Fanny said, ‘listen. Listen to me. What about your promises to me? What about Harry? I know you love this place, I know what it means to you even if you’ve never lived here and you know I’ll help you restore it and keep it up. I promised you, didn’t I? I promised when I married you. But it’s going to cost a fortune. It really is. The thing is, Johnnie, that good interior designers don’t come cheap and we agreed, didn’t we, that we were going to go for gold and not cut corners because that’s what a house like this deserves?’
‘Well,’ John had said uneasily, ‘I suppose …’
‘Poppet,’ said Fanny, ‘just think about us. Think about you and me and Harry. And Norland. Norland is our home.’
There’d been a long pause then.
‘They’re snogging,’ Margaret said disgustedly. ‘She’s sitting on his lap and they’re snogging.’
It worked, though, the snogging; Elinor had to give Fanny credit for gaining her ends. The house, their beloved home which had acquired the inimitable patina of all houses which have quietly and organically evolved alongside the generations of the family which has inhabited them, was being wrenched into a different and modish incarnation, a sleek and showy new version of itself which Belle declared, contemptuously, to resemble nothing so much as a five-star hotel. ‘And that’s not a compliment. Anyone can pay to stay in a hotel. But you stay in a hotel. You don’t live in one. Fanny is behaving like some ghastly sort of developer. She’s taking all this darling old house’s character away.’
‘But’, Elinor said quietly, ‘that’s what Fanny wants. She wants a sort of showcase. And she’ll get it. We heard her. She’s got John just where she wants him. And, because of him, she’s got Norland. She can do what she likes with it. And she will.’
An uneasy forced bonhomie hung over the house for days afterwards until yesterday, when John had come into their kitchen rather defiantly and put a bottle of supermarket white wine down on the table with the kind of flourish only champagne would have merited and announced that actually, as it turned out, all things being considered, and after much thought and discussion and many sleepless nights, especially on Fanny’s part, her being so sensitive and affectionate a person, they had come to the conclusion that they – he, Fanny, Harry and the live-in nanny – were going to need Norland to themselves.
There’d been a stunned silence. Then Margaret said loudly, ‘All fifteen bedrooms?’
John had nodded gravely. ‘Oh yes.’
‘But why – how—’
‘Fanny has ideas of running Norland as a business, you see. An upmarket bed and breakfast. Or something. To help pay for the upkeep, which will be’ – he rolled his eyes to the ceiling – ‘unending. Paying to keep Norland going will need a bottomless pit of money.’
Belle gazed at him, her eyes enormous. ‘But what about us?’
‘I’ll help you find somewhere.’
‘Near?’
‘It has to be near!’ Marianne cried, almost gasping. ‘It has to, it has to, I can’t live away from here, I can’t—’
Elinor took her sister’s nearest hand and gripped it.
‘A cottage,’ John suggested.
‘A cottage!’
‘There are some adorable Sussex cottages.’
‘But they’ll need paying for,’ Belle said despairingly, ‘and I haven’t a bean.’
John looked at her. He seemed a little more collected. ‘Yes, you have.’
‘No,’ Belle said. ‘No.’ She felt for a chairback and held on to it. ‘We were going to have plans. To make some money to pay for living here. We had schemes for the house and estate, maybe using it as a wedding venue or something, after Uncle Henry died, but there wasn’t time, there was only a year, before – before …’
Elinor moved to stand beside her mother.
‘There’s the legacies,’ John said.
Belle flapped a hand, as though swatting away a fly. ‘Oh, those …’
‘Two hundred thousand pounds is not nothing, my dear Belle. Two hundred thousand is a considerable sum of money.’
‘For four women! For four women to live on forever! Four women without even a roof over their heads?’
John looked stricken for a moment and then rallied. He indicated the bottle on the table. ‘I brought you some wine.’
Margaret inspected the bottle. She said to no one in particular, ‘I don’t expect we’ll even cook with that.’
‘Shush,’ Elinor said, automatically.
Belle surveyed her stepson. ‘You promised your father.’
John looked back at her. ‘I promised I’d look after you. I will. I’ll help you find a house to rent.’
‘Too kind,’ Marianne said fiercely.
‘The interest on—’
‘Interest rates are hopeless, John.’
‘I’m amazed you know about such things.’
‘And I’m amazed at your blithe breaking of sacred promises.’
Elinor put a hand on her mother’s arm. She said to her brother, ‘Please.’ Then she said, in a lower tone, ‘We’ll find a way.’
John looked relieved. ‘That’s more like it. Good girl.’
Marianne shouted suddenly, ‘You are really wicked, do you hear me? Wicked! What’s the word, what is it, the Shakespeare word? It’s – it’s – yes, John, yes, you are perfidious.’
There was a brief, horrified silence. Belle put a hand out towards Marianne and Elinor was afraid they’d put their arms round each other, as they often did, for solidarity, in extravagant reaction.
She said to John, ‘I think you had better go.’
He nodded thankfully, and took a step back.
‘She’ll be looking for you,’ Margaret said. ‘Has she got a dog whistle she can blow to get you to come running?’
Marianne stopped looking tragic and gave a snort of laughter. So, a second later, did Belle. John glanced at them both and then looked past them at the Welsh dresser where all the plates were displayed, the pretty, scallop-edged plates that Henry and Belle had collected from Provençal holidays over the years, and lovingly brought back, two or three at a time.
John moved towards the door. With his hand on the handle, he turned and briefly indicated the dresser. ‘Fanny adores those plates, you know.’
And now, only a day later, here they were, grouped round the table yet again, exhausted by a further calamity, by rage at Fanny’s malevolence and John’s feebleness, terrified at the prospect of a future in which they did not even know where they were going to lay their heads, let alone how they were going to pay for the privilege of laying them anywhere.
‘I will of course be qualified in a year,’ Elinor said.
Belle gave her a tired smile. ‘Darling, what use will that be? You draw beautifully but how many architects are unemployed right now?’
‘Thank you, Ma.’
Marianne put a hand on Elinor’s. ‘She’s right. You do draw beautifully.’
Elinor tried to smile at her sister. She said, bravely, ‘She’s also right that there are no jobs for architects, especially newly qualified ones.’ She looked at her mother. ‘Could you get a teaching job again?’
Belle