‘No,’ Elinor said, ‘it’s not about him.’

Margaret wriggled back to her seat. She said, ‘Jonno says she has the attention span of a midge.’

‘He’s right.’

‘Well, why are you emailing her?’

‘I’m not,’ Elinor said patiently. ‘She’s emailed me. To tell me all over again about Lucy and Ed. And to make sure I get the message, Lucy has emailed me as well.’

Margaret put the end of a pen in her mouth. Round it, she said, ‘What message?’

‘That they are getting married.’

‘We know that.’

Elinor sighed again. She said, looking at the screen and not at Margaret, ‘Well, they want to rub it in. That Lucy felt she should offer to let Ed go if it meant a breach with his family and no inheritance, and that he wouldn’t hear of it and told her she was an angel.’

‘I bet he never said that.’

‘No,’ Elinor said. ‘That was me. In my crossness.’

‘Why are you cross?’

‘Because Ed is behaving so well. And because Nancy Steele is such an airhead and because Lucy only writes to me like this so that I will forward the email to Mrs J. and Mary and everyone, and they’ll think: Ah bless, what a lovely person Lucy is and how horrible the Ferrarses are.’

Margaret took the pen out of her mouth. She said, ‘Well, aren’t they?’

‘Some of them.’

Margaret began to roll the pen back and forth across the table.

‘Ellie …’

‘What?’

‘Does it matter about money? Does it matter whether Ed and Lucy have any?’

‘Well,’ Elinor said carefully, ‘they have to live.’

‘He hasn’t really got a job, though, has he? And she kind of faffs about doing courses and stuff. Not earning, really.’

Elinor looked back at her screen. ‘Lucy asks me to see if Jonno would give Ed a job. Or Tommy even.’

‘Crikey,’ Margaret said unexpectedly.

‘Yes.’

‘Would they?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Would Jonno or Tommy Palmer really give Ed a job?’

Elinor looked at her sister. ‘Well, what do you think?’

Margaret picked her pen up again. ‘I think’, she said, ‘that money is even more boring than love. But not quite as utterly boring as biology.’

In the bath above the kitchen – she could hear her daughters’ voices through the floor, even if she couldn’t make out what they were saying – Belle Dashwood lay in the hot water, her face stiffly blanked out by a face mask. Mary Middleton had been seized with an urge for clearance, and had emptied out the contents of her lavishly appointed bathroom cupboards, sending down to Barton Cottage a carrier bag full of expensive half-used pots of this and that, including a face mask which promised to leave your skin not just unlined, but dewy. Margaret had been very contemptuous of the idea of dewy. ‘They just mean wet. Who wants to look wet, unless they’re a fish or something?’

Belle had no desire to look like a fish. But she had discovered, in the last few weeks, she did have a desire not to look only like the mother of three grown daughters. She had begun to be anxious not to be seen only relatively, indeed to be acknowledged as a woman who amazed people by revealing how old her daughters were, a woman who was admired for what she still had, rather than was pitied for what she now lacked. Lying in the bath and feeling her skin tightening under the cracking shield of the mask, Belle reflected that although Henry was, and always would be, the love of her life, the heart was a muscle as well as an organ, and required exercise.

She had tried to suggest something of the kind on the telephone to Abigail Jennings. The conversation had started with Belle’s gratitude for all the kindness shown to Marianne for so long, and had then proceeded, on Belle’s part, to hint at that kindness being possibly extended to Marianne’s mother.

‘It’s wonderful here,’ Belle said, gazing out of the window at the rain falling as straight as stair rods on to the paved patio outside the kitchen window. ‘So beautiful. And Jonno’s so kind. And Mary. Everyone’s adorable. But it is – it is rather remote, you know.’

Abigail, no doubt surveying a very different view and prospect from her London window, chose not to get the hint. ‘Don’t worry, dear. I’ve no intention of forgetting Margaret. It’ll be her turn next, I promise you. Charlotte has persuaded Marianne down to her weekend place, with the baby, and I can’t make her return with me here afterwards, so I’ll be all bereft, won’t I?’

Belle threaded her fingers into the coil of the telephone cable. ‘I just wondered, Abi, whether I might …’

‘You, dear? What would you want with London, living where you do? Send me Margaret, in the holidays, and then there won’t be any jealousy, will there, between the sisters.’

Belle had taken a deep breath. ‘Abigail,’ she said, ‘you’ve been so kind, and so hospitable. But my daughters are my daughters. They aren’t library books. They’re not there just for anyone to borrow on a whim, you know.’

And then she had put the phone down. Abigail did not ring back. That was three days ago, Belle reflected, lying there in a no longer quite hot enough bath, and there had been absolute silence. Trying to communicate with Marianne – she was better, Elinor said, but very bruised still – was hardly easy and now Elinor was eluding her, too, declining, as she put it, to be a go-between any longer.

‘You’ll have to sort it yourself, Ma. I can’t do any more with Marianne. I can’t make things smooth with John and Fanny. I can’t always be the one who does all the bits of life you don’t want to be bothered with. I have got a job to do, which pays a lot of our bills, and keeping that going and getting Margaret to school is all I can manage right now. All. OK?’

Belle groped along the side of the bath for a face flannel, soaked it, wrung it out and began to wipe it across her masked face. The relief was indescribable. Was half the effect of beauty treatments the sheer deliverance when they stopped? She heaved herself up out of the bath and climbed dripping on to the mat beside it, reaching for a towel. What a mess it all was, suddenly – or had it been a mess, in fact, since Henry died? No money, John and Fanny’s behaviour, this cottage which they had to be so grateful for, Willoughby, Ed – Ed! Belle wrapped the towel round herself tightly, like a sarong. Was it Ed? Was that why Elinor was so distinctly unhelpful? Was Elinor, in truth, deeply upset about Ed and the Steele girl, even though she swore she wasn’t?

