An Invitation to the Kennedys

by Emily Hourican

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

An enthralling historical fiction from the bestselling author of the Guinness Girls series

Kathleen 'Kick' Kennedy, a recent arrival to England from Massachusetts, is already a huge hit in 1930s London society. Her status as the daughter of an ambassador puts her at the centre of the most elite social circles but being an American and a Catholic sets her apart, something she only comes to realise when she falls for Billy Cavendish, the future Duke of Devonshire. Their families will never approve the match - if her parents find out about their romantic attachment, she risks being sent back to America.

Lady Brigid Guinness has no interest in love, marriage or society connections. Her brother-in-law Chips Channon, always seeking to increase his political capital, is keen for her to befriend Kick but Brigid has no interest in showing a brash American around town. When Chips invites both Brigid and Kick to his country estate in Essex however, neither of them is given a choice in the matter.

During their stay at Kelvedon Hall among members of the Guinness family and their friends, Kick and Brigid are immediately thrown together in the midst of the drama going on around them. Marriages are on the rocks, friendships and alliances are being forged, and political intrigue lurks just beneath the surface. Chips starts to push Brigid towards a match with a desperately dull German prince, while Kick tries to keep hope alive for her relationship with Billy. And by the time their week in Essex has ended, both young women's lives will have changed forever.

Inspired by true-life events, An Invitation to the Kennedys is a captivating story from the bestselling author of the Guinness Girls series.

(P)2023 Hachette Ireland

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

Print pages: 416

Sample

March 1938

Kick

‘It’s a ship like a city,’ Kick said, tucking Eunice’s arm tighter into hers as they walked towards the end of the SS Washington’s deck.

It was calm where they were but she knew they would round the corner into a heavy wind that would buffet them like blows from the palm of an open hand. The kind of wind she knew from family summers at Hyannis Port; that her brother Jack had described, with a grin, as ‘like being slapped by Kikoo. It can reach out and hit you in places you never expected.’ Kick had laughed. They all had. Much as they loved Kikoo, their nanny, for the solid comfort of her presence that was so unlike the brittle distant affection of their mother, Rose, they also knew the feel of her calloused hands and the point at which, when they were younger and, sick of yelling at the nine of them, she would lash out with slaps that stung.

‘More like a small town for me,’ Eunice complained. ‘You get to stay up and go to dinner every night, and then whatever it is you all do afterwards – dance, I suppose – while I have to stay in my cabin with Pat and Jean, and Kikoo looking in on us every ten minutes to make sure we stay put.’

‘It’s only because Mother isn’t here,’ Kick said. ‘Pa needs someone to entertain with him. And to watch Rosemary.’

‘Watch her for what?’

‘You know, in case she says the kind of thing Rosie says sometimes, that we don’t mind because we know and love her, but that strangers might find mighty odd?’

Eunice laughed. ‘Remember the time she told Fr Palfrey that she had a spot, and he said he couldn’t see it, trying to be all reassuring, and Rosie said, “No, on my backside,” and Mother looked daggers right at her?’ Kick, remembering, smiled a little. But along with what Rosemary had said, and the look on Fr Palfrey’s face, she recalled how that had been another step in their mother starting to leave Rosie out. Not letting her go to parties or stay up when they had guests even though Kick, two years younger, was allowed. How bewildered Rosie had been at first, and then how she had got used to being left behind and sweetly tried to make the best of it. Kick didn’t know which was worse.

‘Ready?’ Eunice asked now, bracing beside Kick for the wind. Behind them, rows of passengers sat in deck chairs, rugs pulled up over their knees, watching the vast emptiness of sea and sky that wrapped around this ship that was so huge, and yet so tiny on the surface of the ocean. Nowhere among them was the girls’ father. He would be at the solid desk he had had installed in his stateroom, insisting that the flimsy dressing table be removed to make space for it, reading and responding to the telegrams that arrived each morning. Later, he would take a turn about deck and watch the little boys at their tennis lesson. Later still he would send for Kick and ask for a report on everyone’s day. He would have had a report, already, from Kikoo. But it wasn’t enough.

‘She indulges those boys,’ he would say. ‘I can’t be sure she’s telling me everything I need to know.’

‘How do you know I will?’ Kick had asked, sitting on the edge of his desk, bare legs swinging.

‘I know you won’t,’ he had responded, ‘but I can tell a great deal from what you don’t say.’

