She laid the guitar on her bed, snatched a handful of tissues from the box on the floor and blew her nose. Then she rubbed the balled-up tissues across her eyes and crossed the room to open the door.

‘Yes, Ma?’

Belle surveyed her woebegone face. ‘Oh, darling …’

‘I’m OK.’

‘You’ve been crying again. You poor lamb.’

‘Why doesn’t he ring?’ Marianne wailed. ‘Why doesn’t he answer my emails? Or my texts, even? Why doesn’t he at least let me know he’s alive?’

Belle came two steps up the staircase. ‘He will, darling. I’m sure he will. It must be something very serious, something he wants to protect you from.’

Marianne sniffed again. ‘Sorry. Sorry to go on about it.’

‘I just wish I could help.’

‘You do,’ Marianne said. ‘By being nice to me. Everyone’s nice to me. Even those morons up at the Park who don’t know when to stop teasing. I know they mean to be nice because they’re too stupid to see how clumsy they are.’

‘That was Jonno on the phone just now.’

Marianne sat down on the top step of the stairs. She said, wearily, ‘Surprise, surprise.’

‘He is inexhaustibly jolly. No sooner do the Palmers go – they left this morning – than he invites someone else to stay. Mrs J.’s late husband’s goddaughter or something. And her sister. They are your sort of age, and Jonno wants us to go up for dinner, on Saturday.’

‘No,’ Marianne said.

Belle smiled. ‘That’s what I told him. I mean I didn’t put it like that. I didn’t say none of us could bear another meal at the Park. I said that we absolutely could not accept any more hospitality from them until we had repaid some of it here.’

‘Oh, Ma …’

‘So,’ said Belle triumphantly, ‘they are all coming to lunch on Saturday – minus the children, thank goodness – including these two girls.’

Marianne sighed. ‘I can imagine them.’

‘No, darling,’ Belle said, ‘you can’t. You might love them. They might be just what you need to – to distract you. They are called Lucy and Nancy. Lucy and Nancy Steele.’

Margaret was going home with a new school friend and would not, she said with emphasis, need picking up by Elinor. There had been a good deal of telephoning and need for reassurance about this arrangement, but Elinor had finally prevailed over all Belle’s anxieties by using her lunch break to visit the friend’s mother and see for herself the absolute reliability of the situation: a semi-detached house in a suburban street, unmistakably inhabited by a family of unimpeachable orthodoxy. She had even felt impelled to half apologise to Margaret’s friend’s mother.

‘It’s just that we’re a bit new to round here and Mags has only been at the school a few weeks and …’

The woman was laughing. She patted Elinor’s hand. ‘I get it, dear. No hard feelings.’

But even that confirmation of respectability didn’t stop Belle from ringing Elinor’s mobile several times during the afternoon, so that when it rang, yet again, Elinor snatched it up without glancing at the screen and said almost crossly into it, ‘What now, Ma?’

‘It’s Jonno,’ Sir John said.

‘Help. Sorry. So sorry. Family stuff.’

‘Tell me about it. Just tell me about it. That’s why I’m ringing.’ Elinor felt an instant clutch of alarm.

‘What, what—’

‘I’ve been turned down,’ Sir John said. ‘By your mother.’

‘Turned down?’

‘I’ve got a brace of lovely girls here and your mother has declined to bring you all here to supper to meet them.’

Elinor swallowed. ‘But you’re too good to us. We were with you only—’

‘Listen,’ Sir John said, ‘I’d have you to supper every night if I had my way, promise you. But I can’t shift your mother. And it’s dull for these lasses, stuck with us, although I have to say that they are brilliant with the kids, brilliant. They said they adored nippers and they really do seem to. Amazing. But look. I rang you because even if I can’t shift your mother and Marianne, why don’t you drop by on your way home?’

Elinor closed her eyes. ‘That’s sweet of you, but—’

‘Don’t but me. Don’t.’

‘Jonno,’ Elinor said, opening her eyes, ‘it’s really nice of you, and I’d really like to meet them. But I’m tired. I—’

‘It’ll perk you up to come to supper!’

‘No,’ Elinor said, with more force than she intended. ‘No.’

There was a brief and startled pause. She could hear Sir John giving some instruction or other to his secretary. Then his voice boomed in her ear again.

‘Just a drink, then.’

‘Well …’

‘Great,’ he said. ‘Splendid. Settled. We’ll see you for a drink on your way home.’

Elinor sighed. He had already put the phone down. She laid hers down too, slowly, on the bottom rim of her drawing board.

Tony Musgrove looked at her over the top of his reading glasses. ‘Boyfriend trouble?’ he said.

