he is. Having Fanny for a mother …’
Belle turned in her seat. She said, rolling her eyes slightly in the direction of Thomas, ‘Let’s not talk about Fanny.’
‘She didn’t wave,’ Marianne said. She gazed out of the window, as if devouring what she saw as it sped past her.
‘No.’
‘She turned her face so that I kind of got her ear when I kissed her.’
‘Yuck, having to kiss her at all …’
‘She was pretty well smirking!’
‘She’s horrible.’
‘She’s over,’ Belle said firmly. ‘Over.’ Then she turned and smiled brightly at Thomas, who was driving with elaborate professionalism, and exclaimed, almost theatrically, ‘And we are starting a new life, in Devon!’
In the bright, small kitchen at Barton Cottage, with its immediate view of a rotary washing line planted in a square of paving, Elinor surveyed the unpacked boxes. She had said that she would sort the kitchen not just out of altruism, but also so that she could have time to herself, time to try and retrieve her mind and spirit, neither of which had yet made the journey with her body, from Norland to Barton.
It had been quite a good journey for the first few hours. Everyone was slightly hysterical with the immediate relief of escaping the pressure of living in a house with other people who so openly wanted them gone, but then Marianne had gone suddenly very quiet and then very pale and when Elinor, trained by long practice to be alert to her sister’s symptoms, asked if she was OK, she had begun to wheeze and gasp alarmingly, and Belle had ordered Thomas, in a voice urgent with panic, to stop the car.
They had tumbled out on to the verge of the A31 somewhere west of Southampton, and Elinor had been intensely grateful to Thomas, who quietly established himself beside Marianne as they all crouched on the tired grass by a litter bin in a parking place, and supported her while Elinor held her blue inhaler to her mouth and talked to her steadily and quietly, as she had so often done before.
‘Poor darling,’ Belle said, over and over. ‘Poor darling. It’ll be the stress of leaving Norland.’
‘Or the dogs, miss,’ Thomas said matter-of-factly.
‘What dogs? There aren’t any dogs.’
‘In the car,’ Thomas said. He was watching Marianne with a practical eye that was infinitely comforting to Elinor. ‘Sir John’s dogs is always in the car. Doesn’t matter how often we hoover it, we never get all the hairs out. My nan had asthma. Couldn’t even have a budgie in the house, never mind dogs and cats.’
‘Sorry,’ Marianne said, between breaths. ‘Sorry.’
‘Never be sorry …’
‘Just say, a bit earlier, next time.’
‘It won’t be an omen, will it?’
Margaret said, ‘We did omens at school and the Greeks thought—’
‘Shut up, Mags.’
‘But—’
‘We’ll put you in the front seat,’ Thomas said to Marianne, ‘with the window open.’
She nodded. Elinor looked at him. He was wearing the expression of fierce protectiveness that so many men seemed to adopt round Marianne. Solicitously, with Elinor’s assistance, he lifted Marianne to her feet.
‘Thank you,’ Elinor said.
He began to guide Marianne back to the car, his arm round her shoulders. ‘Nothing to thank me for,’ he said, and his voice was proud.
The rest of the journey had passed almost in silence. Thomas drove soberly and steadily, with Marianne leaning her head back in the seat beside him, her face turned towards the open window, her inhaler on her lap. Behind them, Elinor gripped Margaret’s hand and Belle sat with her eyes closed (in a way that suggested crowding memories rather than repose) as Hampshire gave way to Dorset, and Dorset, in its turn and after seemingly endless hours, to Devon.
It was only in the last five miles or so, as the countryside grew increasingly beautiful and spectacular, that they began to rouse themselves from the aftermath of shock and exclaim at what they were passing.
‘Oh, look.’
‘This is amazing!’
‘Gosh, Thomas, is Barton going to be this good?’
It was. They left the road and turned in between stone gateposts crowned with urns that heralded a series of drives curving away around a smooth hillside crowned with trees. There were freshly painted signs planted alongside the drives, indicating the directions to the main house, to the offices, to visitors’ parking and, with a right-angled arrow, to Barton Cottage. And there, after a further few minutes, it was, as raw and new looking as it had been on Sir John’s laptop, but set on a pleasing slope, with woods climbing up behind it, and the forked valleys falling away dramatically in front. They had gasped when they saw it, as much for its astonishing situation as for its uncompromising banality of design.
Thomas had looked at it with satisfaction.
‘We never thought he’d get planning permission,’ he said. ‘We all bet he wouldn’t. But he managed to prove there’d been a shepherd’s cottage up there once, so there’d been a residence. If he wants something, he doesn’t give up. That’s Sir John.’
Sir John had left wine and a note of welcome in the kitchen, and a basket of logs by the sitting-room fireplace. Someone had also put milk and bread and eggs in the fridge, and a bowl of apples on the new yellow-wood kitchen table, and Margaret reported, after inspecting the bathroom, that there was also a full roll of toilet paper and a new shower curtain, printed with goldfish. Elinor could not think why, confronted both with the kindness of almost strangers, and a practical little house in a magnificent place, she should feel like doing nothing so much as taking herself off somewhere private and quiet, to cry. But she did – and there was no immediate opportunity, what with Marianne needing to be assisted into the house, and Belle and Margaret exclaiming at the advantages (Margaret) and disadvantages (Belle) of their new home, to indulge herself. The luxury of being alone and able to look at and begin to arrange her thoughts would have, as it so often did, to wait.
And now, here was her chance, by herself in the kitchen, with unpacked boxes of saucepans and plates. It was comical, really, the way she’d ended up with unpacking all the practical stuff, while the others, ably and eagerly assisted by Thomas, decided where the pictures should hang and which window gave on to the right prospect to be conducive to guitar practice. Margaret had found a tree outside where she could get five whole signal bars on her mobile phone, if she climbed up into the lowest branches, and Thomas had immediately said that he would make her a tree house, just as he had agreed with Belle that the cottage could be easily improved by extending the main sitting room into a conservatory on the southern side. He had said he would bring brochures. Elinor had said quietly, ‘What about me?’
Belle went on looking at the space where the conservatory might stand. ‘What about you, darling?’
‘Well,’ Elinor said, ‘most architects get their first break designing extensions for family houses. Even Richard Rogers—’
Belle gave her a quick glance. ‘But you’re not qualified, darling.’
‘I nearly am. I’m qualified enough.’
Belle smiled, but not at Elinor. ‘I don’t think so, darling. I’d be happier with professionals who do thousands of conservatories a year.’
Elinor closed her eyes and counted slowly to ten. Then she opened them and said, in as level a voice as she could manage, ‘There’s another thing.’
Belle was gazing at the view again. ‘Oh?’
‘Yes,’ Elinor said, more firmly. ‘Yes. What about the