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‘The Lord be with you,' he announced in a deeply polite voice.

‘And with thy spirit,' came the echoing murmur from the congregation. The organ boomed into the closing hymn and Alice felt a wave of dizziness and felt herself slipping down towards the floor.

When she came round Richard was sitting next to her as she lay on the bench at the back of the church.

‘How long have you been fasting this time?'

‘Just for a few days.'

‘You are a stupid old thing.'

Yes, she thought, but getting thinner, getting better. When she danced with Richard in her slip of a gown she would be as lithe and thin as that girl in the blue satin sheath at Amforth.

‘Come on,' he said, standing up irritably.

Richard's room was hot and the air smelled of unaired bed. The scout did not come in on Sundays. She opened the window, pulled his sheets straight. He made her some sweet tea then he said, ‘Why don't you lie down for a bit?'

He came and lay down beside her and they started the same game that they always played with passion, with her belatedly well-defined rules as to which garments could come off and which not. But after a while he sat up and looked at his watch.

‘Look, I've got a really dull drinks thing to go to with a fusty old tutor. You have a nap. I'll be back in an hour or so. We'll go to lunch.'

‘I'm fine. I'll come with you.'

‘No, really, it's ever so dull, and you'd have no one to talk to. It's just my tutors drinking sherry. Really, not your thing.'

He was gone a long time. She was so hungry – and bored. She slid open the cupboard door, his neat row of shirts, his jackets, his cricket jumpers. On a shelf at the bottom of the cupboard there was a box of pink and yellow candies, half of them eaten. A gold box with a ribbon. It was a girl's box of sweets. The sort a man might buy for a girl for a special occasion – and then she eats half of them right away because she's greedy. Alice felt her heart knocking hard inside her ribs. Something made her pull open the little drawer by his bedside and there they were, a pile of little black and white photographs; Richard at a ball in some college, with a girl who was smiling and laughing and waving around a glass of champagne; Richard and the girl kissing and in the corner of the picture a set of fuzzy lights like alien spaceships in a matinee film, or falling stars. She stared at the pictures for a long time, and it slowly dawned on her that she was holding actual pictures of Richard going to an actual ball with an actual girl who was definitely not called Alice. Behind them, a huge Christmas tree at the end of a long ballroom filled with blurred people. The party at Garstang House.

She looked out of the window. Oxford was still there, the delicate towers and spires scissored against the sky, and she watched all the glamour fade from the buildings as if the day was already ending, even though it was barely two o'clock.

When he came back she gave him the photos.

He let out a high giggle and then held out his arms to her.

‘I'm sorry, pookums. Ma and Celia insisted. I couldn't say no.'

She saw then how easy his life was, how he fell into things, how he would happily love her, and love any number of people besides, and it would all be easy.

She backed away, and heard herself running down the stone steps of his staircase.

She had no idea where they were going, except that it would involve dinner. The dress was probably too much, but she was glad to have a chance to get some use from the thing.

As soon as the girls in her lodgings had heard that Alice was going to wear that dress they wanted to help her do her hair, lend her silver platform shoes and an evening wrap. Even the landlady had got all misty eyed and excited. She had insisted that Alice risk sidling into her stuffy bedroom to see herself in the wardrobe mirror.

The dress was beautiful.

She thought, Richard and all his set, they could go and jump in his wretched lake.

The doorbell rang.

‘Ooh la di da,' the landlady said, peering through her bedroom blackout curtains. ‘He's here and he's come in a taxi, milady.'

Ralph took her to dinner at the Randolph Hotel. He had a linen suit that was probably the thing in Spain, and looked almost exotically handsome. He pulled out her chair and helped her sit down. Then he
opened an enormous menu and ordered for both of them, in French. He even studied the wine list carefully and was quite sure they should have a white burgundy.

‘I can't believe you booked a table at the Randolph. It's outrageous. And when did you learn about ordering wine?'

The restaurant was full now; servicemen in uniforms, women in evening frocks, couples leaning close, perhaps saying goodbye at the end of a leave, older couples, grand and silent and carefully dressed.

‘It doesn't seem fair, does it, that just because people have money they can come and dine out in a place like this every night and never have to produce any ration books. Not that I mind being forced to spend the evening in style, darling. One could quite get used to it.'

‘Well, a place like this suits you. You're the loveliest girl here.'

‘Gosh, and he's charming too. But we should make a toast, to you. Basil said you aced Responsions. You got in, with distinction. Well done you.'

‘Sadly I'll only have a few terms here at Oxford, and then I'll get my call-up papers. But it makes you realise there's no time to waste on stuff that doesn't matter. So you see, I want to make it all count.'

‘A man in a hurry.'

The piano music stopped. A small band of musicians started playing dance music. She noticed that Ralph had become a bit agitated, pleating his napkin and scratching at his head.

‘Look here,' he said, ‘I don't suppose you'd like to dance? With me, I mean.'

So because he looked so earnest, and because he seemed to want so badly for her to say yes, she stood up, gave him a curtsy. He took her hand and led her to the area of parquet flooring in front of the musicians. She was aware that she looked the part in her outrageous green evening gown that left her shoulders bare, clung over her hips. He held her tentatively in a waltz embrace, did an odd
step forward that made them both stumble. Then he got flustered, started again, and with a lunge he began leading her round the little dance floor.

