The Clematis Tree

by Ann Widdecombe

Genres: General Fiction; Sagas; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

'You want to go on reading, you want to know what happens; it isn't easy to put down' Ruth Rendell A powerful novel about a family, and how their lives are torn apart in a single, devastating moment. Mark and Claire seem an ideal couple. He is an accountant, she the daughter of a successful businessman. They live in a comfortable middle-class village in Surrey. Then, during a party for their daughter Pippa's baptism, their son Jeremy is knocked down on the road outside. It is their worst nightmare, something they thought could never happen, and the consequences will affect each one of them more than they could possibly imagine. What is Claire's guilty secret, and can her wealthy, self-made father help? Will Mark, desperate to escape, have the nerve to leave? And how will Pippa be affected by the turmoil that began on the day of her own christening? 'A compelling story about the way a family copes with a catastrophe' THE TIMES 'A delight, a very polished read' CATHOLIC HERALD 'An accomplished first novel' TATLER 'Humane, thoughtful' HARPERS AND QUEENS

Release date: December 1, 2011

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Print pages: 301

Sample

The christening party was assembled on the lawn. Apart from Paul, Mark’s brother, all the relatives were Claire’s who assiduously
attended family baptisms, weddings and funerals with the regularity and numbers of Galsworthy’s Forsytes, contrasting sharply
with Mark’s nearest and dearest whose closeness was forged by the adamantine bonds of loving neglect.


‘Are you going on Sunday?’ Mark could imagine his mother asking Paul as surely as if he had been present. ‘You are? Oh, good.
I needn’t bother then.’ Yet Claire had one sibling and he five.


So now Paul circulated among the guests, an ambassador at a foreign reception, his tanned skin and dark rabbinical-style beard
sorting oddly with the flowery dresses of Claire’s aunts. Aunt Jane was looking at him as if he had done it on purpose.


Mark picked up two half-full bottles of champagne and advanced upon a group at the far end of the lawn.

‘Lunch up any minute,’ he remarked to the vicar as he passed him, and ‘I like your hat,’ to Aunt Isobel. Poor Aunt Isobel.
Mark had never heard either Claire or her sister Sally refer to her in any other way. Similarly Claire’s father generally
referred to ‘poor old Isobel’ and Aunt Jane to ‘my poor sister’. As Isobel was certainly not at all poor in any material sense
Mark could never understand the reason for the casual pity.


It might, he supposed, be a result of her having suffered what the family always described as a ‘disappointment’ when she
was a young girl and never having married, or because she had given


up sixteen years of her life to raise her brother’s daughters, or merely because she had a vague, benevolent manner which
suggested absence of mind and a propensity to be put upon. Yet she bustled about with joyful if ill-defined purpose and seemed
to look with bright hope at a life which was largely behind her. Clever, cool, independent, Sally adored her.


‘Oh, that’s a cheerful sight,’ smiled Marianne as Mark approached with the champagne. ‘I asked Peter to get me some ages ago
but he said it was too hot to move.’


Mark grinned. ‘Your new god-daughter’s finding it too hot as well. Claire has just taken her inside to cool off.’

‘Wasn’t she good at the christening? But perhaps she’s finding all those names a bit heavyweight in this weather.’ Rupert
Fiske, Aunt Jane’s grandson and in his final year at Winchester, had only just begun taking liberties with his elders. He
was a shy boy and the clumsy pleasantry sounded almost rude. Mark liked him.


‘That was your Aunt Claire’s doing,’ Mark told him. ‘Philippa Isobel Graine Ruth – a name we like, Claire’s substitute mother,
her real mother and my mother. You can take it as a declaration that our family is complete and we had to do our duty by everyone
in one go.’


‘I shall call my god-daughter Pip,’ decided Marianne.

‘We’re calling her Pippa,’ said Mark.

‘No, Pip,’ insisted Marianne. ‘Pippa is a good little girl – you know, God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world etc.
With Sally as the other godmother the poor child hasn’t a hope of being like that. She’ll be a tomboy: Pip or even Phil.’


‘I wish you wouldn’t keep talking about Pip. It reminds me of the revision I haven’t done for next week’s Eng. Lit.’ Rupert
entered the conversation at a simultaneous charge and limp.


‘ Great Expectations? I hear you have too, young man. Place at Christ Church …’ Peter, Marianne’s husband, was saying in mock avuncular tones as
Mark left the group and approached Sally, whom he could see under the magnolia tree talking to the


latest in a surprisingly short line of boyfriends. As Mark looked at them he felt a shaft of unease.


