‘My dear,’ Abigail Jennings said, ‘has she stopped crying?’

Belle was making coffee. She had not been at all pleased to see her visitor, especially as she had neither Elinor nor Margaret at home to shield her. She nodded towards the huge jug of mop-headed chrysanthemums that Abigail had brought with her.

‘Lovely flowers.’

‘You look, my dear, as if you need a stiff drink rather than flowers. It’s exhausting living with a broken heart. I remember it all too well with my own girls. Mary was a terrific weeper but luckily Charlotte was more like me and always thought there’d be a better bet somewhere else every time it happened. Mind you, I thought she’d do the dumping when it came to Tommy Palmer. But no. He has no manners whatsoever but she seems to find him funny. No accounting for taste, that’s for sure. Except when it comes to Wills – he seems to be to the taste of every living thing with a pulse.’ She looked at Belle with concern. ‘Your poor girl.’

Belle said carefully, ‘It would help if we knew why.’

Abigail raised her plump hands and let them crash on to the table, making the mugs Belle had just put down dance. ‘Money, dear.’

‘No, he—’

‘Sorry, dear, but it’ll be money. He’ll have asked Jane for another handout and she’ll have given him a flea in his ear. That car …’

‘Beautiful.’

‘Tens of thousands it would cost, dear. Tens. Even to lease it. He has champagne tastes, that boy.’

‘But’, Belle said, feeling that even if Abigail wasn’t the right person it was a relief to have someone to talk to, ‘why be so melodramatic, if it was just about money? Why rush off leaving Marianne in pieces like this if—’

‘Pride, dear. Men like that don’t care to be dependent. He’d want Marianne to think he’d earned it.’

‘Hasn’t he?’

Abigail gave a cackle of laughter. ‘He wouldn’t know hard work, dear, if it jumped up and bit him on the bottom!’

Belle began to pour the coffee. ‘They were so adorable together.’

Abigail leaned forward, folding her arms under the cushiony shelf of her bosom. ‘Well, luckily, dear, marriage bells aren’t the only answer for girls these days, are they? And Marianne’s only just out of school, for goodness’ sake.’

Belle said abstractly, ‘I was only eighteen when I met their father.’

‘You were an exception, dear. The modern way is to be like your Elinor, with a career and no time wasted mooning over this F boy. Jonno and I have been killing ourselves over that. The F-word boy, we call him!’ She looked round. ‘Where is Marianne?’

Belle pushed a mug of coffee across the table. ‘She’s gone for a walk. She walks all the time, poor darling, wearing herself out. I make her take her phone and her inhaler but I can’t help her sleep.’

‘And Elinor?’

Belle looked a little startled, as if she’d temporarily forgotten about Elinor. ‘Oh, she’s at work.’

‘Sensible girl. Does she like it?’

‘I think so,’ Belle said uncertainly. ‘I mean, she’s only just started, so it’s a bit early to know.’

Abigail took a swallow of coffee. ‘He’s a naughty boy, Wills, a very naughty boy. And the sooner Marianne gets over her infatuation, the—’

‘It’s not an infatuation!’ Belle said indignantly.

Abigail stared at her. Belle leaned towards her, across the table. ‘Don’t you’, she said, in a different and more emotional tone of voice, ‘believe in love at first sight?’

Abigail went on staring. Then she picked up her coffee mug again. ‘Sorry, dear,’ she said, ‘but no. I do not.’

On the hill above Allenham, where the fateful thunderstorm had begun, Marianne sat on the damp grass, hugging her knees. Below her, the old house lay quietly in hazy autumn sunshine, on its hillside, a plume of bluish smoke rising softly out of one of the marvellous twisted Elizabethan chimneypots, the only other sign of life being the miniature figure of one of Jane Smith’s gardeners raking up leaves. She couldn’t hear him from where she sat, but she could watch him, with avidity. He was raking across the sweep of grass below the window behind which she had had the most wonderful afternoon of her life, in a four-poster bed whose hangings, Wills said, had been embroidered in 1720. She had put a hand out to touch them, reverently, and he had captured her hand in his at once and said that she wasn’t to give a flicker of her attention to anyone or anything but him, or he’d be jealous.

He’d been gorgeously, blissfully jealous of everything that day. She’d wanted to examine every painting and rug, to exclaim over panelling and marquetry and plasterwork, to run her hands over velvet chair seats and polished chests, but he’d stopped her, laughing, pulling her to him, taking her face in his hands, touching her, kissing her, pushing her down into that welter of linen pillows and silky quilts on the great bed until she capitulated completely and let him take her over. Her eyes filled now thinking about it, thinking about him. It had been the ultimate in truth and beauty, to surrender to someone like that when it was someone that you were meant – meant, as she and Wills were – to belong to.

‘Don’t contact me,’ he’d said to her on that Sunday, kneeling on the hearthrug in front of her, clutching her to him, his cheek pressed to her belly. ‘Don’t do anything until I’m in touch again, anything.’

She’d had her hands in his hair. She said shakily, ‘But how am I to know—’

‘Trust me,’ he said. She could hear that his teeth were clenched. ‘Trust me.’

‘Of course.’

He lifted his face. He said, ‘You do, don’t you?’

She nodded vehemently. ‘You’ve got to,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to. You’re the only person in my life who I trust and who trusts me. The only one.’

Even in her shock and misery, she had felt a jolt of happiness then, a little flash of recognition and self-justification. He’d be in touch. He’d be back. He said he would – and he would. He belonged to her; they belonged together. Trust was too small a word for what they had between them.

