Kitabı oku: «Follies»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Michaelmas Term

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Christmas

Chapter Six

Hilary Term

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Easter

Chapter Ten

Trinity Term

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Summer

Chapter Fifteen

If you enjoyed Follies, read on for a taste of Iris & Ruby

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Rosie Thomas

About the Publisher

MICHAELMAS TERM

ONE

In a moment, she would see it.

The train swayed around a long curve, and then rattled over the iron arches of a little viaduct. Helen pressed her face against the smeared window, waiting.

Then, suddenly, it was ahead of her. The oblique sun of the autumn afternoon turned the spires and pinnacles to gold, and glowed on the rounded domes. The light made the stone look as soft and warm as honey, exactly as it had done for almost four hundred years.

The brief glimpse lasted only a few seconds, then the train shuddered and clattered into an avenue of grimy buildings and advertisement hoardings. But when Helen closed her eyes she saw it again, a sharp memory that was painful as well as seductive. She loved the place as she had always done, but she was a different person now. She shouldn’t have come back. Home was where she was needed now, not here under these honey-gold spires. Yet her mother had insisted, her face still grey with strain. And Graham, with all the sudden maturity that had been forced upon his thirteen years, had told her that it would break their mother’s heart to see Helen give up now. So she had repacked her cheap suitcase with her few clothes, the paperbacked texts and the bulging folders of notes, and she had come back.

Helen opened her eyes again as if she couldn’t bear to think any more.

The train hissed grudgingly into the station and she stood up as the doors began to slam. Two foreign tourists, encumbered with nothing more than expensive cameras, reached to help her with her luggage. A deafening crackle overhead heralded the station announcement.

‘Oxford. Oxford. This is Oxford.’

The tourists smiled at each other, pleased to have their destination confirmed. They bowed to Helen before they left her.

Where else? she thought. Even the air was unmistakable, moist with the smell of rivers and the low mists that the autumn sun never shone strongly enough to dispel. The yellow and gold leaves in the roadway beyond the station entrance were wet, and furrowed by bicycle wheels.

Helen picked up as much of her baggage as she could manage and went in search of a taxi. It was an unaccustomed luxury and uncertainty sounded in her voice as she told the driver, ‘Follies House, please.’

The oak door was heavy, and studded with iron bolt heads. A drift of crisp, yellow-brown leaves had blown up across the threshold, giving the house an abandoned air.

Helen stopped pulling at the iron ring that hung unyieldingly in place of a doorknob and stepped back to peer at the narrow windows set in the high wall. There was nothing to be seen, not even a curtain in the blackness behind the glass. The traffic, roaring close at hand over Folly Bridge, seemed miles away. It was the gush of running water that filled the air, the river racing between the mossed arches of the old bridge.

Helen glanced down at her luggage, piled haphazardly in the pathway where the taxi driver had left it. Her mouth set in a firm line and she turned back to bang on the door with her clenched fist.

‘Anyone … at … home?’ she shouted over the hammering.

From startlingly close at hand Helen heard footsteps, and then a rattle before the door swung smoothly open.

‘Always someone at home. Usually me,’ the fat woman answered. Helen remembered the facts of the loose grey hair, the billowing, shapeless body and the alert little eyes in the dough-pale face. What she had forgotten was the beautiful smile, irradiating the face until the plainness was obliterated. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Pole,’ Helen murmured. ‘The door wouldn’t open. Helen Brown?’ she added, interrogatively, afraid that the woman might have forgotten, after all.

‘You call me Rose, pet. I told you last term, when you came for a room. Don’t forget again, will you? Now then, for the door you need a key.’ The ordinary-looking Yale swung at the end of a strand of dirty orange wool. Rose fitted it into the lock and showed Helen how the door moved easily on the latch. ‘Simple, you see.’ Rose waved towards the stairs. ‘No-one to help with your stuff, I’m afraid. Gerry’s never here when you want him, and I’m far too infirm.’ The smile broadened for an instant, then the fat woman turned and disappeared into the dark as quickly as she had materialised.

Helen scuffled through the leaves and stepped into Follies House.

The hall was dingy and smelt of cooking, but the grandeur was undimmed. It was high, four-square and wood-panelled to the vaulted plasterwork of the Jacobean ceiling. The bare wood stairway mounted, behind its fat balusters, to the galleried landing above. In the light of an autumn afternoon the atmosphere was mysterious, even unwelcoming. Yet Helen felt the house drawing her to it, just as she had done the first time. It had been a brilliant June morning when she had applied to Rose for a room. ‘Not my usual sort,’ Rose had told her bluntly. ‘Mostly I know them, or know of them. Reputation or family, one or the other. But you’ve got a nice little face, and Frances Page won’t be needing her room next term, not after all this bother.’

‘I know,’ Helen had said humbly. ‘Frances is in my College. She told me there might be space here.’

‘Oh well,’ Rose had said, looking at Helen more closely. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were a friend of Frances?’

And so it had been arranged.

Now, after the long, sad summer, she was here. Usually her family had come with her, driving up to her College in the little car. Helen shook her head painfully. This time she was alone, standing in the muffling quiet of a strange house. Again, through the stillness, she heard the pouring gush of the river as it tumbled past the house and on under the bridge, and the sound soothed her. Determinedly, one by one, she hoisted her cases and boxes over the doorstep and into the hall. With the last one she kicked the door shut on the fading yellow light outside and began to climb towards her room with the first load.

Follies House was square, and the first-floor gallery ran round the staircase which led off up to the third floor. Servants’ quarters, she thought with a faint smile, as she panted up into a smaller corridor, even dustier, with uneven, wide oak floorboards. There was no name-card on the low oak door in front of her, but the room was hers just the same. Helen pushed open the door and dropped her burden gratefully on the worn carpet.

The room was the smallest of Rose’s undergraduate quarters, Helen knew that, but the size was unimportant. What mattered was the view. It was a corner room, no doubt freezing cold in the coming damp of the Oxford winter that already seemed to hover in the air. But there were windows in two of the walls, square windows with stone facings set in the red Jacobean brickwork, with cushioned window seats in the recesses beneath them.

Helen knelt on one of the seats and, through the fog of her breath on the cold glass, stared out over Oxford. Due north, ahead of her, was Carfax with its ancient tower, the crossroads that was the nominal centre of the city. Beyond that lay Cornmarket with its chain stores and shoe shops, and beyond that the dignified spread of North Oxford.

Helen turned away to the second window. There, to the east, was the heart of Oxford. The towers and pinnacles and domes were familiar to her now, but the sight of them spread out before her never failed to thrill her.

A little bit of this is mine, thought Helen, as her eyes travelled from the distant perfection of Magdalen Tower, along the invisible but well-remembered curve of the High past All Souls’ and St Mary’s, to the magnificence of Christ Church’s Tom Tower in the foreground. I do belong here, she whispered to herself, and knew that she was glad to be back. Glad, in spite of and also because of the deadening sorrow that she had left behind in the cramped rooms of her parents’ house.

As Helen knelt on her window seat and watched the teeming life passing to and fro over Folly Bridge, up and down St Aldate’s and past Christ Church, a figure appeared in the ribbed archway beneath Tom Tower, over the main entry. It was a young man in a soft tweed jacket, breeches and tall polished boots. He stood for a moment with his hands in his pockets, watching the shoppers and cyclists and homebound office workers with an air of faint surprise. Then he shrugged, adopting an expression of mild resignation in place of the surprise, and began to stroll towards the bridge. Several of the faces in the crowd streaming past him turned to watch him pass, but the young man was oblivious. He merely lengthened his stride, lifted his head to taste the damp smells of leaves and woodsmoke that mingled with the exhaust fumes, and smiled in absent satisfaction. With the wind blowing the fair hair back from his narrow, tanned face and the brilliance of his smile, he attracted even more attention.

Helen, high up in her window, stayed at the vantage point long enough to register the fact of Oliver Mortimore turning out of Christ Church and down St Aldate’s. He was the kind of Oxford figure whom she had spotted and categorised for herself early on in her life there. She had expected him, and would have been disappointed not to have discovered his kind. She knew that he was ‘a lord, or an earl, or something’ because a breathlessly impressed friend had told her so. And she knew that he drove a fast car, and had beautiful friends and expensive tastes, because she had observed as much for herself. Oliver Mortimore was a famous figure in Oxford, well known even to Helen, even though he moved through its world at a level that couldn’t have been further from her quiet round of library, lecture room, and College.

Helen smiled tranquilly and sat for a moment more, immersed in her own thoughts as she stared unseeingly out at the view. Then, reminding herself that there were things to be done, she swung her legs briskly off the window seat and set off for the next armful of possessions.

Her foot was on the last step of the broad lower staircase when the front door banged open. It brought with it a gust of damp, river-redolent air, a small eddy of dead leaves, and Oliver Mortimore. In the dimness he stumbled against Helen’s shabby pile of belongings, lost his balance and fell awkwardly. Oliver swore softly. ‘Jesus, what is all this? Looks like a fucking jumble sale.’

Helen sprang forward, contrite. ‘I’m sorry. It’s all my luggage. Stupid place to leave it.’

Oliver looked up at her, and the frown disappeared from between his eyes.

‘I didn’t see you there,’ he said. ‘Sorry for the language. Good job I didn’t break my leg on your impedimenta, that’s all. It’s the first Meet tomorrow.’

Helen nodded politely, evidently not understanding, and Oliver grinned at her as he scrambled up. She saw that there was a long scrape in the high polish of his boots, and had to resist the impulse to kneel down and rub the blemish off such a vision of perfection. At close quarters Oliver Mortimore was not only the most beautiful but also the most physical man she had ever encountered. He radiated such confidence, such highly-charged animal pleasure in his own existence, that set her skin tingling in response. He made Helen feel hot, and shapeless inside her clothes. Oliver held out his hand. He was six inches taller than Helen, but it felt like twice that.

‘I’m Oliver Mortimore,’ he said lightly. ‘Who are you, and why don’t I know you?’

‘I know who you are,’ Helen countered. ‘You don’t know me because there’s no particular reason why you should. My name’s Helen Brown.’

‘And what are you doing at Follies, Miss Brown?’

Helen moved forward under his gaze to pick up one of the scattered boxes.

‘What I’m doing is moving in. I’m going to live here for a year.’

Oliver was staring at her now with undisguised interest.

‘Oh really? You’re not in the usual run of socialites and harpies that Rose collects around her, are you?’

He was so clearly stating no more than the obvious that Helen found herself laughing with him.

‘I imagine not. Frances Page let me inherit her room. We’re friends,’ Helen told him crisply, ‘in a way.’

Oliver raised his eyebrows, but politely made no other comment on such an unlikely sounding friendship. ‘Ah, unlucky Fran,’ he said. ‘Perfectly okay for one’s own use, of course; but not very clever to start dealing in the stuff. Still, if you’re a girl with expensive tastes and no cash, like Fran, the books do have to be balanced somehow.’

Helen looked away. She didn’t care to hear muddled, aristocratic, silly Frances spoken of so lightly. For the time that they had lived in adjacent College rooms, she had been a good friend to Helen. She hadn’t been sent to prison for what Helen thought of as her witless dabbling on the fringe of the cocaine-peddlers’ world, though she could have been. But she had been sent down from Oxford, and Helen missed her.

Oliver was counting up the remaining items of Helen’s luggage.

‘Cases, three; cardboard boxes, miscellaneous, secured with string, four. You can’t possibly manage all this yourself. Where’s bloody Gerry?’

He picked up the nearest box. ‘Oof, what’s in here? Rocks or something?’

Helen put out her hand. The material of his sleeve felt very soft. ‘Books, mostly. Don’t bother, really. Rose told me I’d have to cope myself, and I’m quite ready to.’

‘Lazy old trout.’ Oliver had already started for the stairs. ‘Where’s your room?’

‘Top floor.’ Helen had no alternative but to pick up the remaining case and follow him.

Oliver chuckled. ‘Good old Rose. Trust her to have stuck you right up there. Who’re the lucky occupiers of the smarter quarters this year?’

‘No idea. Isn’t this Gerry one of them?’

‘God, no. Gerry is Rose’s half-brother. He calls himself a writer, but he’s actually a drunk and a lecher. He also claims to be a distant relative of mine, because Rose is, but I find that hard to swallow. You’ll be seeing lots of him, which is hard luck.’

They reached the door of Helen’s room and Oliver shouldered it open. He dropped his armload and strolled over to the window. ‘Nice view, anyway. Hey, you can almost see my windows over at the House.’ Oliver flexed his shoulders inside their second skin of tweed, easing them after the long pull up the stairs, then turned back to Helen.

