Peel arrived, all bustle and shopping baskets. Enid met her in the hall. “Go and sit with Ian. He’s in his bedroom.” She put on her coat. “My son, he’s come to stay. See that he has everything.” She fixed her hat. “I have to go out.” She didn’t, but she couldn’t stand the silence.

She walked for an hour around the streets of Fulham. When she turned into her street again, she half expected to see the Rolls, but instead she saw a post boy, handing Peel a letter.

Enid, 1926

28

Enid, 1926

The lawyer she found, from an advertisement in the back of The Times, had fat wobbling lips and a cheap-cut suit. Her chair was lower than his; she had to look up at him. “Can you help me, Mr Crowther?”

“A most complicated case.” He smiled, showing uneven teeth. His desk was loaded with files slipping across the ink blotter, hemming in a glass tankard packed with pencils. Weak sunshine forced its way through an overcast day; it hit the windowpanes behind him and highlighted the dust-laden glass. “Might you give the child back?”

She gripped her purse on her lap and flicked the metal clasp with her thumbnail. “I can’t.”

“It would save a great deal of bother.”

“She’ll stop my money.”

“Wouldn’t she have done that already?”

“She can’t, while I’ve got him.” It sounded cold. She meant it to be brave.

“Can you not return him on condition of an assurance that your allowance is safe?”

“She hates me. She’ll say one thing and do another. She’s never going to give me anything without him.”

“But you don’t want him?”

It was a simple question. Too simple. “I can’t think straight if I’m destitute, can I? She’s taken my son and she’s taken my money—”

“Your mother’s money.”

“It was supposed to be my son’s.”

“Has that changed?”

“Of course it hasn’t changed. But the rider has: she who holds the reins. Don’t you understand? My sister hates me. It was only a matter of time before my funds dried up; it was lucky I came back when I did, and if I hadn’t divorced I’d never even know. Douglas, my husband, he had all the bank accounts in hand, I had nothing of my own that he couldn’t touch. I’d have come back, divorced, given him custody, and hey presto my bank account dries up.”

“Did it?”

“It didn’t have time.”

It was all lies and she knew it. That wasn’t what she’d been thinking about at all. She’d been thinking about Joan – clumsy, dumpy, mother’s girl Joan, tripping up and landing on the pulse, getting everything. “She’s stolen what’s mine.”

“Your son?”

“My inheritance.”

“We are defending custody.”

“Of course.” Enid flicked her thumbnail against the catch.