‘You won’t be the first, dear.’

‘He just led her on …’

‘Typical, I’m afraid.’

Elinor stood up, abruptly. ‘I’ll have to tell Ma.’

‘Leave it till the morning, dear.’

‘No, I ought—’

‘Leave it, dear,’ Abigail said firmly. ‘Leave it till you’re all calmer. Leave it till tomorrow.’

Elinor closed her eyes briefly. She said, ‘I saw all her texts. I saw all her messages to him. It was heartbreaking; she never doubted him, she never—’ She broke off and gave something like a sob.

Mrs Jennings got up and put an arm round her.

‘I know, dear. It’s all wrong. He’s all wrong. It’s a bad, bad business. That Callianos girl has her car shipped into London for the winters, I’m told. A Porsche, with her own number plates. No change out of twenty grand for that sort of nonsense.’

The door opened. Mrs Jennings’s doctor, in his weekend cords and urban waxed jacket, leaned into the room.

‘All quiet,’ he said, smiling. ‘Good as gold. Fast asleep and breathing like a baby. I’ll be back in the morning to check on her and you’re to ring me any time if you’re worried.’

And now, Elinor thought, filling the kettle as quietly as she could, in Mrs Jennings’s kitchen, I would like to think that sleep is possible for me, too. I would like to think that when I lie down, after this unspeakable day, I won’t be so filled with fury at Wills and despair for Marianne that I just lie there and toss and turn and fret and rage and worry. What will she be like when she wakes up? What can I say to her? How do I tell her that that vile, vile complete shit of a man has thrown her over for money? You couldn’t make it up. You couldn’t. Not in this day and age. I have never wanted just to eliminate anyone before but I do him. And I want him to suffer while I do it. I want him—In her cardigan pocket – her father’s reassuringly familiar old cardigan – her phone began to vibrate. It would be Belle, from Barton, still in ignorance of Wills’s terrible conduct; and needing to be told, as calmly as Elinor could, what had happened, not just today, but to all Marianne’s most passionate hopes and desires for the future. She pulled her phone out and looked at the screen. ‘Bill Brandon’, it said. Elinor felt a sudden rush of pure relief that she couldn’t at all account for. She said, thankfully, into her phone, ‘Oh, Bill …’

‘Are you all right? You sound—’

‘I’m fine, I’m fine. And so is she, so is Marianne, now. I mean, she’s OK. It’s OK.’

‘Elinor,’ Bill said, his voice suddenly alarmed, ‘what’s happened? I was ringing to see how the wedding went, whether—’

‘I can’t tell you over the phone.’

‘Why not, what’s—’

‘It’s all right now,’ Elinor said. ‘It really is. She’s fine. She’s sleeping. But I wonder …’

‘What?’ he said. His voice was sharp with anxiety. ‘What?’

She swallowed. She could feel more tears thickening in her throat. She said, ‘Can – can you come?’

‘What, now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Dear girl, I’m down at Delaford. But of course, if it’s really urgent—’

‘No. No, of course not. Not now. Just – just soon, Bill. Please. I’ll be in London for a few days.’

‘I’ll come tomorrow. Are you sure she’s—’

‘Yes,’ Elinor said, tears now sliding down her face. ‘Yes. She’s fine. Thank you. Thank you. See you tomorrow.’

11

‘You wouldn’t believe,’ Charlotte Palmer said, ‘but it’s all over YouTube already! Someone must have been filming, on their phone, at the wedding. Aren’t people just the end?’

She was standing in her mother’s sitting room, as round as a robin, her mobile in her hand.

‘I mean, I wasn’t going to look at it, I really wasn’t, even though absolutely everybody was sending me the link, but then I thought, Well, I can’t defend poor Marianne if I don’t know what I’m defending, can I?’ She glanced at Elinor. ‘Have you seen it?’

‘No,’ Elinor said. ‘And I don’t want to.’

‘It really isn’t too bad,’ Charlotte said. ‘I mean Marianne looks really pretty even if she is crying and you can’t see Wills’s face that well—’

Elinor put her hands over her ears. ‘Please stop.’

Charlotte gave a little shrug. She said, ‘Of course, everyone’s siding with Marianne. I mean, they’re all sick of girls like Aggy Cally just buying up our hottest men like this.’

‘Charlotte dear,’ her mother said, not raising her eyes from her Sunday newspaper, ‘enough, don’t you think? However riveting?’

Charlotte looked intently at her phone, as if deaf to any implied reprimand. She said brightly, ‘Tommy was a bit of a star, wasn’t he? I just adore it when he gets all masterful like that and strides about knowing what to do!’

