A Cornish Inheritance

Book 1: The Fox Bay Saga

by Terri Nixon

Genres: Family Life; Historical Fiction; Sagas; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

The perfect treat for fans of Downton Abbey, Poldark and Dilly Court — discover the first in a heartwarming new series set in the 1920s in a glamorous hotel on the Cornish Riviera....

Welcome to Fox Bay Hotel, where family fortunes rise and fall.

1920, Bristol. Helen Fox is happily married to the love of her life: charming former playboy Harry. With their three children, glamorous lifestyle and extravagant parties, they have the perfect life. But after a tragic motorcycle accident, nothing will ever be the same....

Helen is forced to leave their home and move to the Fox family's hotel on the Cornish coast — where she discovers her perfect life has been based on a lie.

Now Helen must find a way to build a new life for herself and her children with the help of a vivacious new friend, Leah Marshall.

But when the future of the hotel is threatened, Helen discovers that she hasn't left her past behind after all, and unless she takes drastic action, she's going to lose everything all over again....

Release date: December 5, 2019

Publisher: Piatkus

Print pages: 416

Sample

Bristol

March 1920

The noise, the smells, the crowd … it was Harry’s world, not hers. Engines revved and coughed, oil and smoke drifted through the air, and Helen peered through the crowd of racers at the trackside, trying to find him. But almost all of them had obscured half their faces with helmets and goggles, and just when she began to think he wasn’t racing after all, and relief was creeping through her, she saw him wheeling his motorcycle out onto the track. If he hadn’t raised a hand in greeting, she’d never have known him; it was an eerie feeling not to immediately recognise your own husband.

‘I expect he’s glad you came to one of these at last.’ Jeanette Duval had appeared, unnoticed, at her shoulder. ‘Adam likes it when I’m here, likes to have someone to coo and squeal over him when he comes back in.’

‘I’m not really the cooing and squealing type,’ Helen pointed out, her eyes still following the riders as they manoeuvred their motorcycles to the start line.

‘Oh, you’ll turn into one. They’re so heroic.’

‘They’re idiots.’

‘What’s bitten you today?’

Helen tore her gaze away and looked down at Jeanette, glowing and over-excited in the chilly spring air, and almost told her. But just because Adam was Harry’s best friend, it did not follow that his fiancée must be hers, and in any case, it was too late to say anything now; there was too much noise. Instead she watched, her heart in her mouth, as the last riders to arrive kicked life into the monsters beneath them, and let their engines warm up.

For a moment the air was thick with the rising roar and an almost unbearable tension, then the flag dropped, and they took off, fighting to get ahead of one another and slide into a better position. Helen’s skin seemed to shrink on her bones as she watched them, and she wished she’d remained in blissful ignorance, waiting at home with the children and not listening to the horror stories people were so happy to share. A single magpie swooped by, and Helen automatically saluted it. Good afternoon, Mr Magpie, hope your wife is doing well …

There were cheers from the crowd as individual favourites edged ahead, and Helen picked out Harry quite easily at first, by the Fox family emblem on the petrol tank. If she stared very hard she could keep up with where he sat in the race, but it made her eyes hurt and she soon gave up. Jeanette knew exactly where Adam was, however, and kept up a running commentary; Helen heard it only as a hum among the rest of the crowd and the noise of the motorcycles.

Gradually the worry began to subside, and she let her mind wander, but it never strayed from the man on the track, the man who was life and breath to her even now. Harry Fox, her first and deepest love; adoring and adored father of her three children; liar.

Even as the word flitted through her mind a gasp went up from the crowd, and then a cry, and as Helen dragged her eyes across the field she saw a rider fighting to keep his machine from spinning off into the barriers. Her breath caught, but the rider eventually won and, with wheels sliding and his booted foot pushing hard at the ground, he righted himself and re-joined the pack. There was no emblem on that tank, but the thought that it could so easily have been Harry was like a dash of icy water on her brow, and she felt the cold March wind blow harder. Why must he do this?

The field thinned out, as various machines coughed their last and their riders wheeled them off the track, hands raised in gloomy acknowledgement of the mingled cheers and jeers. Harry was still out there, and according to Jeanette he and Adam were jostling for second position, along with two others. She didn’t care. She wanted it to be over, so they could go home and talk. Really, properly talk, about what they were to do now and how to explain to the children—

A roar, and a sudden, violent surge of the crowd took her completely by surprise, and she was carried forward several steps before she heard Jeanette’s hoarse scream. ‘Harry!’