‘Come and have tea with me, won’t you? Tomorrow. No – wait – Friday. Yes?’

Helen looked straight back into his tanned, smiling face for a long moment before she answered. But there was no possibility that she could refuse.

‘Yes. On Friday, then.’

To her amazement, Oliver leaned forward and kissed her, quite casually, on the corner of her mouth. ‘Cheer up,’ he said softly. ‘You should smile a bit oftener. You’ve no idea how much it suits you.’

From the doorway he waved, without looking at her again, and Helen heard him clatter away down the stairs.

For a moment she stood stock-still in the middle of the room, absently touching the corner of her mouth with her fingertips. Then she sank down at one end of the narrow bed. Follies had cachet, Helen knew that. The idea of Helen Brown, who had none at all, living there had given her some rare moments of private amusement over the summer. And now here she was, in the house for barely an hour and already she had been invited to tea and kissed by Oliver, practically a being from another planet. Helen rocked back on the bed and laughed out loud, a transforming giggle that Oliver would have approved of. It was absurd to think anything of their encounter, let alone to take it as an augury for the new year, but she would do it anyway. It was a good one, Helen was sure of that.

Chloe Campbell registered the road sign as it flicked past her on the motorway. Oxford 15 miles. Shit, almost there. A little shiver of nervousness snaked along her spine before she realised it. Well, there was nothing to be apprehensive about. Nothing at all. Chloe jammed her foot down on the accelerator and swung her slick, little black Renault Gordini out into the overtaking lane. A glance in the mirror showed the family saloons dropping satisfactorily away behind her, and she relaxed her too-tight grip on the wheel. Nice little car, she thought. Thank you, Colin. Thank you, but goodbye in the end, just the same. Goodbye to a lot of things, come to think of it.

Chloe, darling, are you serious about all this?

The question was addressed to her own reflection briefly glimpsed in the mirror. The huge green eyes with their sooty black lashes were perfectly made up as usual. The dark coppery-red hair gleamed over the diamond ear-studs, just as always. But where were all the other things she used to identify herself by?

Chloe began her reckoning once more, already repeated once too often since she had left London.

No job, to start with. She had resigned from that, her ridiculously well-paid job as a top copywriter in a smart little ad agency. Well, except for the money, that was no great loss. Trying to create the perfect lines for the perfect housewife in her dream kitchen with the superlative packet soup bored Chloe nowadays, like so many other things.

No lover, either. All the available ones bored her too, and it irked her to think of the unavailable one. Leo Dawnay, damn him. All of this was really because of him. Leo was in the business, the perfect Englishman who had made it his particular business to trade on that on Madison Avenue. A big joint campaign had brought him briefly back to London, and into Chloe’s bed. It was Leo who had said it as they lay wound together after one of their long evenings of love-making.

‘You don’t have to be so competitive in everything. You’ve got an intellectual chip on your shoulder, that’s your problem.’

‘What? That’s crap.’ Chloe sat up and the sheets fell away from her silky shoulders. ‘I’ve got twice the wits of any of the little graduate mice that they send along to type my letters and answer my phone nowadays. When I was eighteen I just wanted to get on with life, not moulder in some dusty library.’

‘Well,’ Leo had said coolly, ‘you mentioned graduates, not me. But you’re twenty-eight now, and perhaps you’ve done enough getting on. Take some time off. Test yourself a bit. You’d enjoy it.’

Leo, of course, had been at Balliol. And had taken a First.

‘I don’t need it,’ Chloe had whispered into his thick, black hair. ‘What I need is you. Again.’ And his hands had moved across her belly and between her legs once more with unquestioning assurance. In the first pleasure of the moment Chloe had forgotten his words, but later they kept coming back to her. She thought about them when she recognised the uncomfortable feeling that permeated her life as boredom, and she remembered them again when she realised one day that she wasn’t interested in the challenge of pitching for a major new account. She felt that she was running along in comfortable, well-oiled grooves, and that she wasn’t thinking about anything, any more. She began to be afraid that even falling in love with Leo had been no more than a way of filling the vacuum that yawned in the centre of her life.

Another day she had pushed aside the story boards for a new bra commercial and typed a letter to the Principal of an Oxford College, making the choice just because she had seen the College featured in a magazine.

‘That’s that,’ she thought. ‘The answer will be no, of course.’

But with surprising speed, the letter had led to an interview with the austere Principal in her book-lined drawing room. Then, after some hasty reading, there had been papers to write on Victorian novelists and Romantic poets. She had been interviewed again, making her joke to her friends that she felt that she was being looked over for the chairmanship of Saatchi and Saatchi, not a commoner’s place at an obscure women’s College. At last the Principal had told her: ‘We have a policy here, Miss Campbell, of accepting mature students and other unusual folk. You’re more mature than most, of course, and you’ll have a lot of catching up to do. But we think you’ll make a useful contribution of College life, even if you turn out not to have a first-class mind. Would you like to come up this October?’

At first, going to Oxford had been no more than a teasing idea for Chloe. She had wanted to prove to Leo that she could win a place, and she had wanted to show him that it impressed her so little that she could turn it down without a second thought. Then she had found herself enjoying the preparation for the entrance papers, hurrying home to dig poetry books out of the inner pocket of her briefcase instead of going out to cocktails and dinners with friends from the agency. She had started to use the cool, remote thought of Oxford as an antidote for her grating London world.

Yet, even so, when the moment finally came she was shocked to hear herself saying, ‘Thank you, Dr Hale. I’ll do my very best. And I’d like to start in October.’

Now, Leo was back in Manhattan, or with his top-drawer wife up in East Hampton or wherever it was. Chloe Campbell was slowing down before the Oxford bypass, her car loaded with her expensive but not-too-new-looking leather suitcases, piles of crisp empty notebooks and brand new standard texts, and feeling as apprehensive as any sensitive adolescent on the way to a new school. It was too late now. Chloe negotiated the tangled city traffic, and parked the Renault defiantly half on and half off the pavement on Folly Bridge. Only a single window in the old house showed a light.

Chloe hitched her shaggy wolf-pelt jacket closer around her and began to pick her way down the slippery stone steps. Her hair looked as bright as a beacon in the wintry dusk. Before she reached the front door which had barred Helen’s entry, it swung open and Gerry Pole lounged out. His grey sweater was filthy and his lined face was unshaven, but the tattered remnants of a more wholesome romantic youth clung about him. Chloe responded with a brief flicker of interest as Gerry grinned at her.

‘One of Rose’s new tenants, I take it? And very lovely, too. I’m Gerry Pole, by the way, token male on the premises …’

‘Oh, good,’ Chloe said quickly, waving up towards her car perched on the bridge. ‘Perhaps, then, you could possibly give me a hand with my things? So inaccessible, down here.’

‘Delighted.’ Gerry smiled again, showing off the attractive crinkles around his pale blue eyes and revealing uncared-for teeth.

So Chloe made her entrance into Follies House burdened with nothing more than her handbag and her portable typewriter. Gerry obligingly toiled to and fro with the leather cases and set them carefully down in Chloe’s first-floor room. The long windows looked out on almost total blackness now, but the little lamps inside glowed invitingly on panelled walls and solid furniture. Chloe looked around her with approval. The panelling was painted soft bluey-green, like a bird’s egg, and the curtains and faded Persian rugs stood out against it in warm reds and garnets. She laid her typewriter down on the bare desk and switched on the green-shaded library lamp to make a little, welcoming circle of light.

Here, Chloe thought with a sigh of satisfaction, she could work. Books. Peace, calm and no hassles. Perhaps this crazy idea was going to work out after all. A little sound from behind her reminded her that Gerry was still hovering by the door. She shot him a brilliant, dismissive smile.

‘Thanks very much. I expect we’ll be meeting again soon, if you live here too?’

‘Oh yes, certain to,’ Gerry rubbed his dry hands expectantly. ‘I could more than do with a drink now, in fact, after all that lifting. Won’t you join me? I’ve got a little something …’

The flip-flop shuffle of down-at-heel slippers came up the stairs and along the gallery towards them. A second later the mass of Rose’s bulk filled the doorway. She jerked her head at her half-brother and, with surprising speed, he was on his way.

‘Another time, then,’ he winked at Chloe and vanished.

Rose eased herself down on the foot of the bed and rested her podgy hands on her spread knees. The two women smiled.

‘Still not quite sure about it, eh?’ Rose asked. Chloe took off her jacket and stood stroking the fur absently.

‘Not a hundred per cent,’ she admitted. ‘Or even fifty. Sometimes it feels like a crazy decision to have made, three years up here reading George Eliot and trying to make ends meet on a grant. Not that it isn’t perfect to be at Follies House,’ she added warmly.

Rose chuckled flatly and her little eyes flickered over the diamonds in Chloe’s ears, the discreet but heavy gold chain around her neck and the supple, rust suede of her tunic dress. ‘Don’t tell me that girls like you ever have to manage on a grant,’ she murmured. ‘And you’ll enjoy it here, mark my words. All kinds of people to meet, for a start. Different from your London ad men.’

‘I hope so,’ countered Chloe fervently.

‘Look at me,’ Rose went on. ‘I just have this house, nothing else. But enough goes on here to keep me looking forward to tomorrow.’ As she winked at Chloe she looked, for an instant, very like her half-brother. ‘So long as I choose the right people to live with me here at Follies, I have everything I need in these four walls. Which is just as well, because where could I go outside with a face and figure like mine?’ The white hands fluttered vaguely over the forbidding fleshy mass. Chloe could do no more than turn the talk with a question.

‘Who else lives here now? Since Colin Page’s sister left?’

Rose’s face brightened in anticipation. ‘Ah. All new this term. You, dear, of course. A little mite called Helen, who you shall meet in one second, unless my predatory young cousin has swept her out of the house already. And by the end of the week there’ll be a pretty love called Pansy. Such a beautiful name, isn’t it? There’s just the three of you. I think you’ll make such an interesting combination.’ Rose’s fingers knitted across the mound of her stomach as she nodded happily at Chloe. Just for the moment she looked like a complacent puppet-mistress with her pretty dolls on sticks, waiting for the show to start. The idea amused Chloe rather than alarmed her. Why shouldn’t Rose live a little through her lodgers, after all?

The landlady heaved herself to her feet and padded to the door.

‘Helen!’ she shouted up into the darkness. ‘Helen, darling, come down and meet a new friend.’

Chloe wasn’t sure who she had been expecting as another member of Rose’s ‘family’, but the figure who appeared obediently a moment later came as a surprise.

‘Helen Brown, Chloe Campbell,’ Rose said easily. ‘And now I’m off. Tell me if you need anything simple. Anything strenuous, ask Gerry.’

‘Hello,’ Chloe said to the girl in the doorway. Helen was small and fine-boned, too thin, with collarbones that showed at the stretched neckline of her royal blue sweater. In her grey corduroy skirt she might have been a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, but something in the poised tilt of her head told Chloe that she was older, twenty or perhaps even a little more. Her skin was very pale and creamy under a mass of short black curls, and the huge grey eyes in the heart-shaped face were smudged underneath with violet shadows.

‘Well, and how did it go?’

It was easy to tell Chloe things. Helen clasped dramatically at her heart and stumbled forward into the light. ‘Wonderful. And awful. He asked me to go to bed with him and I said no. Oh God, Chloe, what shall I do?’ It was half a joke, but only half. Something intriguing had come in to fill a cold, empty space inside Helen, and now she didn’t want to let it go.

Chloe’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. ‘Horny little bugger,’ she said, amused. ‘You were quite right to tell him to get lost. He’ll be back, love, don’t you worry.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Helen softly. ‘I want him to be back, very much.’ She didn’t, in her preoccupation, see the quick anxious glance that Chloe shot at her.

After an hour of sitting with Rose in the impenetrable untidiness of her kitchen, Oliver stood up restlessly. He drank the remains of the dark brown sherry in his glass and made a face. Rose went on impassively with her sewing, not looking at him. ‘Before you go,’ she said, ‘what are you doing to that nice little thing upstairs?’

Oliver shrugged himself into his coat without answering, turned to go, and then as an afterthought sketched a kiss in the air between himself and Rose. ‘Doing nothing at all, darling Rose. All the treasures are kept securely locked away, as you must have guessed. Bloody boring. And now, au revoir or I shall be late for Hall.’

Rose, left alone in the kitchen, smiled a little and went on sewing.

Oliver took the steps into the misty dampness shrouding the city two at a time. He noticed the outline of a big car parked on the bridge as he came level with it, then as he swung out on to the pavement he saw that it was a white Rolls. Beside it, a man in a peaked cap was lifting a heavy trunk. Three other people were standing close together in the orange glare of the street lights, moisture from the mist beading brilliantly on their hair and clothes. The tallest was a thickset man in an expensive overcoat; one of the two women was clinging affectedly to his arm.

