Marianne had given him a small smile by way of reply. As the chief witness of her public humiliation, she could never quite forgive him, nor see in him the good heart and good sense that Elinor insisted were there. It had been a relief to her that Tommy was not coming down to Cleveland until later, bringing, apparently, Bill Brandon as another weekend guest, and by the time they both got there, Elinor would have arrived too, from Barton, and would, as usual, take responsibility for both herself and Marianne, leaving Marianne free to read, or go for a walk, or generally absent herself from the well-fed, deep-drinking jollity that Charlotte was plainly planning.

Marianne turned to face the room again. She would let Elinor choose the bed she preferred; she would let Elinor take the lead, dictate the pace. She was trying very hard – hard enough for Elinor not to fail to see – to adjust herself, to be less self-absorbed, less wilful, more mindful of what other people (Elinor in particular) were bearing with a stoicism she had to acknowledge, even if she didn’t want to imitate it just yet. She was striving to change, she was, but it was hard, all the same, to let go of the glory of her past certainties, of her belief in passion, and surrender, and the seductive power of giving in to inclination. But she was trying, and she would go on trying, and agreeing to a weekend in Charlotte and Tommy’s country house was proof of her real intention to be different. Wasn’t it? She sneezed suddenly, shivering, and looked for a box of tissues. They’d be somewhere. Charlotte was the kind of hostess who, even with a new baby, would never overlook the details.

The tissues were there, of course, hidden in a white wicker cube in the bathroom, beside a graded pile of snowy towels and a new cake of pink soap shaped like an egg. Marianne snatched a handful from the box and blew hard. Maybe it wasn’t depression she was feeling but something altogether simpler. Maybe the aches in her joints and head were not psychological at all, but merely the physical portent of a heavy approaching cold. She blew again and then put her palm against her forehead. Did she, she wondered, have a temperature?

Elinor, driving the seventy miles from Exeter to Cleveland after work, watched the evening deteriorate. She had left Exeter in late-afternoon sunshine, but as she drove up towards Bristol, the clouds ahead darkened and lowered, piling up into great bruised masses until, ten miles from her destination, the rain suddenly crashed down on to the motorway as if a bath had been tipped sideways, and she found herself battling both to keep the car steady, and to see. She had Heart FM on the radio – Margaret’s preferred choice – but even that was drowned out by the drumming of rain on the car roof. She leaned forward in an effort to see better, and, not for the first time, wondered what it was in Marianne that made her requests so difficult – even impossible – to refuse.

‘Just a weekend at Cleveland,’ Marianne had said. ‘Two nights. Please. Don’t make me go alone.’

‘But I don’t see why you want to go at all. Why don’t you just come straight home?’

Marianne said, sadly, weakly, ‘I can’t quite do that …’

‘But what’s the difference between coming straight home on Friday or, via a weekend you don’t want to do, on Sunday afternoon?’

There was a pause. Marianne was silent and Elinor, at her desk in Exeter, was in no mood to help her. Then Marianne said, in an even smaller voice, ‘It’s a kind of test.’

‘What? What is?’

‘Going to Charlotte’s. I’ve got to make myself be normal again. I’ve got to – to train myself to be more ordinary. I’ve got to go to Charlotte’s and be a good guest and take notice of the baby and be appreciative.’

‘If I were Charlotte,’ Elinor said, ‘I’d be pretty insulted by an attitude like that. Luckily for you, she’s too nice and cheerful to care, even if she notices.’

Marianne said, ‘It came out wrong.’

‘Did it?’

‘I didn’t mean to sound superior. I don’t think I’m superior. I think you are superior. I just meant that – that I was trying. Not – to be like I was being.’

Elinor relented a little. ‘OK.’

‘If it’s a big deal when I get home, Ellie, I’ll know it’s because I made it a big deal. I really don’t want melodrama, or even drama drama. I want to get home and plan my future and be – well, something like I should have been. But I would so … value it, if you came to Cleveland.’

So here she was, battling up the motorway in a spring storm with a weekend ahead among people who were all, with the exception of Charlotte’s baby and Marianne, not only older than she was, but who had a completely different take on life. Life, she thought suddenly, and almost bitterly. Is life what I’m having? Even if I fairly powerfully do not want pubs and clubs and getting wasted, surely life for someone of my age should be just slightly more fun?

