Val McDermid - Northanger Abbey

‘What do you mean, racist?’

‘That bullet came from a German gun. And that Bible is the reason I’m here today.’

She frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘My great-great grandfather was an officer in the First World War. He carried his Bible inside his tunic and it took a bullet for him on the Somme. If not for the Bible, he would have been killed, and I wouldn’t have been born. Cat, we’re not vampires. That’s crazy. Vampires don’t exist in the real world. Any more than the zombie apocalypse is just round the corner.’

Hands on hips, she stared him down. ‘Prove it.’

He burst out laughing. ‘You can’t prove a negative. I can’t prove there are no such things as vampires any more than you can prove you’re not a lesbian. You’re a vicar’s daughter, Cat – surely you of all people understand there’s a point where you have to have faith? Take people on trust?’

They stood staring at each other, neither willing to capitulate. Then Henry made an impatient gesture. ‘This is stupid, Cat. I came here to apologise for my father, that’s true. But that’s only part of the reason. I came because ever since I met you at Fiona Alexander’s dance class I’ve been falling in love with you.’

Her mouth suddenly dry, Cat took a step backwards. ‘No.’

He looked stricken. ‘You don’t feel the same?’

At last, Cat composed herself and spoke sense. ‘Oh, Henry, I’m completely crazy about you.’ And she threw her arms round the startled young man, who quickly recovered himself and gathered her into a warm embrace. Finally, Cat knew the kiss she’d dreamed of since that first dance. They stood locked together in the orchard, oblivious to anything but each other, as young lovers are inclined to be.

It was some time before they reached the Allens’ house and afterwards, neither would have been able to give any sort of account of the conversation that took place there. By the time they returned to the vicarage, the matter was sealed. Henry explained to the Morlands that he had argued so fiercely with his father that he feared there could be no reconciliation. ‘But I have a profession,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fully qualified by the end of the year. I can support myself without taking a penny from him. I’ll be fine. Straightening things out with Cat has been worth much more than any amount of money.’

The two young lovers looked at each other. ‘Vampire,’ she said.

‘Lesbian,’ he replied.

And to the astonishment of the Morlands, they burst into helpless laughter.

Four years later

Henry had never looked more handsome, Cat thought as she walked down the aisle of the parish church at Farleigh Piddle on her father’s arm. Her husband-to-be had the perfect figure for full morning dress, and the pearl grey of his cut-away coat emphasised the golden glow of his tanned skin and the sun-bleached highlights in his dark blond hair. There wasn’t a more handsome man in the church. Probably not in the whole Piddle Valley, she reckoned.

In the four years that had passed since her enforced flight from Northanger Abbey, our cast of characters had undergone a bewildering kaleidoscope of changes. Cat herself had pursued her mother’s suggestion of training as a nanny. Once qualified, Henry had found her part-time work with one of his colleagues, so their two-year commute between Newcastle and Edinburgh was finally ended. They’d lived together quite happily in the little flat in the Lawnmarket, but Henry’s growing success meant they were considering a move to something more spacious. ‘Something with a nursery,’ Cat had confided to her mother the night before the wedding. ‘Not right away. Don’t get the wrong idea. But down the line.’

Spurred on by Henry’s confrontation with her father, Ellie had also taken her life into her own hands. She accepted a place at the Edinburgh School of Art to pursue a course in design, funding herself by selling some of the jewellery her mother had left her. ‘I only sold the ugly pieces,’ she told Cat. ‘Big stones in clumsy settings. I’ve kept the antiques. But my father really does have dreadful taste in jewellery. I’m not sorry to see the back of most of it.’ Of her romantic life, she never spoke, perhaps with good reason.

Ellie and Cat had continued with their children’s book project. They’d collected a raft of rejections, but finally an indie publisher in Edinburgh had bought the first two books in a series of comedy vampire stories. ‘Because of our family experience,’ Ellie had said with a giggle when they finally met their editor. Cat kicked her under the table. Not everyone could be expected to share their sense of humour.

Freddie’s tour of duty in Afghanistan being over, he had resigned his commission and taken up a lucrative position with an armament company. He was unable to attend the wedding because of a sales trip to a Gulf emirate. Nobody minded.

James Morland had carved out a niche in immigration and human rights law in his chambers in York. He’d fallen in love with one of his clients, a Somali woman who had just opened a restaurant near the university that was already winning rave reviews. James had gained both happiness and half a stone in the process.

Bella Thorpe had featured briefly in a reality TV show but had been eliminated in the first public vote of the season. Her brother Johnny had been fired by his bank after a series of dubious transactions came to light. Susie Allen took great delight in reporting their misfortunes to the Morlands, and even the vicar could not avoid the sin of schadenfreude .

And what of General Tilney? His first reaction to the rebellion of his younger children was to cut off their allowances and bar them from Northanger Abbey. His capacity for cutting off his nose was remarkable, but he had reckoned without the compassion their mother had installed in Henry and Ellie. A year after the terrible night when he had cast Cat out of the abbey, his younger son arrived there, having colluded with Mrs Calman to ensure the General was home alone.

Henry never revealed what had passed between them, but although there was never much subsequent warmth between father and son, neither was there the bitterness there had been previously. Ellie too had been welcomed back into the fold; now she had completed her degree, she was to take up residence at Woodston, where her father had promised to build a studio at the water’s edge.

The moral or message of this story is hard to discern. And that is as it should be, for as Catherine Morland found out to her cost, it is not the function of fiction to offer lessons in life.