But it was the other woman who drew Oliver’s startled attention.

She looked very young. Over a cloud of pure white fur, the face was as innocent as an angel’s, and as expressionlessly beautiful as if carved in marble. Oliver stopped dead. At once, the face burned itself into his memory. He knew that he had never seen it before, yet it was familiar, even down to the faintly startled reflection in the depths of the immense eyes. And the girl went on looking back at him, her lips slightly parted and the street lights darting jewels of dampness among her snow-white furs.

The thickset man made an irritable sound and Oliver wrenched his attention from the girl.

‘Can I help?’ he asked politely.

The man stabbed a finger towards the square black bulk of Follies House.

‘Is this Follies House?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Jesus, will you look at those steps!’ The accent was mid-Atlantic, but beneath it were the unmistakable echoes of London’s East End. Hobbs, can you get all this down there?’

The chauffeur leaned over the parapet. ‘Yes, Mr Warren, I think so.’

The other woman clung more tightly to the cashmere sleeve. ‘Oh, Masefield, it’s so wet out here. My hair.’ Without a word her escort opened the passenger door and handed her back into the Rolls. Hobbs bent to lift the trunk again. The girl stared back at Oliver, motionless. The shroud of mist seemed to swallow all the sounds around them, so that they moved in eerie, silent isolation.

‘Can I help?’ he asked again, but the thickset man glanced at him only briefly. ‘Thanks. No.’

The girl in white ducked her head and followed her father down the steps. Hobbs bent to the trunk again and bumped awkwardly after them. The woman sat in the car, staring ahead of her and rhythmically stroking her hair.

Oliver walked away, back up St Aldate’s to Christ Church. He whistled to himself as he went, the same few, unfinished notes. Now he knew. The man was Masefield Warren. More, the white girl was his daughter, Pansy. Her face, wide-eyed and startled, was familiar from the flashbulb shots of a hundred gossip columns. Pansy Warren was not only beautiful, she was the heiress to her father’s by now uncounted millions.

As Oliver walked back under Tom Tower the rest of the little whistled tune came spilling out, unchecked.

TWO

Oliver came looking for Helen again on Sunday morning.

On Sunday mornings Oxford was always full of the peals and counterpeals of church bells, and today they sounded louder and even sweeter than usual. The skies were clear after the days of rain of the term’s beginning, and the trees without their muffling shrouds of leaves let the echoes through with extra clarity.

Helen was planning to do some reading in a library with a view over lawns and towers. It is Sunday, she told herself, as she gathered up her books. You must work as hard as you can, for Mum’s sake and Graham’s, but it can’t be flat out all the time.

When she came out of the front door of Follies House she saw Oliver at once. He was leaning on the parapet of the bridge, watching her. He made no move as she climbed the steps towards him, feeling clumsy in her thick overcoat and encumbered by her books. But as soon as she came level with him, he smiled. Helen was struck at once by the way his face, the same features that must have belonged to the parade of illustrious ancestors stretching behind him, was repossessed by the smile to become Oliver himself, unique. He stepped forward, blocking her path.

‘No work today,’ he said firmly. ‘Don’t you know it’s Sunday?’ One by one he took the books from under her arm. ‘Come with me instead.’

He wasn’t being persuasive; he was simply telling her what she must do.

‘We can go anywhere you like. The whole world’s waiting.’

Helen let him unburden her, unable to protest or insist that indeed she must work.

‘Books, books,’ Oliver was saying breezily. ‘I was sent out for tutoring last term to a man called Stephen Spurring. He kept trying to make me go to gloomy seminars with anxious girls from Colleges I’ve never heard of …’

‘Like me?’ Helen was laughing in spite of herself.

‘No. Not a bit like you. You don’t go to seminars and adopt a Marxist interpretation of Wuthering Heights, do you?’

‘Oh, all the time. Stephen Spurring’s very highly thought of, you know.’

‘Then you must stop it at once.’ Oliver stood squarely in front of her and cupped her chin so that she looked up into his face. He was mock-serious, grinning at her as he dropped his hand again so that she wanted to say, Come back. ‘It can’t be good for you. And highly thought of by whom? Hart has discovered that Spurring has got some kind of senior-member responsibility for As You Like It. Of all the tedious little men.’

So Oliver dismissed the bright star of the English faculty. How confident he is, Helen thought, as she followed him.

Oliver dropped the pile of books haphazardly into the well behind the seats of his open car. It was waiting for them at the kerbside, looking to Helen absurdly low-slung, sleek and highly polished. She had often seen Oliver driving around town in it. Now she said, ‘It’s such a pretty car. What kind is it?’

He opened the passenger door with a flourish, handed Helen into the leather bucket seat and swung him legs over the door on his own side.

‘A Jaguar,’ he said, with deep satisfaction, patting the walnut fascia. ‘XK 150. Rather old now, and quite rare.’ The engine roared throatily into life and Oliver beamed. ‘Looked after for me by a little man in the Botley Road. He just loves the innards of old cars, isn’t that lucky? Me, I don’t have any taste for sprockets and oil. I just want to drive her, the faster the better. So, really, the three of us have a perfect relationship.’

Helen watched him, fascinated. She had never met anyone so vibrantly pleased with life, and so certain of himself. The introspective moment of the other evening when he had sat staring out into the darkness of Canterbury Quad, and Helen had thought that after all he might make the perfect romantic hero, was forgotten.

They were bowling through the wide, tree-lined streets of North Oxford now, where the pavements were drifted over with golden leaves. The few people who were about were strolling with newspapers under their arms, or walking dogs who scuffled in the piles of leaves.

‘Where are we going?’ Helen asked.

‘Where would you like to go?’ Oliver countered. ‘Anywhere in particular?’

‘No.’

‘Well then, you might as well leave it to me. We’re going to have lunch, as it happens. And to see a man about a dog.’

Helen asked no more questions. Instead she sat back in her seat and let the wind blow away everything but the immediacy of this extraordinary morning. When she closed her eyes, the sunlight and the shade from the trees flashing past dappled patterns through her eyelids. When she opened them again there was the long, black car bonnet in front of her, the outskirts of the city dropping away, and Oliver beside her. He drove negligently, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the polished wooden knob of the gear lever. They sliced in and out of the traffic on the busy road and then, suddenly, they were in the open country. Helen felt the acceleration pressing her back into her seat as the car surged forward. The shadows swept over her face, faster and faster, and the wind whipped her hair back.

Oliver glanced at her, sidelong. If Helen had known him better she might have recognised the small, secret smile with which he always congratulated himself on getting his own way. When she looked round at him again the smile had vanished and he asked, casually, ‘Warm enough? My coat’s in the back if you need something to put over your knees.’ It was the brown leather aviator’s coat which he had been wearing the other evening. Helen instinctively pulled her own well-worn duffel coat more tightly around her.

‘I’m fine. Thanks.’

The car swept on. They were in the Cotswolds now, driving through villages built of honey-coloured stone and past winter-ready fields showing countless shades of brown and ochre.

‘It’s a beautiful day,’ Oliver said, stretching back in his seat and bracing his arms straight against the wheel. ‘Better than mouldering with all that lot in some library?’ He jerked his head backwards at the pile of books behind them.

Much better, Helen told herself, shutting her mind resolutely to the niggling voice of conscience and another, much fainter, murmur of apprehension. She didn’t feel safe with Oliver Mortimore. But then, what was so appealing about safety? Helen wriggled a little deeper into her seat and stared along the low line of the Jaguar’s bonnet at the open road hurtling towards them. She thought, fleetingly, of Chloe; feeling safe wouldn’t be high on Chloe’s list of priorities, she was certain. Perhaps, after all, it didn’t come so high on her own either. Helen couldn’t explain to herself why she had been swept up by Lord Oliver Mortimore. But it gave her an unfamiliar glow of flattery and excitement. And now she was here she would enjoy it, whatever was to come. The recognition of that whatever, too, gave Helen a thrill of recklessness. She so rarely did anything without thinking very hard about it first. But there just wasn’t any leeway for thinking, where Oliver was concerned. He had just happened to her, and she was ready to accept that.

Just as he would have to accept her.

Helen was clear-sighted enough to know that there was nothing to be gained by pretending to be something she wasn’t, in the hope that would make her more interesting to him. Whatever it was that he had seen in her in the first place would have to go on being enough, and Helen lifted her chin determinedly at that. But she definitely wanted him to go on seeing something in her. Her eyes were drawn to him again as he sat negligently at the wheel. He was unusually good-looking, yes, but his attraction was more magnetic than that. It was the ease, the casualness and the assurance that drew Helen, who possessed none of those things. She felt as if she wanted to warm herself by him. And there was something else, too. She thought she detected a sensitivity in him, under all that urbane gloss, that made him doubly attractive. A little mysterious, too.

Be careful, Helen’s sane little inner voice warned her. Another, louder voice responded. I’m always careful. This time I just want to see what happens. I don’t care if it isn’t real. If it doesn’t last any longer even than today.

The Jaguar was slowing down. They had left the main road and, at the end of a much narrower road, they came to a compact little village. A cluster of stone cottages around an uneven triangle of green, a church with a squat stone tower masked by a belt of yew trees, and at the apex of the triangle, there was a pub. A mulberry tree was painted on the sign over the low door.

Oliver switched off the ignition and his smile flashed at her again.

‘This is where we’ll have lunch.’ Again there was no possibility of disagreeing with him, even if Helen had wanted to. Instead, she let him escort her across the green to the door under the mulberry tree sign. Oliver’s arm sat lightly across her shoulders as they walked. Inside, there were log fires and high-backed oak seats.

‘You’re always so cold,’ Oliver grinned down at her. ‘We’d better sit close to the fire.’ His hand touched the nape of her neck again, just briefly, under the tangle of black curls.

‘Morning, Lord Oliver,’ the man behind the bar greeted him. ‘And Miss.’ This was Oliver’s home ground in some way, Helen realised.

‘Hello, Bill. Drink, Helen?’ A quick glance round the bar confirmed Helen’s instinctive choice.

‘Sherry, please. Dry, with ice.’

‘Quite safe, but a little dull.’ Oliver’s voice was teasing. ‘I’m going to have champagne, and I think you should too.’

The drinks arrived at once, Oliver’s in a silver tankard and Helen’s foaming in a tall, narrow glass. Twice in one week, Helen thought, amused. And I’ve hardly ever even tasted real champagne before. How odd things are. She raised her glass to Oliver in a quick, half-ironic toast and there was a flicker in his eyes as he responded.

‘You are pretty,’ he told her. ‘Why do you hide it?’

‘I don’t,’ she said, quickly defensive. ‘Anyway, being pretty isn’t everything.’

‘You’d be surprised.’ He was laughing at her. ‘What else is there? Tell me with special reference to Helen Brown, please. I didn’t have a chance to talk to you at my tea-party. And we did get off on rather the wrong footing afterwards.’ Oliver took a long pull of champagne and looked at her expectantly.

‘Mmm, your tea-party.’ Helen picked the least dangerous avenue out of his questions. ‘Are those people all friends of yours?’

Oliver shrugged, not interested. ‘Acquaintances, mostly, not many friends. Except Tom Hart. He’s very different, and rather formidable.’

Helen remembered the dark, intense face among the pink-and-whiteness of the English upper classes, and smiled a little. She remembered him, too, as much less formidable to her than the closed ranks of Oliver’s social peers.

‘Don’t change the subject, anyway,’ Oliver reprimanded her. ‘Don’t you like talking about yourself? Every other woman I know adores it.’ He leaned back in his seat and clasped his hands behind his head, waiting for her to speak.

Helen was silent. How could she talk to this suave, privileged young man about any of the things that mattered to her? She knew, instinctively, that Oliver would just be puzzled, and probably embarrassed, if she told him about the problems that beset her now. She had no desire to talk to him about her father, or even her mother and brother at home in their underheated little house. And then, the things that didn’t really matter were so dull. She couldn’t hope to amuse Lord Oliver Mortimore by giving him the details of her quiet, work-filled life and the few small diversions that she allowed herself. She felt herself colouring under his stare before her resolution to stay true to herself came back to her.

‘No,’ she said coolly. ‘I’d prefer not to talk about me.’ The amiability in Oliver’s face didn’t fade, but Helen was aware that he was staring at her with a shade more curiosity in his eyes. Unexpectedly, she grinned at him. ‘Doesn’t that make me fascinatingly different from all the other women you know?’

