Fanny said crossly. ‘It’s about the family. And Father’s money.’

Mrs Ferrars seemed to pull herself together. ‘Well,’ she said in a much more decided tone, ‘they won’t get a penny of that.’

Fanny said wearily, ‘You don’t mean that, Mother.’

‘I do, I certainly do!’

‘No, you don’t. You adore Robert. You always forgive Robert.’

Mrs Ferrars said, unexpectedly, ‘Why isn’t that girl marrying Edward? After all the fuss?’

Fanny said sharply, ‘Because she knows which side her bread is buttered, Mother. And she knows Robert is your favourite.’

‘She’s right,’ Mrs Ferrars said, her voice somewhat softened, ‘I have always found Robert much easier to deal with. A sweeter nature, you know.’

‘So you’ll forgive him—’

‘I didn’t say that, Fanny.’

‘But you will. You’ll let Lucy worm her way in, with Robert’s help, and before you know it, she’ll have carte blanche to do up the house in Norfolk—’

‘Don’t be so jealous, Fanny,’ Mrs Ferrars said. ‘I’ve never liked sibling rivalry: you knew that. And you’ve had your fair share, and more. I don’t care for someone with a house like Norland begrudging her brother having a mere farmhouse in Norfolk.’

‘Mother, I never said, I never meant—’

‘In any case,’ Mrs Ferrars said, interrupting, ‘that house needs renovating. I would say, actually, that renovation is long overdue.’

Fanny gave a little shriek, and threw her phone across the room. Mrs Ferrars took her own phone away from her ear and shook it a little, as if in puzzlement, and then, with determined precision, began to dial Robert’s number.

Sir John Middleton was in his element. The weather was better, the house was full – both Bill Brandon and Abigail Jennings had returned to occupy their old bedrooms for at least a long weekend – that poor girl up at the cottage was on the mend, and there was also a full-blown romance going on up there between her sister and the F-word boy. Add to that the news that his son and heir had gained a place at his father’s old school – Mary was making an immense fuss about the boy boarding, at his age, but he had yet to silence her with reminders of pipes and tunes – and the signing of a satisfactory new contract with a clothing distributor in northern India, and Sir John could feel that all was pretty well in his good-natured if not over-sensitive world.

He was especially pleased to see old Bill back at Barton Park. It seemed months since he had been there, months in which Bill had been preoccupied with all the halfwits he seemed so devoted to, never mind that mad bad daughter of the girl he’d once been so keen on. Sir John shook his head. He had a shocking propensity to try and sort the wrecks, poor old Bill, and seemed never happier than when knee deep in other people’s problems and trouble. And it had had an effect, of course it had, ageing the poor fellow before his time, stiffening his morals, fossilising his sense of fun. But he seemed different this visit, very different, improved even. In fact, Sir John would go as far as to say that Bill was very nearly relaxed.

Last night, when they were all at dinner – nine of them round the table, and Sir John would ideally have liked double that number – and those girls were telling Bill what had happened to Robert Ferrars and Lucy Steele, Bill was laughing with the best of them. Mind you, Marianne was a brilliant mimic, and by the time she’d taken off Lucy Steele and old Mrs Ferrars, and Fanny Dashwood having the vapours, they were all of them sobbing with laughter. It had been a riot, an absolute riot. With many more riots to come, Sir John sincerely hoped. Not only was fun right up his street, but it livened Mary up nicely. She’d been, well, quite amenable later that night, even – dare he say it – a bit frisky. He beamed to himself and leaned forward to read something that had just popped up on his screen.

There was a knock on his office door.

‘Come!’ he called.

The door opened on to a familiar billow of scarves.

‘Jonno?’

‘Abi, my dear.’

‘Am I interrupting?’

‘Yes, Abi. You always are. I am a busy man.’

‘Two minutes, Jonno.’

He waved a hand towards a chair the other side of the desk.

‘Sit, you. No coffee, because I don’t want you staying.’

Abigail subsided into the chair. ‘I must have a little sound-off.’

‘Go ahead.’

Mrs Jennings settled her scarves. Then she leaned forward slightly.

