24

When I came round later, I was horizontal. I also appeared to be on a red chenille couch in the corner of a strange room that had a plaster rose in the middle of the ceiling and an ornate but faintly cracked cornice running around the edge. Sam and Janice were gazing down at me; Janice was hovering with a glass of water.

‘Archie –’ I struggled to sit up.

‘He’s here,’ said Sam quickly. He wheeled my still-sleeping child into view near my feet so I could see him. ‘He’s fine.’

I sank back. ‘Did I faint?’

‘You did. Quite dramatically. But I suppose any faint is dramatic; I’ve just never seen anyone do it before.’

‘God, how embarrassing. I’m so sorry.’ My eyes roved around. ‘Am I supposed to say: where am I? Where am I?’

He grinned. ‘In the senior partner’s room, the only one with a sofa.’

‘Christ –’ I struggled to move. He put a hand on my shoulder.

‘Don’t panic, he’s in Mauritius. You could stay there for another ten days and he wouldn’t be any the wiser.’

‘Water?’ Janice proffered the glass anxiously.

‘Um, thank you.’ I managed to half sit, although Sam sort of helped me. This was beyond embarrassing.

‘Did you eat any breakfast, dear?’ Janice was asking as I sipped. ‘Or have you got your monthlies?’

I flushed, mortified, which was impressive given my pallor. ‘Um, no. I mean, I didn’t have any breakfast.’

‘Well, there you are, then,’ she scolded as I sank back again. ‘You young girls, running around with nothing in your tummies. Oh, those wretched phones.’

They were indeed jumping off the desk behind us.

‘Please get it,’ I begged her. ‘I’m fine, really.’

‘Well, if you’re sure …’ She looked doubtful but then scooted off to reception, handing Sam the glass and calling over her shoulder, ‘Don’t let her get up yet!’

‘Did you have to carry me here?’ I asked, appalled, as he dragged up a chair. There was something faintly psychoanalytical about our configuration now as he sat at my head. I quickly unlaced my fingers on my chest.

‘Well, between us, yes. You don’t weigh much, though, Poppy. Janice is right, you should eat more.’

It was a long time since anyone had said anything like that to me: Phil certainly hadn’t and Dad wouldn’t notice. Mum. It would have been Mum, then. I looked up at him. Lovely eyes. Greeny-brown, and sort of flecked with hazel. Suddenly I remembered why I was here.

‘Shit – the dog!’

‘Ah yes, Peddler. But you know, these things happen, particularly in the country, Poppy. People get very worked up at the time, but he was an old hound, and he died doing what he loved most. Not such a bad way to go, surely?’

‘Was he? Old? Not a puppy?’

‘No, no, at least twelve. And it wasn’t you who kicked him, don’t forget. And anyway, it was hardly premeditated.’

‘Yes, but I didn’t own up.’

‘Well, you have now. And at the time I imagine you just panicked. We all do that.’

‘Really?’ I gazed up at the calm, kind face above me. Hard to imagine he ever did. I must get up. Must get off this sodding couch. I felt ridiculous.

‘Here.’ He held my arm as I swung my legs around, but in my haste my skirt got hitched up along the way so that I flashed far more leg than I’d have liked and I saw him avert his eyes, embarrassed. But I felt better, actually. I’d admitted my crime. And out loud, twenty-four hours later, it didn’t seem so heinous. He was right: it had been my horse, not me, and the hound had died in its natural habitat, doing its job. Although the huntsman might not see it like that, I supposed. I remembered him taking his hat off, passing a hand across his shattered face.

‘I’d like to explain to the huntsman. Mark, isn’t it? Apologize. Tell him what happened, face to face.’

For some reason Sam looked as if I’d handed him half of my inheritance. His eyes shone. ‘D’you know, I think he’d like that. Thank you, Poppy. I’ll give you his address.’

And he did, together with his phone number, when I’d followed him back into his office, pushing Archie. As he turned and handed me the piece of paper, he held my eyes for just a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

‘How’s the book club?’ he asked suddenly.

I blinked, wrong-footed. ‘Oh, pretty much disbanded, sadly. I think the party line is Literary Differences.’ I made ironic quotation marks in the air then realized I hated it when people did that. ‘Most of us wanted to read rollicking commercial fiction, which we knew we’d enjoy and polish off by the following week, and then gather for a chat and a bit of a party. But then we were given a really hard book to read and we all sort of gave up.’

‘Oh. Shame. Who suggested the hard book?’