Oliver shrugged briefly. ‘Different, anyway.’ He raised his hand in a gesture to the barman to show that he wanted more champagne.

Aware that she had dampened the conversation, Helen cast about for a neutral topic to fill the silence between them.

‘Where do you live? When you’re not in Oxford, I mean.’

Oliver frowned over his tankard. ‘Quite near here. At least, my family does. Thankfully, as a younger son, I’m not expected to involve myself too closely in all that.’ Helen could only guess at what ‘all that’ might be. She had a dim vision of a feudal hierarchy presided over in baronial magnificence by Oliver’s father. What would he be? A duke? A viscount?

‘What about you?’

Helen told him the name of her home town and Oliver looked blankly back at her. ‘Ah. Is it nice?’

‘Not especially. But then we can’t all have Gloucestershire estates.’ I shouldn’t have said that, she thought, as soon as it was out, but Oliver only smiled his brilliant smile.

‘No,’ he agreed as if she had made a telling point. ‘It’s a pity.’

Helen was realising as she sat in her corner, caressed by the glow of the champagne and the warmth of the log fire, that she and Oliver were even further apart than she had first thought. They might as well have come from different planets. Yet, surprisingly, the knowledge excited rather them depressed her. Covertly, Helen watched him lounging opposite her. He was playing absently with his silver tankard, turning it to catch the reflection of the fireglow. His fine blond hair was reddened by the warm light and his cheeks were faintly flushed by it. The aquiline features that reminded Helen of a marble knight on a marble tombstone were softened, so that he looked – as he did when he smiled – more like Oliver himself than Oliver the scion of a noble house.

I want him. The words sprang into Helen’s head unvoiced, and for an instant they shocked her. What do you want, she made herself ask. A share, came back the answer from the other, hidden Helen. To share a little bit of him, because he’s exotic and glowing and – perhaps – more than a bit dangerous. And to share through him all those things that I admire and have never had, like certainty and assurance. Not the money, or privilege necessarily, except that those things make it easier to have the others. I do want him, she thought, but I’m not making a very good job of getting what I want. If I was Flora or Fiona, I could giggle and gossip; maybe he’d think I was stupid but at least I wouldn’t be sitting here in silence.

As if to help her out, a waiter in a sleek, black jacket came over to their corner.

‘Your table is ready, Lord Oliver.’

‘Great. Are you ready, Helen?’

Under his casual demeanour, Oliver sometimes displayed beautiful, rather old-fashioned manners. His hand was under her elbow to help her negotiate the single step up into the dining room. He waved aside another hovering waiter and pulled out Helen’s chair himself, settling her into it and shaking out her thick, white linen napkin before laying it across her lap.

‘What d’you think?’ From across the starched white cloth Oliver waved around the little dining room. Helen peered about her. The light outside was brilliant, but in here it was all absorbed by dark walls and heavy oak furniture. Small, shaded lamps on each table cast pools of light, but the rest of the room was dim. There were only a dozen tables. The other diners were mostly much older than Oliver and Helen; men with port-wine complexions and silvery moustaches, women with high voices and well-cut tweeds.

‘I’ve never been to one,’ Helen told him, ‘but it looks like I imagine the dining room of a gentleman’s club.’

Oliver laughed, surprised. ‘You’re quite close. Except that the food’s a million times better. And, considering it’s really only a country pub, it has the most amazing cellar.’

He means wine, Helen reminded herself, dispelling the image of a mysterious cobwebby recess beneath her feet.

Oliver nodded to the still-hovering waiter. At once a bottle was reverently brought, wrapped in a white napkin. Oliver tasted the half-inch of red wine which was poured into his glass, frowning, intent. Then another sharp nod to the waiter gave him the signal to fill Helen’s glass. She watched, intrigued, then picked up her glass and sniffed at it as Oliver had done. The wine smelt rich, fat and beguiling, quite unlike the smell of any wine she had tried before. And a single sip told her that it was indeed something very different.

‘This,’ said Oliver, ‘is burgundy. Gevrey-Chambertin, Clos St Jacques. Not quite the very greatest, but as good as one can find almost anywhere.’ He turned his glass to the light and looked at it intently, then drank. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, and Helen knew that she was forgotten.

After a moment Oliver looked up again and recollected himself. ‘One comes here for the game,’ he told her. ‘We’re having grouse, okay?’ She nodded, not caring if they were going to eat penguin.

In fact the food, when it came, didn’t appeal to her. The meat tasted strong and not very fresh. Helen ate what she could and gave all her attention to Oliver. In response, he set out to amuse her. She realised that when he chose, he could be excellent company. He made her laugh with stories of his own casual irresponsibility, and he swept the conversation along without making any more awkward demands on Helen’s self-protective quiet. He seemed to live in a world of parties, weekends in Town, as he called London, dining clubs – and, even less intelligibly to Helen – dogs and horses.

‘Do you do any work?’ she asked.

‘Not a jot.’ His beguiling smile drew her own in response. ‘I shall get a Third, of course. Just like my father. And his father, for that matter. My brother didn’t bother with a degree at all. What difference does it make?’ He shrugged amiably. ‘More wine?’

Halfway through the meal Oliver drained his glass, tipped the empty bottle sideways, then signalled to the waiter to bring another.

‘Another?’ Helen said it out loud, in spite of herself.

‘Of course another.’ Oliver looked faintly surprised. ‘The days of the one-bottle lunch are, as far as I am concerned, ancient history.’

He drank most of the burgundy, but he took care, too, to refill Helen’s glass whenever she drank a little.

After the grouse came thick, rich syllabub in little china cups, and then brandy which made even Helen’s fingers warm as she wrapped them round the glass.

When they had finished, one of the self-effacing waiters brought the bill. Helen tried to look away, but curiosity dragged her eyes back to Oliver’s negligently scribbled cheque. It was for an amount almost exactly equal to the money she would have to live on for the rest of the term.

When they came out into the late afternoon sunshine, Oliver’s eyes were hooded and he was talking just a little more deliberately than usual, but there was no other sign of how much he had drunk.

Once again he flung open the Jaguar’s passenger door with a flourish and waved her towards it.

‘Can you drive all right?’ she asked, knowing that it was a pointless question.

‘Perfectly.’ His arm came round her shoulders again and with one finger he raised her chin so that he could look down into her eyes. ‘Don’t worry so much,’ he told her. ‘Don’t be so frightened of everything.’ His hand moved to tangle itself in the mass of black curls and Helen felt the tiny, caressing movements of his thumb against her neck. He smelt of leather and wool and very faintly of dark red burgundy. For a moment they stood in silence. Helen was waiting, half apprehensive and half eager. Then Oliver laughed softly, deep in his throat. ‘You seem so timid. But you aren’t, really, are you? What door do I have to open to let the other Helen out?’

The other Helen. She caught her breath, thrown off balance by his sudden astuteness. Ever since he had kissed her, up in her bare room at Follies House, two Helens had been sparring inside her. She had no idea which one was her real self. How could she begin to find an answer for Oliver?

He didn’t wait for one. Instead, he took her hand firmly and guided her into the car. ‘Come on. We’ve got things to do.’ Oliver hoisted his leather coat out from behind the seats and tucked it around her. Helen buried her nose luxuriously in the sheepskin lining.

‘Where?’

‘I told you. To see a man about a dog.’

The car shot forward. Oliver was driving even faster than before, but it seemed to Helen just as competently. He was very sure of where he was going.

The sun was low behind the trees now, and the shadows were thickening between the hedges in the narrow lanes. For a mile or so they skirted a long wall that looked as if it might enclose a park, then suddenly Oliver swung the wheel and the car skidded in through a gateway flanked by tall stone posts. They passed a low building that might have been a gatekeeper’s lodge, its windows warmly lit behind drawn curtains. Beyond the lodge was a driveway, arched over with massive oak trees. As they sped towards it, Helen became aware of the dark, crenellated bulk of a big house sitting squarely on a little rise ahead.

Beside her, Oliver’s face was expressionless.

To one side of the house was an outcrop of lower buildings, and Oliver turned the car decisively towards them. A moment later they were in a cobbled yard, the roar of the Jaguar’s exhaust thrown back at them by the enclosing walls. Oliver vaulted out of the car and simultaneously one of the stable doors swung open. A shaft of yellow light struck across the cobbles.

‘Evening, my lord,’ said the little man who had come out to meet them. He was toothless, brown-skinned and dressed in moleskin trousers and a coat so ancient that all the colour had been drained out of it.

‘Hello, Jasper,’ said Oliver, grinning at him. ‘Where are they?’

‘End barn, my lord.’

‘Come and see them too, Helen. This is Jasper Thripp, by the way. Miss Brown, Jasper.’

‘Evening, miss,’ said the little man, and hobbled towards the door of the end barn.

Uncomprehending, Helen followed them.

Inside the barn were the mingled smells of bran, paraffin from a heater, and warm milk. In a large box near the heater was a beagle bitch, surrounded by a warm, wriggling mass of brown, black and white-patched puppies. Oliver stooped over them, murmuring endearments to the mother as he lifted each pup in turn. His face was soft in the harsh light cast by the bare, cobwebbed lightbulb overhead. As he turned the puppies to and fro, running a practised finger over their legs and backs, Helen saw that his hands were long and sensitive like the hands in an eighteenth-century portrait. At length he nodded and smiled at Jasper. ‘Three first-rate, and a couple more pretty good. Yes?’

Jasper sucked at his toothless gums. ‘Yup. I’d say so. She’s done well this time, the old gel.’ They were talking as equals now.

When the last of the pups had been gently returned to the security of its box, Oliver moved aside briskly. The softness was gone from his face, replaced by the more familiar authoritative mask.

‘We’ll give them a couple more weeks, then pick the ones we need for the pack.’

‘Right you are, my lord.’

Master and servant again, Helen thought.

‘And now, let’s have a drink before I take Miss Brown off. There’s a bottle in the tack-room safe.’

They retraced their steps to the door from which Jasper had emerged. The tack-room was stuffy and crammed with ranks of saddles and bridles, folded horse-blankets, combs and brushes and mysterious bottles and jars. Oliver was rummaging in an ancient green metal safe. Triumphantly he produced a whisky bottle and three thick tumblers. Helen shook her head at his invitation, but Oliver and Jasper both took liberal measures.

The old man drained his at a gulp, murmuring first, ‘Here’s to ’em, then.’ Oliver tossed back his drink too, then stood up to go.

Jasper eyed him. ‘Will you be taking Cavalier or The Pirate to the Thursday meet?’

Oliver was zipping himself into the aviator’s coat. He took Helen’s hand and squeezed it.

‘Neither. Got to work this week.’ Seeing Jasper’s face, he laughed delightedly. ‘Well, rehearse anyway. I’m in a play, did you know?’

‘I’m sure you’ll be the star of the show, my lord,’ said Jasper drily and picked up a saddle from one of the pegs. It was clear that he had a low opinion of anything that took the place of hunting in his lordship’s life. Oliver was still laughing as they climbed back into the car together. Helen could swallow her curiosity no longer.

‘What is this place? The house? Who’s Jasper?’

It was almost completely dark now and she could barely see Oliver’s face. But she did see that he hesitated a moment before answering, poised with his fingers on the keys in the ignition. And she was certain, too, that after a moment’s hesitation he looked backwards over his shoulder in the direction of the big house. Then the car’s engine roared into life again.

‘Jasper is an old ally of mine,’ he told her. ‘He’s part groom, part gamekeeper and a fund of useful knowledge. He taught me to ride when I was about three. Nell – the dog you saw – is as much his as mine, and he’s in charge of the pups. I’m the Master of the House beagles this year, and I want to present the best of the litter to the pack.’ There was pride in his voice as he spoke.

He does belong with another world, Helen thought. I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time.

As an afterthought, Oliver said quietly, ‘And the house … it’s where my parents live.’

The car surged forwards so fast that Helen was jerked backwards in her seat. She settled back, ready for the return drive to Oxford, but Oliver merely drove down the little rise away from the house, took another road across twilit parkland from which a damp mist was already rising and drew up in front of a cottage that might have belonged to a groundsman. It was screened on three sides by tall trees and all the windows were dark.

Helen followed Oliver through the drifts of leaves to the front door and stepped inside after him. When the lights came on they blinked at each other.

‘Home,’ he said.

The door had opened straight into a low, square room. It was shabby, filled with a mixture of what looked like outworn drawing room furniture and outgrown nursery pieces. The atmosphere was unmistakably welcoming. Helen looked round at the worn chintz covers, overlapping and unmatching rugs and the plain cream walls with an air of relief. She suddenly felt more comfortable with Oliver than she had done all day.

