The next morning, after the school drop, she was still humming with pleasure when she met Harriet at Starbucks. At the front of the queue, listening to Harriet bleating about some parent-teacher meeting, she ordered their usual. 'Tall skinny Americano with a poppyseed m.u.f.fin, and a mocha latte with whipped cream and a chocolate m.u.f.fin. Cheers.'

'Uh-uh,' Harriet interjected. 'A tea for me, please, no milk. And forget the m.u.f.fin.'

Nicole looked at her in surprise. 'Your body a temple today, then?'

'Not just today, all frigging spring,' Harriet spat, as they settled into the velvet sofa.

'Tell me more.'

'Not yet. I want to hear about you first. What gives with Gavin the Grot? Did he tell you about the major sucking-up trip he's got planned for you?'

'Oh, Harriet, you are bad. Suppose he hadn't?'

'Excuse me, lady, but since I knew he was taking you to Chez Gaston last night ordering Viognier, I dare say I figured he'd have the holiday as a dessert-chaser, just to clinch the deal.'

'I've got to stop telling you things. You know altogether too much about me.' Nicole laughed ruefully. 'What deal?'

'You know, the takeover of the marital bed, the merger with the other occupant, the reacquisition of the wife's adoration. None of which will have been nearly hostile enough, if you ask me.'

'Which I didn't.'

'Don't get sulky with me, Nic. And don't try to deny it. You've got that s.h.a.gged-until-five-minutes-before-the-alarm-went-off look about you and on a school night!' Nicole looked at her sheepishly. 'Look, this is no surprise this is the pattern of your mania. I simply reserve the right, as your best friend and the smarter half of our partnership, to remind you of what a complete idiot you are.'

'Listen, I'm not going to spout any of that it's-different-this-time stuff-'

'Good you'll sound like one of those desperate women on Trisha.'

'It's just... well, you know, really. He's my Achilles heel. I love him.' It was said in the tone of Nancy in Oliver.

'Oh, don't feel bad.' Harriet squeezed Nicole's arm. 'You and a gazillion other women throughout history. I know you can't help it. I may hate it, but I do get it. Honestly. So... Venice. He must be really sorry this time.'

'I think so.' Harriet threw her a sharp glance. 'Okay, okay, well, I don't care. We had an absolutely magical, o.r.g.a.s.mically wonderful, gorgeously romantic time the last time we were there.'

'Nic, everyone has an absolutely magical, o.r.g.a.s.mically wonderful, gorgeously romantic time on honeymoon. Even Tim and I had our moments on St Lucia.'

'Yeah, but have you ever been back? Re-created the recipe?'

'You know we haven't. Can't see it happening, somehow. Right now I wouldn't want to go on a day-trip to Brighton with Tim he's driving me mad.'

'Well, I'm going to try. Get us I'm married to Don Juan but holding on to girlish hope even though it flies in the face of all reason. You're married to Mr b.l.o.o.d.y Darcy, and you're not happy either. What's the poor sod done now?' Nicole loved Tim almost as much as Harriet despised Gavin.

'Oh, he hasn't done anything wrong. Of course not. How could he? It's me, really. And this.' She pulled the invitation out of her bag and watched as Nicole read it.

The cancelled chocolate m.u.f.fin immediately fell into place. 'Oh, hon.' They held hands, briefly, there on the sofa together.

Nicole knew all about Charles, of course. On one of those long afternoons together in the park, years ago when the babies used to sleep for three hours after a feed, they had played the deepest-secrets-truest-loves game. They both had pretty short scorecards. Nicole was married to the love of her life, and Charles had been the love of Harriet's. She loved Tim, Nicole knew she did. When they had first been friends, and Nicole had first understood about Charles and Tim, she had kept her fingers crossed that Harriet would fall in love with Tim. That the babies how good he was with them, the family they were crafting would tip the balance and turn love into being properly 'in love'. But when she looked at herself, and the stupid, crazy, desperate way she felt about Gavin, she knew that Harriet wouldn't find that next to an Aga or over her baby's sweet-smelling head. Charles had been It, as Gavin was It. Although over the years Nicole had wished that Gavin had got away from her, or that she was married to her own Tim. A calmer, gentler love had its appeal, especially in the bad times.