Helen’s disbelieving eyes found the thick, oily-black cloud on the far side of the track. Bright flame flickered in its depths before flaring and engulfing everything, but not before it showed her, horribly clearly, the still figure sprawled on the track.

* * *

Burleigh Mansions, Bristol

New Year’s Eve 1919

Four, so far. Out of perhaps one hundred and fifty. But four was enough.

Helen pretended to fuss with her brooch until she felt safely alone in the crowd once more, then she raised her eyes and scanned the heaving room. Once again, the Foxes had delivered the party of the year – or this time, she supposed, the party of the decade. No matter how many events were put on tonight, the cream of the Bristol set was always going to be here at Burleigh, wafting around, congratulating one another, and themselves, on being the toast of the town. Not the biggest party, perhaps, but certainly the most lavish. All three of the townhouse’s storeys were lit with twinkling lights, and, with the exception of her children’s rooms on the top floor, were filled with music, laughter, and clinking glasses.

Harry caught her eye and raised an eyebrow; always concerned about her, even after nearly twenty years of marriage and of parties like this. She raised her glass to him, and he grinned and disappeared again, and, ever the conscientious hostess, Helen looked around to see if there was anyone she had not yet greeted. Jeanette Duval had arrived, and was hanging onto her handsome beau’s arm as if she were terrified he was going to abandon her. She was probably right. Helen made her way over, and Jeanette turned as she approached.

Five.

Helen faltered. Five people, all friends to one degree or another, and each one looking at her with that same expression. Was it sympathy? Condescension? Genuine pity? Whatever the look was, it slid off Jeanette’s face as soon as it had landed there, and she held out her small, bejewelled hand.

‘Helen! Darling, come and rescue me.’ She drew Helen into the group, and her blond male companion sketched a little bow.

‘You’re looking lovely tonight, Mrs Fox.’

‘Mrs Fox!’ Helen laughed. ‘And how long have we known one another, Mr Coleridge?’

‘I believe it’s approximately thirty-three years, four months and …’ he squinted into the distance, ‘one and a half weeks.’

‘He’s joking,’ Helen said quickly, seeing Jeanette’s frown. Then, unable to help it, she added, ‘It’s two weeks, not one and a half.’

Jeanette smiled again, but it was thin and a bit strained, and Helen gave Adam a reproving look. He merely shrugged, but she noticed he brushed Jeanette’s hand with his thumb, and the woman’s features relaxed into a more natural smile. Thank goodness he had some manners, or Jeanette would have been the perfect wallflower tonight.

The small group picked up its conversation again, and Helen followed it for a few minutes, but it was all to do with new investments, and shipping, and she found herself instead concentrating on those odd looks she’d been getting. She wanted to broach the subject with Jeanette, but it was hard in this lively atmosphere.

‘How’s Harry?’ Jeanette asked, finally letting go of Adam’s arm and leading Helen off in search of another drink.

‘As you see him,’ Helen said, pointing. Her husband was, predictably enough, surrounded by the biggest, noisiest crowd in the huge room; the glamorous centre of attraction. Helen felt the usual surge of pride in Harry, and in the two of them as a couple, but few of their friends and acquaintances believed that, when she’d fallen for him, she’d had no idea he was one of those Foxes, the wealthy family who owned the majestic Fox Bay Hotel down on the Cornish coast. And the beach below it, as he’d told her casually, on the train down for their first visit.

‘Quite the host, as always,’ Jeanette said, handing Helen a fresh glass. ‘This champagne is very good.’ She drank it more quickly than she ought to, given its fine pedigree, and Helen saw her eyes flicking around the room as she did so.

‘Jeanette, do you know anything about why people are looking at me—’

‘When’s Harry racing again?’

Helen blinked. ‘Not until the middle of the month. I assumed Adam was joining him?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe.’ Jeanette’s laugh was brittle. ‘He’s so busy with his get-rich-quick schemes.’

‘Get rich?’ Helen shook her head. ‘He’s one of the wealthiest men in the South West.’

‘Saving Harry of course.’

‘Who’s saving Harry?’ He had appeared from behind Helen and slipped his arms around her waist.

‘Oh, you’re well beyond saving.’ She leaned against him, loving the warmth of him at her back, and put her hands over his, holding him closer.

He grinned down at her. ‘Doesn’t mean you can’t try.’ He nuzzled her neck, sending a flush of heat through her, and his voice dropped to a whisper. ‘How does later tonight sound?’