‘Make yourself at home while I do the fire.’ He knelt down at the open hearth. ‘Or, better still, be an angel and make some tea.’

The kitchen was at the back. Helen hummed softly as she rummaged in cupboards to discover thick red pottery mugs and a homely brown teapot. When she carried the tray in, Oliver was lying on a rug in front of the fire, his head propped against the sofa cushions. He watched her as she put the tray down on the floor and then rocked back on her heels to meet his eyes. Oliver patted the cushions beside him, but Helen ignored him for a moment. Instead she poured tea into the red mugs and then handed him one. Then she wrapped her thin fingers round her own. Emboldened by the cosy domesticity of the little room, she asked him, ‘Why do you call this home? If your parents live over there?’

‘I’ve used this little house to escape to for years. When I was younger, to escape from the family. Nowadays, when I’m here, which isn’t often, it’s to avoid the tourists.’

‘Tourists?’

‘Mmm. The house is open to the public. Hordes of it. We’ve retreated to one of the wings, like survivors in a sinking ship.’

‘What is this place?’ Helen asked again.

‘It’s called Montcalm.’

Of course. Oliver’s father, then, was the Earl of Montcalm. And this blond boy who was laughing at her in the firelight came of a family whose history stretched back to the Plantagenets.

‘Didn’t you know?’ he asked her.

‘No,’ Helen said humbly. ‘Or, if I did know who you were, I’d forgotten.’

‘How lovely.’ Oliver was laughing delightedly, and her own laughter echoed his. ‘Come and sit here.’

Helen went. Her head found a comfortable hollow in the crook of his shoulder, and his chin rested in her hair. In front of them the fire crackled and spat. Helen let her eyes close, thinking of nothing but the sound of their breathing and the immediate sensations that lapped around her. Oliver’s sweater was rough against one cheek and the heat of the fire was reddening the other. She felt his mouth moving in her hair.

‘Comfortable?’

‘Mmm.’

Gently, Oliver began to stroke her cheek. Instinctively, Helen turned her face closer to his. Her body felt soft, warm after the day’s bright cold and relaxed with the ebbing of tension.

Very slowly, Oliver bent his head and kissed her mouth. Even as she felt herself respond to him, answering his kiss with a kind of hunger that surprised her, Helen heard a cold little voice inside her head.

You know that there will be no going back, after this?

You could still stop him.

You could still play safe.

No. I don’t want to be safe. I don’t want to lose him. I don’t care what happens. This is all that matters now. This room, the firelight, the roughness of the rugs beneath us. Oliver.

His hand was on her breast now and his mouth was more urgent over hers. Like a suicide pushing away the lifebelt that drifted within reach, Helen shut her ears and eyes and let herself be submerged in him.

‘You look so fragile,’ he whispered, ‘but your strength is all inside, isn’t it?’

He lifted her from the cushions and peeled her sweater off. Her eyes focused on his hands, portrait hands, insistent as they took off the rest of her clothes. Helen’s skin was creamy-pale, but the light and warmth made it rosy now. Intently Oliver’s fingers traced the line of her collarbone and the tilt of her small breasts, ran over the smooth flesh that stretched tight over her ribcage and then grasped her waist. She felt herself pulled towards him and her hands reached, in turn, at his clothes, wanting to touch him too.

At last, they faced each other, kneeling naked in the red glow.

‘Now,’ he said, and she echoed him on a long breath. Helen’s fingers slid over him as he waited for her.

The dreamy languor which had bathed them both was gone in that instant. A flash of longing for him swept through her, making her gasp aloud. Her fingers knotted in his hair as they came together and her head arched back, and further back, as his mouth slid from hers to her throat, and then to the hardness of her nipples. His hands explored her, relentless now, and she felt herself open to him like a flower.

‘Oliver,’ she murmured, ‘Oliver.’ It was the first time she had called him by his name, but she felt as though it had been in her head for her whole life. His eyes were closed and his breath was coming in quick gasps.

Still kneeling, Oliver lifted her effortlessly and then drew her down on top of him. He pierced her with a single thrust and at once she felt a wave of pleasure so intoxicating that she cried out loud. Her legs wound around him, jealously imprisoning him inside her. Poised, they moved together, at first slowly and then fiercely, unstoppably.

Helen felt the deep buried stirrings of her own climax with the first low moan in Oliver’s throat. Her back arched, taut, as he ground deeper into her. Then her fingers clenched, once, and fell open as the liquid currents shot through her veins, pulsed, extinguished everything except the man within her and then, slowly, exquisitely, receded.

By infinitesimal degrees, time started up again. Helen lifted her head from where it had sunk against Oliver’s shoulder. Looking down at him she saw that his face was soft, just as it had been when he bent over the tiny pups. Sweat had damped his fine blond hair so that it lay close against his head and his eyelashes were dark and spiky. For an instant, Oliver looked almost vulnerable. Helen stroked the hair back from his face and laid her cheek against his.

Beside them the fire sank deeper into its own red heart.

After a moment Oliver stirred and smiled lazily at her. ‘So that was the door.’

‘Door?’ Helen was bewildered.

‘The door to let the other Helen out.’ He chuckled. ‘You surprised me. So much heat under that cold skin.’

Helen felt herself blushing, and uncertainty took the place of the peaceful satisfaction of the moment before. Had she done something wrong? Her knowledge of sexual matters was so slight that she might well have. She had simply trusted in the force of her own instincts to guide her and she had believed that Oliver was doing the same. Now, she saw, that could have been a mistake. It was all so confusing, not least her disconcerting longing to please him.

What was the right thing? She felt that he had been surprised by her refusal of him the other evening, and now after her passionate surrender of herself, he was no less surprised.

‘Did I do something wrong?’ she asked simply.

‘Wrong?’ His blue eyes were very bright. ‘No, of course not. You were charming. Just not very like other girls. Or like what I expected.’

I’m not like Flora or Fiona, Helen thought. Or like Vick. I know that. But what did he expect? She wanted to ask him, wanted to make him talk, but the words eluded her. Instead, she became uncomfortably conscious of her nakedness, and she reached out for the tangle of clothes beside her. Quickly, acutely aware of the clumsy awkwardness of putting on clothes, she pulled on her crumpled shirt. Then she saw that Oliver was looking away from her, into the depths of the fire. He seemed utterly unconscious of his body, and at once Helen regretted her prudish scramble to get dressed.

Uncomfortable, unexplained hot tears pricked behind her eyes. What’s the matter with me, she asked herself bitterly.

Oliver lay calm and unmoving. His body was evenly and deeply tanned, every inch of it. Helen knew that meant remote, exotic beaches, or very fashionable ones where everyone was free of stupid inhibitions. He looked fit, too, with the flat belly and developed muscles of the all-round athlete. Alongside him Helen felt herself bony and uncoordinated, as well as pallid from lack of sunlight. There had been too many weeks of not caring what she ate, too many nights with very little sleep.

With his eyes fixed on the fire, Oliver put out a hand and caught her wrist.

‘Stop jumping about,’ he ordered her. ‘Lie still, here.’ He made space on the rug beside him and obediently Helen lay back with her head against the cushions. His fingers encircled her wrist, and, as if to underline her own image of her body, he murmured, ‘So thin and brittle. One false move and it might snap. Poor Helen. You need feeding up.’ And he laughed again, pleased with the idea.

In the quiet that followed, Helen collected herself. What else did you expect? Or want? You shared those moments of love-making with him, and in those moments he was yours. Nothing can take that away. And now, what point is there in wishing it had happened some other way? Or hadn’t happened at all? You wanted to give yourself to him, because what else could you have offered? And he’s still here beside you. With his fingers around your wrist. Take what you’ve got, and believe in your own convictions.

The threatened tears were gone now, and the determination was back in Helen’s face again.

Oliver sat up and reached for a log from the basket. When he threw it on the fire, the embers glowed hotly and sent out a last fierce blush of heat before settling again.

He let go of her wrist and leaned away from her to fumble in one of his pockets. When he settled himself, Helen saw that he was holding a key ring, with a small, silver propelling pencil dangling among the keys. Quickly, Oliver unscrewed it and Helen saw that it was not a pencil at all, but a hollow tube. Oliver patted his pockets again and then produced a tiny silver-backed mirror. Finally from his wallet he extracted a single, crisp pound-note.

‘I can’t stand the ostentation of people who use fifties,’ he told her. Helen watched, bewildered.

Frowning with concentration now, Oliver shook a tiny drift of white powder from the tube on to the mirror. Then he held it out to her.

‘Snort?’ he asked, casually.

‘What is it?’

‘Cocaine,’ he answered, enunciating the word very carefully. ‘What did you think?’

‘No,’ Helen cried out before she could bite back the word behind her teeth. Suddenly, and with startling vividness, she remembered Frances Page being driven away in an unmarked car by a young and pretty policewoman and a creased middle-aged man who bore no resemblance to the drug-squad officers of television serials.

Oliver shook his head. ‘It’s harmless, you know, unless you’re very stupid. And it is instant sunshine.’ He offered the mirror again, as if it were chocolates.

‘No. Thank you.’

Oliver shook his head again, as if to say please yourself, then rolled the crackling note up into a narrow tube. With a sharp sniff at each nostril the white powder vanished from the mirror.

This time the tempo of their love-making was languid and dreamy. To Helen each movement seemed slower, as if replayed before her eyes by an unseen camera, but yet more piercingly sweet than she could have believed possible. The world beyond the little circle of firelight, beyond this coupling of tanned skin with her own pale translucent flesh, meant nothing.

This was Helen’s first experience of living for the moment, of being absorbed in the sensations of the instant, and she was transfixed by it. At last Oliver drifted into sleep with his head heavy against her breast. For a while Helen stared over the crest of blond hair into the greyness of the dead fire. Then she, too, closed her eyes, as if surrendering herself once again, and then slept with him.

It was very late when the black Jaguar slid alongside the steps leading down to Follies House.

Oliver switched off the engine and glanced sideways at Helen. Her chin was sunk against the collar of his coat which he had wrapped around her, and she seemed to be lost within her own thoughts.

‘Follies,’ he said, to nudge her back into awareness. ‘I told you I’d deliver you back, safe and sound.’

Helen stared at him, her face drained of colour by the orange street lights. Something in her expression made Oliver uneasy.

‘You’re not sorry are you? About today?’ He had meant it lightly, half referring to her missed day’s work, but Helen interpreted it differently.

‘No, not sorry. Stunned, perhaps. And bewildered. But happy too.’ She smiled at him, and her small, cold hand reached out for his as it rested on the gearstick. ‘Are you sorry?’

Her question disconcerted Oliver but he kept the lightness in his voice as he answered. ‘No, why should I be? One only feels sorry if things turn out badly. And this evening wasn’t bad. Not bad at all.’

There was a small silence before Helen spoke again.

‘Will you come back again? Soon?’

‘Of course. I’m always in and out of Follies. Rose likes to see me about the place.’

Helen nodded, accepting that.

Oliver leaned back to gather up her books from where they lay scattered behind the seats. He glanced at them before handing them over.

‘God, serious stuff.’ His voice was teasing. ‘Do you work all the time?’

‘No,’ said Helen in a small voice. ‘I didn’t work today, did I?’

Once again, a little silence hung between them before she took the books from his hands. ‘It’s late,’ she said, as if reminding herself rather than Oliver.

‘Mmm. And Hart has decreed that tomorrow work starts on the play in earnest. Something tells me that he’s likely to be a slavedriver.’

Cheerfully Oliver climbed out of the car and opened Helen’s door. He helped her out and they faced each other in the livid light. As he looked down at Helen’s pale, heart-shaped face framed by black curls, Oliver saw that there was something unfamiliar in the huge eyes that met his. It was something that he didn’t want to confront too closely. Instead he kissed her lightly on the cheek and swung her round to face the steps.

‘Safe home,’ he told her.

‘Goodnight.’ Her fingers touched the cuff of his jacket for a second before she walked away.

Oliver leaned on the parapet to watch her go and noticed again how slight she looked. He remembered how light she had felt in his arms, like a small bird, and how the strength of her passion had seemed at odds with that fragile body.

He frowned and turned abruptly back to his car.

Before he drove away he glanced up at the square dark shape of Follies House. Lights showed at three long windows on the first floor, and Oliver knew that they were the windows of Pansy Warren’s room. The frown disappeared and Oliver was whistling as he eased the Jaguar away towards Christ Church.

Slowly Helen climbed through the dark house to her room. She had wanted, as she said goodnight, to seize hold of Oliver and never let him go. Even as she heard his car purr away she felt cold with the loss of him. But she squared her shoulders and, inside her head, tried to laugh away her feelings. Anyway, she reminded herself, he’ll be back soon. He told you so himself. Perhaps tomorrow. Or if not tomorrow, the next day.