They circled carefully at first, then with more confidence. She realised that he was leading. She began to feel the push of his steps, carrying her a little further than she expected each time, the slight, effortless lift in her body from the compact strength in his torso, following the melody of the music.

And she thought, This feels right; and while she was thinking about how that was such an odd thought, he gathered her up, that was the word for it, gathered her up, and kissed her.

This was nothing like the elegant kissing practice she and Richard had gone in for. This was a revelation, elemental – a sudden response that shocked her.

The music stopped. They stepped apart. She felt small, and suddenly fragile. Disconcerted by the impression of his mouth on hers, she turned her face away to regain some composure and place herself back in charge of things. He took her hand in his fingers; they felt hot and crackling with electricity. He led her back to their table.

By the time she was seated, sipping a glass of cold water, she was resolved not to let things slide into such silliness again.

‘I'm sorry. I hope you don't mind,' he said.

She patted his hand. ‘You are very sweet, Ralph, but—'

‘Wait. Please don't start telling me I'm so young and all that guff. I'm deadly serious, and I know exactly what I want. Alice, I already know I want to marry you.'

Shocked, she blurted out a laugh.

‘I know there won't be anyone else for me, Alice. From the moment I saw you in the garden at your parents', the wind ruffling your hair, and you so small and so fierce, I was done for. You're the one. Alice, will you? Will you marry me?'

‘You can't just propose at the drop of a hat, because you danced with someone, because of one kiss. Do you even have a ring, Ralph?'

‘No, there's no ring, yet, but . . .'

‘You see then, you're not really serious.'

‘I'm very serious.'

‘Maybe we should go.'

‘Please don't.'

‘I'm sorry, Ralph. I think that's enough this evening.'

He looked stricken with unhappiness. He seemed so much like a boy that she wanted desperately to hug him, just to see him happy again. For a moment she thought, But that's why I love him, because he's so unguarded; because he's so completely himself.

A mad and dizzy moment when she saw how she could leap into a different life, she could say yes. Yes, of course she'd marry him: she was completely in love with him.

But that was ridiculous. How could she possibly ever love Ralph?

It was as if all the stuffy Victorian uncles – who she so despised for their petty litanies of self-importance and their bowler hats and stiff suits – had now crowded round their table in a half-circle; as if Richard's mother were there whispering in her ear, making her look at Ralph and see that he wouldn't do; he wasn't really quite the thing, not really English enough somehow. And the thought of having to bestow all that civilisation on him, and the fear of what might happen if she could not get him safely inside the pale of right opinions, left her feeling too exhausted.

He fetched her coat from the lobby, helped her into it. Silent and looking stunned, Ralph found a taxi and took her back to Iffley Road.

They stood awkwardly on the dark pavement.

‘Ralph, I'm sorry. I do enjoy your company, and I really wish you all the best with you going off to who knows where with the army, but really it's time to stop this.'

She held out her hand. ‘Goodbye, dear Ralph.'

He didn't take it. ‘I am right, Alice. I absolutely know; you are the one.'

She sighed. ‘I'm trying, I'm really trying, Ralph, to be sweet about this, but it's only fair I should tell you. I know I'm not in love with you, Ralph. You have to wait for someone who does love you, and Ralph dear, I'm sorry, but I'm not her.'

Ralph waited on the pavement until she had gone into the house and shut the door. A blur of movement behind the glass panel as she took off her coat, pulled across the blackout curtain.

A light drizzle was coming down, making the linen fabric of his suit relax with dampness. He turned up his collar and began the long walk back to his lodgings on the other side of town.

He only hoped that Mama would have gone to bed and not be waiting up with cocoa, anxious to hear every detail of the last few hours spent without her.

CHAPTER 11

Fourwinds, 1981

Peter got out of bed, pulled on a dressing gown and quietly let himself out into the corridor. The watch by his bed said seven. Ralph would have left to fetch Nicky by now.

He walked along the corridor and stood outside Sarah's door, head bowed, listening. Not a sound. He was glad she was still sleeping. Then he thought of the sedative she'd been given and he began to feel uneasy. He knocked gently but there was no reply. He pushed the door open a little way. The bed was ruffled and empty. He called her name as he walked in, but she wasn't in the room. By the bed was a glass of water. The white pill lay untouched beside it.

At that moment he recalled the sound of a door opening and closing somewhere in the house as he had fallen asleep – and he knew that she was gone.

A thudding, empty space where his heart should be, he searched through the house swiftly, hoping to find her curled at the end of a sofa, sleeping, or in the kitchen with a coffee. She was nowhere. He ran outside and walked rapidly through the gardens, checked inside the interior of the marquee that held nothing but the cold, grey light. A thought occurred to him and he ran back into the house. He looked in the hallway. Her jacket and bag were gone.

Where was she? He stood, breathless and dizzy. He held on to the
door frame for a moment. He heard the heavy crackle of a car in the driveway, doors slamming.