Lyddie dropped her case on the bed and looked around the small room. There was only just enough space for the chest of drawers and a chair beside the bed.
‘Thank goodness there’s a hanging cupboard built into the wall,’ Hannah said. ‘It would have been impossible to cram a wardrobe in here – it’s hardly more than a cupboard – but at least visitors haven’t got to share with Tobes or Flora.’
‘It’s great.’ Lyddie looked appreciatively at the vase on the chest, with its arrangement of autumn berries and beech leaves; the folded fluffy towels on top of which lay a new tablet of deliciously scented soap. ‘Thanks, Han, it’s brilliant.’
‘Come down when you’ve got yourself sorted.’
She disappeared and Lyddie unpacked the little case, squeezed it between the foot of the bed and the wall, and set her spongebag beside the tilting-glass on the chest. Before she’d left Truro she’d packed the contents of her office – laptop, reference books, charts – into the car, given her four favourite and most useful editors her mobile telephone number and sorted out her winter clothes. She would have to go back, of course, but she needed to make this a significant break; a gesture that indicated that she was making a new beginning.
The Bosun had looked anxious as he’d watched his space in the back of the estate car being eroded but there had been enough room for him to jump onto his own bed, which was flanked by a box containing a week’s rations and his dinner bowl. When she’d left London some of Lyddie’s belongings had gone to Ottercombe and a few things to Oxford and, as she drove to Dorset, she felt a deep sense of relief that she had a second home to which she might flee. Roger and Teresa would have been willing to put her up for a while but the house in Iffley no longer seemed like home. Teresa had put her mark very strongly upon it and, anyway, neither of them were as dear to her as Mina and Nest, or Jack and Hannah.
As she drove to Dorset she wondered, as she often had in the past, why it should be that she’d been so much closer to Jack than she’d ever been to Roger.
‘Roger doesn’t know?’ she’d asked Mina anxiously.
‘No, no,’ she’d answered soothingly. ‘He was only three or four years old. No, Roger has no idea of it.’
She realized, on that journey from Truro, that it would be easier to disclose Nest’s revelation to Jack than to Roger, although she’d begun to see that it would be impossible to tell anyone at all. After all, it was not her secret to tell; there were too many people involved. However, there was more to it than that. Although she could imagine the comfort it would be to share it all with Jack, she knew that it was too early, that she needed time to digest it, to discover her own true feelings about her new identity, before she could open it up to other reactions. Nevertheless, it was an odd sensation to think of Roger as her half-brother as well as, bizarrely, her cousin.
Lyddie had shaken her head, confused but not particularly dismayed. It had always been difficult to get close to Roger; he was very self-contained and he had a waspish, sometimes cruel, tongue, which wounded although he’d smile and say, ‘It was only a joke,’ and appear contemptuous of her sensitivity. From her earliest memories Jack had been a warm, friendly child; caring and thoughtful for others’ needs and always very funny. At least Jack was still her cousin, nothing changed that.
He was waiting for her when she’d finished unpacking and came down to the kitchen, sitting on the floor with his back against a cupboard, his legs stretched out in front of him, talking to the Bosun, who sat beside him gazing with a blend of amazement and affection into Jack’s face. Lyddie burst out laughing and, immediately, the tiny knot of fear and pain in her gut began to unwind and dissolve.
‘Caligula upset him,’ Jack was explaining. ‘Dogs are very sensitive people and Caligula was very rude. Wasn’t he?’ he asked the Bosun, who licked Jack’s nose gratefully and beat his tail upon the floor.
‘Quite mad,’ observed Hannah resignedly. ‘But don’t let it worry you. I suppose you realize that the Bosun is going to cause havoc when the boys get back after supper. Bedtime is going to be a very interesting experience.’
‘I’ve only ever been here in the holidays,’ agreed Lyddie, ‘or at half-term. Oh dear, we’ll have to hide him in the garage.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ replied Jack indignantly. ‘His nerves are quite lacerated enough already. The boys will be delighted. I can’t wait to see their faces. Has Hannah told you that we’re going to get a dog?’
‘No.’ Lyddie smiled, delighted at the thought. ‘Goodness, Tobes must be out of his mind at the prospect.’
‘He doesn’t know yet.’ Hannah poured Lyddie’s tea. ‘We decided to wait until the holidays begin to give us a flying start with the house-training and I couldn’t cope with the thought of his asking every five minutes how long it was to the end of term.’
Jack gave the Bosun a hug and climbed to his feet. ‘You look very tired and rather fraught,’ he studied Lyddie closely, ‘and later on you shall have a very large drink. I’m not really allowed to start until the little darlings are all in bed. Not allowed to be drunk in charge of a dormitory.’
‘But that doesn’t mean that we can’t,’ said Hannah firmly, nodding encouragingly at Lyddie. ‘Anyway, he’s only here to say hello before he goes off to supervise prep and then supper. We can’t wait for him.’
‘Such unselfishness,’ observed Jack to nobody in particular.
Lyddie chuckled. ‘Sounds good to me. Never mind, Jack. You’ll soon catch up.’
‘I thought you might walk over to the school with me,’ he said. ‘Stretch your legs after the drive and give the Bosun a gallop.’