Without being conventionally beautiful Sally, Mark’s sister-in-law, was the most attractive woman at the gathering. She was
sitting with her head slightly back, her hands on the ground behind her, and the thick hair which cascaded almost to her waist
was a most unusual shade of deep red. By contrast a few wisps of auburn in an otherwise unremarkable head of mouse were the
only evidence Claire gave of being Graine’s daughter. Other than her eyes Claire had inherited all that was plain in either
parent. She was taller than Sally but Sally’s model-girl figure and elegant dress sense belied her average height. It amused
Mark now to remember that when he had first met her Sally had been a plain, skinny, awkward but determined child of twelve.


Mark’s unease was on account of the boyfriend. Instinctively he did not like Oswald Bell-Porter, and not just because he found
the name ridiculous.


‘It must be a case of Doctor Fell,’ Claire had commented after Bell-Porter’s first visit. ‘I don’t know why I don’t like him
but I don’t. He’s polite, he’s educated, he’s got a good job and he’s OK to look at, but he’s not for Sally.’


‘Polite but not kind, educated but without humility, good job and no concern for anything beyond the material, good looks
and knows it.’


‘Yes, that’s it exactly. Clever Mark.’

But that was not it, thought Mark, though it was certainly a fair summary. His real objection was that Bell-Porter had a lubricious
mouth and younger sisters-in-law were like younger sisters: you believed them pure, or at least wanted to believe them so.
Even if the wish were not mother to the thought Mark would have risked a large wager on Sally’s innocence. No, perhaps not
innocence, rather on her chastity, he mused. Sally was far from innocent, surely. She occasionally drank too much, could swear
fluently in her received English accent and in her


teens had set out to shock her family with a string of blue jokes, but for all that she emanated a kind of puritanism.


Now his sister-in-law looked up at his approach and smiled. She was wearing a flame-red dress which should have clashed with
her hair and did clash with her politics.


‘Hello, brother-in-law, you’re making me feel guilty. Do you or Claire need any help?’

‘A good time to ask, it’s probably all done,’ commented Bell-Porter as Mark briefly toyed with the idea of finding Sally a
task just for the satisfaction of temporarily parting her from him. ‘Yes it is,’ went on the object of his unkind thoughts.
‘There are Claire and Sam wheeling out the nosh.’


Mark repressed a feeling of irritation at Bell-Porter’s familiar way of referring to his father-in-law, knowing it to be unreasonable
and feeling sure that in any case Sam had invited the familiarity. He amused himself by imagining the expostulation which
would follow if Bell-Porter were to take similar liberties with Aunt Jane and call her by her Christian name. Jane indeed!


‘What’s funny?’ asked Sally curiously.

‘Nothing. Mary, go and help Martha.’

Sally rose. ‘That’s elevating Ozzie to dizzy heights.’

‘Don’t blaspheme, my girl. The vicar might hear,’ grinned Bell-Porter, slapping her bottom affectionately.

Mark turned away in disgust and headed towards Aunt Isobel.

‘That’s a nice young man Sally’s got,’ she greeted him.

‘No, it isn’t. He’s ghastly.’

‘Well, perhaps he isn’t as nice as George,’ agreed Isobel Renwick amiably.

George had been Sally’s escort in her second year at Cambridge and Mark was not sure if Aunt Isobel referred to him now because
she had liked him best of Sally’s boyfriends or because she had merely forgotten the two in between. Mark tried to remember
George, managed a vague recollection of dark curls in an over-long style, and gave up.


‘Who are the other godparents?’ asked Aunt Isobel, removing

her flower-trimmed hat and fanning herself with it. Her white wavy hair, flattened by hat and heat, lay limply but tidily
round her temples. She was not yet sixty but already everyone treated her with that gentleness accorded to the very innocent
elderly.


‘Marianne and Peter Robson. Marianne was at Bristol with Claire. That’s their son Michael playing with Jeremy.’

‘Jeremy doesn’t seem at all jealous of Pippa. That’s nice.’

‘For now at any rate he regards the baby as a bit of a curiosity, certainly not as a rival. Given that there’s four years
between them and that they’re different sexes, it could just last.’


‘Do you really like my hat?’

Mark remembered his earlier comment. ‘Yes, I do. Especially in this sun. It makes all the colours glow.’