THREE

Stephen Spurring folded The Times into three, vertically, as he always did, and propped it against the coffee pot. The dining room was quiet, with thin autumn sunshine reflecting on the amusing pieces of high Victorian furniture collected by Beatrice and himself years ago, but from the kitchen came the confused babble of bickering children’s voices. Beatrice herself could be heard from time to time, refereeing in the state of constant war that seemed to exist among their children.

Stephen stirred his coffee very slowly. This moment of privacy, ‘Daddy must have some peace over breakfast, darling, because he needs to think,’ was a legacy from the early days of their marriage, and he still clung tenaciously to it. It was little enough, Stephen thought. In a very few minutes Beatrice and the children would get into one car to do the round of bus stops and school gates, and he would take the other into Oxford. The day would officially have begun.

In the meantime, there was his oasis of quiet and the newspaper. When he glanced back at it the print blurred obstinately in front of his eyes. Damn. His reading glasses were upstairs, and the thought irked him. Needing glasses at all made him feel old and creaky. Irritably, Stephen abandoned the paper, picked up his cup and went over to look out of the French windows. The gardens around the old stone rectory looked very bright, gaudy with autumn colours. As he stood watching, a grey squirrel bounced jerkily across the grass.

Thirty-nine wasn’t so old, Stephen told himself.

It was October again now. This was the time of year when everything came to life for him after the long silence of the summer, just as it had done for the last twenty years. Twenty? Had he really been in Oxford for that long? Stephen smiled wryly, reflecting that this was the last year before middle age. Well, there was still time. For what? he might have asked himself, but he chose not to.

He was surprised to find himself humming as he picked up his briefcase in the black-and-white tiled hallway. A glance in the ornate gilt hall mirror cheered him further. Stephen had never belonged to the dusty corduroys and down-at-heel shoes school of University teachers. Today he was wearing a soft grey tweed suit, and a bright blue shirt without a tie. He looked sleek, and younger than his age even with the threads of grey in his silky hair. Satisfied, Stephen went on into the kitchen to say goodbye to his wife.

Beatrice looked round at him, tucking the loose strands of dark hair behind her ears as she did so. It was a gesture that she had used ever since he had known her, and it still made her look like a schoolgirl.

‘Goodbye, darling,’ Stephen murmured. ‘Have a good day. I might be a bit late – faculty get-together.’ They kissed, automatically, not meeting each other’s eyes. Stephen reached out to touch his younger son’s shoulder as he passed, but Joe jerked his head away. Sulking about something, Stephen remembered, but couldn’t recall what. Five minutes later he was in his car, ready to drive the numbingly familiar ten miles into Oxford.

Beatrice watched him go, half regretfully. Fifteen years felt like a long, long marriage, but her husband still had the power occasionally to make her catch her breath and wish that he would stay. Even though she knew him much better than he knew himself, and that knowledge left no room for illusions, she still half loved him, half craved for him. Well, she reminded herself, the days of ducking guiltily out of whatever they were supposed to be doing and staying at home alone together were far behind them now. Beatrice reached for the tendrils of hair again, then remembered the marmalade on her fingers from Sebastian’s plate. She wiped them slowly on her apron, staring out of the gateway where Stephen had disappeared. She was still tasting, as she did every day, the odd mixture of frustration at her dependence on him and the satisfaction that, in spite of everything, they were still together.

‘Mum? My gym shirt?’ Eloise’s voice came demanding from the doorway. Gratefully, Beatrice stopped thinking and began to rehearse the daily list: clean football kit, riding lesson after school, three things beginning with J for Sebastian to take with him. Another day.

Stephen was still humming under his breath as he strolled into the packed lecture room. The sight was familiar, but it still touched him. There were the dozens of fresh faces, the clean notebooks and brand new copies of his own Commentaries. The size of the audience was gratifying. Stephen had given not a thought to his lecture, but that didn’t matter. He had delivered this introduction to his pet subject so many times that it was as familiar to him as his own name. He put his unnecessary sheaf of notes down on the desk and smiled around the room.

‘Okay,’ he said softly, as if speaking to just one of the faces turned up to him. ‘I’m going to talk to you today about love. Romantic love, sexual love, real love, as we find it in the greatest of Shakespeare’s great comedies.’

There was a ripple around the room as pens were unscrewed and eager hands began to scribble down Stephen’s words.

Chloe Campbell was the only person who didn’t move.

Instead she cupped her chin in her hands and looked intently back at Stephen. Fortyish, she thought, and not a bit like the stooped academic she had expected from reading the lecture list. This Doctor Spurring was slim, not tall, but undeniably sexy. His hair was just a little too long but it was well shaped. He wasn’t conventionally good-looking but his eyes were a startling clear blue. And his mouth, almost too full and curved, looked as soft as a girl’s. There was something in his voice that attracted her too. Under the conventional, cultivated tones there was something – someone – else. Was Stephen Spurring a Yorkshireman, Chloe wondered, or a Geordie perhaps?

After his forty-five fluent minutes, Stephen began smoothly to wind up his introductory lecture. All around her Chloe saw that there were sheets of notes with underlined headings and numbered points, now being clipped with satisfaction into new folders. Dr Spurring was an excellent teacher, she realised, but she hadn’t written down a single word of his instruction. Stephen Spurring the man interested her far too much.

When Stephen came out of the lecture, hitching his black gown familiarly over his shoulder and thinking cheerfully of coffee and the rest of The Times, he found three people waiting for him. Two of them, he saw, were Oliver Mortimore who was lounging characteristically against the wall to watch the girls streaming past, and an intent-looking Tom Hart from the Playhouse. The third was a girl. Stephen had glimpsed her mass of dark red hair in his lecture audience, and now he took in green eyes, an aura of self-possession and a direct, challenging smile. He had no idea who she was, and wished that he did.

He turned reluctantly to Oliver and Tom.

‘Still no Rosalind?’ he asked, without much interest. Stephen was the senior faculty member responsible for student drama productions, and usually he enjoyed the involvement. He liked the passionate enthusiasms of his undergraduates, and even more he like the steady trickle of pretty would-be actresses that it brought him into contact with. Yet this particular production, Tom Hart’s As You Like It, threatened to be less agreeable. To begin with, casting Oliver Mortimore as Orlando was an absurdity. The boy knew nothing about Shakespeare and seemed to care less. Stephen guessed that he had agreed to act the role simply out of amusement and curiosity. And Oliver was devoted to amusing himself, the older man thought with dislike. He stood for so many of the things that Stephen had despised Oxford for twenty years ago, and mistrusted even now – inherited privilege, too much money, the unquestioning belief that life owed to its brightest and most beautiful the leisure to eat, drink, ride horses and indulge themselves in and out of bed. Stephen, with no such privilege behind him, had little time for Oliver’s kind. Then there was Hart. He irked Stephen too, although the reasons were less clear-cut. His very presence, the suggestion of foreign, Broadway glitter which he brought with him, was a mystery. He was difficult to place, and so just a little threatening. Stephen waited without enthusiasm to hear what the two of them had to say.

Tom didn’t hesitate. He started talking quickly in the confident manner that annoyed Stephen. ‘We’ve got a couple of girls coming to audition for Rosalind at twelve. Can you be there?’

It was a mere courtesy that the senior member was invited to approve of the casting, at least in Tom’s view. Stephen hadn’t wanted Oliver, but that was just too bad.

Stephen frowned and glanced at his watch. The way that Tom Hart always addressed him as an absolute equal didn’t help, either. But he wasn’t going to give up and take a back seat, because that was probably exactly what Hart wanted.

‘If I must,’ he answered. ‘Just don’t keep me hanging about for too long.’

‘Of course not.’ But there was more irony than courtesy in the response. Cocky bastard, Stephen thought, and turned away deliberately to the red-haired girl who was still waiting at his elbow.

‘Dr Spurring,’ she held out her hand. ‘I’m Chloe Campbell. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your lecture. And to ask you a couple of questions.’

Stephen saw that she had the clear, creamy skin of the true redhead, coupled strikingly with dark brows and eyelashes. She also had a wide, curving mouth which seemed made for laughter as well as for other, more intimate things.

‘Ask away,’ Stephen smiled at her. He looked round and saw with pleasure than Tom and Oliver had gone. ‘Or better still, let me buy you a cup of coffee, and then you can ask me.’

With a touch of his hand at her elbow, Stephen turned Chloe round in the direction of the senior common room.

‘In here,’ he murmured.

Chloe found herself sitting in a deep, leather-covered armchair in a sombre, quiet room. There was a log fire at one end, and at the other a long table covered with a white cloth and trays of china and silver. There was a promising smell of fresh coffee.

This is more like it, she thought.

Chloe had already admitted to herself that her first few days in Oxford had been very short on glamour of any kind. She hadn’t come up expecting immediately to dine off gold plate in ancient halls while the greatest minds in the world sparred wittily around her, but neither had she anticipated quite so many anoraks and queues, and so much junk food served and eaten cheerlessly in plastic cafeterias. And Follies House had been lonely, echoingly quiet. She had heard the third lodger, Pansy whoever-it-was, arriving with huge quantities of luggage, but she had left again immediately, apparently for a long weekend. Helen had been there and Chloe would have liked to see her, but she had vanished disconcertingly early every morning with a forbidding pile of books. Chloe’s only chance of companionship had been with fat, chuckling Rose in her witches’ kitchen. Pride was the only thing that kept Chloe from turning tail and running back to London.

But this was different. This peaceful room with its scattered figures in black gowns was more what she had expected. And here was Stephen himself, leaning over to pour coffee, his eyes even bluer at close quarters than they had looked across the lecture room.

‘Cream? Sugar?’ he asked, then handed over a deep cup with, she saw in amused satisfaction, the University crest emblazoned on the side.

‘Well?’ he asked, smiling a lopsided smile that made Chloe shift a little in her chair and forget, for a moment, the bright opening that she had planned.

‘Ummm …’ Now they were both laughing. He’s nice, Chloe thought. Nicer than anyone I’ve met for, oh, a long, long time.

‘Dr Spurring,’ she began, but Stephen leaned across at once and rested his fingertips lightly, just for an instant, on her wrist.

‘Stephen,’ he told her. ‘Even my students call me that.’

‘I am a student,’ she told him, half regretfully. ‘A mature one, as they say. That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you about, as it happens. I’m very new to all this, you see. I haven’t read nearly enough. And I’ve been out of the way of – oh, just thinking properly, for years and years. Will you give me some advice about where to start? Tell me what to read, to begin with. Not just reading lists, but what’s really important. I feel at a disadvantage. And I’m not used to that,’ she finished, candidly. She had intended to make herself sound interesting for Stephen Spurring’s benefit, but she seemed to have blurted out something that was closer to the real truth. I’ve only made myself sound naive, Chloe thought, with irritation.

‘You? Feel at a disadvantage?’ Stephen leaned further back in his chair and grinned at her. ‘Come on … Chloe … look at yourself, and then look at those kids out there.’ He waved in the direction of the window and its view down a flight of steps crowded with people hurrying between classes. ‘Okay, apart from your obvious advantages, and you don’t need me to list those, you’re a little bit older. It can’t be by very much …’ he smiled again, into her eyes this time, ‘but you’ve had the chance to live some real life. Adult life. Which means you know yourself a whole lot better, and you understand people and their funny little motives more clearly. Isn’t that true?’

Chloe nodded slowly. ‘Yes, but …’

‘Listen. What could be more important, particularly in our field, in literature?’

Our field, Chloe thought, suddenly proud. I really am here, talking to this clever man, who’s still got the sexiest mouth I’ve ever seen. Even better, he’s not going to start the bitchy business gossip in five seconds’ time, nor is he going to try to get me to put some work his way. I’m glad I’m here. This is where I want to be.

‘I think that’s more impressive than just being born a Mortimore,’ Helen told him gently.

Tom smiled at her in response, and she saw that although his face was stern and his mouth ungiving, there was real kindness behind his dark, hooded eyes.

‘Perhaps.’

‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘What are you really doing in Oxford, if you’ve got all that waiting for you in America?’

Tom picked up a fragment of bread from the tablecloth and rolled it between his fingers into a grey, doughy ball.

‘I’m in disgrace, as it happens. Serving out a year’s exile in the guise of doing my apprenticeship in the British theatre. By the time I get back, my old man reckons all the fuss will be forgotten.’

Helen stared at him, intrigued. She had forgotten herself enough not to worry about being tactful. ‘What fuss?’