But this invitation, this declaration of Charles's intentions, so stark in black embossed text, she knew how much it had to hurt.

Clare Clare switched off the soap opera she hadn't really been watching and put the sandwich she hadn't really been eating into the fridge. Then she looked at the clock. If Elliot wasn't back by now he was staying away on purpose until she had left for her night shift. Neither pleased at avoiding him nor angry because he was avoiding her, she collected her bag from the hall cupboard and left, switching off the last light behind her. Elliot would come back to a dark, empty house. Leaving the light on in the front window, as she would have done once, felt like too much of a welcome.

It was as if the nurse inside her, the observer, had climbed out and sat beside her on the pa.s.senger seat of the car to watch her flick on the heating to defrost the windscreen and push in the ca.s.sette. She told her that nonchalance was the scariest thing, the last stop on the road to clinical depression, and willed her to feel. Driving along the flyover, Clare thought, at the bend where she always thought this, What if I didn't turn the wheel, just let the car go straight? What if I did that? Straight over, into the road below?'

But Clare didn't want to die. She just wanted something to change. She wanted to feel. She'd be all right when she got to the labour ward, which was her favourite. When well-meaning people, with their relentless invasive questions, discovered that she couldn't have a baby, they invariably said, 'And you a midwife. How sad for you, all those babies.' But it wasn't often like that. Sometimes, when it was quiet at night on the postnatal ward, it was. The hospital maintained an old-fashioned night nursery, where mums who had had Caesareans, or second-time mums who wanted to grab a precious night's uninterrupted sleep could park their plastic cribs with their precious cargo. Then, if there was time between new admissions and answering bells, Clare would sometimes take a newborn, bath her, really properly, sometimes cut her tiny sharp finger- or toenails, and dress her carefully in a white bodysuit, scratch mittens and a hand-knitted cardigan the mother had packed with such hope and excitement weeks earlier. Then she would hold her, swaddled, and rock in the chair in the corner of the night nursery, rock the rest of the room away. That made her ache, especially when the fiercely possessive new mother would come, anxious for her baby, b.r.e.a.s.t.s swollen and painful, muscles sore from delivery, smiling with grat.i.tude as she staked her claim.

The labour ward was different. There, women needed her, and she was good at caring for them. She knew how to do this.

She had recognised Harriet at once the other night at the reading group. It happened to Clare all the time, walking around town she had delivered a lot of babies. Harriet had joked that she probably didn't recognise her with her knickers on, but Clare remembered everything: that it had been a longish but straightforward labour, that the baby had been a girl, called Chloe, weighing seven pounds or so and with long feet, born almost at sunrise. And Harriet had remembered her, too. That she'd been kind, encouraging and strong. That she herself had been beastly, noisy, rather wimpish, and particularly grateful to the little dark-haired girl who had stayed on after her shift to be with her at the end. There was a picture of Clare in their family alb.u.m, all in white, holding a tiny, red-faced, newborn Chloe in a white blanket, competently on the upturned palm of one hand, leant in on her, and another at the head of the bed next to Harriet. 'It's a weird relationship,' Harriet had said. 'We were each other's entire universe for about six hours and then we would never ordinarily meet again.' Clare liked it that way. Mostly.

Tonight a woman called Maria was delivering her first baby. Clare had met her a few times at the clinic, liked her, knew that she was terrified. Maria's husband, Ian, was clutching a bag of boiled sweets he had taken from a large rucksack clearly packed to NCT specifications: Clare could see a tape-recorder and a ca.s.sette, whose case carried handwritten notes music they wanted to give birth to. No doubt there would be aromatherapy candles and a vial of arnica among the rest. One look at Maria's face told Clare that labour had progressed to a stage where all that careful planning had been forgotten. The young woman grabbed her hand as she approached the bed. 'I think I'm ready for an epidural now. Really. Please. I don't want to do this any more. Please.'

