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.I noticed straight away.’‘She thinks she might have flu.’‘Ah,’ Caroline breathed, her heavy-lashed eyes fixed on mine.‘But you guys are okay?’ Her smile did nothing to take the edge off the question.A sickening thought struck me: that Ginny had confided in this woman, had spilled out the most painful details of our unhappiness.And fast on this thought came the idea that Ginny had talked about my visits to Dittisham, had even – a sinking thought – read something suspicious into them.‘Couldn’t be better,’ I said with terrible joviality.Caroline searched my face, and I had the feeling that little escaped her voracious eyes.‘Glad to hear it,’ she said at last.‘So many people falling by the wayside.Owing their last bootlace to Lloyd’s.Jobless at fifty.Reduced to selling herbal remedies from their dining rooms.No wonder marriages creak under the strain.And we’re all meant to be more caring!’Had Ginny suspected something all this time? Had she thought I was having an affair? As the idea took hold, my spirits shrank at the prospect of the confrontations ahead.‘Though when it comes to caring,’ Caroline was saying with a provocative smile, ‘I think you poor beleaguered men have had a raw deal.I think us beastly women have pushed you too far, and you all need spoiling and cosseting again, just like in the bad old days.’ She gave me a look that wasn’t entirely frivolous.The noise seemed to rise up around me, the drink sang in my brain, I had reached some limit that I barely recognised.With an indeterminate salute, I moved rapidly away and escaped into the garden.I knew I shouldn’t let the Carolines of this world get to me.Mischief-making was a compulsion with her and if it hadn’t been such a very long day I would have remembered that sooner.I would also have remembered that, whatever else Ginny had reproached me for, she had never hinted at infidelity.Besides, our unhappiness had set in long before the summer, at some point in the long years since love had given way to bewilderment.Standing there in the sulphurous darkness of the London night, the party a distant murmur, I tried to picture a time when things might be different, when the business would be back on its feet, when Ginny and I would be happy again, when in some miraculous way I would be free of worry and guilt.But the idea wouldn’t form, it seemed too remote, and, taking a last breath of damp leafy air, I trudged back towards the house.A few guests lingered remorselessly until nine-thirty, and we didn’t close the door on the caterers until after ten.‘You go to bed,’ I told Ginny.‘I’ll finish down here.’‘I’m all right.’ She sat on the edge of a chair by the fireplace.‘I don’t think it’s flu after all.’‘Are you sure?’She gave a faint nod, her eyes doggedly on mine, and I realised she wanted to talk.I poured myself a brandy, almost certainly the last thing I needed, and sat in the chair opposite.‘Well, that seemed to go all right, didn’t it?’ I said with forced brightness.‘I don’t think anyone noticed the food.’She sat like a governess, her arms held into her sides, her shoulders braced, austere and unyielding.‘How was your day?’ she asked.‘Oh, you know…’‘No, I don’t.Tell me.’ And she fixed me with a look of strange intensity.‘Well…I told the Hartford staff what was happening.I saw David and Mary for lunch.’‘And what was it you told the staff?’ she persisted solemnly.‘Oh, I gave them the latest news in all its glory!’‘Please, Hugh – I’d like to know.’If I looked surprised it was because Ginny had never shown much interest in the details of the business.‘Sorry,’ I said penitently.‘What did I tell them? Well…I made Cumberland sound pretty ogre-ish.I said they’d sell Hartford to the highest bidder, and, if it didn’t happen to be us, then the staff faced almost certain redundancy.I said the future under a buyout would be pretty tough.But I think I made the bad times with us sound marginally more attractive than being out of work.’She was listening intently, a small frown on her forehead, so I went on, explaining some of the risks involved in making our bid, and the hard work that lay ahead.‘But you believe in the buyout?’ she said.‘It’s what you want?’‘What I want?’ I gave a shaky laugh.‘I think so! When I last did any rational thinking anyway.’‘There you go again,’ she said, her voice rising.‘Where again?’‘Not answering me properly.’‘I’m sorry.’ I heard the note of injury in my voice and suppressed it.‘Yes, it’s what I want.’ Articulating this gave my feelings new force.‘Yes.Ye s.I can’t just let it be written off.Not when it’s got so much going for it.Oh, I know what you all think,’ I said as if she represented the rest of my family.‘You think it’s just the tradition or something, that I’m incapable of letting go.But it’s not just that.It’s the people at Hartford, and the place…I love it! I love everything to do with it!’Ginny said gravely, ‘So long as it’s what you want.’‘Okay, and I want to be the person running it!’ I conceded, as if this had been in dispute.‘I want to run it because I think I can do a better job than anyone else.With the right team beside me – and without crazy delusions of grandeur!’ Just thinking about Howard stirred me to anger once more, and it was a moment before I took in what Ginny was saying.‘.I phoned the estate agent, threatened to take the house elsewhere unless they drummed up more interest in Melton.The man suggested some ads in the glossy magazines – which we pay for, of course.I agreed, but I told him he was on trial, that we’d give him six weeks at the most
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