‘D’you really want to know?’

‘Of course. What could be bad enough to deserve being banished from home for a whole year?’

Tom laughed shortly. ‘It’s not so bad. I miss New York, that’s all. Do you remember that production of The Tempest that was so successful in the West End last year? With Sir Edward Groves and Maria Vaughn?’

Helen nodded, dimly recollecting having read about it.

‘My father brought the production over for his summer season. With the original cast, starring the theatrical knight and his new wife Miss Vaughn.’

Helen remembered that, too.

‘Well, whatever Maria had married her knight for, it had nothing to do with bed. In spite of the fact that she’s very interested in that side of things herself. Most of us are, after all. When I was offered the choice, before the run had even started, I was hardly likely to turn her down. She’s very beautiful, and disturbingly sexy. Before long we were screwing each other at every possible opportunity. At my apartment, in her hotel room, in her dressing room. And that’s where Sir Edward caught us at it. Careless of me, really. The scene that followed was high drama – threats, screams, hysterical weeping, the whole works. It culminated with Sir Edward stamping down to my father’s office and announcing that the Hart family was not to be trusted, so he and Maria were back off to London and fuck the opening night. Greg flung himself into the scene like the old trouper he is. There were more accusations of filial disloyalty, immorality, perfidy and general filthiness. Of course, Edward really had no intention of missing out on the chance to bestow his Prospero on Manhattan. They compromised by despatching me to England instead. This job was fixed up for me in about forty seconds, and here I am.’

Helen thought for a moment. ‘Isn’t that rather hard on you? Surely your father must have seen your side, just a little?’

Tom laughed again.

‘Oh, it’s much more complicated than that. You see, Greg certainly had Maria carved out for himself. He does quite a good line in leading ladies – he’s always been very successful with women. And he’s used to thinking of himself as the young phenomenon. Suddenly, there he was, seeing that his own son had cut him out. What would it be next, he must have asked himself. His theatres. His whole empire, perhaps. So, get rid of the little bastard for a convenient space of time by packing him off to Oxford, England, to produce piddling student productions of the classics.’

‘Did you have to come?’

The answer came without a trace of hesitation. ‘Oh yes. If I want to get the business in the end, I do. And I want it very much. I love the theatre.’

‘Except for piddling little productions in Oxford.’

Tom shot her a quick glance, his eyebrows raised. ‘Yes. I asked for that. I didn’t mean it, except as a comparison with what I could be doing if I was back home. Of course this show is just as important in its way as the biggest musical spectacular on Broadway. That’s why I’ve taken so much care to get the casting right. And it’s why I’m so pleased with Oliver and Pansy. Particularly Pansy. I knew as soon as she walked into the theatre that she was the one I was looking for. She’s amazing, isn’t she?’

Tom’s habitual cynical expression had melted, replaced by an enthusiasm that was almost boyish.

‘Yes.’ Helen didn’t want to talk about Pansy Warren. She switched the subject again. ‘And you? Will you make a wild success of being here? It’s what happens in all the books.’

‘Not wild. There’s hardly scope. But I’ll do well enough.’

Helen knew that he would, from the determined lines etched in his dark face. Tom Hart was bound to succeed in whatever he did. It was in his blood. You’re probably quite ruthless, Helen thought. You can be kind too, but you wouldn’t let that impede you where it matters. Probably you just feel genuinely sorry as you plunge the hatchet in. I know I wouldn’t like to cross you.

Tom was looking at her now, his gaze level. ‘Why am I treating you to this self-centred recital? It must be something to do with your having such a calm, attentive face.’

I don’t want to be just a calm, attentive face. A sudden spurt of resentment took possession of Helen. I want to be beautiful, like Pansy and Chloe, the kind of woman that people look at, not talk at. I want to be rich, and confident, and amusing. It’s not fair. And then at once she felt ashamed again. You’re so lucky in so many things, she reminded herself. Think of Mum, and Graham. And Dad.

Tom turned from signalling to the waitress and saw a brightness in Helen’s eyes that might have been the start of tears. His hand touched hers.

‘What is it? Did I say something?’

She shook her head fiercely. ‘No. I just … remembered something. Look – it’s late.’

‘I know. I must go too.’ When the bill came, Helen remembered that Oliver and Pansy, unthinking, had left without paying their share.

‘Can I go halves with you?’ she ventured.

‘No. Of course not.’ Without even looking, Tom dumped a fistful of notes on the plate and stood up.

It’s just different for them, Helen told herself. It’s wrong of you to feel resentful.

Tom left her with a brief goodbye at Carfax. Helen turned to watch him for a moment as he walked off down the long, golden curve of the High. His clothes were stylish, almost flamboyant, and with his alert face and purposeful walk, he stood out in high relief from the anonymous blue denim crowds that drifted around him.

As soon as he was gone, Helen was surprised to feel the loss of his bracing company. The lunch had been uncomfortable, but for some reason her sharpest impression now was of this brisk American. He was as different from the ordinary run of University people as Oliver himself. Helen thought he was more than a little frightening, because his cleverness made him intolerant, but she remembered the kindness she had sensed in him as well as the flash of vulnerability when he had looked at Pansy Warren. She liked him, too, for the straightforward way he had told her the story of his exile to Oxford. Tom Hart would not be easy to know well, she reflected, but once he had committed himself, she guessed that he would be a valuable friend. Helen wondered if Pansy, in her glancing appraisal, had seen that too. No, she wouldn’t have. Beside Oliver’s glitter, Tom seemed saturnine and acerbic. And it was Oliver, inevitably, who had scooped Pansy up and spirited her away.

Helen sighed, stuck her hands in her duffel coat pockets and began to walk down St Aldate’s towards the river and Follies House.

As she stepped into the hallway and let the massive oak door swing to behind her, Helen knew immediately that there was something different about the old house. The dim, spidery spaces in the hall were deserted and looked just as they always did, but there was light filtering through from somewhere. And then the noise began – unbelievably loud rock music that bounced off the panelling and echoed along the stone floors. When she looked up, Helen saw that the door at the head of the stairs was open. A shaft of bright sunlight shone through it.

Pansy was home.

Helen knocked on the door jamb and, knowing that she wouldn’t be heard above the music, peered inside. Pansy was dancing alone and with her eyes shut. She was smiling a small, happy, secretive smile.

‘Hello.’ Helen had to shout. Pansy opened startled eyes.

‘Hel-lo. Sorry. D’you ever feel so happy that you just have to dance? Wait while I turn it down.’

‘That was a short tutorial,’ Helen said into the new quiet.

‘He didn’t wait, can you believe it? I wasn’t that late.’ Pansy was wide-eyed, genuinely surprised. ‘Anyway, it means I’ve got a lovely free afternoon now. Don’t go. Stay here and talk while I sort some of this junk out.’

Unlike Chloe, Pansy had made no effort to settle into her room. Suitcases and a huge trunk were all open, the tumbled contents showing that their owner had rummaged through in search of the things she needed without bothering to unpack anything. Pansy was standing in the middle of the jumble now, staring round in exasperation.

‘God, what a mess. I hate all this stuff. Wouldn’t life be easy if we were allowed to own only ten things each.’

Pansy, like Chloe, seemed to possess an unbelievable number of clothes.

‘No,’ said Helen a little sadly. ‘It’s nice to have things. I love clothes.’

Pansy glanced across at her and then scrabbled in another suitcase.

‘Do you? Would you like these? Kim bought these for me because she thought they were Oxford-y. I’ll never wear them, and they’d suit you.’

There were two Shetland jerseys, one in soft, sugared almond pinks and one in stronger blues. They had little round collars with picot edgings. She was holding out a skirt too, folds of pale grey fine wool challis.

There was a small, surprised silence.

‘I couldn’t possibly,’ Helen said stiffly. She would have loved to own such pretty things, but it was impossible. She was not so hard up that she needed to accept Pansy’s casual largesse.

‘What a pity, because I won’t wear them.’ Pansy shrugged dismissively and tossed the clothes back into the suitcase.

The silence was uncomfortable now.

Helen knew that she should go away, but it was unthinkable to leave without having mentioned Oliver. She had the impression that his name hovered in the air between them, waiting to be uttered.

‘Are you pleased about the part?’ she asked at last.

‘Oh, yes. So long as it doesn’t mean too much hard work. Still,’ Pansy was holding an evening frock up against herself, her head on one side to consider it. It was a frothy mass of Zandra Rhodes squiggles and ruffles, ‘… with two lovely men like that about, even rehearsing shouldn’t be too much of a bore.’

Now that the opening was here, Helen shied away from it.

‘Tom Hart’s rather exotic for Oxford,’ she said.

‘Mmmm. I wouldn’t choose him, though. Bit too saturnine and Jewish, if you call that exotic, for my taste.’

Of course, Helen thought, you do only have to choose. Not Oliver, please.

‘But Oliver, that’s different. Bit unfair of him to be so beautiful and a Mortimore, don’t you think? What can a girl do, confronted with that?’ And Pansy laughed, pleased with herself and with the pleasant prospect ahead of her.

Helen felt a slow, dull crimson flush creeping over her face. Her chest and throat felt tight, and her fingers itched with a sudden surge to slap Pansy’s bright face. The violence inside her astonished and frightened her. But this girl would take Oliver away, she knew that now, and in that instant she hated her. She must say something. Not let him go without a struggle.

Helen struggled to make her voice sound cool and light, but when at last it came out it shook and cracked.

‘Yes, Oliver and I …’ she faltered, not knowing how to put it.

Pansy swung round in genuine surprise.

‘You?’

Helen flinched. As she stared back at Pansy, she felt the ugly flush deepening over her face and neck. It was so humiliating, that surprise, the more so because it was completely natural. What could Oliver, it said, with his looks and his charm and his position, see in a little mouse like you?

‘Yes,’ Helen said, finding defiance in the anger that threatened to choke her. ‘Me. Why not?’

Pansy was looking defensive now, her eyebrows pulled into a frown over the chameleon blue eyes, and a trace of hurt lingering about her vulnerable, flower-like mouth.

‘I’m sorry. It’s just that … you didn’t look or behave as if you belonged together.’

Belonged together? How Oliver would hate that, Helen realised. She was giving Pansy the wrong impression, making her undefined relationship with Oliver seem too formal, but it was too late to backpedal now.

‘I don’t want to tread on anybody’s toes,’ Pansy added, with such clear sincerity that Helen’s anger faded as quickly as it had come. After all, Pansy had done nothing yet, except exist.

‘It’s all right,’ she said wearily. ‘You aren’t. Nobody belongs to anybody. Forget it.’

‘Forget what?’

Chloe had come up the stairs without either of them hearing her. Now she was standing in the open doorway, almost striking a pose. She had one hand on her hip and the other was raised to coil the dark red hair into a knot on top of her head. The stance emphasised her height and slimness and for a moment as she stood there, it was Chloe who was the beauty and not Pansy.

Pansy’s sharp stare missed nothing.

‘Hello. You were at the audition too, weren’t you?’

‘Pansy,’ said Helen, ‘this is Chloe Campbell. Rose’s third tenant.’

There was a little, wary moment as the two women looked at each other. Then, immediately after the practised appraisal of attractive women confronting one another, came the answering smiles of complicity. To Helen, watching, it was as if they belonged to a desirable club from which she would be forever excluded. She was oppressed by a sense of her own plainness and dowdiness.

‘Forget what?’ Chloe was asking Helen again.

‘We were talking about Oliver Mortimore,’ Pansy said, before Helen could frame an answer. ‘Helen was kindly warning me off.’

Helen wished she could find something as lightly dismissive to say, but nothing came. Chloe felt the tension vibrating in the room and tactfully turned her attention to dispersing it.

‘Really?’ she said vaguely, feigning lack of interest as she wandered round Pansy’s room. There were arched windows with views of the river and Christ Church, and panelling and furniture similar to her own, but here everything was fresher and there were thick new carpets. Chloe peered through the adjoining doors. One led to a bedroom with a glimpse of a bathroom beyond, another revealed a tiny, compact kitchen.

‘You’ve got a whole flat,’ she said to Pansy enviously. ‘Mine’s next door, but it’s only a room and a bit.’

‘What’s yours like?’ Pansy was asking Helen, and Helen knew that it was a peace-offering. She was being drawn into the conversation as a means of calling a truce in a skirmish that had never really started. It was generous of Pansy, she thought. More generous than she was herself – but then Pansy could afford to be.

‘My room’s a small, square cell on the floor above,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘Servants’ quarters.’

Chloe and Pansy both laughed, relieved. The tension was ebbing away.