Clare heard the underlying hysteria and fear in her polite voice. 'h.e.l.lo, Maria. Now, we'd better just have a look at you, see if this baby's planning on making an appearance tonight.' She brought her face close to Maria's, put a hand on her shoulder. 'Don't panic. I'm here, and I'll stay with you, however long it takes. You're going to have a beautiful, healthy baby safe in your arms just as soon as he's ready. You can do this. I know I can this will be my hundred-and-fiftieth baby. I'm good!' Maria smiled weakly. 'Let's have a look and then we can have a chat about what you want to do. Okay?'

Elliot Elliot flicked the switch on his computer, pulled his jacket off the back of his chair, rubbed one eye and stretched both arms skyward. A long day of looking at the screen. Mostly Elliot's days were fairly sociable a steady stream of kids and mature students through the office with enquiries, bantering lunch with a colleague, meetings but he was working on a data doc.u.ment that was due at the end of the week, and he'd been shut behind his part.i.tion door since 8.45 a.m. He had had only a tuna-mayonnaise sandwich and an argumentative phone call with the local garage about his car's MOT to break the monotony. He hated days like this had been. He was only too aware that, lately, he had had most of his human contact from colleagues. Clare showed him so little kindness and warmth, and he couldn't reach her. Friends were harder and harder to be with: the ones with kids were impossible; the ones without didn't want to be with them anyway. Christ, he and Clare didn't want to be with themselves.

Outside it was freezing cold, so Elliot turned up his collar and hunched his shoulders against the wind as he scanned the parking bays for his car. He should have gone home earlier. Clare would have been there.

On the other side of the car park, a bunch of kids pulled open the double doors of the pub: warm golden light and the sounds of music, shouted conversations and clinking gla.s.ses spilt out into the dark evening. It was a great pub, pulling in a mixed crowd of students, workers from the nearby office blocks, and anachronistic regulars, who sat in jealously guarded seats at the bar and treated the youngsters like the cabaret, nursing pints in their own tankards, which were stored on hooks next to rows of alcopops. Staffed by rowdy Australians and Kiwis, it was noisy, smoky and real.

Elliot opened the car, threw his briefcase on to the back seat, locked up again, and set off, hands pushed deep into pockets. He'd take an hour of the comfort of strangers.

Brightly coloured chalk on the board by the door announced that this was karaoke night, and Elliot almost turned away, but a burst of raucous applause and wolf-whistling was irresistible. Three girls had taken to the stage, and were listening, hands round their microphones, to the introduction of their song. And there she was, watching them. They must be friends of hers. As they ma.s.sacred the first line, they warmed to their disco-diva task, and their performance became a magnet for the crowd. Elliot couldn't take his eyes off her. She was so... beautiful. So free and young. Her hips swayed in low, wide corduroy trousers, and above them the gem in her navel sparkled under the lights. As her friends finished, bowing theatrically and hugging each other, she saw him at the edge of the stage, and her smile changed. It was just for him, that look. It gave her pleasure to see him.

Not pain.

She inclined her head towards the door and whispered to her friends.

When she came out, wrapped in a huge woolly jumper, he was waiting down the alley at the side of the pub. 'h.e.l.lo, you,' she said, and kissed him deeply, her arms round his neck, fingers in his hair.

Elliot held on to her. 'h.e.l.lo, me.'

Harriet Harriet couldn't sleep. At three a.m. she gave up, tied her enormous white towelling robe round her and padded along the corridor to look at her children. Joshua was spreadeagled like a starfish, duvet pushed down to the last fifth of the bed, palms open, vulnerable in sleep as only a child can be. Harriet covered him lightly with the duvet, but he shrugged it off again. Chloe was face down, right on the edge of her bed, with one arm hanging almost to the floor. She smiled and curled one arm round her mummy's neck in her sleep as Harriet moved her towards the wall. She plugged her thumb back in and nestled down. She smelt like an angel.

Downstairs, Harriet flicked the switch on the kettle for a mug of tea and resisted the temptations of the biscuit barrel. She'd been on this b.l.o.o.d.y diet for a whole week now. This morning the scales had shown a gratifying three-pound drop, which had strengthened her resolve. Now, instead of chocolate biscuits, she would treat herself to a nostalgia fest. Harriet often sent herself back to the summer of 1988 when she couldn't sleep, when the kids were driving her barmy in traffic jams, when she was swimming. She'd been doing it more and more often lately.

