Helen buried her face in her hands. ‘I didn’t mean to say it like that,’ she whispered. ‘It just came out too quickly. I didn’t mean to be priggish, and pompous, and all the other things he recoils from. Chloe, all I wanted to say was Look. You don’t have to make yourself like this. Why can’t he see? I just wanted …’

‘I know,’ Chloe told her gently. ‘But he can’t hear that.’

Helen’s sleeve was soaked with cold coffee and she tried vainly to roll it back. There was a leaden, stifling weight inside her chest and a taste of metal deep in her throat. There seemed to be nothing in the whole world that she could focus on that was clear, and sweet, and straight. Then she thought again. There was Darcy, in all his goodness and devotion. And there was Tom, with his uncompromising clear sight and the sharp weapon of his intelligence. Two opposite sides of the same truth, she thought. But which of them was the truth that she needed for herself?

Helen pushed back her chair with a sharp scrape. ‘This is a horrible day,’ she mumbled to Chloe. ‘I’m going to do just as Oliver said. I’m going to go away and work. That’s easy to understand, at least.’

She turned away in the same direction as Oliver, and Chloe watched her go with a deep frown marked between her eyes.

‘I hate this house.’

Stephen Spurring was looking up into the shadowy height of Follies’ hall.

Chloe smiled faintly. ‘Why? I should have thought it was right up your street.’

They had come face to face one evening at the steps leading down to the island, where it was impossible for either of them to turn aside. Although they had barely spoken since the play, they managed to put a casual gloss on this awkward meeting. Stephen asked politely about her work, and Chloe responded with equal formality. Now she was surprised by the sudden vehemence in his voice.

He shrugged, irritable. ‘Not the shell itself. That’s very fine, of course. Just the atmosphere. I wish Pansy would come and live somewhere else. I’ve tried to persuade her, but she won’t hear of it. I could rent us a place, at least.’

Chloe couldn’t resist a tiny pinprick.

‘Surely Pansy could buy a house? Or Masefield would set her up in anything she wanted.’

Stephen flushed uncomfortably. ‘There wouldn’t be any need for that.’

Poor Stephen, Chloe thought suddenly. Married, and in love with a mercurial girl half his age. And a rich man’s daughter, at that. He must know he can’t give her any of the things she’s used to.