Elinor made a face. ‘I wish.’

The sitting room at Barton Park was in uproar. It seemed to Elinor to be too hot, too bright and too full of charging children, never mind the noise. There were two young women – dressed, Elinor couldn’t help noticing, with elaborate modishness – on the floor, trying to field a child or two as it hurtled past, and, on a sofa at a slight distance, surveying the scene with every evidence of satisfaction, was Mary Middleton, placid in cream cashmere.

Sir John sprang forward to greet her, a glass in his hand. ‘Hello, lovely girl. Welcome to the usual madness. G and T?’

‘Actually,’ Elinor said, ‘could I have something soft?’

‘No!’ Sir John said. ‘No! Don’t be such a party pooper. Wine, at least, if you won’t have any gin! I shall get you wine. Don’t argue. You know I can’t bear to be argued with.’

Elinor shrugged, resignedly. ‘OK.’

‘Good girl. That’s more like it. Shan’t be a tick.’

Elinor looked back at the riot in the room. One of the girls on the floor, with a sharp, pretty face and tumble of carefully arranged long glossy curls, caught her eye, got to her feet and came towards her, her hand out ready, and smiling. The hand, Elinor observed, was encircled with charm bracelets and carefully manicured.

‘You have to be Elinor!’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Lucy. Lucy Steele.’ She turned and pointed towards the floor again. ‘That’s my sister. She was Mr J.’s goddaughter.’

Elinor nodded.

‘We’ve come for the weekend,’ Lucy said. ‘Amazing house! You should see my bedroom. You could put our whole flat into my bedroom! And the children are so cute, really lively.’

‘Certainly lively.’

‘And she’s just amazing, too,’ Lucy said. ‘Isn’t she? I mean Lady M. Awesome clothes, and her figure! You’d never think she’d had four children, would you? Amazing.’

Elinor looked across the room. Mary Middleton was watching the two older boys pushing Lucy’s sister down on to her back on the carpet, one of them using her hair to speed the process, with no sign that she was other than completely oblivious to the need for discipline.

Elinor said anxiously, ‘Is your sister all right, d’you think?

Lucy glanced across, almost casually. ‘Oh, Nancy’s fine. She can take care of herself.’

Nancy gave a faint but distinct cry of pain and put her hands to her head. Mary roused herself, without urgency, from her sofa. She said lovingly, ‘Be careful, boys.’

‘Get off!’ Sir John roared at his children, returning with wine for Elinor in a glass as big as a small bucket. ‘Get off the poor girl, this instant!’

‘Jonno,’ Mary said reproachfully, ‘they’re only playing, bless them.’

Nancy Steele struggled to her feet and adjusted her clothing. She smiled bravely, showing long, unnaturally white teeth.

‘It’s fine,’ she said, ‘I’m OK. Totes OK. Mos def.’

‘Nancy,’ Sir John said, ‘come and meet Elinor. Elinor lives—’

‘Oh,’ Nancy said, advancing on Elinor and thrusting out a hand adorned with long, acrylic nails, ‘I know about you! Don’t we, Luce? You lived at Norland, didn’t you? We know all about Norland.’

Elinor took her hand for as brief a moment as possible. ‘Oh?’

Nancy looked significantly at Sir John. She said, nodding, ‘Oh yeah. We know all about the F-word guy! Fo sho we do!’

‘Nancy,’ her sister said tensely.

Elinor looked steadfastly into her drink.

‘We know it all!’ Nancy said. She ran a hand through her visibly straightened hair, letting it fall back into exactly the same shape as it had been before she touched it. ‘We know that your sister’s made it with a really cute guy, and that you’ll be next! Scream!’ She gave Sir John a nudge with her elbow. ‘We even know the F-word guy! Don’t we, Luce?’

Lucy shifted slightly and examined her bracelets. ‘Well, only slightly.’

‘Luce! We do! At Uncle Peter’s!’

There was a sudden squeal of pain and rage from across the room. They all swung round. Mary Middleton was holding her kicking three-year-old, Anna-Maria, and saying urgently, ‘So sorry, darling, careless Mumma, silly Mumma, horrid Mumma’s brooch to hurt poor baby Anna, sorry, sweetie, sorry, poppet.’

Sir John strode over. ‘What’s happened?’

‘My pin caught her little arm, her poor little arm.’

Sir John seized his daughter’s flailing arm and peered at it. ‘Can’t see a thing.’

‘There!’ Mary cried. ‘There!’

Anna-Maria wrenched her arm out of his grasp, flung her head back and screamed afresh.

‘Totes adorable kids,’ Nancy Steele said.

‘Really cute,’ Lucy echoed, without complete conviction.