‘Last night, dear. Huge fun. Enormous fun. And those girls are a joy, aren’t they? Bill looked a decade younger, even though there is no point in him gazing at Marianne. She could have her pick, the form she’s in right now, she has no need—’

‘Abi,’ Sir John said warningly.

Abigail collected herself. ‘Sorry, dear. Sorry. Well, what I wanted to say was that I’m afraid I just don’t care how rude they are about that little minx, Lucy Steele. I tell you, Jonno, she was in my sitting room, pleading poverty and true love for Edward, ten minutes before she runs off with his brother! And then, no sooner has she gone, than her sister tips up, having lent Lucy whatever she could spare, in a panic that Mrs Ferrars would have their guts for garters, and also distraught because she now couldn’t afford the plane fare to join her plastic surgeon at a villa party he’s having in Ibiza, or somewhere. So, me being as silly as I’m soft-hearted—’

‘Abi,’ Sir John said, ‘you could tell me all this any time. I may look as if I’m hardly ever working—’

Mrs Jennings shook her head. ‘I’m hopeless, dear. Really I am. But I’ll get to the point. And the point is – is that Ferrars boy really in love with Elinor?’

Sir John gawped at her. ‘Several hundred per cent, I’d say.’

‘Well,’ Abigail said, ‘I need to know because you see, he utterly adored Lucy.’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘My dear Jonno, she broke his heart!’

Sir John stood up, for emphasis. ‘Rubbish,’ he said.

She stood too, uncertainly.

‘He was trying to do the right thing,’ Sir John said. ‘He felt obliged to her family, having a mother like he’s got. That’s all.’

‘But she said—’

Sir John strode over to his office door and opened it. ‘Out, Abi.’

‘Yes, dear.’

She trotted over, and paused in front of him. She said, defensively, ‘I like to think the best of people, Jonno.’

He bent towards her. He said firmly, ‘Then don’t waste your time on the worst ones, Abi,’ and pushed her out of the room.

Edward was lying on the sofa at Barton Cottage. He had spent the day at Delaford with Bill Brandon, being shown round the place and meeting the people, and had come back to Barton with the contented and slightly disbelieving feeling that he had at last found a work environment that chimed amazingly with his own temperament and beliefs. He was waiting now, his head on a cushion and his feet dangling over the arm at the end of the sofa, for Elinor to come home from work in Exeter.

He could not believe the depth of his contentment, nor the height of his optimism. He wasn’t sure he had ever felt either, before, and certainly never to such a degree. Everywhere he looked seemed bathed in light, and every time he thought of Elinor, something inside him felt as if it was simply dissolving in rapture. He lay there, looking at a faint crack in the ceiling and watching a very small spider venturing out along its length, and thought that if this was happiness, then it ought to be bottled and fed intravenously to every single patient of the National Health Service.

‘Gosh, you look down,’ Marianne said, approvingly, from the doorway.

He turned his head and waved at her. ‘Never been more miserable,’ he said. ‘Can’t you see?’

She held out the phone in her hand. She said, smiling, ‘Call for you.’

He swung himself upright. ‘For me? On your phone?’

Marianne made a slight face.

‘It’s brother John. He wants to talk to you.’

‘Yikes.’

Marianne put the phone to her ear. She said, ‘I’ve found him, John. Hard at work on the sofa. I’ll hand you over.’

Edward took the phone and held it gingerly against his head. ‘John?’

The other end of the line, John Dashwood sounded very grave.

‘I imagine, Edward, it’s a bit late for recriminations—’

‘Much too late,’ Edward said cheerfully, ‘and completely pointless, as I have never, ever, in my whole life been so—’

‘Edward,’ John Dashwood said majestically.

‘What?’

‘Your mother is heartbroken. Your sister is feeling, naturally, completely betrayed. It is, in fact, astonishing that either of them are still functioning, let alone as well as they are.’

Edward looked back at the spider. ‘Oh,’ he said.

‘I would have hoped, Edward, for a much more concerned response. Your mother, your sister—’

‘Sorry, John,’ Edward said, ‘but you should be ringing Robert, not me.’

