‘Oh,’ Elinor said. She was staring straight ahead. Marianne had taken the hand not holding the phone and was gripping it. ‘So – so Ed’s mother knows?’

‘She was distraught,’ John said. ‘Absolutely distraught. And you know what a wonderful woman she is – you met her. She only wants what is best for her children, that’s all she’s interested in, but when she pointed out to Edward what a lovely match Tassy Morton would be for him, and how happy she’d be to give them the family house in Norfolk, he just laughed. Can you believe it? He simply laughed.’

‘Good for him!’ Marianne called.

‘Who was that?’ John demanded.

‘It’s Marianne, John. She’s next to me.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said, “Good heavens”,’ Elinor said, not looking at her sister. Marianne put her face into Elinor’s nearest shoulder, shaking with giggles.

‘I should say so,’ John said. ‘It’s appalling conduct. Disgraceful. I’m not surprised that she reacted as she did. Not another penny his way, ever. Not one. He’s burnt every boat.’

Elinor said quietly, ‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing much, actually. Odd really, but I suppose silence is part of his defiance. Even when Fanny’s mother said – perfectly understandably, in my view – that she would do everything to stand in his way in the future, he didn’t really react. He just said he’d promised.’

‘He probably did.’

‘But come on, now. Promises to a girl like that?’

Elinor took a breath. ‘Mrs J. is very fond of Lucy, John. And Mrs J. has been really kind to us.’

‘Well,’ John said, beginning to bluster, ‘I know Lucy is some sort of connection of Mrs Jennings, and I’m sure she was never any trouble before, but it really isn’t on, is it, to make a boy you know is worth a fortune promise to marry you, when you don’t yourself come from much of a background. I mean, you can’t avoid thinking eye-to-the-main-chance, love-me-love-your-wallet kind of thing, can you? It’s no fault of Mrs Jennings that her late husband’s goddaughter or whatever behaves in a disappointing way, now, is it? I’d be the last person to think that. Just as I’m the last person to think Fanny’s mother has been other than exemplary – so fair, so generous. She offered him a six-bedroom house in Norfolk, Elinor, never mind the farm that goes with it! And he just threw it all back at her. Just like that. Well, he has made his bed, stupid boy, and he must lie on it.’

Marianne leaned closer to the phone. She called, ‘John, how did it end?’

‘How did what end?’

‘All this. This row.’

‘Well,’ John said, ‘Edward slammed out of the flat, and we have no idea where he is. Fanny just said to me, “Oh, John, get a taxi for those girls and get rid of them. Even put a cab on our account, anything to get them to go.” So I did. So generous of her, you know – and when you think of the circumstances! But where Lucy is now, I have no idea. I know she and her sister went straight round to the Palmers but I think Tommy threw them out again, sensible fellow. So we are just picking up the pieces here. Poor Fanny. She’s so cut up; you know how sensitive she is. She even said she wished she’d had you two to stay, not the Steele girls.’

‘Really …’

‘And, of course, Fanny’s mother is going straight to her lawyer in the morning. There’s no holding her, once she gets going; she’ll have her will changed by lunchtime. She’ll just stand over them till they’ve done it. Lucky old Robert. He’ll get Edward’s share now. And of course, there’ll be some for Fanny, not that she’s in the least interested in money.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘So Mrs Jennings knows all this?’

‘Yes,’ Elinor said. ‘She told us.’

‘And what do you think her reaction will be?’

Elinor smiled into the phone. ‘Oh, I expect she’ll be all for it, John. She’s very fond of Lucy, and she’ll hate to see someone like Edward thrown out of his family. She’s very family-minded, you know.’

There was a short pause. Then John said, stiffly, ‘I’m sure Fanny would love to speak to you, if she weren’t so upset.’

Elinor smiled more broadly.

‘Give her our love.’

‘She’s really so hurt. And of course you feel humiliated as well as hurt when someone you’ve been so kind to lets you down like this.’

Elinor suppressed a laugh. ‘Yes, you do, John,’ she said. ‘You really do. It’s so tough when people close to you turn out not to be what you thought they were,’ and then she clicked her phone off and turned to her sister.

‘You’re a star,’ Marianne said, laughing back. ‘You’re an absolute star.’

15

‘What are you doing?’ Margaret said.

She and Elinor were seated either side of the kitchen table in Barton Cottage with their laptops open. Margaret was supposed to be doing a biology project on hers – the digestive system, complete with diagrams and analyses of all the chemical interactions of the various digestive fluids, but was in fact having a Facebook conversation with a girl in her class who had a cool – and coolly remote – older brother.

