Seeing Maude and Beth back on guard duty, she gave them a small wave. As she drew nearer, she glanced at Beth’s wrist. ‘Are we going to report Ralph for that?’

Beth shook her head. ‘I think he’s suffered enough, and if I’m honest I’d rather forget the whole affair.’ She brightened. ‘I take it you and Ted have decided to give things a go?’

Olivia nodded. ‘That’s why I’d been ringing Ralph’s barracks, so that I could tell him we hadn’t got a future.’ She sighed guiltily. ‘Golly, how I wish I’d rung him sooner – that way none of this would ever have happened.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ Beth said, ‘because if he hadn’t shown up shouting the odds, you lot would still have thought badly of me, and I’d have lost my dearest friends.’

Olivia grimaced. ‘You shouldn’t have had to go through any of that. You should have been able to talk to us, knowing that we would believe and support you. I’m so sorry we let you down.’

Beth gave her a grim smile. ‘That’s what happens when you’ve got a reputation, no matter how false it may be.’

Olivia remembered her father’s words when it came to a girl’s reputation. ‘I’m so angry at my father and the trouble he’s caused, but when I think of your situation and the unfairness of it all, I realise that my life would have been very different if word had got around I was pregnant at fourteen.’

‘Hung, drawn and quartered before you’d left school,’ Beth agreed.

‘He was still wrong for telling all those lies.’ Olivia tutted under her breath. ‘You’d think that after my father, I’d be able to recognise a liar a mile off!’

‘Not necessarily. Ralph was plausible. How were you to know he had his sights set on you before you’d even met …’

‘Sorry?’

Beth explained how Ralph had learned of Olivia’s father’s estate through the application process.

‘Blimey!’ breathed Olivia. ‘If you put it like that, then no, I didn’t stand a chance, because I wasn’t aware I was stepping into a game of poker where the only other player already knew my hand.’ She gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘He and my father are like peas in a pod.’

‘You’ve certainly had a lucky escape,’ Beth agreed.

Olivia smiled happily. ‘And I’m with my first love, who wouldn’t dream of doing anything to hurt me, and who respects me no matter how big I am.’

Maude tapped Beth on the arm. ‘You should’ve seen Ted when he hit Ralph, defending Liv’s honour. Not only was it the most romantic, heroic act I’ve ever seen, he took Ralph clean off his feet!’