John Dashwood took a steadying breath. He said, ‘Do you realise, Edward, that your mother has not actually mentioned your name since this whole disgraceful business began?’

Edward aimed an imaginary gun at the spider and fired. He said, with one eye shut, ‘No change there, then.’

John Dashwood sounded outraged. ‘Edward!’

Edward said nothing. He got up and stood looking out of the window. Soon, Elinor’s car would come into view.

‘Are you still there?’ John Dashwood said.

‘I am.’

‘Will you please listen to me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Your sister and I – Fanny and I – think you could very easily do something to ease the situation. Your own, as well as your mother’s.’

‘Which is?’ Edward said guardedly.

‘You should write to her. You should write and say how sorry you are for upsetting her.’

‘Why?’ Edward demanded.

‘Because she wants nothing so much as for her children to be happy. Because she has been badly wounded by her sons’ conduct just recently.’

Edward ran his hand through his hair. He said incredulously, ‘Are you saying I should write to my mother and say sorry for Robert?’

‘Well, it would be very much to your advantage—’

‘No.’

‘Edward—’

‘No. Absolutely not. Never. I wish I hadn’t had all that nonsense with Lucy, but I am so certain, so certain about Elinor that I don’t give one single stuff about what any of you think. I’m not sorry. I’m not humble. I might talk to Mother about all this, one day, if she’ll ever listen, but I absolutely refuse to write a letter that I don’t mean and for something I haven’t done. Right?’

John said stiffly, ‘You are making a big mistake.’

‘Not as big as my mother’s!’ Edward shouted.

There was silence. Then John said, with elaborate dignity, ‘I shall go and convey this to your sister.’

‘You do that,’ Edward said rudely. ‘How does it feel to be pussy-whipped by two women in your life?’

There was shocked silence at the other end of the line. An orange car was creeping along the valley floor, and Edward felt his heart lift in his chest, like a bird.

‘Bye,’ he said, into the phone, carelessly, ‘bye,’ and tossed it on to the dented cushions of the sofa.

Marianne was sitting on the ridge above the valley where Allenham lay. She was sitting upright, her hands round her knees, and a yard away, Bill Brandon lay on his elbow in the grass and watched her. Her hair was loose down her back and, every so often, a breath of breeze lifted a strand or two and he watched them float and then settle again.

She was not, he observed, looking tense or strained. She was gazing down at the old house, at its eccentric Tudor chimneys and neat hedge-partitioned gardens, and her expression was one of dreamy half-interest, rather than one of any intensity. It was strangely comfortable, being up there with her, in silence, and he found he was in no hurry to break it, or to know what she was thinking as she looked down, not just on a place she knew, but a place she had hoped to know so much better.

It had, after all, been astonishing to him that she should ask him to walk with her at all. Of course, Belle didn’t want her going anywhere alone for the moment, and he had been conveniently lounging about in the garden, ostensibly waiting for Edward, when Marianne had come right up to him, and looked straight at him, and said she needed to go and have a look at Allenham, and would he go with her?

They’d climbed up, companionably enough, through the woods, across the lane and he’d made her, without fuss, stop to catch her breath before they set out across the ridge itself. He’d offered to carry the sweater she’d taken off, and she’d said, ‘No,’ and he’d calmly said, ‘Don’t be silly,’ and taken it, and she’d turned to him, laughing, and let him. And now here they were, on the rough, tussocky grass high above Allenham, in easy silence, a yard apart. Only a yard, Bill thought, but it’s a distance. And I’ve made it, because I am desperate not to push her. And, actually, it’s more than enough, it’s wonderful to lie here and watch her able to look down at that house without it distressing her. She’s not indifferent – that would be too much to hope for – but she’s not yearning, either.

As if she’d read his thoughts. Marianne turned and smiled at him.

She said, ‘It’s OK.’

‘Is it?’

She nodded.

He said, ‘Was it a test? To come back here?’

She nodded again. ‘Sort of.’

‘And you passed?’

She turned to look at him properly. Then she dropped her gaze to the turf. She said softly, ‘First love …’

He let a beat fall, then he said, ‘Tell me about it.’

