on earth was that noise?’
‘Katie fell off the ladder.’
‘Katie, are you all right?’ Her father was crouching on the floor beside her, saying calmly, ‘Let’s have a look at you. Don’t try and move.’
Move? That was the last thing she felt like doing. She felt sick and dizzy, and there was the most dreadful pain in her arm.
‘How is she?’ That was her mother, sounding impatient and anxious at the same time.
‘Is she hurt?’ That was Aunt Rose.
‘She’s broken her arm, by the look of it. We’d better get her down to A & E.’
Broken her arm? But she was going skiing next week, and she had to go because Tom would be there, and she desperately wanted to see him.
However, when Katie tried to tell everyone that, the pain in her arm became so intense that she fainted instead.
‘Here you are, Janey. This is the last of them.’
Janey took the empty Tupperware containers from Ella and put them into the back of the Range Rover.
‘Dad and Amber both look well,’ Ella continued, watching as Janey closed the back of the car.
‘Yes, they’re marvellous,’ Janey smiled.
Ella had taken the opportunity of the distraction provided by Katie’s fall to have a few minutes on her own with her sister.
‘A lot of that is down to you,’ she pointed out. ‘I really don’t know how you cope with all that you’ve got to do.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind. Dad and Amber aren’t any trouble at all.’ She paused and then acknowledged, ‘I wish I could say the same about Cassandra. She’s become so very difficult, and John finds it very hard to deal with her. To be honest, she wears me down. I felt so envious of all of you when we were in the kitchen earlier; you all looked so groomed and glamorous.’
‘Oh, Janey.’ Ella gave her sister a fierce hug.
‘You are the best of all of us.’
As she released Janey, Ella, feeling awkward, said, ‘I’ve brought some clothes with me that I thought you might be able to use. I know you don’t get much chance to shop these days.’
‘And if I did I wouldn’t have the money to buy designer clothes. Oh, it’s all right,’ she assured Ella, ‘I don’t mind eating humble pie – which is just as well as we’d probably all starve if we didn’t.’ Anything of Ella’s with a waist in it would have to be let out, of course, Janey thought, since she was nowhere near as svelte as her sister, but luckily that was something she could do herself.
‘I don’t know how we’d manage without all the help we get from the family, and I’m especially grateful to you, Ella, for giving up your share of the Walton Street business profits to me. They’ve installed the new central heating in the Dower House, which Cassandra insisted she was entitled to, and bought me this very handsome vehicle.’
‘You deserve it, Janey, and more. I’m sorry that Cassandra is giving you such a hard time.’
‘I can’t understand why she is being so mean,’ Janey responded. ‘Especially when she and our mother were such great friends.’
Ella wondered if this was the time to tell Janey about the real relationship that had existed between their late mother and their father’s cousin. Even now, after all these years, she hated thinking about the time as a child she had opened her parents’ bedroom door to see her mother and Cassandra naked on the bed together, Cassandra caressing her mother intimately, but before she could bring herself to speak, Janey’s elder son came out of the kitchen to join them.
‘Uncle Drogo has just rung from the hospital. Katie has broken her arm but it’s a nice clean break and the hospital says it will mend well.’
‘Well, thank goodness for that.’ Janey greeted Harry’s announcement with relief. ‘Go and find your father and David, will you please, darling, and tell them that I’m ready to leave? I’ve got to get back,’ she explained to Ella, after Harry had gone, ‘otherwise I won’t be able to get organised for the morning. I’ve left everything you’ll all need for breakfast in the fridge.’
‘Modern life is a far cry from the days when houses like these were run by an army of servants,’ Ella remarked as they closed the door on the cold night air, and then took off their coats, a sturdy well-worn Barbour in Janey’s case, and a luxurious camel-coloured wool and cashmere coat in Ella’s. ‘I wonder what Blanche would make of things if she was alive today?’
‘She wouldn’t approve at all,’ Janey laughed.
‘If you’ve got time we could go to our room and I could give you those things I mentioned?’
‘You’re so tactful, Ella,’ Janey told her, ‘trying to be discreet and make sure that the others don’t see me accepting my big sister’s charity, but truthfully, I don’t mind. Pride is a luxury I simply can’t afford, and I am truly grateful to you.’
When she got back to New York, she’d buy her sister something lovely and special and brand new, Ella promised herself, fiercely blinking away the tears she knew Janey would hate to see.
‘What makes it all so much more difficult with Aunt Cassandra and John is that she will keep reminding him of what close friends she and John’s mother were. She says it in that sort of way that implies that John owes her something above and beyond the very generous provisions for her made by his father in his will. I know it’s mean of me but I can’t help wishing that she hadn’t decided not to go and stay with her friends in Brighton this Christmas.
‘Oh, I know what I meant to say,’ Janey continued, changing the subject. ‘Your Olivia and Robert looked very happy in one another’s company when they arrived this evening. Is something going on there?’
The amused and questioning note in Janey’s voice distracted Ella from thinking about the brief sharp prick of warning she had felt when Janey had been talking about John’s mother and Cassandra.
‘They’ve always got on well together.’ Ella sidestepped Janey’s teasing question. Naturally she’d noticed Olivia’s glow of happiness, and she’d seen the looks that Olivia and Robert had been exchanging, but if something was going on between them it was a very new ‘something’, and one she wasn’t sure she liked.
‘I’m sorry for causing so much trouble, Dad,’ Katie said as Drogo stopped the car in front of Denham.
‘And so you should be, Katherine,’ Emerald scolded. ‘You’re old enough to know better than to take such silly risks.’
‘Yes,’ Emma chipped in with big-sister superiority. ‘Harry told you to come down.’
Drogo shot his younger daughter a sympathetic smile. ‘Not in too much pain now, are you?’ he asked her.
Stupidly it was her father’s kindness that brought her close to tears, rather than her mother and her sister’s criticism, Katie acknowledged, as she sniffed and shook her head. ‘My arm aches a bit but that’s all.’
‘You’re lucky you didn’t end up with concussion after a fall like that,’ Emerald told her, her crossness a cover for the shock and anxiety she had felt when she’d hurried into the hall to see her daughter lying crumpled there.
‘It was Harry who saved her from that by breaking her fall,’ Emma announced. ‘I bet he’ll be bruised black and blue with you falling on top of him like a sack of potatoes,’ she added. ‘Of course, you won’t be able to go skiing now. Not with a broken arm.’
‘I’ll be able to manage, Katie protested. ‘You see loads of people out there with arms and legs in plaster.’
‘Yes,