Gently she coaxed it out of him. ‘I stopped myself thinking about it,’ he said. ‘Every time it came into my mind, I said, It didn’t happen. But it would always come back to me, this thought: I gave away my son. I gave him away.’

‘And your dreams?’

He had not mentioned those – not to Edward, nor to her.

‘Yes, I dreamed about playing with him. I dreamed that he was there in the flat. I dreamed that I was taking him to school.’

‘Of course you would.’

She told him something that she knew every patient liked to hear – that he was not alone, that there were others. ‘I have somebody who comes to see me because she gave her baby away in adoption,’ she said. ‘Now she wants her back, but, as you know, you can’t do that. And there are others. I’ve had people coming in here – not just women, men too – who have felt guilty about abortions, about the fact that they disposed of something they now feel was the beginnings of a baby. Not an easy subject, and not one we like to talk about. But some of these people feel regret, and it can haunt them. What you’re experiencing is not all that different from what they feel.’

James listened, but did not say anything.

‘Every case is different, though,’ she continued. ‘Some people act selfishly. They give a child up for adoption because they can’t be bothered with it. By no means everyone is like that, but some are. You didn’t do that, did you? From what you tell me, you gave Frank up because you couldn’t cope. You were bereaved – it was entirely understandable. And then, later on, when you could have taken him back, you realised that he had a much better life with your wife’s relatives. That wasn’t a selfish decision – it was quite the opposite, in fact.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, I do – and I think most people would look at it that way. Most of us are quite selfish when it comes to our children, you know. We want things from them: love, the satisfaction of seeing them do well, and so on. Plenty of parents don’t think just of their child’s best interest. Oh, they may pay lip service to it, but they really think of themselves, of what they get from parenting.’

She saw him several times, and it helped. The dreams of Frank seemed to stop, or changed in such a way that he no longer remembered them. He found himself thinking of the boy less frequently, and, when he did come to mind, his thoughts of him were free of remorse. He wrote to the Churchills and expressed his pleasure that Frank was so happy in Australia. He wrote in such a way that he made them think that their move to the wine estate had been entirely motivated by concern for Frank’s future. He said that he hoped that Frank might be able to come and see him for a brief holiday some time; he made sure to stress that it would be brief, as he did not want the Churchills to read into his invitation any suggestion that this would be the beginning of an effort to get Frank back.

The Churchills returned to England on visits three times during Frank’s childhood – when he was ten, when he was twelve, and then shortly after his sixteenth birthday. On each occasion they offered James as much time with the boy as he wished, and the offer was readily accepted. The first visit was not a particularly long one, but the second was for an entire month, and James took Frank for a full two weeks. They went to Ireland together, and camped for several days on the Dingle Peninsula, enduring rain and flooded fields. Frank was appreciative of everything that his father did, and thanked him profusely, with a formality that James found strangely old-fashioned. The manners came from the school he attended – he had spent his first year at a weekly boarding school in Perth, where such things were still stressed and over-familiarity with adults was as yet unknown.

The trip to Ireland gave him an opportunity to talk to his son about what had happened. They lay in the darkness, listening to the sound of the rain on the roof of their tent; somewhere, in the distance, were waves crashing against rocks.

‘You may wonder why you went to live your uncle and aunt,’ he said. ‘You must have thought it a bit strange.’

‘No,’ said the boy. ‘I didn’t think about it because I don’t really remember anything.’

‘It was because your mother died, you see.’

‘I know,’ said the boy. ‘That’s why.’

The conversation faltered at that point, and did not resume. What is the expression? James silently asked himself. What is the expression that pop psychologists use? Or problem-page people? It came to him. Unfinished business. Exactly.

By the time that Frank visited at sixteen, it was too late to talk. The cautious, rather reserved little boy had become something quite different: a gregarious, confident teenager, endowed with blossoming good looks and conscious of his power to charm. A young Adonis, he turned the heads of almost all those who even had so much as a glimpse of him. His wide smile exposed a line of white that contrasted strongly with the olive of his sun tan; a head of blond curls, like that of a Renaissance angel, topped shoulders that were broad for a boy and that gave him an air of strength and firmness. The Churchills paraded him with pride; James stared at him with unconcealed wonder, verging on disbelief. Was this what Australia did?