She gave him a quick smile. ‘I don’t suppose there’ll ever be anything quite like it.’

‘No,’ he said hesitantly, ‘but that doesn’t mean it’s the best. Only that it’s unique in its own way.’

‘Because it’s the first—’

‘And one doesn’t know enough not to surrender oneself completely.’

She said, not in a melancholy way, ‘I liked that quality.’

‘Me too.’

She glanced at him. ‘Did you?’

He plucked a buttercup and twirled it. He said ruefully, ‘I wanted to drown in what I was feeling.’

‘Really?’

‘I didn’t want to know what she was like. In fact, I wanted not to know. I just wanted what I believed, and to feel.’

‘Wow,’ Marianne said respectfully.

He smiled at her. ‘And you?’

‘Just like you,’ she said.

‘So perhaps,’ he said gently, ‘we didn’t get it so wrong. We didn’t deliberately choose the wrong people, because almost anyone would have done, to feed the passion.’ He looked across at her and winked. ‘At least we chose beautiful people.’

She edged a bit closer to him across the turf. She said, ‘Elinor told me that Wills said I didn’t mistake him. He did mean it. He does.’

Bill looked at her. He said steadily, ‘Eliza knew she’d have been a different person with a better life with me.’

Marianne said, ‘Could you have lived with her?’

‘I’d have tried.’

‘Me too. And it would have half killed me.’

‘Yes. Sacrifice is only exciting at the beginning.’

She reached forward and took the buttercup out of his hand. She said, ‘I think I’m only beginning.’

‘In what way?’

‘To learn that there is more to a good life than … I can’t say it.’

‘A good life,’ he said, stating it.

‘Yes. You live a good life.’

He looked at her seriously. He said, ‘It could be.’

She looked away. She said, ‘I know.’

He got to his feet and held a hand down to her.

‘Up you get. Time to go home.’

‘Bill—’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No more. Not now.’

She leaned forward and threaded the buttercup into the top buttonhole of his shirt. Then she reached up and kissed him, quickly and lightly.

‘I’ve been so happy with you today,’ she said.

19

Mrs Ferrars’s flat in Mayfair had not been touched, decoratively speaking, for thirty years. Climbing up the building’s common staircase, Edward was transported back to his eight-year-old self, trudging up those same stairs on the same green trellis-patterned carpet between walls dotted with the same dim little flower prints in gilt frames, and feeling an apprehension and a reluctance that time had done nothing to diminish. When he pressed the brass doorbell outside the flat, he couldn’t help sighing. He had spent a great deal of his childhood sighing, one way or another. But the last few weeks had introduced him to a completely new kind of sighing, that resulting from an excess of incredulous happiness, which was the kind, he thought, listening to his mother’s heels tapping their way along the parquet floor inside the flat, he must arm himself with now.

‘Edward,’ his mother said without inflection, opening the door. She held up her powdery cheek for a kiss.

He bent obediently. He was aware that she had instantly observed and judged his clothes, and found them to fall short of the standard set by her formal day dress and expensive jewellery.

‘Hello, Mother.’

‘I imagine you’ve had lunch?’

‘Well, I—’

‘I’ll make coffee, then. Or you could make yourself useful, and make it for us?’

He said truthfully, ‘It’s never right for you when I make it.’

She surveyed him again, without, somehow, looking at him in the face. It struck him for the first time how alike she and Fanny were. In a few years’ time, they would be indistinguishable: tiny, immaculate, forceful and hard.

In her drawing room, with its elaborate curtains and draped tables bearing rafts of china boxes and silver frames, Mrs Ferrars wasted no time.

‘I have had a terrible time recently,’ she informed Edward. ‘As the mother of a family, I have suffered acutely. I feel, I don’t mind telling you, as if I have had no sons at all.’

Edward cleared his throat. He was holding the small bone-china mug she had handed him, a puddle of lukewarm coffee at the bottom.

‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I am here. I have come to see you.’

‘And what do you mean by that?’