They rounded the corner that brought them from calm quiet into the hectoring roar. This deck was deserted and smelled of salt and wet wood, and whatever was cooking in the kitchens. Why, Kick wondered, was it never a nice smell, like baking, the way the kitchen in Hyannis Port smelt? Always, it was boiling vegetables. Or worse, boiling meat. Her stomach tightened. They were two days into their crossing, with two more to go, and she still could barely believe she was there. When her father’s appointment had been announced – Ambassador to the Court of King James – she had been sure their mother would decide she wasn’t to come. Must stay behind even though she had finished at the convent. Rose knew exactly how much Kick wanted to see England. But that had not meant she would permit it. Even as their things were packed for the sailing from New York, Kick had worried that her mother would change her mind. But she hadn’t, and the seven of them, eight with Pa, had set sail, leaving Rose behind for an operation, a ‘small procedure’ as she called it, ‘nothing you need to know about’.

What would England smell like? she wondered. Would it have the crisp, leafy air of New York State? The fresh blast that was Hyannis Port? Probably it would be like New York City, she decided. Cars and buses and people and everyone trying so hard.

‘Look,’ Eunice said, tugging her arm out of Kick’s. Someone had chalked a hopscotch grid onto the deck, white lines wobbling over uneven wood, washed away by salt water in places. Eunice balanced herself on one foot, holding Kick’s arm momentarily for support, then launched into a series of hops and skips. ‘Your turn,’ she called once she had finished.

Kick started after her, hopping into the wind that pushed at her, hoping she wouldn’t fall. Almost at the end, she looked up. Coming towards them from the far end of the deck, wrapped in scarves, was a man and his wife, both Italian, who had been at dinner the evening before, seated opposite her at the round table where the captain entertained. Kick, in her jersey and skirt, balanced on one leg over her hopscotch square, blushed. She dashed a hand at her hair, whipped into wild curls no doubt, and thought of what she might say to cover what felt like an awkward moment. But they passed her by without so much as a look. They hadn’t recognised her. Kick started to laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’ Eunice demanded. ‘This.’ Kick flung her arms wide, leaning right into the wind and letting it almost support her. ‘All of this.’ The pale green silk scarf around her neck tore loose then and was whipped right away and over the side of the ship and down towards the water.

‘What will we do in England?’ Eunice asked, leaning close again when they had watched it go.

‘As we always do.’ Kick reached out a hand and ran it along the side of the ship. The red paint was blistered so that her fingertips rose and fell over fat bumps and into ragged spots where it had peeled right off. ‘Lessons and tennis and riding. The house Pa has found is right in front of a big park, Hyde Park, that has a place called Rotten Row where we can ride.’

‘Rotten Row,’ Eunice echoed, laughing again. Above them one of the ship’s funnels rose up into the blue sky, black and smooth like a porpoise breaching.

‘Parties and lunches, that sort of thing. And then, when Pa’s time is up, we’ll come home again. The boys will visit when they can …’ ‘The boys’ were Joe Jnr and Jack, not boys at all but men now, Joe in Baltimore and Jack at Harvard, but still called ‘the boys’, and distinguished from ‘the little boys’, who were Bobby and Teddy. ‘And the time will fly past. His appointment is for four years, but I don’t suppose we’ll be there that long …’ Her mother had hinted as much, but Kick didn’t know why.

‘Oh, I don’t want it to fly,’ Eunice assured her. ‘I want it to go ever so slow. You’ve been away before. Italy and France. I never ever have. I plan to make the very most of it.’

‘Good for you!’ Kick said with a laugh. ‘Me too.’ She tugged gently at the little gold crucifix around her neck, fidgeting with the chain. ‘And then when we go home, we can settle into being ourselves again, only knowing that we’ve seen other places and met different people.’

After lunch, Kick went to find her father. He liked her to join him while he had coffee. ‘Will I come in?’ She tapped at the door and put her head around it.

‘Shall, not will,’ he corrected her. ‘You’re going to need to get that right in England.’

‘Shall,’ she repeated. ‘Though who really cares?’

‘Oh, they care alright,’ the ambassador said.

‘Stuffy,’ Kick said, coming and sitting on the edge of the bed, feeling the slip of the satin counterpane under her bare legs. She filled him in on their morning, answering all his questions carefully – how many laps of the deck the little boys had done; the books they were all reading; what Pat, fourteen, had had for lunch. ‘No potatoes,’ she reassured him. ‘I made sure.’ Pat was inclined to ‘get fat’, as Rose said, and that was something to be managed by careful watching of what she ate, especially bread and potatoes. No one said it, but they all knew that when Rose arrived, as she would in a few weeks, the thing she would least forgive would be the extra pounds on her daughters. ‘Or for me,’ Kick added. ‘I’m getting fat too. All those late dinners with the captain.’