‘I’d love to,’ she said. ‘That’s a really good idea.’
‘Let her finish her tea,’ said Hannah. ‘I’ll sort our supper out. Oh, how wonderful not to have to preside over the children’s tea!’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Jack gloomily. ‘Have you ever seen a hundred and fifty small boys between the ages of eight and twelve masticating in unison? No? Well, don’t bother. It could put you off food for life.’
Later, as they paced across the smooth turf beneath the chestnut trees, where each autumn the boys gathered conkers, Lyddie tucked her hand in his arm and he smiled down at her.
‘Poor old love,’ he said. ‘Want to talk?’
‘I’ll tell you something strange,’ she said. ‘I feel sick to my stomach when I think how Liam’s behaved, and I still want him and feel that it’s a tragic waste, but behind all that is a sense of . . . well, almost relief. Oh!’ she cried in frustration. ‘It’s so difficult to explain this because it sounds as if I don’t care and I do. My heart flips when I think of him, and I feel bereft, but the whole way through, Jack, there was this weird feeling of unreality. Can you understand that? Like I was on a holiday where none of the normal rules of daily life applied. Oh, I was working, and that was real enough, but it was odd, working at home all day and then going to The Place every evening and joshing with Joe. I told myself that thousands of people live like that, running hotels and pubs, but it still seemed unreal.’
‘Was the difference,’ suggested Jack, after a moment, ‘that most other hoteliers and restaurateurs are in it together? It’s a common interest. They start it together, have their own roles within it, and their whole lives are bound up in it and controlled by it. You told me that Liam never invited you to play any part in his work, that he actively discouraged it, in fact. You got on with the work you’d been trained for, alone at home, and then used The Place purely as a wine bar every evening. I often wondered how you would carry on like that, to be honest. Where did children fit into the scheme of things, for instance? You could have only become more and more isolated. The hours are so antisocial – or, at least, antifamily – that I wondered whether, at fifty, you’d still be working alone all day and then sitting in a wine bar every evening whilst Liam lived his own life on the side.’
She looked up at him. ‘Did you suspect that Liam was cheating?’
He frowned, formulating his thoughts. ‘I had this feeling that he was playing a part. You know, all that gliding around chatting to the punters and putting himself about in that particular way he has – a kind of cross between a high-class major-domo and Peter Stringfellow. Sorry.’ He glanced down at her, pressing her hand with his arm. ‘I’m not trying to be offensive, it’s just that he is a bit of a poseur and a very attractive one, by the way. I can imagine that women really fell for him.’
‘Well, I did.’ Lyddie sighed. ‘I think you’re absolutely right. There was no chance of real family life, no weekends, no holidays. Perhaps that’s why, in this very odd way, it’s almost a relief. Not that it hurts less.’
‘No, but it gives you something to work towards,’ said Jack. ‘That it was, really, a mistake, I mean. You can hang on to that. I have to say that I did wonder if it was a bit quick after James.’
‘I’m beginning to lose my confidence,’ said Lyddie. ‘ “To lose one man might be regarded as a mistake”, et cetera.’
‘Absolute rubbish,’ he said. ‘What about third time lucky? I shall insist on vetting the next candidate.’
‘So you don’t think it’s wrong of me to give up on marriage to Liam?’ She was surprised at how important his answer was.
‘It sounds as if you hadn’t much option,’ he replied. ‘You’ve offered him a way forward and he’s rejected it. I can’t think what else you could do.’
‘You don’t think I should just go along with it?’
‘No, I bloody don’t,’ he said forcibly. ‘Good God, Lyddie! Don’t be daft. However much you love him, nobody could expect you to passively accept such a role. He’s put his cards on the table and you have to take it or leave it. Well, you’re leaving it.’
She smiled, hugging his arm. ‘Thanks, Jack.’
‘I’m not sure why I have your gratitude but you’re welcome. Will you be OK with the Aunts for a bit?’
‘I think so. At least I shall be able to work. I’m glad now that I didn’t make Roger sell the house all those years ago so that I could have my share. He couldn’t have afforded, back then, to buy me out. Now he can and it will be very useful. It’s been like a nest-egg, all this time.’
‘You could go back to London, to your old job, or one like it.’
‘I have thought about it.’ She hesitated. ‘I need time to think it through. I can do that at Ottercombe.’
‘Nowhere better to recuperate than with those two old darlings,’ he said affectionately. ‘Look, if you take the way through the shrubbery it’ll take you round the outbuildings, back onto the path home, and it’ll give the Bosun a good run. Will you be OK?’
‘Of course I will. Bless you, Jack, you’re such a comfort.’
He smiled down at her. ‘You’re doing the right thing,’ he told her. ‘Hang on to that. See you later. We’ll have more speaks this evening.’
She watched his tall figure walk with long strides towards the sprawling Georgian building, saw the small boys toiling in from the rugby pitch waving to him, calling to him, and felt a huge love for him.
‘Come on,’ she said to the Bosun. ‘You can’t go with him but he’ll be back later’ – and she turned away, her hands in her pockets, her heart eased from some of its pain.