‘Hope Armitage.’

‘Ah.’

‘Clever girl.’ I grimaced.

He nodded. Glanced away.

‘A lovely one too,’ I said quickly, in case he thought I was knocking her. ‘She’s got pretty much everything, actually. Beauty, charm, brains. Chad,’ I added foolishly with a laugh, then wished I hadn’t. I could feel myself colouring. Why was I gabbling? ‘But unfortunately we couldn’t match her in the cerebral department.’ More quotation marks in the air around cerebral. Why? ‘Well, not that we could match her in any department,’ gabble gabble, ‘certainly not the looks department, obviously! Not that we were trying to, or anything.’ Do stop, Poppy.

‘I hadn’t realized she was in your group.’ He’d moved to the window to look out at the street below; had his back to me. He’d gone a bit clipped and terse suddenly. Not so shiny-eyed.

‘Well, as I say, it’s pretty much defunct now anyway. Although one or two people were talking about forming another one, a sort of radical offshoot, but minus the highbrow literary slant.’

Peggy had indeed scurried across the road a few days ago to suggest we read the latest Philippa Gregory, and then meet at her place to discuss it. Thursday at eight, oh, and by the way, it was themed. What you were wearing when the ship went down. And bring a bottle. Angus had got his costume already, apparently.

‘Oh no, we can’t, Peggy,’ I’d said, appalled. ‘What will Chad and Hope think?’

‘Chad and Hope won’t know,’ she’d told me firmly, stubbing out her cigarette in my clump of asters by the front door.

I wasn’t sure I could share this disreputable secret with Sam, though. The Armitages were his friends, they rode together – hacked out, I believed was the expression – and anyway, he’d moved on from holding my eyes for longer than was strictly necessary and was gazing abstractedly at the traffic. I’d lost his attention and had his back.

‘Well, I’ll be away,’ I said shortly, after a pause. I felt faintly uncomfortable. ‘Thank you so much for the erm … water. And the couch.’ And the terribly strong manly arms sprang to mind too, but happily not to my vocal chords, although it was nip and tuck.

‘Don’t forget your papers.’ He seemed to collect himself suddenly and turned to cross to his desk, handing me a large folder, full, no doubt, of the details of my stonking great inheritance: the wherewithal to educate my children at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and Eton, to put me in the Hope, Chad, Simon and Sam brigade, I thought suddenly. Yes, Henley and Harvey Nichols, here I come. Why then, was there less of a spring in my step than there should have been, as I left his office?

I carried Archie down the stairs. He’d woken up and was beaming at me, cheeks flushed with sleep, drumming his corduroy bootees against my tummy. I seized one of them and kissed it hard. It was the mention of Hope, I knew, that had rendered him a bit mute; had heralded a change of mood. Was he in love with her? Wouldn’t be difficult. But she was so happily married. So very unavailable. We all knew she and Chad couldn’t keep their hands off each other, couldn’t keep out of the bedroom. I remembered the first time Jennie and I had met them whilst looking for Leila, both looking very post-coital. Still, that didn’t stop the old ticker disobeying orders, did it? All the evidence being against one? When had that ever stood in the way of true love, or even, I thought wryly, true infatuation? I sighed.

Out in the high street I popped Archie back in his pushchair and was about to head off down the street, when I glanced back over my shoulder. To my surprise, this time he was there, at the window. Was he watching me go, or had he returned to his reverie, the one that had so saddened him earlier? Either way, we both turned away sharpish as our eyes met and I hurried on my way to Waitrose.

When I got back to my house, I found Jennie coming away from my locked front door. She was hastening down the cobbled path, a look of utter despair on her face.

‘Oh, thank God!’ she cried, stopping in her tracks at the gate when she saw me approach, Archie in my arms.

‘What is it?’ I hurried towards her.

‘Quick, get in.’ She seized the key from my hand, ran back to unlock my door and hustled me inside. Then she slammed the door behind us, her eyes wild as she turned to me in the hallway.

‘What?’ I breathed, terrified. ‘What’s happened?’

Clemmie, was my first thought: fallen out of a tree at nursery, or an accident with the scissors. At my very first parents’ evening Miss Hawkins had told me, in a doom-laden voice, that Clemmie had a problem. Heart in mouth I’d anticipated bullying, early anorexia. On being gravely informed her scissor control was not all it should be, I’d been unable to suppress a laugh. I wasn’t laughing now. They’d tried to reach me, obviously, but my mobile was off.