She thought of telling him about the Italian man this morning and the way his eyes had slid over her, not for a moment matching her with the girl who had been at dinner in pearls and black chiffon the night before. But she didn’t. It was hard to know how her father might take this. Would he think it funny, as she did, that she could still slip between being a young lady and almost a child; invisible, ignored? Or would he be annoyed by some failure on her part that he saw and she didn’t? A failure to be attractive enough? Distinct enough? Kennedy enough?

It was too lovely, she thought, being without her mother or her older brothers, to risk it. This was the first time she had had so much of her father’s attention – the thing that was as precious as sunlight, made to spread among them all, with the lion’s share always going to Joe Jnr and Jack. Shared too with her mother; with the many men who admired and wanted to be close to him; and the women who wanted something else from him, though Kick wasn’t exactly sure what. To be noticed, she supposed. Same as she did.

‘Eunice asked me what we would do in England,’ she said, getting up and pouring a cup of coffee from the silver pot that stood on a tray and adding a splash of cream. ‘I told her, pretty much the same as we do at home. But what will you do?’ She was genuinely curious. His appointment sounded so grand. Had been greeted by so much excitement – and relief, she thought – at home; a thing long wanted that had come to pass. But what was it, exactly, apart from a ‘great honour’, as everyone assured one another?

‘I will keep America out of another war,’ he said, putting aside the pages he had been reading and looking up at her so that the light from his desk lamp glared on the round glass of his spectacles. He looked like a man with shiny silver dollars for eyes. ‘I will steer us clear of the quagmire England is sinking herself into. And if I can, I’ll help to pull her out. Europe stands on the edge of another war. One false step and she will fall into that abyss. And it is an abyss, make no mistake.’ He held up a finger. ‘Even though not everyone can see that. There are men who would push for those last critical steps. Who would force their way to war. They refuse to see that compromise with Germany, even at this stage, is possible and desirable. Some are moved by idiotic thoughts of glory, or by shame at what they call England’s appeasement. But to say that peace is “shameful” is something I’ll never understand …’ He paused a moment, honestly baffled. ‘Some are moved by confusion over what’s right. But others again are more cynical – they see the personal opportunities in war. I’m here to stop all of that.’

‘But can you?’

‘I can. Not even the most belligerent want England to enter a war without America at her back.’ He sounded amused. ‘As long as I can keep Roosevelt from committing troops or money, even the ardent advocates for war with Hitler will think twice.’

How magnificent he sounded, Kick thought. There with the ship rolling beneath them and his sense of purpose like the engines that propelled them forward, it was like he spoke straight out of one of the Hollywood films he used to produce. He would succeed, she knew it. He succeeded at everything.

‘Will you help me?’ he said then, putting out a hand for hers and pulling her forward so that she put down her coffee cup on the green leather of his desk, spilling a little into the saucer, and leaned against the side of his high-backed chair.

‘By being careful to say “shall” and not “will”?’ she joked. She was shy of him, and didn’t know what else to say.

‘By being yourself.’ He ignored her joke and spoke seriously.

‘Will they like me, do you think?’ It was what she had been secretly thinking ever since she first heard of the trip.

‘Yes. I’m sure of it.’ She felt his approval warm upon her; light and heat and dazzle. But he hadn’t finished. ‘But just remember, you are American. Not English. There could be no finer example of what it is to be American than you and your sisters and brothers.’ His approval, as ever, came with conditions.

‘OK.’ She didn’t know exactly what he meant, but it was safer to pretend she did. ‘You tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Where are we now?’ she asked then, watching the square of clear blue that was the cabin window behind him moving in a way that was steady and slow. Until you looked down at the rapid roll and curl of the waves.

‘About halfway between America and England; more than a thousand miles of ocean on either side.’

London, Summer 1938

Honor

It was her own fault, Honor thought, when her husband Chips came upon her in the library. She should have gone up as soon as she came home. Should have been safe in her room, behind the pretence of sleep, by the time he came back. But she had found the sandwiches Andrews had left in the library, and a decanter of wine, and then a novel she had borrowed from the lending library, Rebecca; brand new and ‘simply thrilling’ according to cousin Oonagh.

