Isadora Cameron had the sort of springy red hair you didn't often see any more: once common on impossibly teased schoolchildren, or pinned into submission by surly shop assistants, a new generation of relaxants and leave-in conditioners had generally obliterated the kind of mad carrotty frizz that framed her face. Not that she seemed to mind it; since the first day she had come to Dere House, she had let it bounce loosely around her, a kind of russet explosion, dwarfing a face that would otherwise have been almost circular. 'Woman looks like a rusting Brillo pad,' Rosemary had said, with a sniff, on the first day that she came. But, then, Rosemary would have been inclined to dislike her whatever the condition of her hair.

To Rosemary, Mrs Cameron was described as a cleaner, someone to help Vivi now that she was spending more time with Douglas. It was a big house, after all. It was only surprising she'd managed so long without help. To everyone else, Mrs Cameron was Rosemary's chauffeur, cleaner, underwear launderer and general home help. 'Someone to take the weight off your shoulders,' Douglas had said, when he announced her employment. Mrs Cameron didn't bat an eyelid at unhygienic food cupboards or hazardous refrigerators. She didn't let moth-eaten cats or dishonest terriers trouble her cheerful demeanour. She considered soiled sheets and undergarments simply as part of the job. And for four hours every morning, for the first time since Rosemary had arrived, since the children had grown up, perhaps in her entire married life, Vivi now found herself able for several hours a day, to do anything she wanted.

At first she had found the freedom almost intimidating. She had sorted cupboards, gardened, baked extra cakes for The Women's Institute. ('But you don't even like baking,' Ben had said. 'I know,' said Vivi. 'But I feel it's a waste of your father's money otherwise.') Then, gradually, she had begun to enjoy the empty hours. She had started a patchwork quilt, with fabrics she had saved over the years from the children's favourite clothes. She had driven into town, by herself, to have a cup of tea that she hadn't made and enjoy the luxury of reading a magazine without interruption. She took her dog for proper walks, rediscovering the estate from ground level, taking pleasure in the land she had never really got to see. And she had spent time alone with Douglas, sharing sandwiches with him in the tractor, blushing pleasurably when she overheard one of the men remark that she and the 'old man' were like a pair of honeyspooners, these days.

'I don't like her,' Rosemary would complain, querulously, when Vivi and Douglas returned to the house. 'She's very impertinent.'

'She's very nice, Mother,' Douglas said. 'In fact, I would go so far as to say she is a treasure.'

'She's overly familiar with me. And I don't like the way she cleans.'

Vivi and Douglas exchanged looks. Mrs Cameron was resolutely deaf to Rosemary's rudenesses, met her bad-tempered complaints with the same soothing cheerfulness with which she had no doubt treated the old men of the nursing home from where Douglas had tempted her. She had been glad to come, she confided to Vivi. Those geriatric men might have been frail, but they weren't above giving you the odd goosing when they had the opportunity. And it wasn't as if you could give them a good whack in return, not with them prone to falling over and all.

'I'll have a word with her, then, Mother. Make sure she's not missing anything out.'

'She should do something with her hair,' Rosemary muttered, making her way slowly back into her annexe. 'I really find it very vexing that she doesn't tidy herself up a bit.' She turned and stared suspiciously at her son and daughter-in-law. 'Things are going on around here,' she said. 'Hair and all sorts. And I don't like it.'

This morning, Vivi thought, as Mrs Cameron entered, Rosemary was going to have a field day. The muggy heat of previous weeks had broken with a thunderstorm: the skies had darkened perversely at breakfast time and, after a lengthy and portentous stillness, cracked open, to unleash a torrential downpour. Mrs Cameron had been apparently caught without an umbrella, and in the short walk from her car to the door, her hair had sprung up in wild corkscrews around her head, like springs liberated from the innards of broken clocks. The children used to draw lions with manes like that, Vivi thought, trying not to stare.

'Will you look at it?' Mrs Cameron said, shaking her headscarf, wiping the rivers from her face with a handkerchief and examining the sleeves of her scarlet cardigan.

'Thank God for it,' said Douglas, as he came up behind them. 'Thought we were going to have to start irrigating if we didn't get some soon.'

'Do you do you want to borrow a hairdryer?' said Vivi, motioning towards her hair.

'God no. If you think it looks wild now, you should see it after a few volts. No, I'll let it dry naturally. I'll just stick my cardie on the Aga, though, if it's okay by you.' Mrs Cameron walked briskly down to the kitchen, a plump red inverted exclamation mark.