He made an effort, remembering what Elinor had urged him to do. ‘I mean’, he said, ‘that whatever either of us has done, or not done, I am your son and I don’t want to be estranged from you.’

Mrs Ferrars considered this. She was perched on the edge of one of her upright sofas, her patent-clad feet neatly together. She didn’t look across at him. She said, ‘I hear you aren’t going to marry that girl.’

‘Not Lucy—’

‘Well, what was all that about then?’

‘It was a mistake, Mother. I’m just amazingly lucky that it wasn’t a worse one.’

She raised her chin. She said disapprovingly, ‘A fortune-hunter.’

Edward ignored her. He had no wish to discuss Lucy, or to go anywhere near the topic of his brother. He said, instead, ‘But you should know something, Mother. You should know that I am getting married.’

Mrs Ferrars turned to scowl at him. ‘Sensibly, I do hope.’

‘I’ve never done anything more sensible in my life.’

‘The Mortons are nice people,’ Mrs Ferrars said. ‘Scaffolding has proved—’

‘I’m not marrying a Morton,’ Edward said, ‘I hardly know them. I have no interest in them. I am marrying Elinor Dashwood. I have asked her, and she has said yes. I absolutely cannot believe that she said yes.’

There was a prolonged silence. Mrs Ferrars looked into the middle distance and Edward looked at his feet. Then she said, ‘Even you, with your over-developed sentimental side, must see the sheer folly of doing that. Tassy Morton is worth seven figures now, and will be worth many times that in the future. The Dashwood girl hasn’t a penny.’

Edward raised his eyes and looked steadily at his mother. He said, ‘I love her.’

Mrs Ferrars made an impatient gesture and clicked her tongue. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I am not being ridiculous,’ Edward said. ‘I have never been less ridiculous. Elinor is the most wonderful person I have ever come across, and it will be your loss if you don’t try and get to know her. I wouldn’t be here, if it wasn’t for her. She told me that I must make things up with you because, to be honest with you, Mother, three days ago I didn’t care if I never saw you again.’

Mrs Ferrars gave a little jump. She fished about in her sleeve and brought out a small lawn handkerchief, which she pressed to the skin under her eyes. She said unsteadily, ‘You must see the force of what I say. About the discrepancy in their wealth.’

‘I do,’ Edward said. ‘Of course I do. But the thing is, I don’t care. I only care about living with the best person I’ve ever met, for the rest of my life. I’ll be earning at Delaford. Elinor will earn more when she’s qualified. We get a flat thrown in. It’s perfect.’

Mrs Ferrars sniffed. She appeared, if no warmer, at least not to be rallying for further attack. After another pause, she said, ‘You know what I gave Fanny …’

‘When she married John?’

‘Yes. Well, of course you will have the same.’

‘Wow,’ Edward said, with genuine appreciation.

‘But no more.’

‘I don’t want more, I didn’t even expect—’

‘There’s no one on the planet who doesn’t always want more.’

‘Not me, Mother.’

Mrs Ferrars plainly decided to let this idiocy pass. She said, ‘I never wanted to fall out with my boys.’

‘No, Mother.’

‘I never want to stand in the way of your – happiness.’

‘Good, Mother.’

‘You can’t, of course, go back to where you once were in my estimation, but I am relieved to feel I have at least one of my boys back again.’

Edward said nothing. He put the little mug down among the nearest scattering of china boxes and leaned forward. ‘Come to Delaford, Mother.’

She looked mildly startled. ‘What?’

‘This weekend. Everyone’s coming this weekend, to see our flat. Come too. Come and meet Bill.’

Mrs Ferrars shifted slightly and blew her nose. She said cautiously, ‘Everyone?’

‘Elinor’s family. The Middletons. Mrs J. John and Fanny and Harry.’ He paused and then he said, ‘Ellie’s going to ring Lucy. Lucy and Robert might be there. We’re going to have a sort of picnic. In the grounds if it’s fine; in our flat if it’s not.’

‘A picnic,’ Mrs Ferrars said indistinctly.

‘Yes, Mother. I know you hate picnics, but it’ll be fun. I’ll find you a chair.’

