'Which means?'

'Basically, five days a week plus overtime if needs be and trips abroad if necessary.'

'Trips abroad? But I can't possibly do all that with two small children and a G.o.d-awful commute from Oxfordshire!' 'Er, no. Quite.' Silence.

'So it's the nothing option, is it? Is that it, Rupert?'

'Well Lucy,' he struggled, 'you know, what can I say?' I could sense him shifting uncomfortably in his chair at the other end. 'I don't make the rules. Just implement the b.l.o.o.d.y things,' he said miserably.

I opened my mouth to explode, then abruptly caved in. Oh G.o.d, it wasn't his fault. And actually, he was a thoroughly decent man. I sighed.

' It's OK, Rupert. I've felt the vibes for a while, actually. I expect that's why I was so nervous about asking'

This much was true. For some time now I'd felt guilty about sliding home at lunchtime, knowing jealous eyes were upon me, and knowing, too, that there was heaps to do and no one to do it. At times I'd talked airily of arranging a job share with some fict.i.tious character, but it hadn't materialised, and the reality was resentful colleagues, who were still there at six-thirty picking up my workload. I swallowed.

'Sorry Lucy,' he muttered. 'You know I'd do anything to keep you, especially well.'

After all you've been through was left unspoken, left hanging in the air. Rupert had been brilliant when Ned had died, had probably kept me on out of loyalty, I thought now, with a sudden, guilty pang, but I couldn't be carried for ever. And now, here I was, gaily trying to rearrange my schedule to suit myself again. Suddenly I was embarra.s.sed to have asked, to have put Rupert in that position. But I felt sick, too, as I put down the phone. My lovely job. My buzzy, South-Ken lifeline,my slice of London, my money, for crying out loud. But no matter. I turned a brave smile on Teresa now, aware of Ben's anxious, knowing little face turned up to me too.

'Oh, I don't mind about that,' I lied breezily. 'It paid peanuts anyway, and it would have been such a slog, coming up from the sticks. I'll find something down there, you'll see. Anyway Teresa, you'll have a string of shops soon. Perhaps I can manage one in Oxford for you. Muscle in on your fortune!'

She hugged me hard. 'You being brave,' she muttered in my ear.

'What choice do I have?' I muttered back. 'I've made the decision now. If everything conspires against me and taunts me at the last minute, what can I do?'

'I won't mention the Kyshogi boys either then, eh? That taunt you too?'

'Oh G.o.d,' I groaned. 'No, don't! Isn't it just b.l.o.o.d.y typical? Christ, what am I doing, Teresa?' I clutched my hair.

One of the other key, motivating factors for making this momentous break was that Ben was having a tough time at school. Twin boys in his cla.s.s, Bobat and Rahu Kyshogi, had taken it upon themselves to make his life a misery; picking on him, calling him a wimp, waiting for him when he came out of school, so that I had to make sure I was there, at the school gates, on the dot every day, to intervene. True, Pietro had been on the receiving end of the same sort of treatment, but although small, Pietro was much more savvy and streetwise and quite handy with his fists, whereas Ben, tall, skinny, sensitive, and who'd never hit another child in his life, was an easy target to take the brunt of their bullying.

Teresa and I had arrived to pick the boys up yesterday afternoon, to be told, by a beaming headmaster at the gates, that the Kyshogi brothers had ripped their last blazer, kicked their last victim, and spat in their last school dinner. They were being expelled. I'd gaped, speechless at the man.

'But why couldn't you have done that six months ago, when I told you it was unutterably b.l.o.o.d.y? When I brought Ben in to see you for heaven's sake, with a cut lip, bleeding knees, pencil case ripped to shreds. Why now?'

He shifted awkwardly, scratched his chin. 'I suppose I didn't know the full extent of the Kyshogis' behaviour then, Mrs Fellowes. Now, of course-'

'Now that they've beaten up Andrew Krugar,' Teresa interrupted sweetly behind me, 'it's been brought to your attention.' I swung around. 'Have they? Andrew Krugar?'

She nodded. I turned back. 'Ah, I see. Ah yes, well the dawn comes up, Mr Brightman.'

Andrew Krugar's father was head of the school governors and a pretty grand fromage locally. A lot of school funds came winging that way.

'I'm sorry, Mrs Fellowes,' he was hopping nervously from foot to foot now, 'but I really didn't realise it made such a difference to your taking Ben away. His place is still here, you know, and he's such a lovely intelligent boy. I really don't see why-'

'Oh, it's a bit late now, Mr Brightman,' I snapped. 'We're moving tomorrow! The telephone's been disconnected, the papers have been stopped the die is cast, as it were.'

I turned on my heel, furious, with Ben trailing anxiously behind.

'Is that why we're going, Mummy? Because you thought I was unhappy?'

'But you were unhappy, Ben,' I fumed.