She couldn’t help laughing, and her spirits lifted once more. He could always do that to her, even after all this time. ‘If you’re a very good boy,’ she murmured, aware of Jeanette’s eyes on them. As Harry withdrew, he patted her bottom discreetly, and winked.

With champagne fizzing in her blood, and the promise of a night of closeness and love, the party seemed to come to life for her again. Helen and Jeanette went their separate ways and Helen mingled with her guests, accepting compliments and returning them, swapping new year’s resolutions and plans, but her thoughts contentedly resting on what would happen when the house was hers and Harry’s again.

Six. The woman looked hurriedly away, but her expression exactly mirrored the other pitying, knowing looks, and Helen had had more than enough. She started across the room to demand an explanation, but a crash stopped her in her tracks, and she turned to see her son Benjamin, sixteen years old and attending his first society party, on his knees beside a suspiciously empty table. The snow-white lacy cloth was clamped between his hands, and he was laughing so hard he hadn’t realised everyone within earshot had stopped talking to stare at him. Surrounded by broken crockery and spilled food, he dragged in another breath and let it out on a hoot of laughter.

‘You’d better get him off to bed, Helen,’ one of her companions murmured.

‘His father will have some tough words for him in the morning,’ another said. ‘Poor lad.’

‘Poor lad?’ Helen thrust her glass at them. ‘I’ll give him poor lad!’

On any other day she’d have seen the funny side, but tonight she felt only embarrassment and exasperation. Someone had helped Benjamin to stand, and Helen seized the boy’s elbow. ‘Come on, you little reprobate!’ She turned to seek Harry’s help, and as she found him her heart did a slow roll in her chest. The crowd around him had finally dispersed, and now only Jeanette stood looking earnestly up at him, her hand on his arm, her face wearing a beseeching expression. Helen suddenly felt quite sick; how hadn’t she seen this coming? She looked around for Adam instead, but he was nowhere to be seen; no wonder Jeanette had taken her chance.

She turned away and put her arm around Benjamin’s back, letting him lean on her as she led him towards the stairs. How many people knew? For a moment she didn’t even know which was worse: that Harry was clearly being unfaithful, that it was with Jeanette, or that word was getting out and people felt sorry for her. But that moment was brief. Of course she knew. Oh, Harry, not you …

With Benjamin safely deposited, fully clothed, on his bed, Helen went into her own room. Downstairs, over a hundred people were waiting to see in the new year with the famous Foxes; the perfect couple, the ones everyone turned to for advice when their own marriages were failing. H and H, the Heavenly Twins, Harry had laughingly dubbed them. Helen swallowed a tiny sound of mingled despair and humiliation, and checked her make-up in the mirror. She would not make a scene, not tonight.

Her dark hair, once described by a childhood friend as too curly, hadn’t become any smoother with age, so she’d long since given up trying to tame it; Harry liked it, so why bother? She dragged a brush through it, then wiped a finger beneath her eyes to remove smudges and picked up her cake mascara to re-apply, but stopped as she saw her hand was shaking too hard. How could she compete with someone like Jeanette, the smooth-skinned, big-eyed, hand-span-waisted socialite? Helen was no great beauty, and no one but Harry had ever pretended she was, not even her mother. She was too short to wear the most fashionable clothes with any real confidence, and her figure was not the stick-thin outline those clothes demanded, but her slightly rounded face and childlike dimples would ensure she looked younger than her years as she grew older. And her sherry-coloured eyes were usually shining with good humour, which drew even the most fashion-conscious people to her long enough to find out that she had her share of intelligence and wit.

She also had dignity, and that’s what she must show now; tomorrow would take care of itself. A quick re-tie of the yellow ribbon around that too-curly hair, a straightening of her shoulders, and she was as good as new. On the outside, at least.

Downstairs her hostess smile returned, but although she neatly avoided coming anywhere near the treacherous Jeanette, she couldn’t avoid Harry. He appeared at her side just before midnight, his hand warm on her hip, and it took every ounce of strength she possessed not to pull away and demand the truth. But at the same time as she resisted this urge, he smiled, and the smile was so familiar and sweet that she found herself questioning her own conclusions; was she mis-reading things? His hazel eyes picked up the glitter of the fairy lights strung across the walls, and those same lights played across his face, making him appear magical and beyond reproach.

‘Sweetheart,’ he murmured against her temple, ‘you’re not forgetting our appointment later, are you?’