Elinor said faintly, ‘He was great.’

‘God,’ Charlotte said, stabbing at the keys on her phone, ‘he loved it. He thinks you are just fantastic. He adores brainy girls even if he couldn’t be married to one for a minute. Hey, Mummy?’

‘Yes,’ Mrs Jennings said, still not looking up.

‘Did you say Bill was coming?’

Mrs Jennings raised her head and looked knowingly at Elinor. ‘So I gather.’

Charlotte beamed at Elinor. ‘So adorable. He’s got a sporting chance now Wills is out of the picture.’

‘She’s very frail,’ Elinor said. ‘And broken-hearted. Completely.’

‘Fabby Delaford,’ Charlotte said to her mother. ‘I know it’s full of all Bill’s crazies, but he’s got that separate house that could be so gorgeous if it was done up, and of course the landscape’s divine.’

‘And’, Mrs Jennings said, taking her reading glasses off, ‘he has money and he’s sensible with it. He’s the only ex-soldier I’ve ever known who has a cool head about money.’ She looked directly at Elinor. ‘He’s doing the usual idiot man thing round your sister, of course he is, they all seem to need to, but he’s clearly got a very soft spot for you.’

Elinor felt herself glow unwillingly pink. She said irritably, ‘He’s just nice to me.’

‘Nicer, dear,’ Abigail Jennings said, ‘than that useless Ferrars boy of yours is.’

‘He’s not useless.’

‘No?’

Elinor said, more indignantly than she intended, ‘He may be a bit weak but he isn’t cruel, like Wills. He isn’t selfish and – and venal …’

Charlotte and her mother rolled their eyes at one another. ‘Oooh!’

Elinor said more calmly, ‘And he’s not mine! He’s nobody’s. He’s his own person. Like – like Bill is. And – and I am.’

Charlotte moved sideways and poked Elinor in the ribs. ‘Every cloud has a silver lining, Ellie!’

‘Oh, my dear,’ Mrs Jennings said, laughing, ‘almost platinum, in his case!’

‘Please,’ Elinor said, in sudden, real distress. ‘Please. Marianne’s ill.’

‘But she’ll get better. Of course she will! A bit more sleep, Gordon said, and a quiet life—’

The bell from the street door storeys below rang loudly. Without reference to her mother, Charlotte ran to the intercom on the wall and snatched up the receiver. She said excitedly into it, ‘Bill? Bill! We’re expecting you! Kettle on! Come on up, top floor, welcome mat out!’ She put the handset back in its cradle and turned to face the room again. ‘D’you suppose’, she said, ‘anyone at Delaford showed him the YouTube clip?’

‘I had to get you out of there,’ Bill Brandon said. ‘You looked as if you were about to commit murder.’

Elinor looked across the cold, sunny spaces of Hyde Park. She hunched her shoulders inside Mrs Jennings’s borrowed fur-collared padded jacket. She said, ‘Mrs J. has been so wonderful, really, so supportive and generous. But she has a complete tin ear for anything sensitive. And Charlotte has two.’

Bill said, slightly self-consciously, ‘Marianne looked so lovely, didn’t she, lying there asleep.’

‘I’m so thankful she’s asleep.’

‘Was – was she desperately upset?’

Elinor put her hands in the pockets of her jacket. ‘She woke at three. And cried till five. It’s coming to terms with what he really is that’s going to be so hard. If she could believe him to be basically decent, it would be different, but there is nothing to be said for him, nothing. And she’s got to face the fact that she fell utterly for someone like that.’

Bill let a small silence fall and then he said, ‘It’s the “utterly” quality in her that I can’t resist.’

Elinor darted a quick look at him. ‘I know. It’s always been like that with her. Absolutely all or absolutely nothing. And you risk humiliating yourself if you’re like that.’

Bill paused by a bench at the edge of the path they were following. He said, ‘Will you freeze if we sit down?’

Elinor indicated her jacket. ‘Not in my Mrs Jennings insulation.’

He waited courteously for her to sit first. He had driven from Somerset that morning and he looked as clean and organised as if he had started the day ten minutes ago. Elinor said, ‘You’re so nice to come.’

He sat down beside her and put his elbows on his knees. He said, ‘I wanted to. I had to. The very thought—’

‘Better sooner than later, maybe,’ Elinor said. She looked down at the toes of her boots. ‘I mean, with hindsight you could see this disaster coming, you could see it had hopeless written all over it, but Marianne was so sure, so sure …’

‘Elinor.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ He half turned and looked at her. ‘Not a nice story. But you need to know. You need to know she’s well out of it.’