'Yes, but I'm not now,' he said eagerly, trotting to keep up. 'The Kyshogis are going, all my friends are still here and Mr Brightman says I can stay, so so can we stay?'

'No,' I groaned, stopping abruptly in the street. I clenched my fists. 'No, we can't. Plans have been made, Ben. Granny's expecting us the flat's been sold, for heaven's sake!'

'But you weren't going to sell it! At first you were only going to let it!'

'Yes, but Ben, I told you. The offer we got was too good to turn down, and I no longer have a job to finance everything, so-'

'Everything's too good to turn down, except the things we want!' His voice broke and he ran on ahead, without me.

I sighed, rubbed my forehead wearily with my fingertips. It was true, I had been seduced by the money. I hadn't intended to sell the flat, but the estate agent had persuaded me that renting was a ha.s.sle and since he had a cash buyer dangling ... 'Far easer to let the thing go, Mrs Fellowes. Far easier, hmm?' Now, though, I felt as if I'd let everything go. I felt I was witnessing a landslide; with everything slipping inexorably away from me, all the handholds I'd subconsciously put carefully in place, just in case, crumbling before my eyes as my fingernails slipped on the scree.

I gave Teresa one last hug and snapped Max into his seat. Ben got in beside him and I hopped, with forced jollity, into the front.

'Bye, then! Come and see us soon, won't you? Give my love to the others.'

My heart lurched, as I suddenly spied 'the others', patently disobeying orders. Rozanna, Carlo, Ray and Theo were peering sheepishly around the curtain in Theo and Ray's flat. They saw me look, then broad grins broke out all round, as, waving madly and blowing kisses, they were unable to resist. I blew them all a quick kiss, swallowed hard, and shunted into first. Then, beeping my horn cheerfully, I took off. With the trailer piled high behind us and all our worldly goods rattling around in the sunshine, we roared down the road, plunged into the depths of the King's Road, and headed for the M4.

It didn't help of course, I thought, blinking furiously and brushing a few stray tears away with the back of my hand, that I was grotesquely hung over this morning. That didn't add to the gaiety of nations, and that was all down to last night. Yes, last night had been send-off night in Royal Avenue, and in the first-floor flat since that was the largest the usual suspects had gathered; Theo and Ray, the hosts, together with Rozanna, Teresa and Carlo, Jess and Jamie, Lucas and Maisie, and Pietro and Ben falling asleep in front of a video.

Theo and Ray, being the most marvellous cooks, had prepared a feast fit for kings. After much stirring and muttering and shooing us out of the kitchen, they'd whipped off their pinnies and lo. A mountain of ceps risotto, together with bowls of salad had appeared. We'd fallen on it ravenously, having pretty much drunk their drinks cupboard dry, and then had happily frittered the night away and drunk more. Lucas, Maisie, Ray and Theo had talked music and theatre, Teresa, Jess and me were predictably on schools, whilst Jamie, in thrusting Daily Mail mode, had swung his chair around and cornered Rozanna, probing her for a scoop on her latestliaison with a well-known captain of industry. Their heads were close and their voices low, and Jess, naturally, got the wrong idea. Eyes glazed by this stage and mouth drooping dramatically, she bent in close to me.

'You see?' she'd whispered furiously in my ear. 'Just look at him flirting with her, Lucy, he's completely shameless. And look at her, too, smouldering away under those heavily made-up lids. She looks like a high-cla.s.s tart, for heaven's sake!'

'But that's exactly what she is,' said Teresa surprised. 'Didn't Lucy tell you?'

Jess's jaw dropped to her chest. 'No! No, she didn't. G.o.d, how gripping! Is she really? Why didn't you tell me, Luce?'

I shrugged. 'Because she's always wanted to maintain the fiction, I suppose. So I have too, for her sake. Rozanna's quite vulnerable, you know, for all her supposed toughness.'

Rozanna turned at her name. Smiled fondly. 'All right, darling? Lovely party. Did you manage to get that stuff off to Charlie, by the way?'

Jess's ears p.r.i.c.ked up like greased antennae. 'Charlie? The guy in your office?'

I caught my breath. 'Yes. Yes, that's right.'

Rozanna frowned. 'In your office? At Christie's? But no, I told you darling, he writes film scripts and things. He-'

'Yes, yes I know,' I gabbled, 'but he just came in one day. To view an auction. English furniture, I think'

'Hang on.' It was Jess's turn to frown. 'You said he worked with you. I thought you said he was in your department or something. In fact I could have sworn-'

'Oh, that Charlie!' I said quickly, wondering why on earth I hadn't killed Jess months ago. Stabbed her to death on our stall with an antique letter-opener, popped the body in a black bin liner and dropped it in the Thames. 'No no, that's Charlie . . I glanced around wildly for inspiration. My eye snagged on Ben and Pietro's video. 'Bond. Charlie Bond.'