She felt his hand tighten on her, and his lips pressed against her skin, and the longing came flooding back. Surely he couldn’t be so convincing if his heart lay elsewhere? But then that was Harry Fox, wasn’t it? A charmer. He could make you believe anything.

‘No, I haven’t forgotten.’

‘Are you all right?’ He tilted her face up to his. ‘You look tired.’

‘I am, a bit,’ she said. ‘Perhaps later we—’

‘Ten!’ The first shout of the countdown had begun, and Harry’s hand curled around Helen’s as they joined in. On the stroke of midnight, while other people shrieked and hugged one another, waving drinks in the air and joining hands for Auld Lang Syne, Harry took Helen in his arms and bent his head to press his forehead against hers. It was an affectionate, even a loving, gesture, but one that cemented her certainty that his passion had led him elsewhere.

While Harry was seeing off the last of the revellers downstairs, Helen removed her party dress and draped it carefully over the back of a chair. She wiped her face clean of make-up, listening to the banging of doors all over the house as guests retrieved their coats and bellowed goodnight, and happy new year. Happy? Not for the Heavenly Twins.

She looked at the clock: almost three. Somehow, she had made it through the remainder of the party with her smile fixed in place, polite laughter produced at the silliest of jokes, and with a succession of partners ready to whisk their hostess off to the dance floor. But at least six of them – seven, if you counted Harry – knew it wasn’t just the decade that had come to an end.

At last the door clicked quietly open. Harry seemed surprised to see her still up, and when he came further into the light she could see a tightness to his form, and his smile was strained. Helen’s heart shrank until it felt like a burning pebble in the centre of her chest. Not tonight, please not tonight … She needed more time, just one more day of knowing him the way she always had. She wasn’t ready to lose him yet. She wanted to blurt out that she would forgive him, no matter what he’d done, but her pride kept the words in check.

‘How long?’ she said instead, turning away from his outstretched hands.

‘What?’

‘How long has it been?’ She made a supreme effort to sound calm, but heard the rising hysteria in her own voice.

He played for time, crafting his excuses. ‘How long has what been? I don’t know what—’

‘I know about it, Harry, so don’t bother to lie.’

Silence, then a heavy sigh. He was right behind her now. ‘Just about two months.’ His hands rested on her waist, and she whipped her head back, so fast it sent her hair flying in their faces, and shoved him away.

‘Don’t!’

‘I’m sorry.’ He remained at a distance, but his face was wreathed in sorrow. ‘Darling, we must talk about this, it affects us all. The children too.’

The children. Helen gave an agonised moan. Benjamin was old enough to understand, perhaps, but Roberta at eleven and Fiona at just five … their lives would be destroyed, all because their father found a pretty face irresistible. ‘Will you tell them the truth?’

‘Of course. Hels, how did you know? Who told you?’

‘I have eyes! I saw you and Jeanette talking out there. What was she doing, begging you to tell me?’

‘I would have anyway, but she said it had to be now.’

‘So you’re just doing as you’ve been told. Well done, Harry Fox.’ The sarcasm fell between them with all the unbearable weight of a broken heart. Helen’s breath caught in a sob, and she tried to walk away but Harry took hold of her arm.

‘I didn’t want to keep it from you, but Adam said it would—’

‘Adam?’ Helen stared. ‘He’s known too?’ Her children’s godfather, her own childhood friend, and he’d said nothing. Eight.

‘Of course he’s known, he’s …’ Harry let go of her arm and sank down onto the bed. For a moment he sat in silence, just looking at her. ‘You don’t know what you think you do, do you?’ he said at length. ‘I wondered how you could possibly have found out.’

‘Found out what?’ Helen’s dismay was turning to a colder feeling now, at the broken voice and the helpless expression as he raised his eyes to hers. ‘Harry, what’s happened?’

‘It’s all gone,’ he said. As he spoke the words his eyes grew bright with unshed tears. ‘Every last penny. I’m so sorry, Hels. We’re ruined.’