‘I suppose’, Mrs Ferrars said with difficulty, ‘that you leave me no option.’

‘Is that a yes?’

She looked at him, quickly, for the first time since he had arrived. She gave him a gracious little nod. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘I must just get used to it, mustn’t I?’

‘My goodness,’ John Dashwood said, swinging the Mercedes four-wheel drive through the gates of Delaford, ‘Elinor must be insane.’

Fanny, tapping out a text on her smartphone, wasn’t paying attention. She said distractedly, ‘Why, sweetheart?’

‘Well, fancy accepting your brother – no offence, my angel – when she might have had all this!’

Fanny looked vaguely about her. Then, realising what she was looking at, her gaze sharpened. She said, ‘It seems very well maintained, I must say.’

‘Wonderful trees.’

‘Not better than Norland, sweetness.’

‘No,’ John said hastily. ‘No, of course not. I was just thinking that it all might have been Elinor’s.’

Fanny gave a little trill of laughter. She said, ‘Well, the fact that she bagged Ed leaves the field open for Marianne.’

‘D’you really think so? My goodness, look at the house!’

Fanny peered. She said, ‘What a pity to use such a gorgeous house for rehabilitation. Such a waste. Yes, I do think if Marianne is waved under Bill Brandon’s nose often enough, he’ll bite. He’s a pushover as far as daffy girls are concerned. You can see that a mile off.’ She twisted round in her seat to give the new au pair girl (Czech, this time) the benefit of a dazzling smile directed at Harry, strapped in his car seat. ‘OK, Harrykins?’

Harry, who was staring out of the window, took no notice. The Czech nanny didn’t lift her eyes from her own phone screen. Fanny twisted back. ‘Let’s hope everyone behaves,’ she said. ‘I simply dread seeing Lucy, I don’t mind telling you. And if she starts smarming all over Mother—’

‘She wouldn’t dare, dearest.’

Fanny took a lipstick out of her handbag and flipped the sun visor down to see in the mirror on the back. ‘There is no limit to her effrontery, Johnnie,’ she said, applying her lipstick. ‘And Mother has no resistance to Robert.’

The car ground on to the gravel in front of the house. It was slightly shabbier close to than it had appeared from a distance, but it was still supremely impressive.

‘It’s a stunner,’ John Dashwood said regretfully, ‘a real stunner.’ He slowed the car to a halt and wrenched on the brake. ‘And I’m telling you, my angel, that I wouldn’t have minded coming here as Bill’s brother-in-law. Think of that! Norland and Delaford.’ He gave a sentimental sigh. ‘My poor old dad would have been so proud of that!’

‘Elinor can’t possibly cook in here,’ Mrs Jennings said to Belle.

They were, on account of Mrs Jennings’s amplitude, almost wedged together into a narrow galley kitchen, whose end was entirely taken up with a window looking out towards the park.

‘Oh, I think Bill’s going to completely redo it for them,’ Belle said. She had drunk a celebratory glass of champagne she had been handed by Sir John, rather fast, and it had made her feel expansive and confident. ‘I think he’s going to knock walls down and everything. Elinor says we won’t recognise the flat in three months’ time.’

Abigail gestured towards the window. ‘Lovely view.’

‘Lovely place,’ Belle said. ‘Lovely people.’

‘Well, dear,’ Mrs Jennings said, ‘I wouldn’t say all of them were.’

‘Today,’ Belle said, ‘everyone seems rather lovely to me. And seeing Ellie so happy, and her and Ed with such a future. And even Marianne—’

‘She could do worse’, Mrs Jennings said, peering into the sink, ‘than set her cap at Bill Brandon—’

‘My girls’, Belle said, ‘never set their caps at anyone. Edward found Elinor in just the way that I hope Bill might find Marianne.’

Mrs Jennings straightened up. ‘Point taken, dear.’

‘He’s the kind of man, Abi, who needs someone to cherish. Like my Henry was.’

‘If you say so, dear.’

‘But I do have hopes.’

‘Well founded, I’d say.’

‘She’s so young yet—’

‘Talking of young,’ Mrs Jennings said suddenly, ‘what about Margaret?’