Aunt Isobel looked at it absentmindedly and began to play with the flowers which she had added to it in such abundance. Poor
Aunt Isobel, thought Mark involuntarily.


Sally had been four and Claire fourteen when their mother, Graine, had died of cancer. Sam, then on the verge of the business
success which was to bring him such wealth, could afford neither a housekeeper nor to abandon his business and bring up the
girls himself. The result was that the young Claire began to assume responsibility for Sally and for the running of the household
in addition to her schoolwork. Aunt Jane saw and volubly disapproved while offering no solution. Aunt Isobel saw and came
to the rescue.


She offered to give up her small rented house in North London and come to Sussex and keep house for Sam until Sally should
be grown up or Sam remarried or circumstances otherwise change. Sam accepted gratefully and was lectured upon his good fortune
by Aunt Jane.


‘You realise, of course, that my poor sister is giving up her own prospects for you and your family?’

As Isobel was uncourted, of modest means and in unremarkable employment, Sam felt he could live with the guilt. He loved his
younger sister dearly, retained fond memories of how she


adored him as a child and thanked Heaven that it was she rather than his elder sister who was free and willing to help.


Fortunately Jane was sufficiently fearful of becoming involved herself to be reluctant to interfere too much, and the arrangement
proved more than satisfactory. Jane was not spiteful but she was sharp-tongued, severe and exacting. Her husband, good-natured,
unambitious and thoroughly nagged to be otherwise, found what the family privately described as a merciful release in death
while still in his sixties, after which Jane, younger than he by many years, turned all her attention upon her only son Alex,
who responded by leaving home and marrying at the earliest opportunity. His wife, Susan, was a match for her mother-in-law
but was also diplomatic and a modus vivendi more amicable than Jane deserved had been established. She doted on Rupert, her first grandson, but otherwise remained unmellowed
by age.


Meanwhile Isobel became the only mother whom Sally could remember, and to this day she called her Aunt ‘Izzymum’ to her face
even though she called her ‘Poor Aunt Isobel’ to third parties. Sam’s business prospered and Sally enjoyed a childhood marked
by an affluence which Claire only shared in her later teens. Claire had attended the local comprehensive but Sally went to
public school; Claire’s first holiday abroad took place when she was seventeen while Sally was only seven; Sally’s bicycles
were brand-new, Claire’s second-hand; Sally celebrated every birthday with a large party whereas Claire had only been allowed
two friends to tea.


It was therefore a source of both surprise and relief to Sam and Isobel that there should have been not the remotest sign
of jealousy or even wistfulness on Claire’s part. Partly this was because the elder girl had developed a protective attitude
towards her motherless sibling, partly because Aunt Isobel recognised the difference in the circumstances of the two girls
and deliberately set out to minimise it, but mainly it was because Sally, far from growing up spoiled, had demonstrated a
steely determination and a capacity for very hard work.


‘She used to slog away till eleven or twelve at night when Aunt

Isobel would insist she go to bed,’ Claire had told Mark. ‘She didn’t get a scholarship to Cambridge because Daddy could afford
private education – she got it through sheer grit plus a lot of brain power.’


Then, at the end of Sally’s first year at Cambridge, Aunt Isobel startled the family by announcing that she wished to return
to London and resume a life of her own. She had carried out her side of the bargain: Claire had long been married, Sally was
grown up, away from home half the year, confident and successful. Rightly could their father consider his sister’s duty done.
Sam faced the fact that his life would be less comfortable and Sally protested that the house would be empty to come home
to in vacations but to everyone’s surprise Aunt Isobel stuck to her resolution and Sam, feeling both resigned and eternally
grateful, bought her a small house in Hampstead. It was then to no one’s surprise that Sally spent more of each vacation there
than she did in the Sussex house, which Sam himself only occupied to sleep in as his business brought him his next million.


It had been that business which brought Mark and Claire together. She was then twenty-two, a new entrant to the Civil Service
and commuting daily from the family home. Mark, twenty-five and established in a small firm of accountants which had served
Sam’s business from the start was reluctantly visiting him on a Saturday, that being the only day Sam would make himself available.
Claire received him and poured tea, Sally hovered outside the lounge door wanting badly to watch a television programme and
willing them to hurry up. Sam was informal, affable and demanding. The day’s business was concluded at ten o’clock and Claire
offered supper.