She got slowly to her feet. The gardener was now piling the leaves into a kind of mesh-sided truck. It wasn’t fair, really, to expect even Ma, let alone Ellie and Mags, to have the first idea of what she was feeling, or of what she and Wills felt for each other. Ma and Dad had had something pretty good going, for sure, but Mags was still a kid and Ellie didn’t have a passionate bone in her body. She, Marianne, must remember that. She must go home and, while needing to remind them all that, with Wills absent, she was only half a person at all times, she must be forgiving and understanding about Elinor’s limitations.

She began to walk back along the ridge towards the lane and the path down to Barton Cottage. She put a hand into her pocket to pull out her phone – and withdrew it. She would not torment herself by checking it for messages. She had switched it to silent for that very reason. He had said he would be in touch and explain everything, when whatever was the matter was sorted, and he would. She knew it. She knew him and he would do what he had promised. More likely, actually, she thought, scrambling down the bank to the lane where she had first seen his car, he would probably surprise her.

Half skipping down the path to the cottage, Marianne was aware that she felt almost light-hearted. It had been good to look at Allenham, good to remind herself of that magical day, good to reassure herself that exceptional people could not have anything other than equally exceptional relationships. And as she came round the corner of the cottage to the area of gravel Sir John had laid down for parking, she caught a gleam of silver, glossy silvery grey, exactly the colour and finish of Wills’s car, and she began to run, stumbling and gasping, towards it, her arms outstretched and ready.

But it was a Ford Sierra on the gravel. A battered old Ford Sierra with a peeling speed stripe down the side. And Edward Ferrars was getting out of it, looking thin and tired, in the kind of sweatshirt that Wills would never have been seen dead in.

He gave her a half-hearted smile. ‘Hello, M,’ he said.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Margaret demanded.

They were sitting round the kitchen table with macaroni cheese and a bowl of salad that Margaret had positioned so that nobody could see she hadn’t taken any.

Edward put down a forkful of pasta. He said vaguely, ‘Oh, here and there. Plymouth and stuff. The usual.’

Elinor wasn’t looking at him. She wasn’t, in fact, looking at anyone. She had arrived home, with Margaret, in the dusk, to find Edward and Marianne playing the guitar together, and Belle bustling in the kitchen – ‘So lovely to have someone to cook for, even if it is only macaroni cheese’ – and nobody had seemed particularly pleased to see her, let alone troubled to ask her how her day at work had been. All right, it had been her fourth day, not her first, but it was still her first week. And Ed – well, Ed might have managed to make some distinction between greeting her and greeting Mags. Mightn’t he?

‘Did you go to Norland?’ Belle asked.

She’d had a glass of wine while she was cooking and her cheeks were pink. He said, still vaguely, ‘About a month ago.’

Marianne leaned forward, her eyes shining. ‘How was it? Oh, how was it?’

‘Like everywhere else in autumn,’ Elinor said shortly. ‘Covered in dead leaves.’

‘Ellie!’

Elinor jabbed her fork into her supper. ‘Some things’, she said, ‘just aren’t for sharing. Like you and your thing for dead leaves. Mags, you haven’t had any salad.’

‘What about these Middletons?’ Edward said.

‘I hate salad!’ Margaret shrieked.

Marianne closed her eyes. ‘They’re awful. Beyond words.’

‘No, they’re not!’ Elinor cried.

‘Because of them,’ Marianne said dramatically, ‘I’ve had more to bear than I have ever been asked to bear in my life.’

Elinor pushed the salad towards Edward. ‘Ignore her.’

‘Darling!’ Belle said reprovingly.

‘It’s a beautiful place, here,’ Elinor said steadily. ‘And this is a practical house. And the Middletons are kind.’

Belle looked at Edward. ‘Talking of kind, Ed, how is your mother?’

He pulled a face. ‘Don’t.’

‘Why not?’ Marianne said.

Edward picked up a cherry tomato out of the salad and put it in his mouth. He said, round it, ‘She simply will not get that I don’t have ambition.’

‘But you do,’ Elinor said quietly.

He didn’t look at her. He said, ‘Not her kind.’

‘Well, darling,’ Belle said brightly, ‘I expect she worries about you. I expect she wants to be sure you’ll have enough to live on.’

Edward said gloomily, ‘Money isn’t everything.’

Elinor took a breath. Then she said, ‘No. But it needs to be enough.’

‘Enough,’ Marianne said dreamily, ‘to run a beautiful old house and be free to have all the adventures in the world.’

‘I want to win the lottery,’ Margaret announced. ‘That’d solve everything.’

‘Maybe—’

Elinor smiled at her younger sister. ‘Oh, Mags!’

Edward said, smiling at her too, ‘You could buy your own wheels then.’

‘I’d buy paintings,’ Marianne said. ‘And clothes. And islands. And people to come and sing for me.’

Edward grinned at her. ‘Romance for you. Cars for her. It’s so nice that some things don’t change.’

Marianne looked abruptly grave. ‘But I am changed, Ed.’

There was a tiny silence. Then he said unhappily, ‘Me too.’

Elinor said, too loudly, ‘Well, I’m not.’

‘No,’ Belle said with relief. ‘Nor you are.’

‘I seem,’ Elinor said, ‘to be just as bad at reading people as I ever was. I think they’re one thing and then they turn out to be something quite different. Probably I’m just stupid to believe what anyone says. I should stick to their behaviour, shouldn’t I? I should just believe what I see and not what I hear. Don’t you think?’

There was another silence, considerably more awkward. And then Mags reached across the table and seized Edward’s hand. ‘What’s that?’

‘What’s what?’

‘That ring! You’re wearing a ring.’

Edward put his hand out of sight on his lap. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘Show me!’ Margaret insisted.

Edward hesitated. Belle leaned forward, smiling. ‘Come on, darling. Show us.’

Reluctantly, Edward drew his right hand out of his lap, and laid it on the table. On his third finger was a silver band with a small, flat blue stone set in it.