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.

‘You don’t wear rings,’ Marianne said. ‘You are so not a jewellery man.’

Edward said self-consciously, ‘It was a sort of present.’

‘Who from?’

‘Fanny’, Margaret said, ‘would never give anyone a ring like that.’

Edward looked miserable. He tugged the ring off and put it in the pocket of his jeans, tipping himself sideways to do it. ‘Sort of,’ he said again. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘It’s like Ellie’s,’ Margaret said, ‘Ellie’s got a ring like that.’

Elinor put her hands in the air. ‘Not wearing it,’ she said, ‘look.’

Edward went on gazing at his lap. Margaret said, ‘But it’s like yours.’

‘Is it?’ Elinor said to Edward. ‘Is it like mine?’

He said nothing. Belle picked up the wine bottle. ‘Refill anyone?’

Nobody spoke. She upended the bottle into her own glass.

‘Well, I shall finish it. It was a present from Jonno. He’s so kind, presents and parties all the time.’ She glanced at Edward. ‘He’ll want to meet you. He’ll want to have a party the minute he knows you’re here.’

‘I’m only going to another Barton party,’ Margaret said, ‘when Wills is back and I can go in his car.’

Edward looked round the table, his gaze suddenly focused. ‘Who’s Wills?’

‘A friend of Marianne’s,’ Elinor said quickly.

Edward looked at Marianne. Her face was abruptly illuminated, shining. He said teasingly, ‘A friend with a significant car, then?’

She turned to look at him. She was almost crying with eagerness. ‘Oh, you’ll really like him!’

‘I – I’m sure I will. When can I meet him?’

Marianne gave him a wide, tearful smile. ‘Soon,’ she said. She looked round the table, nodding and smiling. ‘Soon!’

8

The house was very quiet. There wasn’t even any wind, so that Belle knew she would be able to hear the sound of feet or wheels on the gravel to warn her of anyone arriving. She was, she told herself, perfectly safe. Mags was at school, Elinor was at work and Marianne had taken Edward out for a last walk (for him) and another longing, greedy look at Allenham (for her).

If it hadn’t been Edward’s final walk before he left, she would not be in Elinor’s bedroom, hunting through her drawers. If he hadn’t said that he really had to leave that day, even though he didn’t want to and had no desire to be anywhere else, she wouldn’t need to look for evidence in this decidedly underhand way. And if Edward was being incomprehensible, Elinor was just as bad. She had been perfectly civil to him all week but nobody could claim that she had shown him any special warmth or attention. And he’d plainly wanted it, needed it. No normal, natural woman, Belle thought, almost indignantly, could have resisted wanting to reassure a man so evidently in need of comfort and confidence as Edward Ferrars.

But not Elinor, apparently. Elinor found it not just acceptable but seemingly quite easy to behave towards Edward as if he were no more than a welcome but mildly irritating brother. And when Belle had said, slightly reproving, to her, ‘I think he’s depressed, poor darling,’ Elinor had simply replied, ‘Then that makes two of them. A soulmate for Marianne,’ and turned the volume on the kitchen radio up louder.

And when Belle had tried to relay to Elinor a very significant conversation she had had with Edward about his family’s ambitions being so very far from his own, and his despair at their ever coming round to his point of view, Elinor had waited politely till she had finished, and then said, ‘I know all that, Ma. I know what they want. I know what he wants. And I know that his mother is completely dominating.’

‘Then why aren’t you nicer to him?’