The broad smile that he now directed at Harriet was intercepted by Emma. It was clear to her now that he was smitten – just as she had thought he would be.

‘I’ll do my best,’ Emma said modestly.

‘Which is all that any of us can do,’ said Philip. ‘In your case, though, your best will undoubtedly be quite exceptional. Royal Academy standard, I’d say.’

After her guests had left, Emma picked up her sketchbook and paged through it thoughtfully. Harriet had agreed to do a sitting the following day but she had yet to decide what the backdrop would be.

‘I don’t want it to be too formal,’ Harriet had said.

Emma agreed. ‘No, of course not. Something natural.’

‘Oh, natural … yes.’

Emma smiled; to be making a risqué suggestion without even realising one was doing so! Au naturel. It was Harriet herself who had made the suggestion, and there might well be a case for a nude study. What could be more natural than that? But she was not quite sure how to propose it, and she was not sure whether her friend would agree.

‘But you suggested it yourself,’ she would claim.

And Harriet would look at her with that slightly confused look that was at once so irritating and so utterly appealing.

13

It was about this time that Jane Fairfax came to stay with her aunt, the unfortunate Miss Bates, and her grandmother, the even more unfortunate Mrs Bates. The two Bateses lived in the centre of the village, in circumstances that were cramped both physically and financially. It was widely believed that both of them had suffered a serious financial loss at more or less the same time – a loss that obliged them to exchange a comfortable existence for an uncertain life of near-indigence. The financial loss was said to have come about when they had both been persuaded by a helpful relative to become Lloyd’s Names – private backers of insurance syndicates who, in return for standing behind the contracts, took a share of the often very considerable profits. They did this and prospered considerably in the first year of the investment, only to be rudely reminded the following year of the unlimited personal liability that the system entailed should claims paid out exceed premiums paid in. Re-insurance could take the sting out of most losses, but occasionally events just became too much, and the Names had to make good the deficit. People said that the loss of a ship off the Horn of Africa, closely followed by the grounding of a tanker on a reef off Kochi, consumed most of Mrs Bates’s capital. A series of destructive storms in Taiwan and Japan did the same for her daughter’s.

The response of Mrs Bates to this change in her fortunes was to more or less lose the power of speech. From being an enthusiastic conversationalist, she withdrew into a world of brooding silence, rarely opening her mouth other than to make occasional requests of her daughter. Miss Bates may have been upset by what had happened, but did not appear as traumatised as her mother. She had always been optimistic and cheerful, and continued to be so, very rarely, if ever, referring to their reduced circumstances, and bearing the indignities of genteel poverty – turned blouse collars, for instance – with remarkable fortitude.

Jane Fairfax’s own circumstances were similarly straitened. She was an orphan, and her misfortune was therefore twice that of Emma or Frank Churchill, both of whom had lost only one parent. She had, however, been supported by a generous and understanding family, the Campbells, who had made it their business to ensure that she was given a good general education and, most importantly, piano lessons. That, however, was all that they could provide, and Jane was every bit as hard up as Harriet Smith – more so, perhaps, as, unlike Harriet, she had not been working. Teaching English as a foreign language was her destiny too, it seemed, and she would be looking for a suitable job doing that at the end of the summer.

Emma had not met Jane Fairfax before, but had heard a great deal about her from Jane’s aunt. Miss Bates would talk on any topic with an equal degree of pleasure, but when it came to the subject of Jane her enthusiasm seemed to know no bounds. There were no limits, it appeared, to Jane’s talents, and her musical ability, in particular, had always been prodigious. ‘I’m not saying she’s Mozart,’ Miss Bates gushed. ‘I’m not saying that at all.’

But you are, thought Emma. That’s just what you’re saying.

‘Put it this way,’ Miss Bates continued. ‘She has just the sort of ear that Mozart had. And it’s the ear, you know, that counts.’ Miss Bates said this to Emma without any intention of implying that Emma could never approach Jane’s level of accomplishment, but that was the way that Emma, and those who overheard the comment, understood her remark.

‘And do you know something?’ Miss Bates continued, ‘She’s the most amazing cook! Yes, our Jane. As you know, Mother and I are simple eaters and pick at our food.’

Except when you come to dinner with us, thought Emma. Then you make up for it.

‘She’s one of those artistic cooks,’ continued Miss Bates. ‘She transforms a plate – positively transforms it. And it’s not just the look of the food that’s so wonderful – those dribbles of sauce and so on – it’s the flavours too. My dear, the flavours! Do you like truffle oil? I certainly do, although Mother’s a bit suspicious of it – she says that it smells a bit like the socks that she wore at school. I know what she means, although we had nylon, which isn’t terribly comfortable but doesn’t smell quite as bad, although I think it’s something to do with the sort of skin you have. But Jane works wonders with it. She takes the tiniest slice of truffle – a fragment, really – and uses it to infuse olive oil with the most delicate perfume. I can’t imagine where she got this from because I gather that Mrs Campbell keeps a very simple kitchen, just as Mother and I do.’

‘Perhaps she went on a course,’ offered Emma. ‘Or maybe she spends a lot of time watching those cookery programmes on television. Some people watch an awful lot of those, I think.’