‘Sally tells me she is going to be a bank manager.’ Aunt Isobel temporarily abandoned the flowers to break into Mark’s recollections.

‘Sort of,’ agreed Mark with a small smile. ‘She’s going into a merchant bank.’

‘I hope she will be kind to people.’

‘Er … I’m sure she will, but she won’t be dealing with people in the way the ordinary banks do. I mean she won’t be deciding
about overdrafts and current accounts or things like that.’


‘People shouldn’t have overdrafts, dear, but merchants must sometimes if business is going through a bad patch.’

Mark, groping for a reply, was relieved to be interrupted by his father-in-law and amused to see that Sam was carrying a pint
mug of beer from which he now removed a fly. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘you found the beer.’


Automatically they looked over at Aunt Jane, expecting disapproval, but she was talking to the vicar and had not yet noticed
the incongruity of Sam’s pint among the champagne flutes.


‘Claire’s put on a good spread. Glad to see Paul here.’

‘Sorry, Sam, I can see Claire signalling for help. I’ll be back in a moment.’ As he headed for the house he heard Sam say,
‘Nice hat, Izz,’ and smiled as he imagined Aunt Isobel’s pleasure.


‘Pippa’s yelling,’ Claire greeted him, ‘and we need some more bottles opened. We’ll cut the cake in a moment. Jeremy wants
to do it.’


Paul joined them in time to overhear. ‘I suggest Claire deals with the star of the show, you find Jeremy and I’ll get to work
on the corks,’ he told Mark, who amended the proposal by assigning Pippa to himself and hurrying up the stairs, taking them
two at a time as his daughter’s cries became more urgent. Claire had put her in her cot in the boxroom which they had turned
into a nursery, because Jeremy used the third bedroom as a playroom and Claire wanted to keep the fourth for guests.


Pippa quietened as Mark picked her up and held her on his knee. Her face was puce from the exertion of crying and she was
dribbling from one corner of her mouth. Despite Rupert’s assertion that she had ‘been so good in church’ she had bawled throughout
the service and looked as if she were contemplating a repeat performance. Mark reached for a tissue and began to mop up mouth,
chin and bib, the last designed to protect the


christening gown. From the hall below Claire’s voice reached him: ‘OK?’


‘OK,’ confirmed Mark.

‘Very OK,’ he continued softly, gently dandling Pippa. ‘Very, very OK. You’re the sex we wanted, you’re healthy and you complete
our family. You’re perfect and so is Jeremy. We’ve been lucky and you’re lucky. You are loved, wanted and set one day to inherit
part of your Grandad’s fortune. Meanwhile, it’s a great partnership we’ve got, Pippa baby.’


He said the last sentence in a Bronx accent. Pippa closed uncomprehending eyes. ‘You’re fooling,’ he said when he thought
her asleep.


There was no response, her eyelids still firmly closed.

‘No? I apologise,’ murmured Mark as he returned her gently to her cot.

Downstairs he was greeted with a scene of happy anticipation. Paul, about to open another bottle of champagne, was standing
outside with his back to the French window, pointing the bottle at Jeremy and Michael as his fingers slowly coaxed the cork.
Jeremy had his hands firmly over his ears and was staring at the cork in giggling horror, Michael was trying to take refuge
behind Marianne’s skirts and Sam was getting ready to duck. To Paul’s right Claire held a glass ready while behind her the
vicar and both aunts watched the scene, Jane with condescending indulgence and Isobel with childish delight. Sally was smiling,
Bell-Porter looked bored, Peter had paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, while Rupert Fiske looked first at Jeremy,
then at Paul and then back at Jeremy as if following a game of tennis.


The cork popped, and as a fountain of froth followed it the adults cheered and the children screamed. Aunt Jane muttered something
intentionally audible and predictable about expense and waste. Sally, suddenly finding her mane of hair too hot, fished an
elastic band from her handbag and tied the red cascade back into a ponytail.


Michael and Jeremy were looking for the cork while Paul, who had seen it, called ‘Warm’, ‘warmer’ and ‘cool’ as they searched.

Suddenly Jeremy saw it too, screamed triumphantly and raced towards it, intent only on possessing it before Michael. Aunt
Jane turned round to tell him to be quiet, found him nearer than she expected, stepped back startled and upset her lunch over
her new dress.


