Belle was pulling lengths of battered old damask out of a box to replace Sir John’s brightly patterned ready-made curtains. She said to Marianne, ‘What are you suggesting, darling?’

‘A walk.’

‘A walk,’ Margaret said in tones of disgust.

‘Yes,’ Marianne said, ‘a walk. And you’re coming with me.’

‘I hate walks.’

‘Why d’you want to walk?’ Belle said.

‘I want to see the old house Sir John talked about. The old house in the valley where the old lady lives who never goes out. She sounds like Miss Havisham.’

‘I don’t’, Margaret said, ‘want to see anything.’

Belle regarded the damask. It had once been deep burgundy red. It was now, faded by the sun, irregularly striped with the colour of weak tea. But anything was better than bright blue cotton printed with stylised sunflowers. She said, absently, ‘Lovely, darling.’

‘But I—’ began Margaret.

Belle raised her head. ‘I don’t want Marianne walking alone. Not after the other day. And certainly not till we know our way about.’

From the top of the ladder Elinor said, ‘The house is called Allenham. The old lady is Mrs Smith.’

No one took any notice.

‘We’re going,’ Marianne said to Margaret.

‘You’re going,’ Belle said to Margaret.

Margaret looked up at Elinor on her ladder. ‘Why can’t you go?’

‘Because,’ Elinor said.

‘I always have to do what I don’t want,’ Margaret said.

Belle dropped the curtains and put an arm round her. ‘I promise’, she said, ‘that you’ll get to an age where nobody tells you what to do any more. One day you can do exactly as you like.’

Elinor leaned forward to unhook the sunflower curtains. ‘I wish,’ she said softly, to no one in particular.

From the cottage, a path ran steeply up through the woods behind it, crossed a narrow, sunken lane, and gave on to a high, open ridge from which it was possible to see down, as if one were a passing bird, into all the interconnected valleys below. Once up there, Margaret, who had complained loudly all the way through the trees, became infected by the wind and the height, and went whirling, screaming, along the ridge, her arms held out and her hair streaming like tattered banners round her head.

Marianne followed more slowly, reluctantly entranced by what lay below her. There was Barton Park and its outbuildings, as neat and miniature as doll’s-house furniture, set among scattered small blobs of trees and connected by the regular pale curves of drives, with green spaces in between dotted with cotton-wool balls of sheep and black and white dominoes of cows. Smoke rose from chimneys here and there, and the postman’s red van crept along a drive like a little bright toy. And then, there, in the next valley, clinging to the hillside below a great hanger of trees, was the fairy-tale house of Allenham, built of soft, rosy brick, with twisted Tudor chimneys and narrow, glittering windows. Its gardens – famous, Sir John said, for being laid out to a particular design in 1640 and never substantially changed – were a distinct formal pattern, visible clearly from this height, of tall dark hedges and lower greener hedges, punctuated only by a few fountains standing dry and still in their pale stone basins. It was a different period to Norland, it was in a different situation to Norland, but something about the romance of that old, quiet house in its valley caught nostalgically at Marianne’s throat and made her abruptly feel tears rising.

‘She’s an old dear, Mrs Smith,’ Sir John had said. ‘She’s been a widow forever. Old Smith’s family made money in the north, and he brought it down here and bought that house. Spent a fortune on it. Lovely old boy. Took up local history. Too bad they never had children, and now she’s there alone, mouldering away, looked after by all these agency girls from God knows where. Heaven knows what they make of it, these Filippinos. If you’d grown up in Manila, you’d think you’d landed on the moon, arriving at Allenham, wouldn’t you?’

Margaret came panting up. Marianne pointed down to the house. ‘Look.’

‘Bit creepy,’ Margaret said. She had taken her fleece off and tied it round her waist.

‘It’s fantastic,’ Marianne said.

Margaret squinted up at the sky. ‘It’s going to rain.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘You haven’t even got a sweater.’

‘I don’t mind. What’s rain?’

A large drop fell, on cue, on to Margaret’s hand. She held it out. ‘This,’ she said.

Marianne glanced behind her. From the south-west and the direction of the sea, an immense pile of gun-metal clouds was moving purposefully towards them. She said, ‘It’s only rain, Mags.’

‘No,’ Margaret said, and her voice was suddenly urgent. She pointed, following Marianne’s gaze, at the moment that a dramatic gash of lightning split the clouds and a crash of thunder echoed round the hills.

