‘Hope, whatever is the matter?’ asked Kit.
In a strangled sob, she said, ‘I’m such a failure.’
Her brother stared at her, his poor badly scarred face clouded with disbelief. ‘How can you say that?’
‘I’m a failure as a wife,’ she said, struggling to get a grip on her emotions. ‘Edmund doesn’t love me. Why would he?’ She looked to where he was so clearly enjoying himself on the dance floor with Em and now one of her young college friends. The three of them were putting on a show of some magnitude as they gyrated in what to Hope’s way of thinking was a most undignified manner.
‘Of course he loves you!’ Kit asserted. ‘Edmund’s devoted to you. How could you think otherwise?’
Taking a deep breath, she turned around to face Kit. ‘If I confide in you, will you promise not to say anything to anybody else? Not even Evelyn. Do you promise?’
He frowned, but acquiesced with a small nod.
She then told him about the anonymous letter she had received and what it accused Edmund of doing.
‘A poison pen letter?’ Kit exclaimed, incredulously.
‘Shhh!’ she hissed. ‘I don’t want people to know.’
‘But you can’t possibly take it seriously? It’s just someone being spiteful, wanting to make trouble. It’ll be a spiteful old biddy with nothing better to do.’
‘But why? And who would want to make trouble like that for me? What have I done?’
‘Did the letter actually have your name on it?’
‘Yes, on the envelope.’
‘Was Edmund’s name used?’
She was about to say yes again, when she visualised the letter in her hand, each horrible word jumping out at her. ‘No,’ she replied.
‘So it might merely be an anonymous wild shot in the dark that could have been posted through anybody’s letterbox?’
‘But it had my name on the envelope.’
‘True, but the nasty individual who penned the letter might just as easily picked any woman’s name who lived in the village.’ He shrugged. ‘Evelyn’s name for instance. Can you think of anything more absurd and less likely than for me to be accused of cheating on my wife? Trust me, Hope, throw the letter away and don’t give it another thought. It’s nothing more than village mischief-making.’
‘Village mischief-making,’ said a voice from behind them. ‘That sounds interesting.’
As if by magic their brother Arthur had materialised out of thin air. He had an uncanny knack for doing that, in spite of his bulk.
‘How long have you been lurking there listening in on our conversation?’ demanded Hope.
‘Lurking,’ he repeated, his tone as supercilious as the expression on his jowly face. ‘What a thing to accuse me of. I’m hurt to the quick.’
‘I’m quite sure you’re not,’ she muttered, thinking it would take more than a few words to penetrate the layers of blubber Arthur had acquired with each passing year.
‘I must say,’ she went on, arming herself for the inevitable round of sparring that accompanied any exchange with Arthur, and which always resulted in trading insults. ‘I’m surprised to see you here.’
He regarded her with a disdainful look. ‘Why?’
‘You spend so little time at the Hall these days. I wonder you can tear yourself away from the lure of the fleshpots of London. Poor Julia must get dreadfully lonely rattling around in that ghastly mausoleum all on her own.’
‘What a jolly hoot you are, Hope. You know, nothing quite prepares me for seeing you again after an extended time apart. But you should know by now that it’s a fool’s game to bait me.’
‘Come on you two,’ remarked Kit genially, ‘play nicely. I trust you’re well, Arthur?’
‘You find me in fine fettle,’ he replied, lighting up an ostentatiously large cigar.
‘How’s Charles getting on with being away at school?’ asked Kit. ‘Julia must miss him terribly.’
‘Boys need to have the apron strings cut early on,’ asserted Arthur, ‘the last thing they need is to be mollycoddled by an over-protective mother.’ He puffed expansively on his cigar. ‘You look a bit off the pace, little sis,’ he remarked to Hope. ‘Something on your mind? Apart from your husband making a fool of himself on the dance floor. Somebody should tell him that the twist is strictly for the young. There again, how can he resist dancing with two attractive young girls when his wife looks so miserable? Now what was this village mischief you were talking about?’
Suddenly gripped with sickening certainty, Hope stared at Arthur with loathing. It was him! It was her brother who had sent her the letter!
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Meadow Lodge, Melstead St Mary
October 1962
Stanley
‘You seem subdued this evening, Annelise,’ remarked Stanley. He kept his voice light, which wasn’t easy given the volume of the band.
‘Do I?’ she said, turning her gaze away from the dance floor to look at him. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise. I was just concerned that you were feeling unwell.’
What really concerned him was that she might be bored in his company. On social occasions like this, when the great and the good from the county were gathered, he could never quite rid himself of the deep-seated anxiety that he didn’t belong. Despite all his outward success at having reinvented himself, deep inside he was still Stanley Nettles, the illiterate kid from the East End.
But determined not to give in to those old insecurities of his, and reminding himself how much he had been looking forward to this weekend and seeing Annelise again, he smiled brightly. ‘Would you like to dance?’ he asked.
‘Would you think me very boring if I said no?’
Disappointed, he shook his head. ‘Not at all. And if I’m honest, I’m not really in the mood for dancing myself. Besides, you know I’m in possession of two of the clumsiest left feet.’
She smiled. ‘That’s so typical of you, Stanley, offering to dance with me in spite of not wanting to yourself. You’re so sweet,’ she added, placing her hand on his forearm.
Wishing she could consider him more than sweet, he accepted the compliment with good grace. ‘In that case, how about something to eat?’
They cruised the trestle tables that were laden with food – venison pies, sausage rolls, coronation chicken, prawn vol-au-vents, cocktail sausages, cheese straws, bacon wrapped around dates, mini quiches, devilled eggs, celery with cream cheese, wedges of melon, and whole salmons poached and covered in wafer-thin slices of cucumber to resemble scales. It seemed only yesterday to him that a spread like this would have been inconceivable, and not just during the war, but for years afterwards when rationing was still in place.