Rosamunde Pilcher - September

"The supermarket's new." Pandora sounded quite accusing. "I know. It's run by people called Ishak. They're Pakistanis. Now, Jeff, it's here… turn right… up through the gates…" "But the park's gone! It's not parkland any more. It's all ploughed up."

"Pandora, you knew that happened. Dad wrote and told you." "I suppose I forgot. But it does look strange." Up the back drive. The hill reared ahead of them, the tumbling waters of the Pennyburn splashed and tumbled down under the little stone bridge. Then the avenue…

"We're here," said Lucilla, and leaned across Jeff to put the heel of her hand on the horn.

At Croy, Lucilla's family filled in the long waiting hours of the afternoon. Isobel was upstairs seeing to the final details of the visitors' bedrooms, checking clean towels and arranging flowers for dressing-tables and mantelpieces. Hamish had decided to take the dogs for a walk, disappeared after lunch and had not been seen since. And Archie, Lord Balmerino, was in the dining-room laying the table for dinner.

He had been finally forced into doing this. Waiting for anything or anybody was not his strong point, and as the day wore on, he had become increasingly restless, impatient, and anxious. He hated the thought of his loved ones belting up the murderous miles of the motorway, and his imagination had no difficulty at all in presenting hideously detailed pictures of pile-ups, mangled metal, and dead bodies. He had spent much time looking at his watch, going to the window at the faintest sound of a car engine, and was patently unable to settle for a moment. Isobel had suggested that he mow the croquet lawn but he had turned this down because he wanted to be certain of being on the spot when the car actually drew up in front of the house. Retreating to his study, he had sat down with The Scotsman but could not concentrate either on the news or the crossword. He tossed the paper aside and started prowling again.

At last Isobel, who had enough to do without her husband getting under her feet, lost her patience.

"Archie, if you can't sit still, then make yourself useful. You can lay the table for dinner. The clean mats and the napkins are on the sideboard." And she had gone upstairs quite crossly, and left him to it.

Not that he minded laying tables. In the old days, Harris used to perform the task, so there could be nothing unmanly about it. And when the American paying guests stayed, laying the table for dinner was always Archie's job, and he got certain pleasure from doing it with military thoroughness, knives and forks precisely aligned, and napkins folded into mitres.

The wineglasses looked slightly dusty, so he had found a tea-towel and was engaged in giving them a bit of a polish when he heard the car coming up the hill. His heart lurched. He looked at the clock, which told him four o'clock. Too early surely. He set down the glass and the cloth. It could not be…

The blast of the car horn, a long continuous blare, tore the quiet afternoon and his own uncertainty into shreds.

Lucilla's traditional signal.

He could not move fast, but he moved as fast as he could. Down the length of the dining-room, through the door.

"Isobel!"

The front door stood open. He was crossing the hall as the car appeared, a thundering great Mercedes scattering gravel beneath its wheels.

"Isobel! They're here."

He got to the door but no farther. Pandora was quicker than he, out of the car almost before it had drawn to a halt, running across the gravel towards him. Pandora with that same bright hair flying all over the place and those same long spindly legs.

"Archie!"

She wore a fur coat that reached almost to her ankles but that did not stop her bounding two at a time up the steps, and if he could no longer lift her off her feet and whirl her around the way he used to when she was a child, there was nothing the matter with his arms, and his arms were ready and waiting for her.

Isobel… dear, uncomplicated, hospitable, unchanging Isobel… had allocated Pandora the best spare bedroom. This was in the front of the house, with tall sash windows facing south down the hill and over the glen and the river. It was furnished much as Pandora remembered it in her mother's day. Twin brass bedsteads, high off the ground, each wide as a small double bed. A faded carpet patterned with roses and an ornate dressing-table with many small drawers and a swing-mirror.

The old curtains, however, were gone, and heavy cream linen draperies hung in their place. The refurbishment had probably been planned with all the paying guests in mind. They would scarcely appreciate threadbare chintz with sun-rotted linings. For them as well, the adjoining dressing-room had been converted into a bathroom. Not that it looked very different, because Isobel had simply installed a bath and a basin and a lavatory, and left the rugs, the laden bookshelves, and the comfortable armchair where they were.

Pandora was meant to be unpacking. "Unpack and make yourself comfortable," Isobel had told her. She and Jeff, between them, had humped all Pandora's luggage upstairs. (Archie, of course, could not hump luggage on account of his leg. Pandora decided not to think about Archie. His grey hairs had shocked her, and she had never seen a man so thin.) "Have a bath if you want. There's gallons of hot water. Then come down and have a drink. We'll eat about eight o'clock."

But that was fifteen minutes ago and Pandora had got no farther than carrying her dressing-case into the bathroom and putting a few bottles out on the marble wash-stand. Her pills and potions, her Poison, bath-oil, creams and cleansers. Later she would have a bath. Not now.

Now, she still had to convince herself that she was really home. Back at Croy. But it was difficult because in this room she did not feel as though she belonged. She was a guest come to stay, a bird of passage. Abandoning her bottles, she went back to the bedroom, to the window, to lean out with her elbows on the sill, to gaze at the oft-remembered view and be quite, quite certain that it was not all a dream. This took some time. But what had happened to her own room, the room that had been Pandora's since babyhood? She decided to go and have a nose-around.

She went out of the room, went to the top of the stairs, paused. From the direction of the kitchen came cheerful domestic sounds and muted voices. Lucilla and Isobel busy with preparations for dinner and probably talking about Pandora. They were bound to talk. It did not matter; she did not mind. She crossed the landing and opened the door of what had been her parents' room, and was now Archie and Isobel's. She saw the huge double bed, the chaise longue at the foot of it with a sweater of Isobel's flung down, a pair of shoes, carelessly discarded. She saw the family photographs, the silver and crystal on the dressing-table, bedside books. There was the smell of face-powder and eau-de-cologne. Sweet and innocent scents. She closed the door and went on down the passage. She found the room that had been Archie's, swept and garnished with Jeff's backpack and his jacket set down in the middle of the carpet. The next room… Lucilla. Still filled with all the cherished flotsam of a schoolgirl… posters thumbtacked to the walls, china ornaments, a tape player, a guitar with a broken string.

And finally her own room. Her old room. Perhaps Hamish slept here? She had not yet met Hamish. Cautiously she turned the knob and pushed the door open. Not Hamish. Not anybody. Empty of any personal possession. New furniture, new curtains. No trace of Pandora.

What had they done with her books, her records, clothes, diaries, photographs… her life? All probably swept upstairs to some attic when the room was stripped and emptied, repainted, re-wallpapered, and given that beautiful new, blue, fitted carpet.