If there was any criticism here of those who watched too much cookery television – which there was – it was lost on Miss Bates. ‘Oh, I think she’s been on one of those,’ she said. ‘There was some sort of competition, and Jane won, not surprisingly, I suppose. Mother and I watched her on television. “There’s Jane,” I shouted out, because Jane was far too modest to warn us she would be on. “There’s Jane, Mother!” And Mother, who’s a bit short-sighted at the best of times, tried terribly hard to see Jane, but I think was confused by all those lights on the set – studio lights are so bright. It must be as hot as the Sahara in there, with all those bulbs. Poor Mother thought that one of the cooking pots was Jane, and although one may laugh about it now, I suppose it was a mistake that was made easily enough, with all that glare and the shape of the human head – not Jane’s in particular, but of all heads – being not all that dissimilar to a cooking pot.’

There had been many such conversations, and on several occasions Emma had had to bite her tongue to avoid giving voice to her thoughts about the remarkable Jane Fairfax. If she were so talented, she asked herself, then what was she doing spending three months of summer cooped up with aged relatives in a two-bedroom cottage in Highbury? Why was she not in London, or even New York, impressing people there with her musical and culinary skills? And if she were as brilliant academically as Miss Bates claimed – ‘Jane has not thought it necessary to do any A levels,’ her aunt had boasted. ‘She is well beyond them, you know’ – then why were universities not falling over themselves to offer her a place, fully funded of course? No, thought Emma, this Jane Fairfax is impossible – she simply cannot be.

It was not until Jane had been in Highbury for several days that Emma decided that the time was right to pay Miss Bates a visit. It was not the aunt she wished to see, of course, but the niece, the news of whose arrival had quickly spread through the surrounding area.

It was Miss Taylor who told Emma of Jane’s arrival. ‘I met her,’ she said as she stopped to speak to Emma in the High Street. ‘It was a brief meeting, but …’

Emma was impatient for news. ‘Tell all,’ she urged. ‘Everything.’

Miss Taylor watched her. She knew Emma. ‘She’s fairly attractive,’ she said. ‘Dark hair. High cheekbones. A bit exotic – in a refined sort of way.’

‘Oh,’ said Emma. Her curiosity was now more aroused than ever. This Jane Fairfax, with her high cheekbones, might liven Highbury up a bit.

‘But she has a rather – how shall I put it? – a rather yearning look to her.’

Emma’s eyes widened. ‘I wonder what she’s yearning after. Or who.’ She remembered that she was in the presence of her governess, for whom grammar mattered. ‘Or even whom. Or do you think one can just yearn in general, without any particular object for your yearning?’

Miss Taylor smiled at the thought. ‘Possibly. Perhaps she’s had some disappointment – or more than one.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Emma. ‘It must be fairly disappointing being Miss Bates’s niece, poor girl. One might feel that one could have been allocated a more exciting aunt in life.’

‘I’m sure that she’s very fond of her aunt – and her grandmother.’

‘Possibly.’

‘Not possibly,’ said Miss Taylor firmly. ‘Highly likely.’ She paused. ‘It’s useful to remember that it’s only a matter of chance that we are who we are, you know. You could be Jane Fairfax, for instance. You’re not, as it happens, but that’s only a matter of the purest chance. We do not choose the bed we are born in.’

Emma said nothing. Now Miss Taylor seemed to relent, and softened. ‘There’s something else,’ she said.

With the argument about genetic chance out of the way, an almost conspiratorial tone – the sort of tone that accompanies the revealing of sensitive or surprising information – crept into the conversation.

‘Yesterday,’ began Miss Taylor. ‘Yesterday afternoon, to be precise, a van drew up outside Miss Bates’s cottage.’

‘Her things?’ suggested Emma. ‘Jane’s impedimenta?’

They both smiled. Impedimenta was a word that Miss Taylor had taught Emma and Isabella when they were very small. The playroom is littered with your impedimenta. Please tidy it. They had loved the sound of it, and had named a kitten ‘Impedimenta’.

‘No,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘Not her impedimenta. I imagine that she has not brought a great amount of impedimenta with her – there wouldn’t be room in the cottage. No, it was a piano.’

Emma’s eyes widened. ‘They’ve got hold of a piano just because she’s coming to stay?’

Miss Taylor shook her head. ‘No. That’s what I thought to begin with. But then I happened to meet Miss Bates in the greengrocer’s the following day and I asked her about it. She said that it was a gift that somebody had sent to Jane. That was all. I asked her who had sent it, but she just ignored my question – you know how she can be when she’s prattling away about something. She went straight off the subject and started talking about growing kiwi fruit in Cornwall or some other such nonsense.’

‘What sort of piano was it?’ asked Emma.

‘A Yamaha,’ answered Miss Taylor. ‘I saw it because I was walking past just as the men were unloading it. Two young men covered in tattoos. They brought it out on a sort of trolley thing – pianos can be terribly heavy, even for those with tattoos. It was a spanking new Yamaha.’

‘A Yamaha,’ muttered Emma. ‘Upright?’

‘They’d never get a grand in that place,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘Not even a baby grand.’

‘It doesn’t really matter,’ said Emma. ‘A new Yamaha will sound really good. They do. It’s a bright sound, quite different from my old Collard and Collard.’

‘There is nothing wrong with English pianos,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘They are reticent for a reason – just like the English themselves. But the crucial question we might ask ourselves is this: Who would have bought Jane Fairfax a piano?’

It was the crucial question, and it hung in the air for almost a minute, as crucial questions can do, defeating both Miss Taylor and Emma. Of all the things that one might buy for another, a piano was perhaps the least obvious.

Miss Taylor finally had a suggestion; at least one possibility could be eliminated. ‘Those people who’ve been looking after her? What’s their name again? The Campbells? Are they the sort to buy pianos? As gifts? No, I suspect that they’re the sort of people who have never bought anybody a piano.’