As she made her light-hearted answer an uncomfortable thought nagged at Helen. Kim’s question hadn’t been so very far off the mark, for all the amusement that had greeted it. However much she wanted it, she couldn’t just be Darcy’s wife in the rural haven of Mere. Whether or not it was at village fêtes, they would have to play a role together in the local life. And when his father died, much more would be expected of them. Helen knew that Darcy hated and feared that side of his life, and she knew too that she lacked the particular strength to help him to be a more public person. She thought, a little sadly, that he should have chosen some kindly, confident girl with the assurance bred of coming from the same background as his own. There must be one somewhere. Not all of them could be like Oliver’s friends. That’s what Their Royal Highnesses would be expecting of him. And instead he would be bringing home Helen.

Some of the elation ebbed away, and a little, dismal premonition of trouble took its place.

She made herself listen to the talk around the table again. Pansy was proposing a last boat trip on the lagoon, and a picnic on one of the distant islands.

‘Come with us, Kim,’ she invited with unusual warmth. Seeing her stepmother through her friends’ eyes had touched her with sudden sympathy.

‘We-ell,’ Kim said. ‘Couldn’t we have lunch at the Lido?’

‘No.’

‘I won’t, then. I need some new shoes, and I want to buy Helen a present she can remember us by.’

Pansy shrugged. ‘It baffles me how anyone who owns forty pairs of shoes can need another.’

‘Unlike you, I don’t choose to slop about in flipflops,’ Kim said sharply.

Relations had shifted rapidly back to normal again.

‘Kim, I can remember you without a present,’ Helen protested. Kim swung round in amazement.

‘Oh but you must. It’s part of it all. I was showered with wonderful things when we got married.’

They let her go to solace herself with shopping, and spent a day idyllic with the first warmth of summer in drifting over the dappled waters of the lagoon.

The last hours in Venice slipped rapidly past. On their last morning Helen packed her case with a sharp mixture of regret and anticipation. She was leaving the city that had affected her more potently than anywhere else she had ever been, but she was going home to Darcy. One day soon they would come back here, together. Carefully she wrapped Kim’s souvenir and nested it amongst her clothes. It was a set of Murano glass bowls, slightly too brightly coloured for her own taste.