‘How rotten. My father found this, I’ve no idea how. I suppose it is rather stylish. He’s good at things like that.’

‘Is your father Masefield Warren?’ Chloe asked.

‘That’s right.’

Of course. Pansy’s father’s name was almost synonymous with ruthless success. He was a self-made man with an iron reputation who now controlled an empire that embraced oil, newspapers, property and films. And Pansy was his only child. One day she would be very, very rich, as well as startlingly beautiful.

Poor Helen, Chloe was thinking. I can’t see her gilded Apollo resisting all that. And Helen was staring down at her clasped hands, not wanting to think at all. To shut off the dull ache of anxiety, she turned to Chloe.

‘Nice lunch?’ she asked politely.

Chloe laughed, pleased with the chance to talk about it.

‘Extremely nice. I’d almost forgotten how delicious it is, meeting someone and realising that you’re attracted to him. Then guessing that he feels the same and waiting to see how you’re both going to play it.’

She had released the knot on top of her head and her hair came tumbling around her face. It made her look much younger, and her features were alight with an excitement that was almost childish.

It had been a very satisfactory lunch. Stephen Spurring had achieved just the right inviting blend of intimacy and remoteness. Chloe hated pushy men. She wanted to know him better now, and her head was full of the way he had looked and the way his mouth had lifted, crookedly, into a smile of invitation.

When it had been time to leave, Stephen had put his hand over hers.

‘Will you dine with me one night at High Table? It might amuse you.’

‘I’d like that.’

She was responding to this quiet, subtle man in a way that she hadn’t done for years. The recollection of it made her smile again.

‘Be careful,’ Helen warned her. ‘Stephen eats girls. And … did you know that he’s married?’

‘I know he’s married because he told me,’ Chloe said coolly. For an intelligent woman, she thought, Helen could be very prissy. ‘And I think I can look after myself. In fact, Dr Spurring had better be careful that I don’t eat him. He’s quite appetising enough.’

All three of them laughed, a little uneasily, before Pansy asked, ‘Who’s this Dr Spurring?’

‘He’s an English don,’ Helen told her. ‘He was watching you audition too.’

‘Him?’ Pansy said, a little absently. ‘I thought he looked interesting.’

For a moment nobody spoke. Chloe’s voice was firm when she answered. ‘He certainly interests me.’

In the silence, a little quiver of reawakened tension whispered at them.

Helen collected herself. Now was the time to escape. From the doorway she said a muted goodbye and then climbed heavily up to the deserted box of her room.

There was nothing she could do. Pansy was here, and there was no point in making an enemy of her. All Helen could do was wait, first of all to see whether Oliver would be true to his word and come to look for her here at Follies House. Helen walked over to her window. With the height of the extra storey she could see over the rooftops to the outline of Canterbury Quad and, she imagined, even the windows of Oliver’s rooms.

Only wait. Already it felt like the beginning of a vigil. And from downstairs, only just audible, she thought she heard the murmur of conversation and a burst of laughter from Chloe and Pansy. What had once felt to Helen like the unassailable Gothic calm of Follies House, now seemed heavy with vague threats, and half-formed mysterious alliances that excluded her.

Suddenly Helen felt cold, and lonely. She shivered. She needed Oliver’s warmth and assurance badly, but he wasn’t there.

FOUR

Helen drew up her knees and rested her chin on them. It was cold in her room, and colder still sitting on the window seat against the misted glass, but she didn’t think of moving to turn on the heater. Instead she went on staring out at the height of Tom Tower and the smooth stone front of Christ Church. It was a grey cloudy November day with a vicious wind that whipped the black branches of the trees. On the pavements below, Helen could see passers-by shrunk into their winter clothes, their faces raw in the wind.

Very faintly she could hear the river and the hum of traffic but inside it was completely silent. Follies had the ability to swallow sound and spin a sense of isolation around the listener.

Once Helen had relished the peace, but lately it had oppressed her.

Work, her faithful remedy, was no longer any use. For days she had stared blankly at her books, watching the lines of grey type jumping meaninglessly in front of her eyes. Then she had given up the struggle. All she had in its place was the persistent whisper of guilt, chaffing her painfully but doing nothing towards driving her back to her desk.

Helen knew that if she wasn’t working, she had no justification for staying in Oxford. That knowledge was the most difficult thing to live with. If she wasn’t working, then she should be at home where she was needed.

Last time they had talked, Helen’s mother had struggled to keep the anxiety out of her voice, for her daughter’s sake, but Helen had heard it anyway. Her mother was lonely, there was so little money, and the two of them had nobody to turn to but each other.

Helen winced and pressed her forehead against the cold window pane.

What’s the matter with me? she asked herself again, knowing the answer all too well.

She had done something she would have believed impossible. She had fallen in love, awkwardly and painfully, and whichever way she turned, there was no escaping or forgetting it.

In the days since Pansy had come, Helen had seen Oliver a mere handful of times, but each time she had wanted him more. He seemed to have the power, simply by existing, to blot everything else out of her life. When she saw him sitting at the table in Rose’s kitchen she was oblivious of Rose’s sly watchfulness. At the few play rehearsals she had been to, the rest of the cast – even Pansy – shrank to grey shadows beside him.

She found that her eyes followed him when he moved, even though she hated her own slavishness.

Pansy’s arrival seemed to have made no difference. Pansy herself gave no more of her attention to Oliver than to anyone else. She simply laughed and joked from day to day with everyone’s eyes on her, from Oliver to Gerry Pole who watched her with dog-like devotion. Whether Pansy was present or nor, Helen’s relationship with Oliver was as puzzlingly tenuous as it had been from the beginning.

But it was still there.

His arm would drop around her shoulders and pull her close to him, or he would kiss the top of her head and draw her hair up to reveal the fragile whiteness of her neck. She would turn blindly to him for a second, and then he would be gone again.

Once, a little while after the auditions, he had come to find her in her room. He had leaned against the door, smiling down at her, and from the brightness and distance in his eyes, she guessed that he had been taking drugs again. But it was unthinkable to resist when he reached for her, and pulled her down beside him on the narrow little bed.

Blindly, she pressed against him, thinking here, now, he’s with you. Nothing else matters.

Afterwards, when he lay in her arms and she was secure in his warmth, Helen studied the curves and angles of his face. She thought she saw in them the gentleness of the other Oliver, the half of himself he must feel compelled to hide for some reason that she didn’t understand.

Oliver had drifted off to sleep and Helen had gone on lying beside him, her mouth against his hair, lost in the pleasure of possession.

When he woke up again, he seemed to be listening for something in the quiet of the house.

Then he rolled away from her, his lazy, assured manner making her doubt the existence of another Oliver after all. When he was dressed he had refused her offer of a cup of tea, kissed her briefly, and gone away.

Helen had quickly learned to accept that.

He came and went as he wanted, and up until now she had seized gratefully and unquestioningly on the few times that they were together without asking for anything more.

It occurred to her that she wouldn’t have known what else to ask for, anyway.

Helen frowned. Up until the last few days, that was how it had been. But this afternoon was different. She was not simply numbed by his presence, she was hurt by it. She hadn’t seen Oliver for four days, and her need for him was growing acute. Part of the grey afternoon’s discomfort was the way her body ached for him. I was so self-controlled once, Helen remembered. Is this what sex is like for everyone? So potent as to rub out everything else, and so bitterly painful when it isn’t gratified?

The other sensation that troubled her was a dull sense of foreboding. The room was heavy with it and for a moment Helen imagined that the clouds outside the window bulged with it. Then she rejected the fancifulness of the idea with irritation. The rational Helen whose voice was still sometimes just audible told her that she was being a fool, and that she should go back to her work and forget Oliver until he appeared again. But the emotional Helen who ruled so capriciously now knew that she couldn’t do that.

She was sunk in irritable apathy, hurt and impatient and powerless to do anything. The solitude and silence pressed around her, almost tangible.

Suddenly Helen jumped up. She couldn’t bear to sit here any longer. Someone to talk to, that was what she needed.

There was no response to her knocking at Chloe’s door. Along the panelled gallery at the head of the stairs, Pansy’s door was open. Helen looked in at the jungle of record sleeves, empty cups and discarded clothes and half smiled. Pansy was always out somewhere.

Helen leaned on the carved banister and looked down into the body of the hall. The panelling seemed to absorb the light. It was numbingly quiet. Then, astonishingly, Helen heard a babble of voices. Almost at once she realised that it was a radio play. Rose must be listening in the kitchen, probably squashed into her battered armchair beside the Aga. Helen was still a little afraid of Rose, but her need for human company now was so imperative that she didn’t hesitate.

‘Come in, love,’ Rose said easily. She was indeed in the armchair, with the massive shapeless tubes of her legs propped up on a stool. ‘Sit down somewhere. Move that pile of stuff off the chair.’

Helen tried not to look at the overflowing ashtrays and smeared plates on the table. Rose lived complacently in a ripe, untidy web like a fat spider. Helen came in here rarely, and mostly in the hope of seeing Oliver. When she did meet him, it always surprised her, because he looked bored and irritable and faintly disgusted by the mess.

As she sat down Helen saw Gerry leaning against the dusty dresser behind the door. He was unshaven and his clothes were filthy. He was clutching a teacup and, as he stared at her with unfocused eyes, he lifted it and took a gulp, smacking his lips. There was a strong smell of whisky.

Helen moved uncomfortably. When she met Gerry on the stairs or along the deserted gallery, his hands invariably reached out to touch her while he joked, disconcertingly, in his cultured voice.

‘Don’t mind him,’ Rose ordered. ‘He’s having one of his bad days.’

Pansy and Chloe had joked about that. Gerry’s ‘bad days’ were the ones when he got drunk. Good days were the ones when he stayed sober, despite his failure to write a word of the non-existent novel promised to follow his single, long-ago success.

‘Tea in the pot,’ Rose told her.

As she lifted the teapot, Helen noticed that there was a crusty dribble of dried egg yolk down the side of it. She poured dark brown tea into a mug, resisting the impulse to wipe the inside of it first with her handkerchief.

‘Well, it’s not often that we see you, dear. What is it, feel like a chat?’ There was an avidity in Rose’s eyes that Helen chose not to see. Instead she nodded, grateful for the sympathy.

‘It’s my work, I suppose. I have to …’

‘Work?’ Rose’s chuckle was derisive. ‘No-one looks like you do because of work, darling. Oliver, is it? Take my advice. Give as good as you get.’

In his corner Gerry gave a short, hard laugh. ‘Always Oliver. He’s too damned lucky by half. Got the lot, he has, and acts like it isn’t worth tuppence.’ His voice was blurred and bitter, but there was a note of grudging admiration in it too. ‘If I was younger, if I could have my time over again …’

‘You aren’t. And you won’t.’ Rose interrupted him wearily.

Helen turned to watch him go and then looked away sharply. Just for an instant she had caught an echo of Oliver’s voice, and glimpsed the mint-brightness of his features distorted in Gerry’s. Surely their relationship was too distant for such a startling likeness, however fleeting?

Rose picked up a long greasy straggle of knitting and attacked it vigorously. When she spoke again, she seemed to have forgotten Oliver.

‘You may think he’s a wreck now, poor Gerry. But you should have seen him years ago. Handsome, and talented. Women fought to get at him. And he was so sure that he was going to be famous and rich. I used to be asked everywhere just because I was his half-sister. Ha, those were the days.’ She was laughing wheezily.

‘What happened?’

‘Bugger all. A little, early-flowering talent, that was Gerry. He had too much, too easy and too early, and he frittered the whole lot away. He’s been trying to get some of it back ever since.’

‘How sad,’ Helen said absently.

‘Sad? Not at all. Pathetic, perhaps.’ Rose’s voice was harsh. ‘He’s luckier than most. At least he had something, once. You know,’ she said, meditatively, as if it had just occurred to her, ‘I think perhaps Oliver’s a little like him.’

‘No, he isn’t.’ It was Helen’s turn to sound harsh now. ‘Oliver’s nothing like that.’

Rose’s white face hung expressionlessly in front of her like a pasty moon.

‘Oh, Oliver’s got money, of course. Not a lot, but enough to keep him going at the rate he spends it. Gerry never had that. And there’s Montcalm, and the title, and all that aristocratic rigmarole. But if you took all that away, you’d see the same thing in them both. Self-destructiveness.’

Helen remembered the inner, secret Oliver that she wanted so much to believe in. Perhaps his cool arrogance was to protect that. Not destructive, but protective. ‘I’m sure you’re wrong,’ she told Rose, as humbly as she could. There was a little, bitten-off smile at the corners of Rose’s mouth. ‘Perhaps. Tell me, love, are you serious about him?’