Looking over to her father, she saw in him the same grief she’d seen in Harold as he had knelt over his mother’s still body, and she had the sense that this was her punishment – to lose her own mother. To know the pain that she herself had accidentally inflicted on Harold.

Her body crumpled and, but for the firm hold that the nurse took on her arm, she would have slumped to the floor. ‘Your father needs you. Be strong for him, Margaret.’

Her father’s sobs broke the silence and, looking over, she saw a broken man. She ran round the bed to be at his side. ‘Daddy. I’m here for you.’ Putting her arms around him, she held him. She didn’t try to move him away from his beloved Belinda, but gave him the strength to stay.

Harold held Mags as they stood around the open grave a week later. His hand on her waist reassured her that he would help her. A strikingly handsome man in a rakish way, his dark hair was sleeked over to one side, and his clothes showed his good taste – smart suits always worn with a white scarf, when outside. He stood at least six feet one and gave off an air of being in charge, wherever he was.

Mags looked up at him and smiled and nodded at Harold when he mouthed the words, ‘Are you all right?’, although she still felt a little cross at him for arriving so late. She’d thought he wasn’t going to come, as she’d had no word that he had arrived at his uncle’s house. But he was stood at the church door when they arrived.

As they walked towards the church gate, Harold’s words grated on her. ‘We will still get married in two weeks, won’t we, darling? I can’t bear to live in my uncle’s stuffy house for longer than that. I’d prefer to go back to the hotel in London.’

It seemed an inappropriate question when her heart was breaking, but she nodded her head.

Once seated in the back of the funeral car, Harold held her hand. ‘You do mean it, don’t you? Your father won’t object, will he?’

‘Harold, I don’t know. We haven’t spoken about it, but we haven’t cancelled anything, either. I have given it some thought, though. If we do go ahead, we will need to scale down the wedding celebrations to just close family and friends. We can’t carry on with the full-scale celebrations we had planned – it wouldn’t be proper; and everyone will understand.’

‘Of course, darling. Anything you wish.’

Harold spoke as if he was finalizing a business deal, not marriage to her, and this fuelled Mags’s nagging doubts. Flors’s voice came to her: ‘Don’t marry him, Mags, please don’t marry my brother. He is a monster.’

As she was used to doing, Mags analysed the reasons for Flors saying this, rather than taking no notice of it. Harold had not been a good brother to dear Flors, but then their mother had been the instigator of that, feeding Harold tales of Flors being a wicked girl who had caused her great stress. But did this justify his behaviour towards Flors, when he was old enough to make up his own mind? Oh, I don’t know.