Now it was the third Sunday in the month and the morning was bright but bitterly cold. There had been heavy frosts for a week but no snow as yet, and as Ruby had driven to Foreburn the glinting sparkle of spiderwebs in the hedgerows and the thick white coating on bare trees carried a desolate beauty all of their own. She stopped the car at one point and wound down the window, breathing in the icy air as she gazed across frozen fields shimmering in the weak winter sun that was doing its best to melt the carpet of frost. She needed to compose herself before she saw Edward. Clarissa had called to see her the day before and invite her to lunch, but the main reason for her friend’s visit, Clarissa had told her candidly, was to acquaint her with Edward’s changed circumstances. Clarissa had held nothing back, emphasizing that Edward had called off his engagement some weeks before the Wall Street Crash because he was still in love with Ruby and always would be, and that on top of losing everything, he had been as near to dying as a person could be and still survive.

‘But he’s changed, Ruby,’ Clarissa had said sadly. ‘He sees himself as a failure and it’s done something to him. I don’t know how to reach him, I confess, and Godfrey has tried and got nowhere. He’s talking about joining the RAF when he’s well enough – he had some flying experience when he was younger – or failing that trying for the Civil Service. He can speak several languages and with his Eton background they’d probably snap him up. He – well, he’s got this fixation about not becoming a burden to anyone.’

Ruby sighed, leaning back in the car seat for a moment and shutting her eyes. How she would eat any lunch she didn’t know because her stomach had been doing cartwheels since Clarissa’s visit the day before. Her mother had baked a splendid high tea as usual yesterday evening but she had only been able to nibble at a sandwich and swallow a small custard tart. While Cissy had been reading Alice her bedtime story, something she loved to do and which Alice enjoyed because her grandmother didn’t mind going over the same story time and time again, unlike her mother, she had confided in Olive about Edward. She hadn’t meant to, but once she had started the whole story had come out.

When she had finished, Olive had looked at her and said, ‘You still love him.’

She’d nodded.

‘And you would accept him now he’s poor?’

‘Even if he had come back rich I would have married him. I’d realized how stupid I’d been not to give it a chance after he had gone to America but it was too late then. And then he met this other girl . . .’