‘Frank wants to be a geologist,’ Mr Churchill said to James. ‘Is that OK with you?’

‘Of course,’ said James. They consulted him from time to time on matters pertaining to Frank’s education, but he had never sought to interfere.

‘There are plenty of opportunities for geologists in Western Australia,’ continued Mr Churchill. ‘And he could help to run the vineyard too. He’s good at that now. He helped a lot with the last harvest.’

James nodded. Frank’s life lay elsewhere – in the things that sixteen-year-old Australian boys liked to do; in a world of surfboards and freedom. There was no future for him in England, even now that he had Randalls. What were a few acres in Norfolk, bound by hedgerows and lanes, to the trackless ranges of Western Australia; what were his copses to their jarrah forests; Norfolk’s chilly beaches to their sun-drenched coasts? The psychotherapist had suggested all those years ago that he should do two things: one was to enjoy Frank’s good fortune – thereby validating his own, earlier choice – and the other was to envisage a sense of a future for himself. He would do both.

He followed her advice. He found Randalls and began to work on rescuing it from near-ruin. And once he had made progress with that, he started to consider his situation. He had a house; he had a farm; he had a comfortable income. What was lacking? A wife, perhaps? A lover? He had seen the bankruptcy lawyer at a party recently. She had been with her new partner, a man with horn-rimmed spectacles and a rather prominent nose. He had watched her from across the room before she noticed that he was there. He felt nothing; there was no pang, not the slightest one, and that confirmed his feeling that he was ready to find somebody who would not think him unexciting, as she clearly had.

They had talked, struggling to make each other heard in the crowded room.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Absolutely. And you?’

She did not hesitate. ‘Yes. I’m busy.’

‘All that bankruptcy?’

‘Yes. It never ends.’ She looked at him enquiringly. ‘And are you …’

He knew what the unfinished question was. ‘I’m by myself,’ he said. ‘But I’m seeing someone.’

It was a lie, and he never normally lied. He did not know why he should wish to mislead her; it was something to do with pride, he thought. He did not want her pity.

‘I hope she’s right for you,’ she said.

He hesitated. ‘I think she is.’

His hesitation was not caused by doubt, but by the sudden realisation that he knew exactly who it was who was just right for him; it had suddenly occurred to him. Of course she was. Of course.

8

‘There’s nobody of your own age,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘And yet you’ve put all this effort into this. It really is impressive.’

Emma had certainly worked hard, but there was somebody of her own age, as she reminded him. ‘Harriet Smith is coming. Remember? She’s my age.’

‘Of course. I’d forgotten about her.’

‘And then there’s George Knightley,’ said Emma.

Mr Woodhouse nodded. ‘Of course, but then he’s my friend, isn’t he? I don’t really think of him as your friend too … and yet, I suppose he could be.’ He directed an enquiring glance towards his daughter. ‘You do like him, don’t you? I’ve never asked you.’

Emma shrugged. ‘Yes, I like him. He’s just … well, he’s just Mr Knightley, isn’t he?’

‘But you don’t call him that any more, do you? You used to, but not now.’

‘I call him George. He’s not all that older than me, I suppose.’

Mr Woodhouse agreed. ‘No. A dozen years isn’t all that much of an age gap, although I suppose it can be when you’re very young.’

‘Well, he’s much younger than you, isn’t he?’ Emma pointed out. ‘What’s the age gap between you and him? Twenty years?’

‘If I’m fifty-one this year,’ said Mr Woodhouse, ‘and he’s thirty-four – seventeen years. Mind you, I never think of George’s age. He’s one of these people who doesn’t really have an age. Do you know what I mean?’

Emma did. ‘There are some people with whom it doesn’t really seem to matter,’ she said. ‘You talk to them without thinking about age.’

‘So when you were born,’ said Mr Woodhouse, ‘George was eleven or twelve.’ He paused, and looked at his daughter with affected curiosity. ‘You are twenty-two, aren’t you?’

‘If you don’t know that, Pops,’ said Emma, ‘then we shall have to have you tested to see if you’ve lost the plot. You do know who the Prime Minister of this country is, I hope. Do you? Isn’t that the test the doctors use?’