Douglas stood by the window, then turned to his wife. 'You remember we're off to Birmingham today, to look at trailers? Are you sure you're going to be all right with us taking your car?'

The Range Rover had gone in for its annual service and, rather than Douglas and Ben cancelling their plans, she had offered them hers. 'I'll be fine. With the weather like this, I'll just potter around at home. Besides, if I need anything I can always get Mrs Cameron to run into Dere for me.'

He had lifted a hand to her cheek, a wordless gesture, but an acknowledgement all the same. He left it there long enough to make Vivi blush, before he indicated upstairs to the gallery. 'Have you rung Suzanna?' He was smiling at her high colour.

'No, not yet.'

'Are you going to get her over here? Today might be a good day, with the rain and all. I don't suppose she'll be doing much business.'

'Oh, you never know. Tomorrow, perhaps.' Her eyes had not left her husband's. 'But I think you should call her. It will mean more coming from you.'

He placed his hat on his head, moved in to hold her. She felt his hands enclosing her waist, the comforting security of his chest against hers, and wondered that this late on in life she could be so embarrassingly happy.

'You are a remarkable woman, Vivi Fairley-Hulme,' he said into her ear. He had placed his emphasis on the "are", as if it were only she who had ever held this in doubt.

'Go on,' she said, stepping back and opening the door so that the rain darkened the slate of the hall floor. 'Before Ben disappears somewhere and it takes you an hour to find him. He's been itching to go since before breakfast.'

By lunchtime the rain had worn out its welcome. Even those who had expressed relief at its arrival, exclaiming at the desperate thirst of their gardens, or the heaviness of the recent heat, were finding the relentlessness and force of the downpour oppressive. It was, said the few visitors to the Peacock Emporium that morning, as they gazed out at the muddy grey skies, the mirrored pavements, like a tropical storm.

'I went to Hong Kong in the rainy season once,' said Mrs Creek, who came in after her lemon sole and boiled potatoes at the Pensioners' Friday Lunch Club (Restaurant Cuisine! At Cafe Prices!), 'and it rained so hard the water was actually flowing over the tops of my feet. Ruined my shoes, it did. I thought it was probably a way of getting us to spend more money.'

'What?' said Suzanna, who had given up trying to do anything and was watching the downpour through the window.

'Well, it's a good way of forcing you to buy more shoes, isn't it?'

'What making it rain?' Suzanna had rolled her eyes at Jessie.

'Don't be ridiculous. Stands to reason, doesn't it? Not providing proper drainage so the water has somewhere to go.'

Suzanna tore herself from the window and tried to take in what Mrs Creek was saying. A watched pot never boils, that was what her mother had told her. But it didn't stop her looking out for the lithe, dark figure that had become familiar to her through reminiscence, if nothing else. A figure that, today, had so far resolutely refused to show itself. I mustn't think like this, she told herself, for possibly the thirtieth time that day.

Suzanna pulled herself back into the snug interior of the shop, only dimly aware of the soft jazz in the background and the muted chatter of the women in the corner, who had been glad to use the rain as an excuse to indulge in a couple of hours' conversation. Mrs Creek was poring over a box of antique fabrics, unfolding each piece and muttering under her breath as she examined it closely for loose threads and holes, and a young couple was rifling through a box of Victorian and art-deco beads that Suzanna had not yet got round to pricing individually. It was the kind of rain that usually made the Peacock Emporium feel like an exotic bolthole, had made it glow, snug and bright, against the wet grey cobbles outside and allowed her to imagine herself to be somewhere else entirely. Today, however, she felt disquieted, as if the grey clouds, swept in from the North Sea, had brought with them some distant unease and blown it into the shop.

She looked over at Jessie, who was still writing price labels for a box of multicoloured Perspex letters, as she had been for the past half-hour, although Suzanna had told her it really wasn't necessary: they could just write '75p each' on the front of the box.

Now she thought about it, Jessie had hardly spoken all morning. In the days since she had returned to work she had been not quite herself: not subdued exactly, but distracted, slow to pick up on jokes that previously she herself might have instigated. She had apparently forgotten all about Arturro and Liliane, her former obsession, and Suzanna, preoccupied, had taken longer to notice. External bruises might fade, she thought now, regretting her own distraction, but perhaps internal ones were harder to shift.

'Jess?' she said carefully, when Mrs Creek had gone. 'Don't take this the wrong way, but do you want to take some more time off?'

Jessie looked up sharply, and Suzanna immediately wanted to backtrack. 'It's not that I don't want you here. I just thought . . . well, we're not busy at the moment, and you might want to spend more time with Emma.'