It had been such a dull evening. A ball, quite in the old manner, with ancient royals in dusty knee breeches and tiresome formalities around supper, so that Honor had eaten almost nothing, so determined was she to avoid the sycophantic line of nodding and smiling ball-goers. Even among them, her husband had stood out for the depth of his nod, the broadness of his smile. All around she had seen gnarled hands, cold and stiff, winking harsh diamonds and precious stones under swollen knuckles. When had they all got so old?

She had left early, coming home alone. And then she had sat beside the fire in the library, planning to read only a few pages while she ate the sandwiches. But she had drunk a glass of wine, and kept reading, and now it was after four in the morning according to the dusty bong of the library clock, and here was Chips, swaying slightly in the doorway.

‘Darling! What a pleasant surprise.’

‘I was just going up,’ Honor said hastily, marking her place and putting the book down.

‘Don’t. Stay. I will ring for more sandwiches and we can have a lovely talk.’

‘It’s too late, Chips. The servants are all in bed.’

‘Well then I will wake them,’ he said peevishly. She could hear the brandy in his voice, thickening the vowels. ‘They are my servants.’ He rang the bell and asked a sleepy footman to ‘bring another plate of sandwiches. Bring some of that fruit cake too.’ Then, ‘Wasn’t it a delightful evening?’ he asked, crossing to the high-winged armchair opposite her and sinking into it.

‘No,’ Honor said. ‘Deathly, I thought.’

Nevertheless he began to dissect the night, just as he always did. ‘Lady Furness can’t think much of our hostess if she only wore her second necklaces,’ he said, ‘she has far better pieces than that.’ He was, she had discovered, particularly clever at deciphering jewellery – finding meaning in the stones their friends chose to wear; the when and how of a brooch or a set of earrings.

The sleepy footman brought sandwiches. Honor thought how much she would have loved a cup of tea, but decided it would be unfair to ask. ‘Do go to bed, Robert,’ she said.

The light from the fire fell on Chips’ face, burnishing his broad forehead and straight nose. He was still handsome, she thought, but – like all aging beauties – now only in certain lights. Daylight, morning especially, was cruel to him, showing the pouches beneath his eyes, the pallor of his skin and lines about his mouth that spoke of disappointment. But there, lit by soft flames, with the glow of brandy still in him, and the excitement of a topic close to his heart, he seemed, again, the man she had married five years ago: smooth with the confidence of his own good looks, lit by purpose and certainty.

‘Did you see how the Duchess of Gloucester has already the royal trick of never sitting down?’ he asked eagerly. He loved these after-sessions almost as much as the parties themselves. Once she had been happy to turn it all over with him, cut the deck a thousand different ways to see how the cards would fall. But not anymore.

‘Must we?’ she asked after a while. ‘Wasn’t it bad enough to live through it once, but I must now do it all again, in memory?’

‘I simply thought you might be interested,’ Chip said stiffly.

‘In what? Parsing every detail and finding what bits of it all might benefit you?’ she responded rudely. ‘I am going up.’

‘May I come with you?’ he asked, reaching forward to put a damp hand on her arm. Sometimes, she noticed, he seemed to almost enjoy her displays of contempt. Finding in them an excitement that repelled her. That was another reason she was careful to keep them under control.

‘Not tonight.’ She shook his hand off and stood up.

‘Not tonight. Not any night. How long has it been?’

‘Please, Chips, not now.’

‘I know exactly,’ he responded. ‘As do you. Certainly not since Paul was born.’

What could she say? It has been a great deal longer. Not since the day you knew I was expecting. Once he knew she was pregnant, he had turned to mist and vapour, as she had thought of it then; as though his duties were discharged. Had left her entirely alone. It was only when Paul had reached his first birthday that he had begun to try to come to her at night again. And by then it was too late. She no longer wanted him.

‘You know I have had a long and confidential natter with Dr Low,’ he said, pouring a dash of brandy into a cut-glass tumbler.

‘Have you indeed?’

‘Yes. And we are agreed, he and I, about the cause of your nerves and difficulties with sleep.’ He turned the glass this way and that so the deep slashes in its crystal sides caught the firelight.

‘Are you?’

‘We are.’ And, when she said nothing, ‘Aren’t you going to ask what it is we agree on?’

‘No, because I do not at all want to know.’ She stood with one hand on the high back of the armchair, ready to leave, but not quite able yet to go.

‘It is a delicate matter, granted,’ he said, ‘but one we must talk about.’

‘I feel certain that we must not.’

‘I know it is difficult to resume marital relations once they have been allowed to lapse, but Dr Low is certain this can only be of benefit to you.’