She had been nineteen, a perfect size ten, for the first and last time in her life, slimmed out of her puppy-fat by a year of self-catering in university halls. She was also very brown, and lying naked in the middle of a very white bed, with very white muslin curtains billowing at french windows. Beyond, the Mediterranean sky was an exquisite azure blue. Just recovering from the aftershocks of her first o.r.g.a.s.m which had been rather wonderful and totally surprising and looking into the eyes of the man she knew without question was the great pa.s.sion of her life. Charles Roebuck. History, third year. Very blond, incredibly s.e.xy and heart-stoppingly beautiful.

About ten of them had taken bucket-shop flights to Athens and a ten-hour ferry from Piraeus harbour, in the summer after her first year at Durham, for three weeks' camping on a beach on Ios, that year's designated party island. Charles had been a friend of a friend, admired only from afar, and occasionally followed to the college laundry, until after one tequila too many Harriet's friend Amanda had suddenly been sharing a tent with his friend Rob. Charles and Harriet were left sitting shyly at the campsite's all-night coffee bar, chatting over the noises emitting from under canvas all around them. By the eighth night a spirit of if-you-can't-beat-'em had clearly come over Charles: he had led an awestruck Harriet into her tent and they had kissed until she thought she would liquefy and flow away down the beach. The next morning, when they were awoken by the heat, making them sweat in their nylon love nest, it being already close to thirty degrees outside, Charles had smiled down at her stubble-rashed face and said: 'I think if we're going to take this any further, we'd better book ourselves a room at that hotel down the end of the beach and do it properly, don't you?' Sir Galahad could not have had a bigger fan.

He announced their decision to upgrade over breakfast and, among much whooping and phwoaring, they tripped off to the relative Nirvana of a hot shower, their own loo and room service. Oh, and that bed. Which was where Charles finally showed her what all the fuss was about. She'd had other lovers, of course. A couple in the sixth form, one ill-advised drunken liaison with the captain of cricket, and a drippy English undergraduate who had sent her a poem on Valentine's Day. But Charles was the first man who had, in the nicest possible way, screwed her brains out. She'd thought she wouldn't be able to walk afterwards, her legs felt so shaky.

On an impulse she went to the dresser cupboard and pulled out one of her old college photograph alb.u.ms. Most of the pages had been pillaged by the kids, and photos were missing or shoved back in the wrong order, so a handful fell out as she carried it to the kitchen table. On the top was one of her and Charles, sitting with a bottle of beer each, raised in a toast, his arm casually around her shoulders. There was another of them at the college summer ball the next year. That was the first time he'd told her he loved her, which sealed her fate. She'd been wearing his DJ it was about three in the morning, and the college lawn was littered with party detritus and exhausted bodies, bedraggled now in prized gowns and rented suits. That night she had been emotional: he had finished his degree and was off to a lucrative management-consultancy job in London, and she was afraid. Afraid because she loved him so much that she thought her ribs might crack, and although they had had this brilliant, amazing year, of s.e.x, parties, working side by side in the library and more s.e.x, he had never told her he loved her, and so she figured he didn't. But that night he had. He had told her he loved her. And that he wanted her to come down every weekend to his new flat, to stay in his life. That they could make a long-distance relationship work, easy. And that she was beautiful. Then they went back to his room, and lay down naked on his narrow single bed, with the noise of the ball shrieking and throbbing around them, and he told her again that he loved her. He said it once with each long, slow thrust inside her, and when he came his eyes were full of tears, and he said it one last time, his lips against hers, so that the breath of the words was hot inside her mouth. And she knew that, whatever happened afterwards, when she lay on her deathbed that was the moment she would remember at the last.

Ha, ha. Harriet smiled at the memory of herself at twenty. Of course, that didn't stay true not when you'd held your own baby in your arms: they were everything. But just imagine the feeling if they'd been Charles's babies, not Tim's.