Elinor said shortly, and without looking up, ‘My emails.’

‘Can I see?’

‘No.’

‘Why? Are they private?’

‘No.’

‘Are they from Ed?’

‘No.’

‘If they’re not private,’ Margaret said, ‘and they’re not from Ed, why can’t I see them?’

Elinor sighed. She turned her laptop round so that Margaret could see the screen.

‘They won’t interest you.’

Margaret lurched forward across the table, screwing up her eyes to see better. ‘Who’s Fancynancy?’

‘Nancy Steele.’

‘Yuck. Gross. Why’s she writing to you?’

‘To show off.’

‘She’s written pages. Is it all about the plastic surgeon?’

‘How do you know about him?’

‘I know’, Margaret said, ‘because she’s always on Twitter. She tweets about how he said this and how he said that and how he liked her pink handbag and all that gross stuff. Sad isn’t the word.’

‘No,’ Elinor said, ‘it’s not about him.’

Margaret wriggled back to her seat. She said, ‘Jonno says she has the attention span of a midge.’

‘He’s right.’

‘Well, why are you emailing her?’

‘I’m not,’ Elinor said patiently. ‘She’s emailed me. To tell me all over again about Lucy and Ed. And to make sure I get the message, Lucy has emailed me as well.’

Margaret put the end of a pen in her mouth. Round it, she said, ‘What message?’

‘That they are getting married.’

‘We know that.’

Elinor sighed again. She said, looking at the screen and not at Margaret, ‘Well, they want to rub it in. That Lucy felt she should offer to let Ed go if it meant a breach with his family and no inheritance, and that he wouldn’t hear of it and told her she was an angel.’

‘I bet he never said that.’

‘No,’ Elinor said. ‘That was me. In my crossness.’

‘Why are you cross?’

‘Because Ed is behaving so well. And because Nancy Steele is such an airhead and because Lucy only writes to me like this so that I will forward the email to Mrs J. and Mary and everyone, and they’ll think: Ah bless, what a lovely person Lucy is and how horrible the Ferrarses are.’

Margaret took the pen out of her mouth. She said, ‘Well, aren’t they?’

‘Some of them.’

Margaret began to roll the pen back and forth across the table.

‘Ellie …’

‘What?’

‘Does it matter about money? Does it matter whether Ed and Lucy have any?’

‘Well,’ Elinor said carefully, ‘they have to live.’

‘He hasn’t really got a job, though, has he? And she kind of faffs about doing courses and stuff. Not earning, really.’

Elinor looked back at her screen. ‘Lucy asks me to see if Jonno would give Ed a job. Or Tommy even.’

‘Crikey,’ Margaret said unexpectedly.

‘Yes.’

‘Would they?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Would Jonno or Tommy Palmer really give Ed a job?’

Elinor looked at her sister. ‘Well, what do you think?’

Margaret picked her pen up again. ‘I think’, she said, ‘that money is even more boring than love. But not quite as utterly boring as biology.’

In the bath above the kitchen – she could hear her daughters’ voices through the floor, even if she couldn’t make out what they were saying – Belle Dashwood lay in the hot water, her face stiffly blanked out by a face mask. Mary Middleton had been seized with an urge for clearance, and had emptied out the contents of her lavishly appointed bathroom cupboards, sending down to Barton Cottage a carrier bag full of expensive half-used pots of this and that, including a face mask which promised to leave your skin not just unlined, but dewy. Margaret had been very contemptuous of the idea of dewy. ‘They just mean wet. Who wants to look wet, unless they’re a fish or something?’

Belle had no desire to look like a fish. But she had discovered, in the last few weeks, she did have a desire not to look only like the mother of three grown daughters. She had begun to be anxious not to be seen only relatively, indeed to be acknowledged as a woman who amazed people by revealing how old her daughters were, a woman who was admired for what she still had, rather than was pitied for what she now lacked. Lying in the bath and feeling her skin tightening under the cracking shield of the mask, Belle reflected that although Henry was, and always would be, the love of her life, the heart was a muscle as well as an organ, and required exercise.

She had tried to suggest something of the kind on the telephone to Abigail Jennings. The conversation had started with Belle’s gratitude for all the kindness shown to Marianne for so long, and had then proceeded, on Belle’s part, to hint at that kindness being possibly extended to Marianne’s mother.