‘To me?’

‘And to me, of course,’ he added hurriedly, politely, ‘my dear.’

‘I don’t wish to discuss this. Not now.’

‘But Honor, darling, Paul is nearly three. It is time there were more children.’

More children. How much, a year or so ago, she had wanted to hear those words. How she had clung to the idea of them, when the world of Nanny and the nursery, where she felt always a visitor – like a cat that has snuck into the kitchen and found a warm spot, but knows it will be ejected – closed around her baby son. Taking him from her, briskly, efficiently, cruelly; always in a way that meant she didn’t know how to resist: ‘It is time for his nap.’ ‘He must have his bath.’ ‘It is better for him if he is not spoiled.’

Perhaps Chips took her silence for contemplation, because he put the glass down and came to stand close beside her, putting a hot hand on her arm. ‘It’s time,’ he said again. He stood so close that he breathed into her ear and, with his thumb, began to stroke the inside of her elbow. Already his breath was fast and jagged. Honor’s stomach lurched. She imagined capitulating. Allowing him to move his hand further up her arm, to her shoulder. Imagined him pulling her forward and pressing his mouth on hers. Imagined the wet brandy taste of him. Imagined going upstairs to her bedroom and the way his body would feel against hers after all this time.

‘I don’t wish to discuss it,’ she said again. ‘I’m going up. Please do not fall asleep here. It makes things so difficult for the maids if they must dust and set fires around you.’ He shot her a nasty look. It was the first time she had acknowledged that she knew this was how he had ended too many nights recently: sprawled across the sofa, decanter empty beside him.

Upstairs, she barely had energy to unhook her dress and wished she had told the maid to wait up. She didn’t bother brushing her hair but fell straight into bed. Molly would have to wash it in the morning anyway. Wash away the smell of cigars and hairspray. The memory of another dull night. She must try to be kinder to him, Honor thought as she fell asleep. Only it had become so hard.

Honor

The next morning he came to her room while she still drank her tea in bed. Though he had barely slept, had been noticeably drunk and had suffered rejection by his own wife, he was now buoyant again with energy and good humour. ‘We are lunching with the Duff-Coopers,’ he said. ‘And I have brought you The Times. There is an account of that play we saw. Not a very fond one.’ Then, when she was settled with the newspaper and another cup of tea, ‘I think I will get another dog. A companion for Bundi. He must be lonely, poor chap, the only canine in this big house. Everyone should have a companion and playmate, should they not?’ By which she understood that he had not given up his plan for another child. Only he had decided to approach it by another way – through the guilt she felt that Paul was growing up with only Nanny and a tutor.

‘Get another dog if you must,’ she said, ‘but I will love only Bundi.’

‘I feel certain you will come around eventually,’ he responded, so that Honor thought she would scream at the endless mannered duplicity of their conversations, the way everything they said meant something else.

‘I can’t stay long at lunch,’ she said. ‘I have Brigid coming to tea.’

‘How is my sweetest and most adorable sister-in-law? The best of the bunnies, is she not?’

‘If by “the bunnies” you mean me and Patsy, then how can I say yes?’ Honor said. And how can I not, she thought, when it was so obvious. At least as the world must judge them. Where she and Patsy had their father’s shape of face – ‘potato-shaped’, as Patsy said wryly – Brigid with her far-apart eyes and elegantly straight nose – a neat, triangular face like a cat – had the effortless glamour of their Ernest Guinness cousins, particularly Oonagh. Which was funny, because, like Oonagh, she really cared very little for appearances, or society, or ‘any kind of fuss, really’, as she said. And, Honor thought, like Oonagh, Brigid didn’t have the same firmness of personality that she and Patsy shared. She was far more vague and suggestible, and far less proof against the influence of others, including Chips.

‘I will leave early with you,’ he said then. ‘I must say, since her coming-out, Brigid has passed even my expectations.’

‘I hate the way you talk about her,’ Honor snapped. ‘As though she were a clutch of eggs and you are waiting to see what will hatch.’

‘May I not take pleasure in the success of my sister-in-law? Surely any success of hers belongs also to her family? To you. To Lady Iveagh. To your excellent father.’

‘Not everything is yours,’ she said. He pretended not to understand, looked blankly at her. ‘You think it’s all yours,’ she continued, ‘to do with what you wish. But it’s not.’

‘Perhaps I will see if Fritzi can join us.’ He ignored her. ‘We could have tea in the larger drawing room.’