Instantly she was the centre of concern. Sally sped to get a cloth, Aunt Isobel dabbed ineffectually at the dress with paper
napkins until irritably repulsed, Marianne picked up the plate, the vicar said ‘Oh dear,’ and Ozzie Bell-Porter smiled his
only genuine smile of the day.


Red with anger, Aunt Jane waved them all away. ‘Don’t fuss, don’t fuss, it really doesn’t matter,’ but her angry eyes promised
plenty of fuss when the family was alone.


‘Say “sorry”,’ Paul urged Jeremy sotto voce.

‘Why? I didn’t spill her silly food,’ protested Jeremy between resentment at his spoiled fun and embarrassment at the scene
he had innocently caused.


‘Don’t be rude,’ interposed Sally firmly. ‘Please now do as Uncle Paul tells you and say you are sorry.’ Unlike Paul she had
not lowered her voice, and Jeremy was miserably conscious that his father was about to intervene as well. He stomped off mutinously
to Aunt Jane.


‘Sorry,’ he grumbled.

‘That’s quite all right, Jeremy,’ declared Aunt Jane. ‘You had been made far too excited, that’s all.’ She glared at Paul.

‘My fault,’ he called.

‘Old cow,’ muttered Jeremy now at a distance where he was blessedly inaudible to Aunt Jane but distressingly near the vicar.

Paul joined Mark. ‘Sorry,’ he said with a grimace.

‘Not your fault. If only it had been anybody but Aunt Jane.’

‘Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to ruin anyone else’s dress. Who’s Sally’s latest?’

‘Ozzie Bell-Porter. He was two years ahead of her in the Cambridge Union. Also wants to go into politics.’

‘Ozzie? Short for Oswald?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bloody silly name these days.’


‘What’s bloody silly?’ piped up Jeremy, who had approached unseen as they talked.

‘Jeremy! You’re becoming a positive liability,’ exploded Mark with a frantic but covert glance at Aunt Jane. ‘Stop showing
off.’


‘Why don’t you and Michael put on some old clothes and play in the orchard?’ intervened Paul hastily.

‘Michael,’ called Jeremy. ‘We’ve got to put on some old clothes.’

‘You will have to lend him yours unless his mummy has brought some,’ pointed out Mark.

‘Mine will be too big for him. I’m four,’ announced Jeremy proudly, oblivious to the fact that Michael would be four in a
fortnight and was both bigger and stouter already.


Michael, certain that old clothes meant fun, was already racing towards Marianne. Jeremy, catching his enthusiasm, gave chase.
Relieved, Mark saw Marianne usher both towards the house, stopping for a discussion with Claire en route.


The afternoon wore pleasantly on. The guests sat and talked, some dozing in the hot June sun. Only the vicar left early, pleading
a sermon to prepare for Evensong. Mark and Claire saw him to the car which he had thoughtfully parked where no one could block
him. ‘Didn’t want to start a whole lot of manoeuvres on a Sunday afternoon,’ he commented wryly.


Presently Eric Barton, the next-door neighbour, could be heard clipping his hedge, while further away a lawnmower droned.
Aunt Isobel began to snore gently and Aunt Jane nudged her awake. The men had long since abandoned the formality of jackets
and more than one woman had discreetly removed her tights on a visit indoors. Champagne had been replaced by soft drinks and
most of the company now sat or lay in the shade, Marianne alone preferring the sun, conscious that a tan went well with her
blonde hair. Rupert was looking at her appreciatively while Peter watched him with friendly amusement.


Mark, half asleep, was irritable when Jeremy once again appeared beside him, already tired of the orchard.


‘Can we play in the stream?’

‘No. You know that.’

‘I can swim. I’m four.’

‘Not on your own. Anyway, Michael can’t swim.’

‘We could just paddle.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t argue.’

‘Can we play in the front?’

‘Only if you promise not to open the gate.’

‘Promise.’

‘Good. Off you go.’

‘Can we take Rags?’

Mark sat up and looked around the garden but failed to locate Rags, Barton’s small wire-haired terrier.

‘Has Rags arrived?’

‘No, not yet, but we can call him.’

‘I think you should leave him alone. Mr Barton wouldn’t like him to play in the front. He might get through the gate.’

‘He wouldn’t.’

‘I am not going to tell you again to stop arguing.’

‘I’m not arguing.’

Mark, who had settled back on the grass, began to sit up again in exasperation. Jeremy backed off, his small mouth puckered
mutinously.


