‘How could he behave to you as he has?’

Marianne shook her head slowly. ‘How could he do what he’s done – to everyone? How could he?’

‘M, I don’t know.’

Marianne slid down in the bed again. ‘Ellie, you’ve been so great. But I can’t talk about it. I can’t. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I can’t think or speak just now, I can’t.’

‘No, no …’

‘Are you staying?’

‘I’ve got to go back to work.’

‘Will you come back next weekend?’

‘Marianne, you can’t just stay in bed, in Mrs J.’s spare room.’

Marianne turned away once more. ‘I may have to. What’s that?’

‘What’s what?’

‘That noise.’

‘Oh, somebody coming to see Mrs J., or something. M, Bill was so lovely, telling me, so straight.’

‘He is straight,’ Marianne said. ‘He’s not the one who gives men a bad name.’

The noise from down the corridor beyond the closed bedroom door was growing louder. Marianne said, ‘You’d better go.’

‘Will you be OK?’

‘Yes. Yes. Just get that bag out of the room, would you? And could you ring Ma again for me? Poor Ma. You’d think it had all happened to her.’

Elinor bent and kissed her sister’s cheek. Marianne’s hand came up and held Elinor’s hair, compelling her to stay close.

‘Thank you,’ Marianne whispered. ‘Thank you.’

‘Surprise!’ Mrs Jennings cried as Elinor came into the room. She made an extravagant and theatrical gesture, flapping the scarf she was wearing round her shoulders for emphasis.

Lucy and Nancy Steele were side by side on the sofa, holding cups of tea. Nancy, impeded by being on a very low sofa while wearing very high heels, made no attempt to get up, but Lucy sprang to her feet and rushed at Elinor as if they were bosom friends whom fate had recently cruelly prevented from seeing one another. Carefully holding her teacup away from her body with her left hand, Lucy put her right arm entirely round Elinor and pressed her cheek to the side of Elinor’s head.

‘Ellie.’

‘Hello.’

‘God, I’m so thankful to see you. I thought you’d never make it to London, what with work and everything, I thought it was useless, hoping I’d see you!’

Elinor extricated herself. ‘I’m – just here for the weekend.’

‘And these girls’, Mrs Jennings said, ‘came up to London in some style, isn’t that right?’

‘Totes amaze,’ Nancy Steele said, tossing her hair. ‘Couldn’t believe it! He just said, Look, two seats in the plane going begging! Hilar!’

Mrs Jennings nodded, knowingly. ‘So useful to have a top-flight plastic surgeon in hot pursuit—’

‘Oh, not pursuit,’ Nancy said, tossing her hair again. ‘I mean, the plane makes all my girlfriends well jeal, but not the paunch, please!’ She threw her head back and gave a little scream.

‘Sorry,’ Lucy said sotto voce to Elinor. She looked round. ‘Where’s Marianne?’

‘Not well, I’m afraid.’

Lucy made a face of intense sympathy. She put her teacup down.

‘Oh, the poor love. It’s so utterly ghastly, being trolled online like that.’

Elinor moved a few steps away. Lucy said, ‘I mean, she’s so well out of it and he’s just so blatant, isn’t he? God, it’s been such a day, hasn’t it? First all that horrible, tacky rubbish about your sister on YouTube, and then all the stuff about Robert Ferrars—’

‘She doesn’t know, dear,’ Mrs Jennings said, rustling across the room with her Sunday paper in her hands. ‘She’s been so caught up with poor Marianne that she won’t have seen this.’ She thrust a double-page spread under Elinor’s nose. ‘Look at this, dear. The original party boy. He couldn’t be less like his gloomy brother if he tried!’

‘And of course,’ Lucy said, moving to stand very close to Elinor once more, ‘that’s all over the social media too. But in a good way. Or at least that’s what Robert will think!’

Elinor gazed at the newspaper held out to her. Under the headline King Robert – Britain’s Party Royalty was an enormous picture of a good-looking, slightly feminine young man in a tight-fitting grey shirt and trousers, with a fur coat slung over his shoulders, a large silver cross on a chain round his neck, and his arms around two identical girls in cocktail dresses.

‘Read on!’ Mrs Jennings commanded.

Elinor said weakly, ‘I’m not sure I need to …’

‘One hundred parties in the last year!’ Mrs Jennings said. ‘Incredible. That’s one party every three nights that wouldn’t have happened without him!’

‘Too silly,’ Lucy said, looking straight at Elinor. ‘Brainless. My poor Ed must be cringing.’

‘Amaze,’ Nancy said from the sofa. ‘Amazeballs.’

Elinor took a step back. ‘Well, I suppose it’s good to be good at something.’

‘Only if it’s worthwhile,’ Lucy said. ‘Or genuine. Like poor Marianne.’

‘She’s much better …’

‘Can we see her?’

‘Well, I think she’s still fairly—’

‘Of course,’ Lucy said earnestly. ‘Oh, of course. I was just going to sit on her bed and have a bit of a girly chat but if you think …’

‘I do,’ Elinor said. ‘And’ – glancing at her watch – ‘I’ve got to get the bus, a bus back to Exeter.’

From the sofa, Nancy Steele erupted into giggles.

‘A bus!’

‘Good news, dear,’ Mrs Jennings said, folding up her paper. ‘Your brother rang, asking how Marianne was. Of course, your sister-in-law had seen everything on this YouTube thing, everything. Never mind her little brother in the papers! How do you have a private life these days, I ask you! But your brother John said he and Fanny happened to be in London for something or other, and he wanted to do something to help, so I said he could come and take you to the bus tonight and have a chat.’ She beamed at Elinor. ‘Wasn’t that sweet?’

