‘You can change your mind,’ he muttered, covering my face with kisses. ‘You can, you can.’

Shakespeare’s Prince Hal renounced the chimes at midnight, the madness and the passion. So did I.

Later, with Nathan resting his hand on my waist at the point where the heavy satin dress curved over my hips, I looked up from cutting the cake and through the window to where Hal was walking down the road. He did not look back.

With a steady hand, I grasped the knife and plunged it down. I loved Nathan, too, and I was quite, quite sure.

Sweet goodbye.

‘So you see,’ Minty pointed out politely, ‘it is pots and kettles. Nathan guessed it was Hal at the wedding. He told me, when you were cutting the cake… He saw him through the window.’

‘Did he?’

‘Yes, he did, and he’s never forgotten it.’

I stared at the hateful, but now shadowed, face. What had I done in my life? How had I arrived at this point of dismemberment, blown, decaying, finished? Bitterness and despair rose and elbowed aside the peace and stillness I had striven to cultivate. We choose between certain paths we label ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and it is important that we believe in the goodness and badness. Or I think so. What else is there? I had believed in Nathan: he had been good, and so, too, had been what we had made together.

Nothing lasts.

Minty smiled, a smug little flicker of her lips, and it burst from me: ‘How dare you? How dare you come here? You have no sense of compassion. None. Go away and take your curiosity with you.’

Under the lash of my words, Minty’s eyes narrowed. She glanced around quickly. ‘Shush,’ she muttered, much as Ianthe might have done. ‘People will hear.’

I paid no attention. ‘Have you no kindness at all, Minty?’

‘And you have a monopoly on goodness, I take it? So much so that your lover comes to your wedding. That’s how you used Nathan.’

‘It’s none of your business.’

She shrugged: careless, knowing, triumphant. I took a step towards her and Minty took a step back and the too-tight dress rode up her thigh. ‘You will never have what I have had with Nathan.’

She turned deathly white. ‘We’ll see.’

Chapter Twenty-three

Vee intervened. She had been observing this exchange and came over to rescue me. ‘I’ve been sent to find you by Poppy. Speech time.’ Ignoring Minty, she slipped an arm round my waist and steered me expertly in the direction of the wedding cake. ‘Take no notice of her,’ she hissed. ‘All red hat and no knickers, as Grandmother would say’

‘She’s not wearing a red hat.’

‘She is mentally’

I clutched at Vee. ‘Until I saw her here I had no idea I was capable of murder.’

‘Keep it to yourself.’ Vee changed the subject skilfully by poking me in the flank. ‘I hate you for being so thin. Picture the scene at home and pity me. Everyone tucking into baked potatoes plastered with butter, and me grazing on a lettuce leaf.’ She giggled, because she was happy with her lot. ‘Have you heard from Mazarine?’

‘Of course. She couldn’t come because of an opening. Apparently another of our national traits is to economize on champagne and she warned me against it.’

Vee glanced round the guests. ‘No fear of that.’

The wedding cake was extremely pretty and different – chocolate, iced and decorated in nineteenth-century American fashion with fresh violets, roses and voile ribbon. Pure Louisa Alcott. Hands around each other’s waist, Poppy and Richard were poised to cut it.

Applause broke out as they did so and, under its cover, I whispered to Nathan, ‘Get rid of Minty. That was the deal. She was not to be here.’

Nathan looked astonished, then furious. ‘I didn’t know she was here.’ He pulled at his cuffs. ‘We’ll discuss it later.’ He stepped forward to make the speech.

Poppy’s contact lenses were making her blink. The tiny sapphire earrings I had given her swayed above her slender shoulders and she glanced frequently and lovingly at her groom. Certainly, Richard was smiling and revealing, I noticed, well-tended teeth. I had no clue what he was thinking.

Minty was at the back of the room, hugging the outer circles of guests, her dark eyes fixed hungrily on the tableau by the wedding-cake.

Who needs a family?

I tried, I tried so hard, but every so often my gaze returned to her and, while Nathan was giving the speech for our daughter, Minty stole my attention and that was, almost, the greatest sin I laid at her door.

But Minty was also watching me. Not Nathan, not Poppy or Richard, but me. Should she not have been considering her lover’s pride in his daughter, his tenderness, his public face? His words? Should she not be shuddering inwardly for having overstepped the mark? At the punishing words we had exchanged?