Suddenly angry, with herself, with Tim, and most especially with Charles, Harriet slammed the alb.u.m shut, shoved it back into the dresser, and went to do the ironing in the utility room. Better not waste that energy.

She'd polished off most of the basket when Tim appeared. 'Cup of tea?'

His calmness irritated her anew. Why the h.e.l.l isn't he asking me why I'm doing the ironing at four o'clock in the morning? she thought. That's just not normal. 'Thanks. I'll be in in a moment.'

Tim flicked the switch on the kettle. He put teabags into mugs, and took milk from the fridge. He tried not to look at the invitation on the shelf. He'd seen it a few days ago, when he'd come in from work, and he'd felt the old fear seep back into him. He'd rushed home, and changed out of his 'worky stuff' as Chloe called it, in time for stories. There was a big deal brewing at the moment, and when it went to due diligence in a couple of months he would have to miss a few chapters. While he had to admit that the bonus, if he pulled it off, would be nice take the heat off the school fees for a few years, certainly he didn't relish the idea of time away from the three of them. Chloe had insinuated herself under his arm. She didn't really understand Harry Potter: she liked Milly-Molly-Mandy, but Mummy had read that to her earlier, she told him, while Joshua was on a submarine secret mission in the bath, and she was quite happy, snuggled into daddy, smelling his familiar smell, listening to the lilt of his voice, while Joshua listened from under the other arm. She felt safest with Daddy between them.

It had been a strange afternoon, Chloe had confided. Mummy, who was normally terribly firm about that sort of thing, had allowed them to gorge themselves senseless on sweets, watch videos and have Nutella sandwiches for tea. And Joshua had had to remind her himself that he hadn't done his reading homework. This he helpfully did fifteen minutes before bedtime, but even that didn't earn him the telling-off he could normally have expected. Mummy was definitely in a funny mood, Chloe had said, with her lovely solemn face, to her daddy while he was changing.

'Oh, darling girl, Mummy's just busy trying to find enough room on the sofa for our bottoms, after you two have been making a mess all day. Anyway, what videos did you watch? And what sweeties did you eat? Not the chocolate gingers Father Christmas brought me, I hope, 'cos then I'd have to tickle you.' And he advanced towards her, mock-menacing, fingers wriggling. Chloe shrieked with delighted terror and shimmied under the duvet as her father fell on her, growling.

But he had noticed it too: Mummy was in a funny mood. Was it the invitation? Or was it the conversation they had had over New Year? Or, rather, the conversation he had tried to have. He'd been a bit tipsy, a bit brave, he supposed. And she had looked so lovely. He never got tired of looking at her face warm, soft and animated. And listening to her he loved to listen when she was on form, as she had been that night when she made other people laugh. He had felt proud and contented and, yes, a little bit tipsy, and, yes, more than a little bit randy. And he'd whispered to her that maybe this year was the year to have another baby, someone in the family should be born in the twenty-first century. Maybe even starting tonight. Harriet had looked at him blankly, then turned and walked away. Ended up on the other side of the room, with ten people between them, for 'Auld Lang Syne'. Should old acquaintance be forgot?

Susan.

Susan shivered in her car. She turned the key far enough in the ignition to switch on the heating, and sat, arms folded, staring at the house ahead, waiting for the warm air to come through. It was called The Cedars. She had the brochure on the pa.s.senger seat beside her. It was full of marketing-speak about trying to walk the thin line between comforting and patronising. And probably failing. The Cedars, it said, was 'a dignified, caring environment, in which those elderly loved ones who can no longer care for themselves are nurtured, physically and emotionally, in an atmosphere both relaxing and stimulating, leaving their relatives free from worry'. Free from guilt, Susan thought. That was the point. A gardener makes the flowerbeds pretty, they stick a few prints on the wall, and let you bring your own portable television, so that your children can park you here and b.u.g.g.e.r off back to their own lives without feeling too bad about themselves.

I can't do it to her.