‘We’ll have tea where I always have tea,’ Honor said reprovingly. ‘And please do not go to the bother of inviting Fritzi.’

‘Oh but it’s no bother,’ Chips assured her, opening his eyes very round and wide. ‘He is a dear boy, and may one day be emperor of Germany. His grandfather, Kaiser Wilhelm, has every hope of it, you know. Inviting him is no bother at all.’

‘Germany doesn’t have an emperor,’ Honor said as though to a child, ‘hasn’t since they got rid of all that twenty years ago. And even if they were to go back, Fritzi is a fourth son. Handsome, I grant you, but he has never struck me as particularly bright.’

‘He is King George’s godson.’ As though that answered everything. ‘And has been quite a favourite ever since he moved here last year. He and Brigid danced at her coming-out ball. I watched them.’

‘Made them, more like. Chips, do not plot.’

‘Why should I not, just a little, for everyone’s sakes? I know you Guinnesses; so magnificently unworldly’ – he sounded torn between admiration and irritation – ‘you will never do it yourselves. But a girl such as Brigid, so vivacious, such beauty and charm, so quaint and unspoiled …’ Honor rolled her eyes. ‘Why should she not have the highest success? Why should she not be empress of Germany?’

Honor started to laugh. ‘And you, therefore, brother to an emperor?’

‘And why not?’

‘Except there is no empire. Germany has a Führer, Herr Hitler, a man you clearly admire although half the country hates him. How can you square that with a return of the emperors? No, the scheme is absurd, even for you.’

‘Nothing is impossible,’ he said cosily. ‘Hitler is a realist who understands the value of tradition, particularly royal tradition. And the kaiser—’

‘Former kaiser.’

‘—is an expedient man who knows that compromise is the way to survive.’

‘An emperor and a Führer?’

‘Maybe. And if not both, as well to have a horse in each race, is it not?’

‘You’re more foolish – or maybe just more greedy – than I thought.’

‘I can see all around a problem.’

‘You look for an awful lot from Fritzi, and poor Brigid.’

‘Nothing that wouldn’t be of benefit to either, or both, of them.’

Almost, she wanted to laugh. Only Chips could imagine that Germany could be peacefully arranged in a way that particularly suited him, even while all around was talk of war. ‘Do go away, Chips, I cannot take your plotting at this hour.’

Even after he was gone, Honor didn’t get up. She was afraid that if he heard her moving about he would track her, and pick up again with his talking and planning. She lay in bed until she was certain he had left the house.

His words from last night came back to choke her: I know it is difficult to resume marital relations once they have been allowed to lapse, but Dr Low is certain this can only be of benefit to you … Worse, even, was the way he had spoken them. She pulled the covers higher about her shoulders, as though to shield herself from the idea that her husband and this doctor she barely knew had discussed her so intimately. So openly. That neither had thought anything wrong with this. And that her husband had laid her out for discussion as though she were a new toy he had acquired and now wished to seek opinion on. And that they had come to a conclusion that was humiliating to her. These things made her feel there was something small and hollow inside her, an empty space the size of her fist, that might open and expand. She turned over in bed, hunching her shoulder to the door, and stared at the window beyond which lay the outside world she was too weary for.

She wished she had someone to talk to. She missed Doris, more even than she had expected to. The letters that arrived from Germany were never enough – never nearly enough. Doris wrote so little of what she did, only asked questions about what Honor did. And Chips. Emerald. All of their friends. She was, Honor thought, far more interested in them all now than she ever had been while living in London and going to their parties.

Her articles, which Honor made sure to read in the Express, the weekly paper in which they appeared, told her even less. Fond but bland accounts of the kinds of entertainments she would have thought Doris hated – large communal picnics and days out in the woods. The Germans seemed so, so … bucolic, Honor thought with a smile. And so very unlike Doris who was all city, all sophistication. How she wished Doris were here, so she could ask her what exactly she was doing, writing such things.

Without her greatest friend, Honor’s life had shrunk. Doris was the only person who had ever been fully hers, from the time they had met, aged fourteen, at Miss Potts’ school for girls, where Honor had been grand and slow, and Doris had been lowly and whip-smart, so that somehow they had met in the middle. Or maybe not shrunk, so much as stalled. The funny things were so much less funny without Doris to share them. And the sad things, the dreary and frightening things, were so much more terrible without Doris to shake them out. Patsy and Brigid had filled the gap for a little while. The sweet busyness of their comings-out, their artless chatter and charming excitement at their own success had brought much-needed noise and fun. B