Should I not be concentrating on the quick rise and fall of Poppy’s breath? On the way Richard was holding her hand? Should I not be utterly focused on my daughter’s future?

Minty and I had arrived at a point where we were objects of fascination to each other. We had infiltrated each other’s bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and we were the shadows that been cast, deep and inky, over each other’s life.

Nathan made a joke, and the audience laughed. Poppy turned her head, and her earrings sparkled in the soft, radiant light. Richard looked down at her and sent her a private smile. Here we go, it said.

Nathan made another joke, and laughter rippled through the audience. The guests shifted. Vee slid her arm round my waist. ‘Rose, please don’t look so sad.’

I was conscious of a vast disappointment. Surely after all the suffering, mine and Nathan’s, the misunderstandings, the painful decisions, it should add up to something greater than a mundane preoccupation with the other woman.

I closed my eyes. However bloody, however hard, I knew I must pull the darkness and anger out of myself, and toss them away.

Yet as Minty and I covertly watched each other, I experienced a steady creep of pity. We all used others, hurt them badly, betrayed them. More often than not, the struggle to treat the world and others with care just did not succeed. I had been guilty of dark preoccupations, and I had almost forgotten that there was warmth. Passion, too, for life, food, sun, knowledge and other landscapes through which to travel.

My thumbnail bit into my finger. At twenty I could not have stood here and reflected in such a manner, nor at thirty. I would not have possessed the words. But today? In the presence of my children, it seemed the only thing left was to be generous with love and pity. To struggle to be generous.

Exhausted, I turned my attention to Nathan. He was funny and brief, and avoided the obvious pitfall of mentioning our marriage. Conjuring the best of himself for his daughter, the gestures, the timed pauses, the smiles were perfect. They were meant for Poppy, there was no doubt about that, and I melted at the tributes he paid her.

‘Such a good speaker,’ murmured a guest. ‘So sweet about the couple.’

Nathan wound up. ‘“There is no more lovely, friendly, charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.” Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know who said that but it doesn’t matter. What matters is the sentiment. Let us raise our glasses…’

There was applause and, tearstained and electric, Poppy whirled towards her father. Looking a lot less fresh, less crisp, than when they arrived, the guests shifted, re-formed and continued to drink enormous quantities of champagne until it was time to leave, when they were effusive with their praise.

‘Such a happy party,’ said one and, impulsively, I leant forward and kissed her. She smelt of champagne.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I think it was.’

Poppy and Richard were still at the centre of a joshing group. They were due to leave for a hotel for the night, then a two-day break in Bath, and a car was waiting. Richard was talking emphatically, but Poppy had gone quiet, and her mouth was white and set. She looked round for me. ‘Mum? Where are you? Mum?’

As I made my way over to her, she pulled free the rose that was pinned to her dress and sent it soaring in an arc towards me.


*

The catering staff were clearing up. Plates were stacked and glasses shot back into the honeycomb of the cardboard boxes. The waiters exchanged information on jobs and tips. The fairy-lights winked down at bare tables, stacked chairs and filled ashtrays. The place echoed with goodbyes.

‘Such a pretty bride…’

‘Such a nice speech…’

I smiled. Early on, when it was clear that Nathan’s ambitions were going to be realized, he had practised a lot on me. We saved up, and Nathan took lessons in public speaking, the deal being that he passed on to me what he had been taught. I got used to statesmanlike policy declarations, the beer-and-sandwich bluff and, in the days of intense union uncertainty, the Henry V rallying cry to the troops. Today it had worked beautifully.

Except for an obstinate cluster by the door, everyone had gone and it was safe to take off my shoes. Just for a second. The beginnings of a headache pounded above my left eye and I rubbed it. A touch on my shoulder made me turn round.

‘Had we finished our conversation?’ Minty was clutching a handbag in the shape of a flowerpot.

I opened my mouth to say something but a voice cut in: ‘Rose darling,’ said my cousin Henry, ‘thank you so much. You are, as always, a celestial hostess and you look stunning.’ He bent over to kiss me. And damn Nathan.’

‘This is Minty,’ I informed Henry, ‘whom Nathan hopes to marry’

Minty paled. Henry raised an eyebrow. ‘Goodness,’ he said, and turned his back on Minty. ‘But, as they say, goodness has nothing to do with it. Goodbye, Rose.’