‘Help!’ Marianne said in a different tone.

Margaret unwrapped her fleece and thrust it at her sister. ‘Take this.’

‘No.’

‘Take it. Take it. I haven’t got asthma.’

As Marianne struggled into the fleece, the rain abruptly began in earnest. Pulling her sister behind her, Margaret began to retrace their steps at a stumbling run, with the rain bouncing off the turf beside them.

‘Slower,’ Marianne pleaded.

‘No,’ Margaret shouted. ‘No. We’ve got to get back, we’ve got to get home!’

‘I can’t—’

‘You can! You can! You must.’

They floundered on along the ridge, the turf increasingly slippery under their feet, their hands increasingly slippery in one another’s.

‘Oh please,’ Margaret kept shouting. ‘Oh, please, run.’

‘I can’t, I can’t go faster, I can’t see …’

Ahead of them, the hedge that bordered the lane grew dimly visible through the sheets of rain.

‘Nearly there!’ Margaret cried. Her hair was plastered to her face and needed perpetually pushing aside with her free hand. ‘Not far!’

Marianne gave a little choked scream and then her hand slid from Margaret’s and she subsided on the earth, heaving and gasping.

Margaret collapsed beside her. ‘Marianne? Marianne? Are you OK?’

Marianne couldn’t speak. She sat where she had fallen, crouched on the sodden grass, her hands pressed to her chest, battling for breath.

Margaret began to scrabble in her sister’s pocket. ‘Your inhaler, your inhaler.’

Marianne shook her head, jerkily.

‘What d’you mean? You haven’t got it? You came without your inhaler?’

Ashen and fighting, Marianne managed a brief nod.

‘Oh my God,’ Margaret said. She could feel panic rising in her like hysteria. She mustn’t, she mustn’t. What would Ma do, what would Ellie do, she must think, think, she must – she stood up.

‘Listen!’ she shouted above the rain. ‘Listen! I’m going to race down to the cottage to get your inhaler and Ma and Ellie. Don’t move. D’you hear me? Don’t move, just do little breaths, don’t panic. OK? OK?’

Marianne lifted one hand weakly from her chest in acknowledgement and Margaret set off towards the hedge and the lane at a speed she did not know she was capable of. As she plunged through the hedge she was aware of a car coming down the lane with its headlights on, a car coming fast, too fast, and even in the midst of her fervour about Marianne it occurred to her that the situation would not be improved if she managed to get herself run over, in addition. So she slithered down the bank and flattened herself against it to allow the car to roar by.

But it didn’t. The driver obviously saw her sprawled against the bank below the hedge and screeched to a halt, spraying her with muddy water and grit. The passenger window opposite her slid down and a man’s voice said, impatiently, ‘You OK?’

Margaret scrambled up. The sight of another human, and an adult, was almost too welcome to be borne. She clutched at the gleaming car and thrust her dripping head into the interior.

‘Oh please, oh please, it’s my sister!’

The driver of the car was a young man, a dark young man. Even in acute distress, with her vision partially obscured by her wet hair, Margaret could see that on the scale of hotness, he registered fairly close to a full ten. He was – amazing. He said, slightly less irritably, ‘What about your sister?’

‘She’s up there,’ Margaret said wildly, close to tears, ‘up in the field. She’s having an asthma attack.’

‘Ye gods,’ the young man said, in quite a different tone.

He switched off the engine and was out of the car in a flash, not bothering to take the key but scrambling nimbly up the bank towards the hedge almost before Margaret had time to register that he had moved at all. She began to follow him, clumsily, calling out, ‘She hasn’t got her inhaler. She forgot her inhaler.’

‘Where is it?’ he yelled.

‘At home.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘Down there. Barton Cottage.’

He paused for a second, halfway through the hedge. ‘I know Barton Cottage,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring her. Get home and tell them I’ll bring her.’

‘You can’t—’

He had pushed through the hedge by now. He shouted down at Margaret, ‘Do as you’re bloody told!’ and then he vanished from her sight.

‘I’ve known Barton all my life,’ the young man said.

He was standing by the fireplace in the cottage, towelling his hair with an old beach towel Elinor had fetched from a box on the landing. Marianne was on the sofa with her inhaler and a little faint colour in her cheeks. She and her mother and her sisters were gazing in disbelief at the young man by the fireplace.