‘Well, if we stay in the back can we call Rags?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he will run around everywhere, knocking over glasses, breaking plates, disturbing the guests and probably jumping
over Aunt Jane too, dammit,’ whispered Mark furiously.


‘You said “dammit”,’ accused Jeremy.

Sally began to giggle. Her father came to the rescue.

‘Come on, lad. Your dad’s wanting his rest. Go and play quietly in the front and I’ll come and join you in a few minutes.
Got to go inside first.’


‘And don’t stop at the Hole,’ warned Mark as Jeremy prepared to run after Sam.

‘What is the Hole?’ asked Bell-Porter, immediately proclaiming himself an outsider, thought Mark with unreasonable satisfaction,
for the Hole and its history were famous throughout the family. It had been discovered by Rags when Jeremy was two. Claire,
having gone indoors for a few seconds, while the child was playing in the garden, returned to find him incoherent with excitement
and barking coming from the other side of the hedge. Thereafter each time he went into the garden Jeremy had tried in vain
to peer through the thick foliage and spot Rags until about a fortnight later when the small dog suddenly exploded through
the hedge and ran around the garden pursued by an ecstatic and triumphant Jeremy.


‘How did he get through?’ asked Claire, who then watched to see how he would get back and thus discovered the small hole at
the bottom of Barton’s immaculate and lovingly tended hedge. It did not take Jeremy long to learn to bend down at the Hole
and call Rags’ name, upon which the terrier nearly always came, sometimes being let out when one of the Bartons heard the
boy calling. Somewhat to the surprise of Claire and Mark, Barton faithfully preserved the Hole, which acquired a capital letter,
occasionally clipping around it to enlarge the aperture to accommodate the terrier’s slight growth and to prevent nature obliterating
it.


‘He doesn’t seem to mind,’ Claire told Mark, wondering at her neighbour’s attitude. ‘It must be because he hasn’t any children
of his own.’


Sam’s voice, the Yorkshire vowels still strong despite decades spent in London and Sussex, floated to them on the early summer
breeze as he encouraged Jeremy and Michael. Mark was unsurprised when, a few minutes later, Rags rushed barking through the
Hole and tore towards the party at play in the front garden. Presently he dozed, waking to the rattle of cups to see Claire and Aunt Isobel carrying tea and the remains of the
christening cake. Around him his guests woke up, yawned, eased themselves into sitting positions and consulted their watches.
The children and Sam appeared from the front, Rags at their heels.


In the distance a low rumble foretold a storm.

By half past five, when the sky had darkened and Aunt Jane was certain she had felt some rain, the guests began preparing
for departure. Afterwards Mark was to view the heavy cloud and distant thunder as portents, but at the time he was preoccupied
merely with getting crockery, rugs and loungers into the house before the storm broke.


Marianne scooped up a reluctant Michael while Rupert helped Aunt Jane into his aged Mini. She was to stay with friends near
Winchester until the following weekend when Rupert, his last exam completed, would drive her to Yorkshire where she lived
within a few miles of her son and his family.


Rupert looked mildly flustered as he walked round to the driver’s door; his exeat expired at seven.

‘You’ll do it. You’ve got loads of time. Good luck!’ called Mark, uncertain whether the last related to the expiring exeat,
the forthcoming exams, the safety of his journey or merely the enduring of Aunt Jane within the confines of a Mini for a prolonged
period.


Alec and Sue Fiske left next on the long drive to Yorkshire, while Paul marvelled at the concept of family duty which had
brought them so far for a christening.


The thunder rumbled again and Rags crept inside to sit in the hall. Eventually only Sally, Aunt Isobel and Ozzie Bell-Porter,
who was to drive both women to Hampstead, remained.


Sally was taking crockery and napkins into the kitchen while Aunt Isobel prepared to help Claire with the washing-up. As Bell-Porter
helped Mark with the chairs and rugs, Jeremy ran up to them accompanied by a barking Rags who had regained his courage in
the face of the impending storm. Suddenly Barton whistled from the other side of the hedge and Rags raced home to his supper. Jeremy stood still and Mark laughed at his desolate
expression.


‘He’ll play later. Now everyone’s gone and you can’t hit cups and saucers, why not get your ball? Rags will like it when he
comes back.’


‘Can I play in the front?’

‘May I play in the front? Yes, if the gate is shut. If not, ask Mummy to close it. All those people have gone out in their cars.’


Jeremy ran off happily, then suddenly turned and handed Mark a five-pound note which he had extracted . . .