It didn’t take unusual powers of perception to pick up that something was amiss with Marnie. Isobel thought she resembled a volcano – heavy clouds hanging around and the possibility of an explosion an alarming threat. Her chippy unfriendliness seemed to be back in place and Isobel marvelled that anyone’s looks could be so altered by their frame of mind. Marnie reminded her of one of those visual tests made up of little dots: look at her one way and you saw an attractive young woman – pretty would be the wrong word – with good bone structure, a beautiful skin and, when she let her guard down, something both touching and beguiling about her; look at her in another way and she appeared as plain as the proverbial pikestaff and rather disagreeable. Isobel noticed how she turned away from Christopher when he came into the room and ostentatiously went to talk to the Colonel. She did not of course know about the misunderstanding between them, or that before dinner Christopher had gone in search of Marnie to make an apology for his assumption, but she had not been in her room and he had failed to locate her. Isobel didn’t imagine the atmosphere in the writing class could have been enhanced by Marnie’s surly negativity, but thought that Catherine, who had taught in some tough places over the years and had a useful capacity for detachment, would have been well up to handling it; it just seemed a pity that, after the welcome departure of Stanley, other frictions had cropped up. She threw a questioning look at Louisa, wondering if there had been some trouble she didn’t know about.