‘My goodness,’ John Dashwood said, the moment he had Elinor in the car, ‘you have made a useful friend there!’

Elinor, busy with her seat belt, affected not to understand.

‘Abigail Jennings,’ John said. ‘She clearly has a lot of time for you and Marianne, and that’s quite a flat, isn’t it! Penthouse in Portman Square? Not much change out of five or six, I’d say. And charming, I thought her, really charming.’

‘She’s very generous,’ Elinor said primly.

‘Well,’ John said, turning the car towards Park Lane, ‘for girls in your situation, it never hurts to have someone like her on your side. A sort of patroness, I suppose. What luck, Ellie. You really did fall on your feet, didn’t you, going down to Devon. Lovely cottage, by all accounts, and the Middletons sound delightful. And so supportive of you all. Fanny would really appreciate an introduction to Mary Middleton, you know, both of them with young kids and huge houses to do up and keep up. Could you do something about that?’

‘Well, I—’

‘The thing is, Ellie, we could do with a tip or two. It’s wonderful at Norland, of course it is, but I can’t describe to you what it’s costing me.’ He beat the steering wheel lightly with one hand. ‘I’m telling you, it’s just insatiable. I had to buy old Gibson out – remember him? East Kingham Farm? – and of course he knew I needed the land because it always was Norland’s, in the past, so he had me over an absolute barrel. And what with rewiring and replumbing the whole house, never mind this amazing new reed bed sewage system that Fanny was quite right to insist on – the Prince of Wales has one at Highgrove, you know, state-of-the-art eco everything – it’s been non-stop cheque-writing, I don’t mind telling you.’

Elinor cleared her throat. She said, ‘How is Harry?’

‘Oh, on top form. Absolutely jet-propelled. We took him to the zoo and then he had a day with Granny. Well, we all had a day with Granny because he’s a bit of a handful on his own, and if you hadn’t been going back tonight – what is this job thing you’ve got in Exeter, anyway? – I’d have asked you to give Fanny a bit of a break from Harry because she is simply exhausted, being such a completely hands-on, conscientious mum.’

‘I’d love to see him.’

‘Talking of seeing people,’ John said, swerving round Hyde Park Corner, ‘I hear you are very definitely seeing someone!’

Elinor tensed. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘Not what I hear!’ John said triumphantly. ‘I hear that not only have you and Marianne – I do wish she hadn’t made an ass of herself over that Willoughby boy – managed to get your knees very well under Abigail Jennings’s table but that you’ve hooked an extremely satisfactory fish. Big estate in Somerset, never been married, solid business going, good age—’

‘No, John,’ Elinor said firmly.

‘Now, I know your modesty …’

To Elinor’s relief, they were now approaching Buckingham Palace Road. John looked fretfully ahead. ‘Do you have to travel by bus?’

‘Yes,’ Elinor said, ‘I do.’

He slowed the car to a gradual standstill under some plane trees. Then he switched off the engine and turned to look sternly and directly straight at her. He said, almost threateningly, ‘Elinor.’

‘Yes?’

‘I want to say something very seriously to you. You may have got very lucky in Devon with all your new connections, but do not be an idiot. If this Brandon fellow comes good, take him. Because it’s no good hoping for Fanny’s brother. None at all. Ever. Do you hear me? Just please use the good sense you at least were born with and put Ed right out of your mind. He is not for you, or the likes of you, most definitely. OK?’

12

Belle Dashwood had resolved, as one of many New Year resolutions, that while she had the cottage to herself during the day, she would not turn on the central heating, but would instead light the fire – logs generously supplied by Sir John, and replenished by Thomas – in the sitting room, and add extra sweaters. It was not only, as she pointed out to Elinor, a material contribution to their situation, but was also, she felt, an almost spiritual acknowledgement of Marianne’s suffering and Elinor’s quiet stoicism. It seemed to her that it was somehow fitting to be cold, and that she was acknowledging a need for mild sacrifice that the whole family appeared to feel, even Margaret, who was currently astonishingly biddable and amenable and had, that morning, actually thanked her mother for breakfast, and put her cereal bowl in the sink without being reminded at least four times.

Kneeling in front of the fireplace – and noticing in what immaculate order Thomas laid the logs for her; well, for Marianne, really, even in her absence – Belle made an effort not to remember Wills standing on that very spot, so magnificent, so gallant, in his damp clothes, towelling his hair. How excited they’d all been, how trusting, how full of hope and expectation, and now all of it was over, dashed to the ground, trampled on. Wills had, quite simply, broken Marianne’s heart, not just by throwing her over – and so brutally! In public! – but also by turning out to be such a worthless person. Belle turned the word over in her mouth. Worthless. Without worth. No worth of any kind, beyond his beauty, and that turned out to be part of the wickedness of him, because it was a deception, wasn’t it, to look so good and to be so bad?

And he was bad. Elinor had told her something of his badness when she got back from London, about the Greek girl and the money, and she had hinted that there was more, which she might divulge later, but Belle wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any more. She had, as she told Elinor, heard quite enough to convince her that Wills’s beauty was, as she’d always hinted – hadn’t she? – only skin deep. Elinor had looked at her with the kind of affectionate scepticism she’d sometimes caught on Henry’s face, a sort of fond tolerance, which had made her most indignant and extra determined to assert her mistrust of Wills from the very beginning. She was equally assertive in her conviction that Marianne must stay away from everything that might remind her of happier and more hopeful times.

‘I’m glad you think that, Ma,’ Elinor had said that morning before she went to work, ‘because I don’t think I could persuade Marianne to move just now, whatever I did. It’s probably shock, the effect of shock. There’s so much for her to come to terms with.’

‘Exactly,’ Belle said. ‘Just what I said to her. Poor darling. But she wouldn’t be warned.’