‘She got soaked,’ Charlotte said. ‘I mean, drowned. She wanted to walk up to the temple and I said, Oh, do wait for Tommy to show it to you, it’s his pride and joy, he’s even had a Wi-Fi connection put in there, but she wouldn’t, she said she had to have some exercise after all those weeks in London, and next thing we knew was this absolutely deafening crash of thunder and the heavens opened and Marianne, of course, was drenched, and then I could not make her take off her jeans and put on something dry, and nor could Mummy, and really, honestly, Ellie, it’s no wonder she feels ghastly. Aren’t these little pea shoots just adorable? I’m going to put them in the salad. I put nasturtium flowers in salad in the summer, and it’s completely worth it, just to see Tommy go ballistic. He can’t bear savoury food with fruit or flowers in. Too funny.’

Elinor was leaning against one of Charlotte’s artfully distressed painted cupboards, nursing a mug of tea. She said, ‘I’ll go and see her. Did she go to bed?’

‘Well, I hope so. I told her to, and so did Mummy, but she waved away Lemsip and Nurofen and, quite frankly, I didn’t want her sneezing all over poor little Tomkins, so I said go to bed and stay there.’

Elinor glanced across the kitchen. Inside a playpen on the carefully flagged floor, little Tom Palmer, dressed in bibbed dungarees and a miniature check shirt, was lying in a bouncing chair, feebly waving his arms and legs like a stranded insect. She said, ‘I do hope she hasn’t given him anything.’

‘Never fear,’ Charlotte said, competently slicing a fennel bulb, ‘I didn’t give her the chance. Bundled her upstairs at the double.’ She looked across at her son. ‘Didn’t we, baby buster? And won’t Daddy go apeshit when he sees you dressed up like that? It’s so funny, but Tommy thinks all babies should be in white nighties for months. So we’ll just hide the new cashmere baby cardi from Daddy, shall we? Ellie, you must be exhausted. Go and have a bath. The men won’t be here till nine and Mummy’s glued to the telly news, as ever. I keep saying to her, Isn’t it better not to know, when it’s all so ghastly, but she says not knowing makes her feel worse. Ellie, what am I going to do with her in London without your sister to fuss over?’

Marianne was lying on her side, on her bed, not in it, with her knees drawn up and her eyes closed. Elinor bent over her. ‘M?’

‘Oh,’ she said, not stirring. ‘Oh, Ellie. I’m so glad you’ve come.’

Elinor put a hand on her sister’s leg. Her jeans were damp, almost wet, and the strands of her hair snaking across the pillow were clearly not dry, either.

She said, almost crossly, ‘What are you doing?’

Marianne said, gritting her teeth against her shivering, ‘I don’t feel too great.’

‘No,’ Elinor said, ‘of course you don’t. You look awful. Have you got a temperature?’

‘Probably.’

‘And you are an asthmatic. And you lie there in wet clothes with a fever. You are not a baby, Marianne.’

Marianne said weakly, ‘Please don’t be cross. I just suddenly felt so awful, and then a bit caged, and I got caught in the rain—’

‘Sit up,’ Elinor said.

‘I can’t …’

‘Sit up!’

Marianne, her eyes still closed, struggled into a sitting position.

Elinor grasped the hem of her sweater and began to pull it over her head. She said, ‘Help me.’

‘I’m trying …’

‘Now your shirt.’

‘Ellie, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just can’t—’

‘Jeans,’ Elinor said. ‘Socks. Everything. God, you are so clueless.’

‘I didn’t want it to be like this.’

‘Have you got your inhaler?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘In my bag,’ Marianne said. She crouched on the edge of the bed in her underwear, shaking. Elinor dug her own pyjamas out of her case and held them out.

‘Put these on. I’ll get your puffer.’

‘I don’t need—’

‘M,’ Elinor almost shouted, ‘if you have a cold and it’s anywhere near your chest, what will happen? What? What?’

‘I didn’t want it to be a drama—’

‘There’s always a drama round you!’

‘I’m really sorry,’ Marianne said. ‘I am, I am. I needed you to come, I wanted you to come, but I didn’t mean this to happen.’

‘I’ll get you a hot-water bottle.’

‘Ellie?’

‘What?’

‘Have Bill and Tommy come?’

Elinor paused by the door. ‘Why should that make any difference?’

‘I don’t know. It’s – it just seems to be a bit reassuring when Bill’s around, doesn’t it …?’

‘Heavens,’ Elinor said tartly, ‘there’s a change of tune. I thought you thought he was old and boring.’