Belle was laughing. ‘Darling, don’t despair. You only left school a year ago, you’re hardly—’
Marianne stepped sideways so that Belle’s arm slipped from her waist. ‘I mean it,’ she said fiercely. ‘I mean it. I don’t want just a man, Ma. I want a soulmate. And if I can’t have one, I’d rather have nobody. See?’
Belle was silent. She was looking into the middle distance now, plainly not really seeing anything.
‘Ma?’ Marianne said.
Belle shook her head very slightly. Marianne moved closer again.
‘Ma, are you thinking about Daddy?’
Belle gave a small sigh.
‘If you are – and you are, aren’t you? – then you’ll know what I’m talking about,’ Marianne said. ‘If I didn’t get this belief in having, one day, a love of my life from you, who did I get it from?’
Belle turned very slightly and gave Marianne a misty smile. ‘Touché, darling,’ she said.
From her bedroom windows – three bays looking south and two facing west – Fanny could see across the immense lawn to the walled vegetable garden, whose glasshouses were so badly in need of repair, never mind the state of the beds themselves, or the unpruned fruit trees and general neglect visible everywhere. And there, in the decayed soft-fruit cage, with its sagging wire and crooked posts, she could see Belle, in one of her arty smock things and jeans, picking raspberries.
Of course, in a way, Belle was perfectly entitled to pick Norland raspberries. The canes themselves probably dated from Uncle Henry’s time, and in their well-meaning, amateur way, Belle and Henry had tried to look after the garden all the years they had lived at Norland. But the fact was that Norland now belonged to John. And because of John, to Fanny. Which meant that everything about it and pertaining to it was not only Fanny’s responsibility now, but her possession. Staring out of the window at her husband’s (by courtesy, only) stepmother, it came to Fanny quite forcibly that Belle was, without asking, picking Fanny’s raspberries.
It took her three minutes to cross her bedroom, traverse the landing, descend the stairs, march down the black and white floored hall to the garden door and make her way at speed across the lawn to the kitchen garden. She let the door in the wall to the kitchen garden close behind her with enough of a slam to alert Belle to the fact that she had arrived, and with a purpose.
Belle looked up, slightly dazedly. She had been thinking about something quite else, mentally arranging the furniture in a cottage she had seen, for rent, near Barcombe Cross, which she had thought might be a distinct possibility even though Elinor insisted that they couldn’t possibly afford it, and she had been picking almost mechanically while she dreamed.
‘Good morning,’ Fanny said.
Belle managed a smile. ‘Good morning, Fanny.’
Fanny stepped into the fruit cage through a torn gap in the netting. She was wearing patent-leather ballet slippers with gold discs on the toes. She looked round her. ‘This is in an awful state.’
Belle said mildly, ‘The raspberries don’t seem to mind. Look at this crop!’
She held her bowl out. Fanny gave a small dismissive sniff. ‘You’ve got a huge amount.’
‘We grew them, Fanny.’
‘All the same …’
‘I’d be happy to pick some for you, Fanny. I offered some to Harry – I thought he might like to pick them with me, but he said he didn’t like raspberries.’
Fanny said carefully, ‘We are very – selective in the fruit we give Harry.’
Belle resumed her picking. ‘Bananas,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘Only bananas, we hear. Can that be good for him, not even to eat apples?’
There was short, highly charged pause. Then Fanny said, ‘Isn’t Elinor helping you?’
‘You can see that she isn’t.’
‘Because she isn’t here,’ Fanny said.
Belle said nothing. Fanny threaded her way through the raspberry canes until she was once again in Belle’s sightline.
‘Elinor isn’t here,’ Fanny said clearly, ‘because she is in my car, isn’t she, being driven by my brother, on her way to Brighton.’
‘And if she is?’
‘I wouldn’t want you to think I hadn’t noticed. I wouldn’t want you to think I don’t know. I wasn’t asked. I saw them. I saw them drive away.’
Belle said defiantly, ‘Edward invited her!’
Fanny leaned forward to pick a large, ripe raspberry very precisely out of Belle’s bowl. ‘He may have done. But she had no business accepting.’
Belle stepped back so that the bowl of raspberries was just out of Fanny’s reach. ‘I beg your pardon!’ she said indignantly.
Fanny looked at the raspberry in her fingers and then she looked at Belle. ‘Don’t get any ideas,’ she said.
‘But—’
‘Look,’ Fanny said. ‘Look. My father came from nowhere and ended up somewhere very successful, all through his own efforts. He was ambitious, quite rightly, and he was ambitious for his children, too. He’d be thrilled about Norland. But he wouldn’t be thrilled at all about his eldest son being – being ensnared by his son-in-law’s illegitimate half-sister with not a bean to her name. Any more than my mother would be, if she knew.’ Fanny paused, and then she said, ‘Any more than I am.’
Belle stared at her. ‘I cannot believe this, Fanny.’
Fanny waved the hand holding the raspberry. ‘It doesn’t matter what you can or can’t believe, Belle. It doesn’t matter a jot. All that matters is that when Elinor gets back from her jaunt in my car with my brother, you have just two words to say to her. Two words. Hands off. Do you get it, Belle? Hands off Edward.’
And then she dropped the raspberry on to the earth, and ground it down under her patent-leather toecap.
Edward held out a crumple of white paper. ‘Have another chip.’
Elinor was lying on her back on Edward’s battered cotton jacket, which he had spread for her on the shingle. She waved a hand. ‘Couldn’t.’
‘Just one.’
‘Not even that. They were delicious. The fish was perfect. Thank you for holding back on the vinegar.’
Edward put another chip in his mouth. ‘I have a thing for vinegar.’
Elinor snorted faintly.
‘I mean,’ Edward said, laughing too, ‘I mean vinegar in vinegar. Not in people.’
‘No names then.’
He lay down beside her, slightly turned towards her. He said comfortably, ‘We know who we mean, don’t we? And you haven’t even met my mother.’
Elinor stretched both arms up and laced her fingers together against the high blue arc of the sky. ‘Talking of mothers—’
‘Did you know,’ Edward said, interrupting, ‘that when you talk, the end of your nose moves up and down very slightly? It’s adorable.’
Elinor suppressed a smile. She lowered her arms. ‘Talking of mothers,’ she said again.
‘Oh, OK then. Mothers. What about them?’
‘Mine is so sweet, really—’
‘Oh, I know.’
‘—but she’s driving me insane. Insane. Almost every day she goes off to look at some house or other. She must be on every agent’s books in East Sussex.’
Edward put out a tentative finger and touched the end of Elinor’s nose. He said, ‘But that’s good. That’s positive.’
Elinor tried to ignore his finger. ‘Yes, of course it is, in theory. But she’s looking at stuff we can’t begin to afford. They may technically be cottages but they’ve got five bedrooms and three bathrooms and one even has a swimming pool in a conservatory thing. I ask you.’
‘But—’
Elinor turned her head to look at him, dislodging his finger. ‘Ed, we can’t actually even afford a garden shed. But she won’t listen.’