Roger said it wasn't going to get any better. TIAs, they were called, transient ischaemic attacks. Little strokes in Alice's brainstem, each one killing off a part of what made her herself. Alice would hate that: she'd much rather have a big, dramatic one that ended it all in a minute. The first one had damaged her memory. Like watching episodes of a drama series in the wrong order, her life was rearranging itself in her brain. She was younger, she was married. So where was he, and who were these other people? She was starting to treat Roger as if he were her doctor, not her son-in-law of some quarter-century. She called him 'dear'. She wandered around Susan's living room looking blankly at photographs Susan's wedding day, the boys as babies, as gangly school sports stars, herself as an elderly woman. Susan was clinging to the fact that she still knew her, never missed a beat before calling her 'Susie'.

But Roger, pragmatic and loving, kept telling her that she had to accept it that this, too, would change and that Susan couldn't expect to cope with it on her own for much longer. For the first time in her marriage, Susan was willing Alice to side with her against Roger. She knew he was right, but still she implored Alice, with her eyes, her voice, to prove him wrong, to come back to them, or at least not to get any worse.

And now there had been this stupid milk incident. She was almost angry with her mother for failing. Alice had burnt herself on boiling milk: milk that she'd put on the stove, let boil, then poured, messily, across the back of her left hand, making an angry red patch across the liver spots and wrinkles. It wasn't healing very well because she was old.

Susan was angry with herself as well. I'm in my forties, she told herself. I have grown-up children of my own. I have Roger. My dad died long ago. I should be ready for this. This shouldn't be the apocalyptic, terrifying thing it is. Maybe it was just the home. They hadn't had to do this with Dad. He'd just died. Here one day, then dead. Susan remembered crying at the kitchen table in the early hours of one morning, then going back to bed and sleeping, long and sound. He had been her dad, a great dad, and she had loved him, and now he was dead. And somehow that hadn't been too hard. There'd been Alice to care for, of course, and a funeral to arrange. (Which was amazingly like a wedding, when you were in charge of it. You had to choose the colour of the flowers and you have to have a view on the lining of the coffin, and whether it would be vol-au-vents or sandwiches afterwards. And, yes, you drank sherry, whisky and tea instead of champagne. And people at the wake were self-conscious when they laughed and expressed pleasure at seeing old friends. But, essentially, it was pretty much the same. Except that a life had ended instead of beginning.) But somehow, all that admin and all those good-innings, full-and-happy-life and bosom-of-his-family cliches she kept hearing made it kind of okay. Throughout, inside her own head, Dad had stayed the old man he had become. That was how she saw him: he was the boys' grandad.

With Alice, it was different in almost every way. There was no funeral to organise, for a start. Instead there was this coffin of a rest-home to consider. No clean break, rather a slow decline to antic.i.p.ate. But the weirdest thing, which kept tears in Susan's eyes, and a big stone on her chest, was that every time she closed her eyes and thought of Alice, she was young again. Alice was dark-haired, not grey; vital, not frail; laughing, not confused. Her eyes were bright and mischievous, not milky and vague. She was Susan's mum. The mum who had been known to wake up on glorious June mornings, declare it was far too nice for school, and take Susan and Margaret to Brighton on the bus for a shimmering day on the beach. The woman whose worst threat was that she would show her knickers on the main road in front of their friends (she had done it once to prove she would), who was brilliant at making fancy-dress costumes for summer fetes and school shows out of scarves, silver paper and papier-mache. Who always said she'd leave Dad if Paul McCartney ever asked her, and read them Georgette Heyer novels at bedtime.

That was the mum she didn't want to say goodbye to. Not now, not yet, and definitely not here.

February.

Reading Group.

I Capture the Castle.

DODIE SMITH 1949.

'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' is the first line of a novel about love, sibling rivalry and a bohemian existence in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Ca.s.sandra Mortmain's journal records her fadingly glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her beautiful, wistful older sister, Rose, and the man to whom all three of them owe their isolation and their poverty: Father. I Capture the Castle has inspired writers as diverse as Armistead Maupin and Joanna Trollope, and remains a cla.s.sic tale of the triumph of youthful naivety over middle-aged cynicism.