Belle focused abruptly. ‘Margaret?’

‘Hasn’t she got a boyfriend yet? She’s old enough.’

‘She’s fourteen. Honestly, Abi, it’s all you ever think about. You’re like those nineteenth-century novels where marriage is the only career option for a middle-class girl.’

‘Just like you, then, dear. You and me both. People pretend things have changed, but have they, really? Look at Charlotte. No brains, I admit, but plenty of capability, and how does she use it? Running houses for Tommy and inventing schedules for that baby. Which reminds me. Or rather the mention of Charlotte reminds me. She told me something about Wills—’

Belle said loftily, interrupting, ‘I don’t wish to hear his name, let alone anything about him.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Abigail said. ‘Of course you do. Especially if it reflects well on Marianne.’

Belle gave a little shrug. ‘In that case …’

Abigail Jennings wedged herself into the narrow space between the cooker and the wall. She said, ‘He went to see Jane Smith.’

Belle tried to look indifferent. ‘So?’

‘He told Charlotte, dear. Charlotte has a bit of a soft spot for him because she knows he still adores Marianne. Well, he went to see Jane Smith, thinking she might refuse to see him. But she didn’t, and she let him speak, and tell her why he’d married the Greek girl, and how he felt about Marianne, and all about that awful drama with Marianne in hospital. Everything. And when he’d finished, she let a silence fall, and then she said – quite affectionately, he told Charlotte – that she forgave him. And of course, he could hardly believe what he was hearing, and he was about to cast himself at her feet and tell her how wonderful she was when she stopped him, and said that if he’d done the right thing by Marianne, he could have had hers – Jane’s – money as well as her forgiveness, but as it was, he’d have to make do with just the latter! Charlotte said she expected him to be furiously angry, but she said he was more rueful than angry. He said it was a gamble that hadn’t paid off, but that he wasn’t sorry he’d taken the risk. And …’

She paused and looked at Belle with significance.

‘And’, she went on, ‘he said to Charlotte that although he didn’t love his wife, he didn’t think his life would be all dark, either, that he’d probably salvage something out of it one way or another. But that he’d never feel about anyone the way he felt about Marianne, and if he heard that she’d married Bill Brandon, he’d be gutted. That was the word he used to Charlotte, dear. Gutted.’

Belle took a deep breath and edged herself past Abigail to the doorway. ‘I never trusted him, you know,’ she said. ‘It was something about his eyes.’

‘Holy smoke,’ Sir John Middleton said to his wife, ‘will you look at those two?’

Across the lawn, to the south of Delaford House, came Mr and Mrs Robert Ferrars. They were dressed alike, in cream cutaway coats over skinny jeans and cowboy boots. Lucy’s hair was in long ringlets down her back, and Robert’s was crowned with a cream trilby hat. They wore sunglasses, and they were holding hands.

‘It’s jaw-dropping,’ Sir John said.

Mary Middleton put her own sunglasses on so that she could scrutinise them less conspicuously. She said, ‘What do they think they’re doing?’

Sir John took her arm. ‘Watch,’ he said.

Halfway across the lawn, Bill Brandon had set up tables, under sun umbrellas, laden with food and drinks. People had gathered there, in companionable groups, among them Edward and Elinor. He had his arm firmly around her shoulders and they looked, as Mary had pointed out to her husband, as delighted with themselves and their situation as a newly engaged couple ought to be.

They were not, plainly, aware of Lucy and Robert advancing towards them, but were instead talking to John Dashwood, who, since he was facing the direction of the house, saw the newly married couple before Edward and Elinor did. He not only saw them, but was utterly astonished by what he saw, and broke off what he was saying to stand there, his mouth half open, and his arm, clutching a tumbler of Pimm’s, outstretched in a gesture of amazement.

‘Ellie!’ Lucy Ferrars cried, loud enough to be heard across the lawn. ‘This is so fab!’

She flung her arms out wide, and then swooped forward and wrapped them round Elinor.

‘Big brother!’ Robert exclaimed to Edward, who was standing stunned by what had happened to Elinor, and did the same.

