Three girls, all wearing long white cotton dresses, came gossiping in at the far end. They wore their hair in straight plaits down their backs. The girl with the darkest hair put a platter down on a chopping board. Enid read the letter again. The light in her head flickered on.

“Has it come?” Ruby was standing beside her. Her face was full of awe and expectation, drenched in the height of excitement as if watching a kitchen drama by the Swaffham Players, but this was Enid’s life. It was her life.

Enid stuffed the papers back in the envelope. “It’s nothing.”

“Enid.” Ruby pulled out the chair, knocking Enid’s feet from the rungs, and sat beside her. She put her hand on Enid’s arm.

Enid shoved the envelope towards her.

Half an hour later, Ruby had made tea and Enid was covered in a blanket on the sofa in the library.

Ruby sat across from her, crossed-legged in an armchair, her ringlets held back in a scarf. “What are you going to do?”

What was she going to do? If only she could stop feeling so damned pleased. “I don’t know.”

“The law is on your side.”

Ridiculous, coming from such a child. “Is it?”

“Of course. Mother told me about this frightful case – it happened to friends of hers, the Pratts. Perhaps you know them?”

“I don’t know them.”

“Mr. Pratt wanted to take the children away but the judge wouldn’t have it.”

“I walked out.” She felt – what was it? Relief. She felt relief.

“Yes, but aren’t there – circumstances?”

Enid adjusted the blanket. She could get a little cottage nearby, near Cherry Trees but not too close. Out of the village, somewhere with trees, a garden, a stream. She’d always fancied a stream. No staff; perhaps a girl and a housekeeper, but no army of staff watching and gossiping and judging her every move. She could pop in to Cherry Trees – she saw it in happy clutter: Everett at the stove, ham hock bubbling – she could pop in and walk away at her leisure. She could stay in bed all day, and no one would call a doctor or say she was off her rocker.

Ruby carried on. “You said he was—”

What had she said about Douglas?

“When you got here – I remember, even if you don’t – you were in a pretty bad state.”

It was the strongest language Enid had ever heard Ruby use. Enid tried to concentrate.

“You said he was—”

“Neglectful,” said Enid. That’s right. That’s what she’d said.

“Neglectful,” repeated Ruby, giving the word the full array of meanings that Enid had never bothered to pick apart.

“He was,” said Enid.