Nicole and Harriet were in Harriet's kitchen. Harriet was slicing the two quiches Nicole had brought; Nicole was making a salad dressing, whisking vinegar, wholegrain mustard and sugar into olive oil in a jug. The other women were next door, and their lively chatter filtered through the open doors. Everyone had loved this month's book, and there had been no awkward pauses. Spines were well broken, yellow Post-it notes and folded-down corners had marked favourite pa.s.sages, and the characters had come alive in their discussion. Now it was time to eat.

'So, I'm seriously thinking about it. I think maybe it's the right time for us. Thought I might persuade you and Tim to join us, keep the symmetry going?'

Nicole's attempt at a light, flippant tone fell on stony ground. Harriet snorted. 'Forget that, for a start. This isn't about me and Tim. You're insane. How Not To Improve the Woeful State of Your Marriage, chapter three, paragraph eight. How could you even think about pulling a stunt like that?'

'I wish I hadn't told you.'

Harriet recognised that Nicole was in defensive withdrawal. To carry on now would represent what Tim called 'entering the discomfort zone'. But what kind of friend would she be if she didn't? Every inch of her knew this was a disastrous idea. 'Yes, but you did, didn't you? You can't expect me not to react. I'm sorry if it's not what you were expecting.'

'Not expecting, just hoping.'

And the doe eyes weren't going to work either. 'Nic, having another baby isn't going to make Gavin faithful. It didn't with the twins and it didn't with Martha. That's the reality, and I know it hurts you. What on earth makes you think it would be different this time?'

They were whispering, hissing, really. This wasn't the time. Which is probably, Harriet thought, exactly why Nicole chose now to tell me.

Polly appeared in the doorway. 'Need any help, you two?'

'No, thanks, Polly.' Nicole smiled. 'It's all ready.'

Polly wandered back into the living room, calling, 'Supper's served.'

'It's not a stunt.' Nicole was close by Harriet's ear now. 'I'm not playing games. That's his department.'

'Exactly. You need a game-plan, and you need it not to be this.'

'When I was fifteen I thought this was the best book ever written. It was so romantic, so intimate, literally like reading someone's diary. All that unrequited love...'

'Did it translate to adulthood, though?'

'When I asked for it at the library they got it from the young-adult section.'

'Miscla.s.sification. Well, it could be either, I suppose. I remember Cressida reading it when she was about that age, fourteen or so, and loving it. She said I should read it then, but I didn't fancy it.'

'It absolutely did translate. I read it exactly like I was Ca.s.sandra again. The adult women, apart from Topaz, the stepmother, are so sterile and unappealing and world-weary in contrast to her it's like escapism. She's got such a strong narrative voice that you can't help but get caught up in her enthusiasm, her pa.s.sion, her drama.'

'Yeah, and believe again, sort of. Do you remember what we were talking about when we did Heartburn? How her dreams were still intact, even after all the s.h.i.t she went through with her husband? Well, I thought Ca.s.sandra was like she might have been, Rachel before she got her heart broken.'

'But if she's so young, so naive and inexperienced, how can you really learn anything from what she writes? I mean, she doesn't see the world how it really is, does she? She's writing, quite literally, in the proverbial ivory tower.'

'Nothing very ivory about it. She's dealing with poverty, with her sister and her father, who is at best unstable.'

'And she still has some of the most lucid thoughts in the whole book. Look at the way she sorts her father out, how she deals with the Stephen situation. Look at the appeal she has for the adults in the book Simon joining in with her summer-solstice ritual, all of that. Oh, and the conversations with Miss Blossom, the dressmaker's dummy.'

'And she still thinks you can make something happen by wanting it badly enough.' Nicole looked straight at Harriet.

'But look how that backfires on her. She can't make Rose love Simon, and Rose can't make herself love Simon, when she really loves Neil. And no amount of scheming on Ca.s.sandra's part can change that.'

'She isn't scheming, surely. She's trying to make something happy that she thinks is what everyone else wants. She's a crowd-pleaser, at the end of the day, isn't she?'

'But what happens happens anyway, doesn't it? Was always going to. I actually thought that Rose was the most interesting she felt trapped by her gender, her circ.u.mstances, that the only way out of a life of dest.i.tution and dullness was to marry someone. Someone with enough money to pay for a different life.'