'No, no. It's fine.'

'Really. It's not a problem.'

Jessie stared at the table for a moment, then moved her head slowly, taking in the whereabouts of the customers, her relative privacy, and turned reluctantly to Suzanna. 'Actually, I need to talk to you,' she said, not meeting her eye.

Suzanna hesitated, then moved silently round the counter and sat down opposite her.

The younger girl looked up. 'I'm going to have to quit,' she said.

'What?'

Jessie sighed. 'I've decided it's not worth the aggro. He's getting worse. We're on the list for his anger management and couple counselling, or whatever it's called, but that might take weeks, months, even, and I've got to do something to get him to see sense.'

Her face framed into an apology. 'I've dreaded telling you,' she said. 'Really. But I've got to put my family first. And with a bit of luck it might only be temporary. Just till he calms down a bit, you know.'

Suzanna sat in silence. The thought of Jessie disappearing from the shop made her feel ill. Even without her current distractions, it no longer seemed the same on the days when Jessie wasn't there: she didn't feel the same enthusiasm for opening up; the hours stretched, instead of skittering by in ridiculous jokes and shared confidences. And if Jessie disappeared, her darker thoughts went, how many customers would vanish with her? They were barely breaking even as it was, and Suzanna knew well enough by now that the girl's smiling face and her interest in everyone's lives were a draw in a way that she alone could never be.

'Don't be cross with me, Suze.'

'I'm not cross. Don't be silly.' Suzanna reached out her hand, placed it on Jessie's.

'I'll stay on a week or two if it leaves you in the lurch. And I'll understand if you want to get someone else. I mean, I'm not expecting you to keep the job open for me.'

'Don't be ridiculous.'

Suzanna saw a tear plop on to the tabletop. 'The job is yours,' she said quietly. 'You know the job is yours.'

They stayed like that for some minutes, listening as a delivery-van reversed wetly down the road, sending waves of water on to the kerb.

'Who'd have thought it, eh?' Jessie's smile was restored.

Suzanna kept hold of her hand, wondering if she was about to receive some further confidence, not sure what she could bear to hear. 'What?'

'Suzanna Peacock. Needing people.'

The rain beat fiercely on the lane, the view from the windows a gun-metal blur.

'Not people,' said Suzanna, trying and failing to sound grumpy, to hide the constriction of her heart. 'You might have a split personality, Jess, but I don't think even you qualify as people just yet.'

Jessie grinned, a hint of her old self shining through, and gently removed her hand. 'But it's not just about me, is it?'

The annoying girl left at a quarter past three, taking with her all that hair, still sticking out as if she had been dragged through a hedge backwards. She had taken to shouting at Rosemary, as if she were deaf, and Rosemary, irked by this patronising treatment, had taken to shouting back, to show her it wasn't necessary. Young people could be so irritating.

She had told the girl, as she left, that if she wanted to hang on to her husband she was going to have to get herself a girdle. 'Tidy yourself up a little,' she said. 'No man likes to see someone who's hanging out all over the place.' She had thought, secretly hoped, perhaps, that the girl would take offence and leave. But instead she had placed her podgy little hand on Rosemary's own (another over-familiar gesture) and hooted with laughter. 'Bless you, Rosemary,' she had said. 'I'll be volunteering my husband for the corset treatment before I do it myself. Hasn't he got several gallons of bitter slooshing around in his?'

She really was impossible. And she was meant to leave at two two, not a quarter past three. Rosemary, checking her watch every few minutes, had become quite anxious for her to leave. Vivi always walked the dog after lunch, and she was counting on having the house to herself.

She called out, making sure Vivi hadn't come back in through one of the back doors, and then, a little stiffly, began to make her way slowly upstairs, hauling herself along with both bony hands on the banister. They had thought she wouldn't know, she mused bitterly. Just because she no longer went upstairs, they had thought they could ignore her wishes. As if her advanced years meant that she no longer counted. But she wasn't stupid. She knew exactly what their game was: hadn't she had her suspicions from the day her son had brought up all that business about dividing the estate again? Even in his sixties he had barely the sense he had been born with, was still swaying with the whims and fancies of women.

She had reached the last but one step and paused, hanging on to the banister, cursing the ache in her joints, the dizziness that prompted the siren call of the easy chair. Old age, she had long ago discovered, no longer conferred wisdom and status, but simply a series of indignities and physical collapses, so that not only was one ignored but tasks that one had once completed without thought now required planning and careful assessment. Could she reach the tin of tomatoes in that cupboard? And if she managed to pick it up instead of the similarly labelled beans next to it, would her now feeble wrists support it long enough for her to place it on the sideboard without dropping it on her foot?