There was a surprised silence. Jess blinked. 'Charlie Bond?' she said drily. 'What, as in "licensed to kill"? Please don't tell me you're p.u.s.s.y Galore.'

I flushed. 'Don't be silly, it's a perfectly common name, Jess. It's just Rozanna's talking about a completely different Charlie, that's all. One who lives round here.'

'Ah.' Jess shut her eyes in mock exhaustion. 'Lordy, silly me. I'm losing track of all the Charlies. Not the one you've got the hots for then.'

I coloured dramatically and could feel Rozanna's eyes on me. 'I haven't got the hots for any Charlie, actually, Jess,' I spluttered.

'Just as well in Charlie Fletcher's case, daahling,' purred Rozanna softly, reaching for her drink. 'Because believe me, you'd be going down an awfully blind alley there.' She eyed me carefully over the rim of her gla.s.s as she sipped from it.

As I gripped the steering wheel now, steaming down the M4, I knew just how blind she meant. She was warning me off, of course. And I knew why. He wasn't just married, he was happily married and naturally, in my head, I'd always entertained dreams that it was otherwise. Imagined that his wife was perfectly ghastly, vile. Much older than him, probably, forty-five at least, and she'd trapped him by - yes, by getting pregnant. He'd had to marry her. There he'd stood, white-faced at the front of the church as she'd ballooned downthe aisle, smug and triumphant, forcing his hand and his destiny. Other days I fancied something entirely different; that they'd married very young, when she was sixteen, gormless and spotty, that he'd been pushed into it by over-zealous parents, to amalgamate family fortunes, that it was practically an arranged marriage.

Either way, young or old, she was totally unsuitable. I imagined she drank heavily and had indiscreet affairs. I saw her prowling around Tesco's looking for loose-limbed youths stacking shelves, dragging them back to her lair by their polyester ties. I imagined Charlie's distress, his embarra.s.sment. After a while though, this particular fantasy began to bother me. If she was such a goer, might she not be tempted to go with her husband, occasionally? When there weren't any shelf-stackers available? Instantly she became a downy-lipped librarian; timid and shy, with swirls of dark hair showing through her American Tan tights. Naturally she was allergic to s.e.x - terrified, in fact, following a nasty experience, years back, in the reference section - and now a glimpse of the naked male body was enough to make her vomit.

He was miserable, of course, miserable, but he kept up a pretence for - who? The children? Did he have any children? This tormented me for hours. On the one hand, yes, lovely, because that madc him a sweet and caring father, just as I was a sweet and caring mother and what a big happy family we'd make one day, de-dah de-dah, but on the other hand, no. No, ghastly, because it tied him to her. Some days it was impossible to resolve, but either way, I decided, the marriage was a sham, and it was only a matter of time before I cruised in, saved his bacon, and became the second Mrs de Winter, as it were.

I sighed. But no, according to Rozanna, she was lovely. Beautiful, talented, successful and he loved her dearly, as Ned had loved me. I swallowed, and tears of self-pity welled in my nose. And imagine if it were Ned and me, I thought in sudden horror. Imagine some predatory hussy prowling around Soho with a ridiculous dog under her arm, waiting for my husband to emerge from his editing suite, waiting to hustle him downstairs and pin him to the cutting-room floor.

Suddenly I felt ill. And not only that, but dirty, cheap and low. As I sped off at the motorway exit, I resolved not to even look up Hexham when I got there; not to gaze, wistfully, at the village on the Ordnance Survey map, not even to go past the place in the car. No, I'd find someone else, I determined, squaring my shoulders. Someone single and available. Find a b.l.o.o.d.y blacksmith, if needs be, bonk the living daylights out of him.

I swept a despairing hand through my hair and glanced in the rear-view mirror. G.o.d, I'd been so impulsive, what sort of a madness had gripped me? I'd followed my heart and my hot-headed instincts and now here I was, hurtling down country lanes with two unhappy boys in the back, no job, no prospects, and destined to live with my mother-in-law, for crying out loud. And I'd have to get a job down there, of course, I thought savagely. In a farm shop or something; selling cabbages, or - or saddles. Muck-spreading, perhaps ... Christ!

'Mummy, why are you doing that?' Ben removed his earpiece for a moment and looked at me in the rear-view mirror.

'What, darling?'

'Banging the steering wheel and making faces? Grinding your teeth?'

'Oh, was I? Well, because I'm so excited, I suppose' I ground a bit more to persuade him. 'This is all so terrifically exciting, isn't it? Such an awfully big adventure!'

'Is it?'

'Of course!'

'Oh.'

'Just look at all this lovely scenery, Ben. All that lovely -gra.s.s. Those, you know, hedges, and things'

He sat up. 'Are we nearly there, then?'

