Rosamunde Pilcher - September

"She arrived yesterday morning, with Noel."

"Where are they now?"

"I think they took the dogs out for a walk. After lunch they had to go to Relkirk to pick up Lucilla's dress from the cleaner's. We had an SOS from Croy. The dress had been forgotten, and they're all so busy getting the dinner party together that nobody had time to go."

"So what else has been happening?"

"What else has been happening? Vi had her picnic. Verena's had us all at her beck and call like slaves, and Edie's cousin has gone back to hospital."

Edmund raised his head a fraction, as an alert dog will prick its ears. Virginia, her nails now satisfactorily dry and hard, took up the package that he had brought her, and began to tear off the cellophane wrapping.

"She's gone back?"

"Yes." She opened the box and drew out the bottle, square-cut and opulent, the stopper ringed with a bow of velvet ribbon. She unscrewed the stopper and dabbed a little on her neck. "Delicious. Fendi. How kind. I've been wanting this scent, but it's too expensive to buy for oneself."

"When did this happen?"

"Lottie, you mean? Oh, a couple of days ago. She became so impossible that Vi insisted. She should never have been discharged in the first place. She's insane."

"What did she do?"

"Oh, talked. Meddled. Made mischief. She wouldn't leave me alone. She's evil."

"What did she say?"

Virginia, turned back to the mirror, began, slowly, to take the pins out of her rollers. One by one, she laid them on the plate glass of the dressing table. He watched her profile, the line of her jaw, the curve of her lovely neck.

"Do you really want to know?"

"I shouldn't ask if I didn't."

"All right. She said that you and Pandora Blair were lovers. Years ago, the time of Archie and Isobel's wedding, when Lottie was a housemaid at Cray. You always said that she listened at doors. She doesn't seem to have missed a trick. Describing it all to me, she made it quite vivid. She became quite excited. Turned on, one might say. She said that it was because of you that Pandora ran off with her married man and never came home again. That it was all your fault. And now…" One of the rollers was being stubborn, and Virginia jerked at it, trying to free it, tugging at and tangling her corn-coloured hair. "… now she is saying that you are the reason that Pandora has come back to Croy. Nothing to do with the party tonight. Nothing to do with Archie. Just you. She wants to start it up all over again. To get you back."

Another jerk and the roller was loose, and Virginia's eyes were watering with agony. Edmund watched her, scarcely able to bear the pain that she was inflicting upon herself.

He remembered the evening when he had encountered Lottie in Mrs. Ishak's supermarket, and how she had buttonholed him. He had recoiled from her distasteful presence. He remembered her eyes, her pallid skin, her moustache, and the useless fury that she had kindled within him, so that he had come very close to losing his temper and inflicting upon her grievous bodily harm. He recalled the stirring of a dreadful apprehension. An apprehension well-founded, for now it seemed it had come to this.

He said coldly, "She is lying."

"Is she, Edmund?"

"Do you believe her?"

"I don't know____________________"

"Virginia…"

"Oh…" In a burst of exasperation, she jerked another roller free, flung it at her own reflection in the mirror, and then rounded on him. "I don't know. I don't know. I can't think straight any longer. And I don't care. Why should I care? What does it matter to me that you and Pandora Blair once had a raging love affair? As far as I'm concerned, it's all lost in the mists of time and absolutely nothing to do with me. I only know that it happened when you were already a married man-married to Caroline-and that you were the father of a child. The simple fact is that that doesn't make me feel very secure."

"You don't trust me?"

"Sometimes I think I don't even know you."

"That is a ludicrous statement."

"All right, so it's ludicrous. But unfortunately we can't all be as cold and objective as you. And if it is ludicrous, you can put it down to human frailty, except that I don't suppose you even know what that means."

"I'm beginning to realize I know only too well."

"It's us I'm talking about, Edmund. You and me."

"In that case, perhaps it would be better to postpone this conversation until you are a little less overwrought."

"I am not overwrought. And I am not a child any longer, I am not your little wife. And I think perhaps that this is as good a time as any to tell you that I'm going away for a bit. I'm going back to Long Island, to Leesport, to spend some time with my grandparents. I've told Vi. She says you can stay with her. We'll close the house."

Edmund said nothing. She looked at him and saw his poker-face empty of expression, the handsome features still, the hooded eyes giving nothing away. No hurt showed, no anger. She let the silence lengthen, waiting for him to react to her announcement. For a mad moment, she imagined him flinging reserve to the wind, coming to her side, taking her in his arms, covering her with kisses, loving her, making love to her…

"When did you plan all this?"

Tears pricked behind her eyes, but she set her teeth and willed them away.

"I've been thinking about going for months. I finally made up my mind after Henry went. Without Henry, there is no reason not to go."

"When are you leaving?"

"I've got a seat on a Pan Am flight out of Heathrow next Thursday morning."

"Thursday? That's less than a week away."

"I know." She turned back to her mirror, pulled free the last of the rollers, reached for her comb, began to draw it through the tangled curls, smoothing out the snarls. "But there is a reason, and you may as well be told that reason now, because if I don't tell you, some other person will. A strange thing has happened. You remember last Sunday Isobel telling us that she had some unknown American coming to stay? It turned out that he's a man called Conrad Tucker, and we knew each other years ago, in Leesport."

"The Sad American."

"Yes. And he is sad. His wife has just died of leukemia and he's been left with a little daughter. He's been over here for a month or more, but he's returning to the States on Thursday." She laid down tbe comb, tossing the shining, clean hair away from her face, turned back to face him. "It seemed," she said, "a good idea to make the journey together."

"Was that his idea or your idea?"

"Does it matter?"

"No. I don't suppose it makes any difference at all. When are you planning to return?"

"I don't know. I have an open-ended ticket."

"I don't think you should go."

"That has an ominous ring to it, Edmund. It wouldn't be a warning?"

"You're running away."

"No. I am simply taking advantage of a freedom that has been forced upon me. Without Henry, I am in a sort of limbo, and I've got to come to terms with being bereft of him, and I can't do that here. I need time to sort myself out. To be on my own. To be my own person. You have to try, just for once in your life, to see a situation from another person's point of view. In this case, mine. And perhaps, as well, you could try to give me some credit for being honest with you."

"I would have been astonished had you done anything else."

After that, there did not seem to be anything else to say. Beyond the open windows, the misty autumn evening sank into an early dusk. Virginia switched on the lights of her dressing-table, and then stood up and moved to close the heavy chintz curtains. From downstairs, sounds reached their ears. A door opening and shutting, dogs barking, voices raised.

She said, "Noel and Alexa. They're back from their walk."