‘They planned it!’ Mary Middleton exclaimed to her husband.

‘She’s a baggage, that girl,’ Sir John said.

‘You didn’t think so once.’

‘Neither of us did, my duck. We were completely taken in.’

‘Well,’ Mary said, ‘that’s not happening now! Look at Ellie!’

Elinor had stepped smartly back out of Lucy’s embrace, and taken Edward’s hand to help him do the same. Lucy and Robert exchanged glances and took another step forward. Elinor held up a hand.

‘No!’ she said warningly.

Sir John shook his wife’s arm. ‘Good girl,’ he said approvingly. ‘Good for Elinor.’

There was a small stir in another group across the lawn, and from it emerged Mrs Ferrars, diminutive and upright in a linen coat dress, her handbag over her arm. She marched determinedly across the grass until she was standing beside Elinor.

‘It might be’, she said to Elinor in carrying tones, ‘how you go on in your family. But it’s not the case in ours. Family is family. Blood is thicker than water. This party is, I believe, to celebrate your engagement to my son. It was at your instigation that my younger son and his wife were invited. So I think it hardly behoves you not to welcome them when they do come, do you?’

There was an appalled silence. Edward and Elinor stared at his mother, mute with surprise. And then Lucy Ferrars, tearing off her sunglasses and uttering a theatrical sob, tottered forward and put her arms round her new mother-in-law instead. ‘Oh, thank you!’ she said tremulously. ‘Thank you, thank you.’

The sun was setting. From the window of the room that would be their future sitting room, Edward and Elinor watched the shadow of the house inch its way over the grass to where the trees began, on the edge of the park. Elinor said, ‘It makes me think of Norland.’

He put an arm round her. He said, ‘If it wasn’t for Norland …’

‘I know.’

He kissed the side of her head. He said, ‘We pulled it off today, you know.’

‘Even your mother’s little moment?’

‘Even that. Lucy won’t get very far. My mother will do almost anything for Robert, but she won’t let anyone else have first call on him. It might have looked like a little triumph for Lucy today, but it won’t last. Mother has a hair-trigger response to exploitation.’

‘And Fanny—’

Edward laughed. ‘Fanny won’t forgive Lucy.’

‘She was quite nice to me today.’

He kissed her again. He said, ‘No one can resist being nice to you. In the end.’

Elinor leaned against him. She said, ‘D’you think Ma means it, about moving into Exeter?’

Edward said, ‘At least she’s got the good sense not to try and move here.’

‘It would be better for Mags, in Exeter,’ Elinor said. ‘Barton Cottage will be unbearable for Mags if I’m not there, and Marianne’s in Bristol much of the time. And if Ma actually gets this little teaching job she’s after—’

‘Hey,’ Edward said suddenly, ‘look at that!’

Along the edge of the trees, in and out of the dappled sunlight, came a couple walking together, her long skirt catching picturesquely on the clumps of tall grasses as she passed. Elinor bent forward to see better. She said, ‘They’re not holding hands.’

‘No. But they look pretty comfortable together.’

‘She’s holding flowers instead. She’s always done that. When we were little, we had to keep stopping on walks so she could pick something, and then she’d just leave them somewhere, on the doorstep or the table or in her gumboot, and they’d die.’

Edward said softly, ‘They actually look pretty happy, don’t you think?’

Elinor smiled.

‘Nine months ago she said he was old and boring and wore scarves to protect his throat in winter.’

‘What would she say now, d’you suppose?’

Elinor glanced up at him. She laughed. She said, ‘I think she’d say that she was mistaken!’

Edward looked out across the lawn again. He said, ‘What d’you reckon his chances are?’

Elinor turned to face him, so that she could put her arms around him and lay her cheek against his chest.

‘I reckon’, she said, her voice faintly muffled, ‘that his chances are pretty good. Marianne can’t do anything by halves, and certainly not loving.’

‘All or nothing.’

‘Yes.’

Edward put his own arms around her and laid his cheek on the top of her head. ‘All,’ he said contentedly. ‘All. I’ll settle for that.’