She crossed the bathroom and rubbed a circular space in the steam on the mirror. She leaned forward and peered at her post-face-mask complexion. Did she look dewy? Or did she just look – red?

Bill Brandon was waiting for Elinor in an Exeter coffee shop. He had rung in the morning to say that he was in Exeter that day, and could he give her lunch.

‘I don’t really eat lunch.’

‘You’ve got to eat something!’

‘I bring something. In a plastic box, from home.’

‘Sounds depressing.’

‘It is.’

‘Well, at least let me buy you a non-depressing sandwich you haven’t had to make yourself, then.’

‘Thank you,’ Elinor said, sounding suddenly grateful, even thankful, ‘I’d – I’d really like that.’

Now, Bill put a plate down on the table between them. ‘Crayfish and cream cheese and rocket. Smoked salmon. Chicken and salad, all on granary bread. Now, eat.’

Elinor said, sincerely, ‘Thank you. Really, thank you.’

Bill pulled out the chair opposite to hers and sat down. ‘And I ordered two cappuccinos with chocolate on yours. Yes. I hate cappuccino but I knew if I didn’t drink it, you wouldn’t drink yours, either.’

‘Am I being a pain?’

He smiled at her, holding out the plate of sandwiches. He said, ‘You’re allowed to be fed up, you know.’

‘I’ve always felt that it was fine to be fed up as long as you didn’t take it out on other people. And I’m not being very nice to Ma.’

Bill took a sandwich himself and regarded it. ‘She’s a lovely woman, your mum, but she exploits you.’

‘No, she—’

‘Yes,’ Bill said with another emphasis. He took a bite of sandwich. ‘Eat up,’ he said and then, chewing and grinning, ‘What would Mrs J. make of us now, eating lunch together in a public place?’

Elinor had bolted her first sandwich. Steadying herself with a second, she said, ‘Why would she make anything?’

‘Because she has it in her gossipy head that I’d come on to you if I dared.’

Elinor stopped eating. She said, ‘But …’ and paused.

He smiled at her. He said, ‘I do think you are wonderful.’

She smiled back. ‘And I think the same of you.’

‘But not …’

‘No. Not.’

He held out the plate of sandwiches again. He said, ‘Do you think you and I are the sort of people who are doomed to want what we can’t have?’

Elinor looked away. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Elinor?’

‘Yes?’

‘Ed Ferrars. And Lucy. What do you really feel about that?’

Elinor looked back and directly at him. ‘Fine,’ she said.

‘Really fine? Really?’

‘Bill,’ Elinor said, ‘I am determined – absolutely determined – not to waste my emotional energy in yearning. I don’t even entirely understand what’s going on, and yet I do see how he’s got himself into this place. It’s all to do with family, his family. And his mother. They are crashing snobs, his family, and he hates that. He’s defending Lucy; he’s being kind of old-fashioned, and honourable.’

‘But he can’t condemn himself—’

Elinor leaned forward. ‘Bill, I think he’d rather live, not particularly happily, in a way he thought was right, and not – not purely materialistically, like his family, than in a way that didn’t sit well with his conscience. I know it isn’t how people think now, but I think he’s got to do it his way.’

A waitress came over from behind the counter and put two huge thick white cups of coffee down in front of them.

‘Enjoy,’ she said, without enthusiasm.

When she had gone, Bill said, ‘And you?’

Elinor looked at the fat cushion of foam on top of her coffee. She said, without complete conviction, ‘He’s never promised me anything. And he’s got to do what seems right for him to do. I’d be the same, in his place. You’re stuck with yourself, so you might as well try and be someone you can stand to live with.’

Bill said gently, ‘You must be honest with me. Would you mind if I tried to help him?’

Elinor’s head jerked up. ‘Help him!’

‘I’ve got a vacancy at Delaford. It’s a managerial job, but more people-orientated than admin- or finance-based. We’ve tried several people with fantastic social-science qualifications, but they all seem a bit theory based, a bit academic, for what we need. So many of the people at Delaford are truly chaotic and we need someone who doesn’t expect either order or miracles. Someone for the staff to turn to, really. Do – do you think that might appeal to him?’

Elinor felt herself growing pink. She put a hand out and grasped Bill’s nearest one.

‘His family sound so grim,’ Bill said, ‘and – and what you say about his conscience really hits home with me. I’d like to help, if I can, even though I don’t know him very well. There’d be accommodation, too, of course. A flat. Nothing special. But I wouldn’t even suggest it, if you – if he—’

Elinor gave Bill’s hand a little shake. She said, fervently, ‘You – you are fantastic.’

‘But you—’

‘I’m fine,’ Elinor said resolutely. ‘Fine. Promise.’

‘As long as you really are?’

Elinor leaned back. She smiled at him. She said, ‘You know, Bill, that I think you can get used to anything as long as you know exactly what you are getting used to. And if I know what lies ahead for Ed, then I can get on with my own future.’

He laughed. ‘I wish Mrs J. was right. About you and me.’

‘But she isn’t.’

He sighed. He said, ‘I must try and copy your supreme good sense. I wish I wasn’t such a hopeless old romantic.’

Elinor picked up her coffee cup. She said, ‘I ought to be more of one.’

‘Never wish that. Will you do something for me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Will you tell Ed to call me?’

She looked straight at him again. She said, ‘You should do that directly.’

‘Elinor, I hardly know him. I know of him, thanks to you, and I have a strong instinct that he’s right for Delaford, but I can’t call him out of the blue. It would seem weird.’