Mr Woodhouse pretended to search his memory. ‘I’m not one hundred per cent sure,’ he said. ‘But I can tell you it’s not Tony Blair.’

Emma laughed. ‘So you see there are two people who are more or less my contemporaries, and then …’

‘Poor Miss Bates. Poor James Weston. Poor Philip Elton.’ He looked at Emma. ‘Have you decided on the placements? It’s always so difficult.’

‘I shall put myself at one head of the table,’ said Emma. ‘As hostess, if you don’t object.’

He inclined his head. ‘It’s your house.’

‘And next to me, on my right, I shall place … now let me think. I shall not have Philip Elton: I couldn’t bear that. I’m prepared to do my duty for England and so on, but to sit next to him, frankly, is too much. So I shall have James Weston, who’s quite good-looking, for fifty-something, and at least is not dead boring. Then on his right, which will be your left, I suppose, we shall have Miss Taylor. I’d rather like James to talk to Miss Taylor, I think.’

Mr Woodhouse raised an eyebrow. ‘Why? Do you think they have much to say to each other?’

‘I do. They’re both intelligent people. She can talk about anything, and so she should find some subject that they have in common. We can leave that up to them, I think. One doesn’t want to have too much of an agenda, don’t you think?’

‘I have none,’ said Mr Woodhouse.

‘And then on your right, we shall have to put Miss Bates. I’m sorry about that, but I don’t see where else we can put her, unless you want to sit next to Philip Elton, which I would wish on you less than I would wish Miss Bates.’

‘I’m perfectly happy to sit next to her,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘She has some interesting anecdotes: it’s just a question of separating the wheat from the chaff. And as for Philip, there’s nothing much wrong with him.’

‘No, you’re right,’ said Emma. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Philip Elton – except for his personality, his attitudes, his conversation, and his views on all possible subjects.’

Mr Woodhouse sighed. ‘You can be very uncharitable, Emma.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I feel so bad about it. I shall try to do better.’ She smiled at her father. ‘What did St Augustine say? Make me good and chaste, but just not yet?’

He ignored this. He did not see what St Augustine had to do with it. ‘Miss Bates will sit next to Philip?’ he asked.

‘Yes. And that will leave Harriet Smith, this new person, sitting next to me. I shall be able to find out all about her. The whole story. It will be very interesting. And she can also talk to George – I’ll put him between them.’

There was a large drawing room at Hartfield in which the guests that evening were offered glasses of wine and canapés before dinner. Emma had prepared the canapés herself, with Mrs Firhill offering them round. The evening was a warm one, and the late May sun was still shining, penetrating the French doors that opened on to the lawn outside, filling that side of the room with a warm glow. As Emma sipped on her glass of English wine, she glanced in the direction of Harriet Smith, who was engaged in conversation with Miss Bates, with whom she had arrived, and with Philip Elton. Harriet had been a pleasant surprise; Emma had expected somebody rather mousy, even dowdy – an expectation that had something to do with the name, Harriet Smith, which she found curiously old-fashioned. And yet Harriet could not have been more different, at least in respect of her looks, which were anything but dowdy. She was about the same height as Emma – which was on the tallish side – and had very similar colouring, which was sandy-coloured hair and a pale, almost translucent skin. But whereas Emma’s eyes were hazel, Harriet Smith’s were blue, of an intensity so striking that they seemed to overshadow every other aspect of her appearance. She had, Emma decided, a very particular beauty about her, a quality that required more than the possession of conventionally attractive features. Good looks could be a cliché, which meant that those who satisfied the normal criteria of beauty could fail its more more subtle tests. Thus it was that those with very regular features could just miss being beautiful because they lacked some tiny human imperfection, some irregularity that imparted to their appearance the poignancy, the reminder of ordinary humanity, on which real beauty depended. It was quite possible to be too perfect, and end up being plastic, as Hollywood stars so often were, with their well-placed curves or sculpted chins. The heart would not stop at such features, whereas it might well do so when a snub nose, or one not quite dead-centre, or ears that were just slightly too large, were combined with eyes that seem to reflect and enhance the light, or with lips that formed a tantalising bow, or with perfectly unblemished skin. That was beauty, thought Emma, of the sort possessed by that boy in Bath who had too many freckles, but whose eyes were wide and had a constant look of surprise in them.