That had made an impression on her, and it came back to her now as she thought about Miss Taylor and James. The chaplain had been right, she thought, even if she was not sure that his basic premise – the existence of God – could be defended. There was, she decided, a very particular pleasure in bringing two people together and seeing what would happen; in a way, it was rather as God might feel – if he felt anything. Of course it was quite possible that the results of one’s intervention might not be what one hoped they would be; there would be introductions, no doubt, that had dreadful consequences – Anne Boleyn would certainly have been introduced to that rotund psychopath, Henry VIII, and the outcome of that was undeniably unpleasant. But the risk, she thought, was worth taking, and James, benign and relaxed as he was, would hardly treat Miss Taylor as Henry had treated Anne.

It occurred to her that she might do it again, and she thought of Harriet Smith. There she was, this rather naïve but very beautiful young woman, wasting her time teaching English to puzzled students at what was, after all, a disused airfield. What a waste that was, when Harriet could be livening up her life – or having it livened up for her – with a love affair. She imagined that there were plenty of young men at Mrs Goddard’s who would leap at the chance of a relationship with an attractive girl of the English-rose type such as Harriet was. But the problem with that would be that their command of English would not be quite up to it: there would be something vaguely comic about these young men saying things like, ‘Please can you tell me the way to the railway station and, by the way, I love the colour of your eyes.’ No, it would not come out like that at all, but would probably be: ‘Excuse me please, the colour of your eyes is very blue, is it not, and what is the way to the railway station?’

She smiled at the thought, and decided that Harriet should not be wasted on a student, but should be brought to the attention of somebody of greater possibilities – somebody who could sort out the financial problems that she had alluded to and, at the stroke of a pen over a chequebook, make possible the gap year for which she was trying to save. You had to be realistic about these things, thought Emma; a hard-up boyfriend living in a garret was material for a romantic opera, but was not necessarily what you were looking for if you had no money yourself. There was no reason why solvent boyfriends could not be good-looking – and entertaining too. If she could only introduce Harriet to somebody like that – somebody who would take her away from Mrs Goddard’s school and whisk her off somewhere exotic … or at least take her out to dinner in London now and then, and to parties where people had fun and did not talk about the way to the railway station and such matters … The trouble, though, was that Harriet did not appear to know anybody, and that meant that she would need assistance in finding the right candidate for this affair she was planning – or rather that Emma was planning on her behalf. Emma thought for a moment: Whom did she know who had the money to give Harriet a good time?

The issue of Harriet Smith’s emotional future arose rather sooner than Emma had planned. It was a week or so after the departure of Miss Taylor that Emma drove into the village in the Mini Cooper her father had given her for her twenty-first birthday – given, but then immediately regretted. Cars were dangerous, and he was entirely conversant with the information that the Consumer Association published on the survivability of accidents in various types of vehicle. It was not that a Mini Cooper, even one painted, as Emma’s was, in the colour known as British Racing Green, was more dangerous than other makes of car, it was just that every car had a mortality risk associated with it, and Mini Coopers were no exception. The only entirely safe car, Mr Woodhouse felt, was one kept resolutely in the garage. However, Emma had pressed him for a car and he’d realised that if he did not provide her with one, then she could end up buying one for which the safety ratings were lower than anything he might produce.

Emma liked to drive into the village from time to time. There was not much for her to do there other than to buy the newspaper and occasional groceries, but it was an outing and it took her out of the house. After dropping in at the post office that doubled up as a newsagent, she would walk along the short village high street to the newly opened coffee house at the crossroads. A coffee house was something entirely new for Highbury, which was more tea-room territory than anything else, but it was proving popular with the locals, particularly with those who felt that the village pub had become unbearable since it had declared itself a ‘gastro-pub’ and put up its charges by almost forty per cent. Not that the coffee house was cheap, but its brews were good and there was always a selection of shortbread, muffins and scones that could be eaten while reading one of the magazines the owners thoughtfully provided for their customers. Emma liked a table by the window and would sit there for half an hour or so, checking her emails and watching the progression of people down the High Street. She knew virtually everybody, of course, and they recognised her, sometimes waving cheerfully when they saw her looking out of the window.

On that particular morning she was not aware of Harriet Smith coming into the coffee house, as she was engrossed in reading a long and rather emotional email from one of her Bath friends. This friend, who had been going out with the same young man for three years, had recently split up with him and was bemoaning the fact that now that he was gone she would have to go to all the trouble of finding a replacement. ‘I know that you don’t care one way or another about having a man on hand,’ she wrote. ‘Frankly I need to have one about the place. I just do. But finding one is such a bore, Emma, and I wish I could just close my eyes and, bang, there’d be a man.’

Emma’s reply was succinct. ‘Get someone to set you up,’ she said. ‘Either that, or internet dating, but with that I suppose you run the risk of getting some dreadful geek. Try being a nun. (Only joking.)’ She did not believe in emoticons, but this was an occasion when she thought she might just add one. While she was trying to work out how to do a wink, she heard a voice behind her and looked up sharply.

‘If you’re busy, I won’t disturb you,’ said Harriet.

Emma pressed the send button without bothering about the emoticon. ‘I’m not busy,’ she said. ‘Just reading an email from a friend.’

‘I love getting emails,’ said Harriet. ‘But I don’t get all that many. I wondered whether my spam filter was stopping them all, but it wasn’t. I don’t even seem to get much spam.’

Emma was on the point of saying that she had heard that there were such people, but stopped herself. ‘I’ll send you an email,’ she said.