Bristol Royal Infirmary

March 1920

‘We’re so sorry, Mrs Fox …’

Helen felt a hand on her arm and one at the small of her back, but didn’t know who they belonged to. More mumbled words, explanations that meant nothing. She heard another voice from somewhere behind her, urging her to come away, to sit down, to drink tea. She had no idea who was speaking. Her legs moved, but only instinctively, to keep her balance as the hands pulled her towards a seat; if they hadn’t, she would have stayed exactly where she was, where those calm, long-practised words had scratched deep, acidic wounds into her heart: We’re so sorry …

Three words that brutally separated the Heavenly Twins forever, three words that they must say dozens of times a week. But this was Harry they were talking about. Harry with the wide smile, the glinting eyes, the quick wit … Harry whose breath she could still feel on her cheek, whose hands were as familiar to her as her own. This morning he’d eaten breakfast with her, laughing as his fork slipped and the piece of egg he’d saved for last had skidded off his plate. He’d forked it up again, and winked at her as their eldest daughter had rolled her eyes in the excruciating embarrassment only an eleven-year-old could express. They’d both stifled their laughter, but she’d read in his eyes what she knew was in her own: the sweeping knowledge that they would forever be the best of friends as well as the closest of lovers.

Now he was gone. All that laughter, all that love. The world darkened, and Helen suddenly felt as if she were falling through ice-cold cloud. She fumbled beneath her for the solid safety of the seat edge, and closed her eyes as she dragged a deep breath in. Help me, Harry, I can’t—

‘It will have been quick, darling.’

Now Helen recognised the voice. Dazed, she looked up to see Adam Coleridge, still dressed in his racing clothes, his helmet strap twisted around his oily hands, his face smudged and blackened and a deep graze down one cheek. Behind him Jeanette stood, pale and shocked looking.

‘Quick?’ How could he know such a thing? Harry had lain on the track for several long, horror-filled minutes before anyone had managed to get close enough to roll him onto his back and smother the flames. He’d died at the scene, certainly, but how could anyone know what he had suffered?

‘They said the fuel pipe leaked,’ Adam went on, as if knowing the reason for it all would bring Harry back. ‘It sprayed petrol back over the exhaust and caught—’

‘Stop it.’ Helen’s voice was dull.

‘He didn’t check it, Helen.’ Adam lowered his voice. ‘The thing is he shouldn’t even have been riding.’

‘I said stop!’ She stood, and pushed past him to leave, but he stopped her.

‘I’m only telling you because … Look, you have the right to know.’ Adam put his lips close to her ear under the guise of a comforting embrace. ‘He had brandy in his jacket pocket, I found the bottle when I ditched my bike and went back to him.’ He patted his own pocket. ‘I took it. I’ve told no one, all right?’

Helen stared at him, numb. ‘But he doesn’t … He never … How do you know he’d drunk any?’

Adam started to speak, but clamped his mouth shut and Helen followed his gaze to see Jeanette looking at them with narrowed eyes.

‘Not here,’ Adam said. ‘I’ll come to Burleigh tonight, we can talk then.’

‘What about the children?’ Helen muttered, anguish sweeping over her again. ‘How do I tell them?’

‘I’m their godfather,’ Adam said quietly. ‘Do you want me to be with you?’

Helen didn’t reply, her mind was already filled with too many fresh realisations. ‘Oh God, Fleur …’ Harry’s mother would have to be told before word reached her, it was bound to be in the papers.

Adam looked helpless. ‘Darling, I’m so sorry.’ He bent to kiss her cheek, but she pulled back and her voice was cold.

‘If it wasn’t for you, he’d still be alive.’

Adam’s eyes darkened. ‘By the time I realised what had happened I was a long way ahead of him. I couldn’t have saved him, Hels.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘I couldn’t get to him any—’

‘I’m not talking about the fire!’

Adam stared at her, clearly uncomprehending, but she couldn’t say any more. She shook her head, and Jeanette stepped forward and took Adam’s hand.

‘You know where we are if you need us, Helen. We’re both utterly devastated for you all.’

‘I’ll come around later,’ Adam repeated, as Jeanette pulled him away.

‘Don’t.’

Helen returned home and gathered the children to her, and, somehow, broke the news. She held the girls as they sobbed, keeping her own tears in check until, exhausted by bewildered grief, they fell asleep. Benjamin tried harder to be adult, to hide his tears, but they built in his eyes until the slightest movement sent them spilling down his newly shaven cheeks, and when Helen drew the boy to her, he wept as hard and as freely as his sisters had.

Much later that night Helen lay down on her bed, with her head on Harry’s pillow, and fell into the abyss that had been waiting for her from the moment she had heard Jeanette’s scream.

