‘De Vere says his son would be willing to take you for a drive next week,’ he said. ‘For her sake, you could at least consider the boy.’

A scream rose in her throat but she clamped it down. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, and opened the door to gusts of wind from the cold night. She thought she heard a door slam upstairs.

‘You’re still a minor until you’re twenty-one,’ he said, his voice unexpectedly loud in the echoing hall, but she didn’t reply and ran out, letting the door shut behind her.

On the way to the dance the rain returned, harder than before. She ran, collar up and head down, against the driving rain, her scarf scant protection against the wind and the bottom of her stockings damp. Glimpsing the harbour as she ran, she saw in the moonlight the water was bulging and swollen. It moved back and forth like an animal waiting to pounce. The tide was high, too high, threatening to spill over the quay wall. God, she hoped their land wouldn’t be too affected if the tide overspilled tonight; salt was the enemy of the farmer.

Outside the door to the dance, she hesitated. In a puddle she glimpsed her reflection, shining, lipstick-bright, until a gust of rain fractured and scattered it. Under her mother’s trench coat, she was wearing a purple silk dress her mother had made for her years ago, for a hunting party, and underneath the dress, nylons Jack had given her. The dress was too tight around her bust and it came a little higher over the knee than it used to, but it was her only good dress. She didn’t count the blue she had worn at Midsummer; she’d made that one herself from cheap satin. For the purple, her mother had chosen everything – the material, the design – and Verity had hated it. Her mother cared about fashion and took all the magazines. She remembered an evening gown her mother had worn for a party early on in the war. It had been a pale gold colour that shimmered in the light. Her mother had answered a knock at the door. Then the sound of a glass smashing. The gramophone playing a jazz tune. Someone said, ‘Nicholas, you’d better come,’ to their father. Verity saw him kneeling by their mother’s fallen form, the telegram in her hand, shattered glass by the hem of the gold gown and wine seeping into the floorboards.

This must have been Jeffrey, only nineteen, the last of the line. Her mother kept saying, ‘What will happen to Felford?’ As if the family estate was all that mattered. It was all gone now and the gold dress hung in the wardrobe, too small for Verity to ever wear. But she saw the purple dress now for what it was – an act of love her mother had been unable to express otherwise.