She took a deep breath, and eyed the wide, even floor of the gallery. Two more steps. She hadn't lived through two world wars to let a couple of stairs deter her. She lifted her chin, took a firmer hold on the banister and, with a grunt, made it to the gallery.

She straightened slowly, taking in the space she hadn't seen for almost seven years. Nothing much had changed, she decided, with a vague satisfaction, not the carpet, or the plug-in radiator by the sideboard, or the smell of beeswax and old brocade. Nothing except the portrait, newly installed, which now glowed, newly framed and radioactive with malice, from the space opposite the long window.

Athene.

Athene Forster.

She had never deserved the surname Fairley-Hulme.

Rosemary looked up at the canvas, at the pale, smirking figure who seemed, even now, more than thirty years on, to be laughing at her. She had laughed at everyone, that one. At her parents, who had raised her to be the little tramp she was, at Douglas, who had given her everything, and whom she had repaid by parading her immoral behaviour half-way across three counties, at Rosemary and Cyril, who had done everything to keep the Fairley-Hulme line going and the estate intact. And no doubt, again, at Douglas, for not having the backbone to keep her portrait out of the family gallery.

She stared at the girl, at the sly smile, the eyes that even then had spoken of too little respect and far too much knowledge.

The rain thrummed on the windows, and the atmosphere felt damp, loaded with intent.

Rosemary turned stiffly towards the Gothic carver chair by the rail, assessing, calculating. She glanced down at her legs, then moved slowly towards it. Grasping its arms between two gnarled hands, she hauled it backwards, dragging it across the carpet towards the wall, one painful step at a time.

It took several minutes to travel the few feet and, when she finally reached her destination, Rosemary was forced to sit down and fight off dizziness, bracing herself for the final onslaught. Fairly confident that she was ready, she stood. Then, with one hand steadying herself on the back of the chair, she gazed again at the girl who had done so much damage, who was still insulting her family. 'You don't deserve to be up here,' she said, aloud.

Despite having done little in the previous ten years that was more acrobatic than stooping to fill her cat's bowl, Rosemary, with a jut to her jaw, her face a mask of determination, lifted a thin, arthritic foot, and began, precariously, to hoist herself on to the chair.

It was almost a quarter to four when he came. She had long ago given up staring through the rivulets on the window, was at a point when even scolding herself had become meaningless. She decided to do what she had put off for weeks: sort out the cellar. The shop itself might be immaculate, but she and Jessie had got into the habit of chucking empty boxes down the stairs, shoving trays of goods, boxes of coffee into whatever space they could find. Now, however, the autumn stock was arriving, a major delivery was due the following day, and Suzanna realised that they could not work round the boxes and the rubbish unless they were better organised.

She had been down there almost half an hour when she heard Jessie's exclamation of surprise, and delight, and stilled for a moment, unsure whether it was one of the other many visitors who seemed to instil in her friend such instant and vocal pleasure. But then, even against the noise of the rain, she heard his voice, halting and tonal, his laughing apology for something. She stopped and smoothed her hair, trying to quell the flutter in her chest. She thought, briefly, of the doctor's appointment she had made earlier that morning, and closed her eyes, feeling a stab of guilt that she could associate it with his presence. Then she took a deep breath and she made her way upstairs, deliberately slowly.

'Oh,' she said, at the cellar door. 'It's you.' She had tried, and failed, to sound surprised.

He was seated at his usual table. But instead of facing out to the window, he was looking towards the counter. Towards Jess. Towards Suzanna. His hair glittered black with rain, his eyelashes separated into starry points. He smiled, a slow, enchanting smile, wiping water from his face with a shining wet hand. 'Hello, Suzanna Peacock.'

Vivi shepherded the dog through the back door, shaking her umbrella on to the kitchen floor, and calling him back before he made a break for the rest of the house and marked the pale carpets with footprints. 'Oh, do come here, you ridiculous animal,' she exclaimed. She had thought that in lace-ups and with an umbrella she was prepared for the weather, but this rain was in a different league. She was wet through. I'll have to get changed right down to my smalls, she thought, examining her sodden clothing. I'll put the tea on and I can be changed by the time it brews.