'Nearly there?' I swung nervously down a little lane, perilously close to another car, palms sweaty on the wheel. 'This is Granny's lane, Ben. Don't you recognise it?'

Ben peered out of the window. Max unstrapped himself and knelt up beside him. A colossal, twenty-foot wall surrounding the estate was making it impossible to see anything, actually.

'I'm not sure. It's ages since we've been' Ben sounded nervous. 'Is that their house?'

He pointed to a little lodge, as we finally found a gap in the wall, and swept through the gates.

'Um, no darling, that's Mrs Shilling's house. You know, who's married to the woodman? The man who does the logging for Grandpa'

It occurred to me to wonder if Ben remembered anything at all about this set-up. It was indeed ages since we'd set foot in the place.

As we purred slowly up the long drive, through the parkland, rattling periodically over cattle grids, my sons fell silent in the back. As I did, too. As one, we took in the sylvan scene; the well-tended acres that spread to either side of us, the trees neatly encircled by deer protectors, the sheep that grazed contentedly, crossing our path occasionally, so that we had to slow down to let them pa.s.s.

'Is this still their road, then?' asked Max, at length. 'Their drive,' muttered Ben.

'Still?' Max repeated in awe, a few minutes later. 'Still'

'So ... where's the house?'

'Hang on, my darling, hold your horses,' I tinkled merrily. 'It's right around this bend, I think.'

Except it wasn't.

It goes on for ever,' said Ben. 'We'll never escape.'

'And why should you want to, silly? Ah here it is!'

As we turned a corner, Netherby finally unfurled itself, rearing up at us out of the manicured green in all its Palladian glory. Banks of windows glinted in the sunlight from the golden, sandstone facade, and bal.u.s.trades and porticoes frowned down. Halfway up, a front door loomed, and from it, a huge bank of steps swept down, and then divided into two, to meet the sweep of gravel below. Beyond the house, beyond the parterres, the lavender walks and the rose gardens, immaculate parkland rolled to a gla.s.sy lake, then up again to wooded hills in the distance.

'Oh! It's like a castle!' breathed Max, suddenly excited.

'Isn't it,' I agreed, crunching to a halt on the gravel. And there, I thought with a gathering sense of dread, was the Queen.

Rose, who'd clearly been waiting, came, not from one of the many side doors I knew the house boasted, but out of thefront door, which was rarely used, except for very formal occasions. She threw it wide and tripped dramatically down the hundreds of steps to meet us. Halfway down, she was overtaken by a pair of bounding lurchers, who raised their heads, baying out a welcome. Behind her, slowly, came her eldest son, Hector; gangly and blond, corduroys billowing in the breeze, blinking away like billyo behind his gla.s.ses, clearly under orders to attend.

I glanced at my watch as I got out. We were over an hour late. They must have been waiting for ages, poised in the morning room perhaps, at the table in the window, sipping coffee together silently, waiting for our car. Rose muttering, 'Where is the wretched girl?' and then finally, as we came into view, putting her cup down abruptly. 'Here they are, Hector. Right, action stations. Come on, quickly now, out we go, and don't forget to smile, for heaven's sake.'

Skipping lightly down the last few steps she came towards us across the gravel, arms outstretched, beaming; a tiny spry, energetic figure, neat in a lovat-green twinset and smart trousers. Her navy shoes had horse bits on the front, and her immaculate grey hair was swept back and curled neatly round her ears.

'Darlings! You're here!' she called, still from some distance. 'h.e.l.lo, Rose.'

As I helped Max out of his seat, I glanced up at the house and caught a glimpse of Lavinia's pale face at an upstairs window. She quickly shot back behind the heavy drapes, clearly wanting to spy, but not wanting to be seen.

I clutched my two boys by their hands, one on either side and steeled myself. Then I strode confidently towards the welcoming committee, a smile fixed firmly in position. 'h.e.l.lo there.'

'Lucy! Ben! Max!' Rose called lightly. Her hands lit briefly on my shoulders and she gave me a swift kiss. 'Isn't this wonderful? Isn't it just marvellous?' She crouched down between the boys. 'And let me look at you both. My goodness, you've grown. Look at the pair of you - huge!'

She straightened up, smiling. As she did, her pale blue eyes travelled comprehensively over my jeans and T-shirt, and finally came to rest on my face. They glittered intently.

'So! Lucy, what a treat. Isn't this perfect? Here we all are, together again. At long last. All present and correct!'

Chapter Six.

'Come in, come in!' she cried, turning on her heel and leading the way towards the steps. She was, as ever, I noticed, dauntingly thin. 'I'm sure you'll want a cup of something after your journey,' she said, striding on, 'and then I'll show you Chandlers Barn. But first, come and say h.e.l.lo to everyone. Lavinia! Lav-in-ia! Yoo-hoo, they're he-re! Follow me, Lucy.'