‘Oh, that would be so nice,’ said Harriet as she sat down opposite Emma. ‘And I’ll reply to you.’

‘That would be really kind,’ said Emma. She was staring at Harriet. Surely somebody who looked as beautiful as that, she thought, would be constantly pestered by men. Did Harriet have to fend them off? Was there something about her – some vaguely fragile quality – that made men fear that if they got too close to her, if they actually touched her, she would break? There were some people who gave one that impression; they were not made for the rough and tumble of ordinary life.

The cappuccino Harriet had ordered was now brought to the table. ‘You’re so kind,’ she said to the owner of the coffee bar. ‘And your coffee’s so lovely. I could drink cup after cup but it would just make me all jumbled up! And heaven knows what I’d do if I were jumbled up.’

Emma looked at her with interest. ‘You could do something really dramatic,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ said Harriet, looking momentarily concerned. ‘Do you really think so?’

Emma laughed. ‘Not really. I don’t see you doing anything to be ashamed of. Not really.’

‘Well, that’s a great relief,’ said Harriet. ‘I can drink my coffee now without worrying about dashing off and doing something I might regret.’

Emma’s eye ran down the clothes that Harriet was wearing. They were nothing special, she decided; in fact, they looked rather cheap. And when it came to her shoes, these were a pair of trainers that had once presumably been red but were now a washed-out colour somewhere between khaki and pink. Somebody like Harriet, with her china-doll build, should not be in trainers, thought Emma. She should be wearing dainty soft leather shoes like ballet pumps, perhaps with a delicate bow on each toe. Shoes like that were expensive, of course, and if you didn’t have the money, or were saving it for your gap year, then they would be beyond your reach. But trainers! It would be interesting to see what a small amount of money spent on Harriet could achieve, thought Emma. It would be a transformation.

Harriet raised her cup to her mouth and took a small, cautious sip – as if the ingestion of any more copious quantity of coffee might have an immediate jumbling effect. She lowered the cup and dabbed daintily at her mouth with a paper napkin. Her lips, Emma saw, were perfect: a Cupid’s bow of a mouth.

‘There’s something I wanted to tell you,’ Harriet began. ‘I hope you don’t mind. It’s a bit of a secret actually, but I felt that I could share it with you.’

‘Oh?’ said Emma.

‘There’s a boy who lives on the edge of the village,’ said Harriet. ‘He’s the same age as me – twenty.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Robert Martin? Do you know him? I expect you know everybody.’

Emma frowned. Robert Martin?

‘His parents have that little hotel. The Oak Tree Inn.’

It dawned on Emma whom Harriet was talking about. The Martin family had owned the hotel for over ten years, and yes, she knew Robert Martin very slightly – enough to exchange a few words if they met in the street, but not much more than that. ‘Actually,’ said Emma, ‘it’s more of a bed-and-breakfast place. It’s not a real hotel.’

Harriet looked crestfallen. ‘It’s quite nice inside,’ she said. ‘They’ve got a bar and a television lounge.’

Emma smiled. A television lounge! Could Harriet really be impressed by the thought of a television lounge, which would almost certainly have patterned carpets and smell vaguely of fried food and furniture polish? Surely not.

‘What about him?’ Emma asked. ‘What about this Robert Martin? Does he help with the B&B? Perhaps he makes the breakfasts. Fries the sausages and two rashers of bacon. Makes the cold toast.’ She wrinkled her nose, but the gesture was wasted in Harriet, who beamed though the uncomplimentary description of the breakfast.

‘Oh no,’ said Harriet. ‘His mother makes the breakfasts. Robert helps to take them through to the guests.’

‘So he’s a waiter,’ said Emma.

‘No,’ said Harriet. ‘He just helps his parents – that’s all.’

Emma waited for Harriet to say something more; she did not like where this was leading.

‘He’s asked me out,’ said Harriet. ‘For dinner at the Chinese restaurant. The one on the Holt road. You must know it.’

‘I don’t really go for Chinese restaurants,’ said Emma. ‘But some people do, I suppose.’

‘Twenty per cent of the world’s population do,’ said Harriet, and then added the explanation, ‘That’s how many people are Chinese – one in five.’

Emma shrugged. ‘That’s fine,’ she said, adding, ‘for them.’ She paused. ‘And are you going to go to this Chinese restaurant with him?’

Harriet nodded. ‘I think so. I haven’t replied to him yet, but I think I will. I love the way they cook duck, you know. I love duck anyway, but the Chinese make it taste really delicious with that special sauce of theirs.’

‘Monosodium glutamate,’ said Emma.

‘They don’t always use that stuff,’ said Harriet, now slightly on the defensive.

‘But do you like him?’ asked Emma. ‘It’s all very well liking the way the Chinese cook duck, but do you like this Robert Martin?’

‘He’s rather sweet,’ said Harriet. ‘He’s got these big eyes, you see, and when he smiles there’s a dimple right there on his chin. It’s really sweet.’

Emma frowned. She had thought Harriet was weak – just the sort of person to have her head turned by the first young man to show an interest in her – but she had not imagined that she would be quite this weak. To be struck by a dimple; could she really see no further than that? It occurred to her that she could not allow Harriet to be that easily conquered, and that she would have to act to prevent this. It was not selfishness or jealousy – nothing like that – it was a simple desire to get the best for her new friend. And Robert Martin, surely, was not the best she could do, whatever dimples he may have on his chin.