The funeral was predictably well attended. At Burleigh Mansions, after the service, the rooms that just three months ago had been festooned in fairy lights were now draped in black. The optimism and laughter that had greeted the new decade had turned to shock and grief, as Harry’s friends and colleagues gathered to honour the memory of a sparkling, joy-filled, but far too short life. There was some speculation about why Harry had refused his mother’s pleas to be buried in the family crypt in Trethkellis, but Helen had firmly honoured his wishes – he’d fallen in love with Bristol, so why not be buried here?

Press interest had scarcely waned in the intervening days, and the death of Harry Fox was built up into a glamorous, though tragic affair; the bon viveur former playboy, and the woman who’d apparently tamed him, had drawn interest from the moment they’d moved into Burleigh Mansions as newlyweds in 1901; everyone had been looking for a flaw in their marriage, a sign that Harry had returned to his former ways. The fact that he’d remained friends with Adam Coleridge – who certainly hadn’t been tamed, no matter how fondly Jeanette believed otherwise – only added to the certainty that Harry would fall by the wayside before too long.

But three children and a war had not dented the Heavenly Twins, and now Harry had been so cruelly wrenched from the world there was very public speculation as to what Helen would do next. Would she sell Burleigh and move away? Would she sell Harry’s shares in the various companies he owned, and take her children on a cruise to give them a chance to heal? Would she invest it all in something new and exciting?

Invest it all? If only they knew. The three months since New Year’s Eve had been a strange time. So great was her relief at discovering she’d been wrong about an affair, she had succeeded in convincing herself that, as long as she had Harry, everything would be all right. Money wasn’t important, their lifestyle wasn’t important. After all, before they’d met she’d been a nobody, and she’d happily go back to that life … Provided she was a nobody who had Harry Fox at her side.

But if her own past had been ordinary, Harry’s hadn’t. His entire life had been spent in a comfort bordering on luxury, and it was a struggle for him to come to terms with losing it all, and with failing his family. So he’d fought. Hard. She’d watched, lost in admiration, as he pulled himself back up, exerting himself like never before, clawing back what he’d lost and never once, in those three months, showing the public any other face than the smiling, confident Harry Fox they all knew and admired.

It was only when, immediately before that fatal race she had mistakenly opened a letter addressed to H Fox, that she realised he’d lied to her as well.

Helen circulated after the service, pressed black-clad arms and thanked people for coming, and tried to avoid speaking to anyone for more than a few minutes. Harry’s elegant mother had shunned everyone’s attentions and taken her leave early, eyes bright with fresh tears, and begun her lonely return journey to Cornwall, to the hotel on the coast that Harry had loved so much, and that might have saved his life.

Helen looked around the crowded room, and her heart cracked a little to see her three children sitting statue-like on the couch, the two eldest clutching cups of tea, their set faces discouraging well-meaning advances from friends and relations. Sarah, the nanny, sat beside six-year-old Fiona, with a protective arm around the little girl’s shoulder.

All three children had done themselves proud today, even the still-shocked Roberta, who Helen had worried about the most. They’d all deeply loved their father, and been equally cherished in return. He was the stone pillar around which all his children grew like ivy, and now he was just a name, a memory, a wisp of remembered love.

But Roberta had found a particular place in his heart, strenuously as he would deny it. Benjamin, the first-born, had been greeted with indescribable joy by both of them, and as soon as he was old enough Harry had begun taking him to meetings and to his club, proudly showing off the heir to the Fox dynasty. The boy had lapped up the attention and rewarded it with complete obedience and with the best of his sparsely given affection.

Fiona, the youngest, had held him in a different way; he would laugh at her determination to crawl away from him, seeking the freedom of any open door they happened to be near, and would scoop her up again without once fearing it was him she wished to be free of. She only had to begin her baby-babble to him, leaning on his knee with her chubby little elbow and staring earnestly up at him, for him to start grinning.

But between the two, when Roberta had come along, Harry had taken one look at the angrily pinched face and jerking fists, and fallen under her spell. As a toddler she’d seemed to become aware of this, and would happily climb into his lap, safe in the knowledge that he would not immediately put her down again, or scold her for creasing his newspaper. But she had tested him, that was for sure; she was the one who had the power to make him think the hardest, and to check his temper the most. They’d enjoyed a complicated, but devoted relationship, and now Roberta was adrift and seemingly alone. But today she had comported herself with a dignity beyond what might be expected of an eleven-year-old, and Helen made a silent promise that she would go to her later and tell her how proud she was.

When the last mourner had left, and the children had gone gratefully to their rooms, Helen closed the front door and leaned against it for a moment. She stared absently up at the coat