The rain-loaded skies had made the kitchen unnaturally dark, and she flicked on several sets of lights, waiting as they stuttered into life. She propped her umbrella against the door, filled the kettle and removed her shoes, placing them against the stove, and wondering whether she should put shoe-trees in them to stop them shrinking. Rosemary's cat was sleeping, stretched out motionless, beside them, and Vivi placed her hand against its neck, just to check it was still alive. These days, you could never be sure. She was afraid that when it did die it might be there for several days before anyone noticed.

She pulled the teapot out of the cupboard, filled it with hot water, and left it on the tray to warm while she got out two cups and saucers. Left to herself, she would have used a mug, but Rosemary liked to do things formally even when it was just the two of them, and she was feeling generous enough to indulge her these days.

She glanced down at the kitchen diary as she pulled off her jumper and put it over the rail of the stove. Ben had a rugby-club meeting tonight: no doubt he would want to borrow her car again. There was also a reminder from Mrs Cameron that they were in need of some new rubber gloves and shower spray. Thank God for Mrs Cameron, she thought. How did I manage so long without her? How could something so simple effect such a change?

She turned back to the kettle, and began to prepare the tea. 'Rosemary,' she called, towards the annexe, 'would you like a cup of tea?'

The lack of response was not unusual: often Rosemary, through deafness or obstinacy, required several summonses before she would deign to answer, and Vivi knew she had not yet been forgiven for her outburst. But after the third attempt Vivi placed the tea-tray on top of a stove lid, and knocked on the door of the annexe. 'Rosemary?' she said, her ear pressed to the door. Then she pushed down the handle and entered.

She wasn't there. Having checked each room twice, Vivi stood in the hallway and tried to think where else her mother-in-law might have gone. Mrs Cameron had left, so she couldn't be out with her. She wouldn't be in the gardens in weather as filthy as this. 'Rosemary?' she called again.

It was then, above the dull rumble of the rain, that she heard the noise: a distant grunting, a shuffling, heralding some unseen effort. She waited, then turned her head better to gauge the direction from which it emanated. She looked, disbelievingly, at the ceiling and called again. 'Rosemary?'

There was a silence that Vivi would remember for weeks afterwards, and then, as she made for the door, a muffled exclamation from somewhere upstairs, the briefest pause, and then a terrible, sickening crash, overlaid by a furious, strangulated cry.

'I brought you something,' Alejandro said, but he was looking down and Suzanna wasn't sure to whom he had spoken.

'A present?' said Jessie, excitedly. She had perked up when he arrived: somehow he always had that effect on her.

'Not exactly,' he said apologetically. 'It's the Argentinian national drink. Mate. Our version of your cup of tea, if you like.' He pulled a brightly coloured packet from inside his wet jacket and handed it to Suzanna, who was standing behind the counter. 'It's bitter, but I think you might like it.'

'Mate,' said Jess, turning the word over in her mouth. 'La Hoja Yerba Mate,' she read from the packet. 'Fancy a cup of Mate, Suze? Milk and two sugars, is that?'

'Not milk,' said Alejandro, grimacing, 'but you can add sugar. Or orange pieces. Maybe lemon, grapefruit.'

'Shall I make a pot?' said Suzanna.

'No, no. Not a pot. Here.' He walked behind the counter so that Suzanna was suddenly acutely aware of his proximity. 'You make it in a mate. Like this.' From the other side of his jacket he produced a voluptuous silver pot, like a miniature pitcher. 'Here, let me prepare it. You can both try it and tell me what you think. I will serve you, for a change.'

'It looks like Chinese tea,' said Jessie, staring at the contents of the packet. 'I don't like Chinese tea.'

'It looks like a pile of old leaves and twigs,' said Suzanna.

'I'll make it sweet,' said Alejandro, shaking the yerba mixture into the pot.

Suzanna stood back against the blackboard, unaware that today's coffee listings were smudgily transferring themselves to her dark T-shirt. He was so close she could smell him: a mixture of soap and rainwater, and something, underneath it, that made her tense involuntarily. She felt oddly vulnerable.

'I I've got to get on with moving these boxes downstairs,' she said, desperate to regroup. 'Call me when it's ready.' She looked at Alejandro and added unnecessarily, 'We we've got loads more stock coming tomorrow. And no room. There's just no room.' She ran down the rickety staircase, and sat on the bottom step, cursing herself for her weakness as her heart thumped erratically against her chest.

'You're not usually here at this time,' she heard Alejandro say to Jessie, his voice betraying none of the turmoil she felt. But, then, she had no idea what he felt. What am I willing to happen here? she thought, clutching her head. I'm married, for God's sake, and here I am, throwing myself head first into another crush. Anything to avoid what's really going on in my life.