you’ll have to stand in for Mrs Gladwin, and do the cooking.’
Lou had seen this coming a mile off, and she had no real objections. But the word ‘please’ would not have come amiss, she thought wryly.
‘Shouldn’t Ellie do it?’ she suggested straight-faced. ‘Convince him that she has all the wifely virtues?’
‘He’s more likely to run out of the house, screaming,’ Marian said, with one of her rare glimmers of humour. ‘Ellie could burn boiling water. Not that it matters, of course,’ she added, reverting to briskness. ‘When she’s married, there’ll be staff to attend to that kind of thing.’
‘Of course there will,’ Lou murmured. ‘Silly me.’
There’s staff here too, she thought. And I seem to be it.
‘So that’s settled, is it?’ said Marian. ‘You’ll cook tonight’s dinner? I thought you might do that mushroom soup you’re so good at—and an orange sauce with the ducks.’
‘Fine,’ Lou said equably. ‘And, having done so, am I expected to join this quiet family party?’
Marian hesitated for a micro-second too long. ‘But of course. If you’d like to. It’s entirely up to you, naturally.’
Lou took pity on her. ‘Actually, I think I’ll pass. Odd numbers and all that. And anyway, I have to go out. There’s a rehearsal at the village hall, and I need to get these costumes settled.’
Marian’s eyes took on that slightly glazed look which appeared when village matters were under discussion. Marian was a big-city woman. She liked the idea of a weekend country home—something to mention casually in conversation, and invite people to—rather than the reality of it. And she took a minimal part in local activities.
‘Well, just as you please,’ she said, adding, ‘Lou, dear,’ as an afterthought. ‘And see if you can find something for Ellie to do, would you?’ She attempted a silvery laugh. ‘She’s getting absurdly nervous, silly girl.’
Left to herself, Lou replaced the loft ladder thoughtfully. She didn’t mind being part-time caretaker in the house where she’d been born and keeping it pristine for the occasional descents from London by the rest of her family. But sometimes she felt a flicker of resentment at being taken so much for granted.
But it wouldn’t be for much longer, she thought, giving herself a mental shake. Because she too was getting married, and would be moving to the tall Georgian house in the main square which belonged to David Sanders, her future husband, who would be furious if he discovered she was acting as head cook and bottle-washer again.
‘They’re just using you, darling,’ he told her over and over again. ‘And you’re too sweet to mind.’
Lou had never regarded herself as particularly sweet, but it was nice to hear, she acknowledged contentedly.
She shrugged. ‘It’s no big deal. And it gives me something to do when you’re away.’
David worked for the regional office of a national firm of auctioneers and valuers. A recent promotion had involved him in a lot more travelling, and attendance at a series of courses in London, which had left Lou to her own devices more than she cared for, if she was honest.
Her own day job was working as a paralegal at the leading firm of solicitors in the nearby market town. The plan was that she would go on working until they started a family.
She loved the sound of that. Loved the thought of the future they would have together. It seemed to her that there had never been a time when David had not been a part of her life. They’d played as children, fought and made up again as teenagers, and rediscovered each other when he came back from university. And for the past year they’d been unofficially engaged.
It would have been put on a formal footing with a party for family and friends but for the sudden death of David’s father, and his mother’s subsequent refusal to cope with anything that approximated to ‘happy’.
‘She will come to the wedding, won’t she?’ Lou had asked at one point, with a faint irony that was lost on David.
‘Of course,’ he’d said, kissing her. ‘She just needs time, that’s all. Be patient.’
Secretly, Lou found patience difficult with David’s mother, whom she suspected to be milking widowhood for all it was worth. For one thing, it provided her with an excuse not to leave the family home, which now technically belonged to her son, and move to the bungalow in Bournemouth that she was to share with her sister. Something which had been planned forever, but which now seemed to have been shifted to the back burner.
But it would have to happen sooner or later, Lou assured herself. Because she was congenitally unfitted to share a roof with Mrs Sanders, and David knew it.
So, for the time being, she occupied Virginia Cottage in peace, most of the time, occasionally allowing herself memories of the time when she’d lived there with her mother, enjoying much the same placid existence, with her father coming home at weekends from Trentham Osborne, the independent publishing company which he ran in Bloomsbury.
But following Anne Trentham’s shocking and unexpected death after a two-day illness from a strain of viral pneumonia, Lou’s whole life had changed. She had been sent away to boarding-school, and her holidays had been spent with Aunt Barbara, her mother’s only sister, her big farmer husband and their rowdy, kind, loving family.
But no sooner had she become adapted to this new set of circumstances than they changed too. Her father, his eyes sliding away in embarrassment, had told her that he was getting married again, and she would have a stepmother and sister. Ellie would be going to the same school, and the rest of the time would be divided between the flat in London and Virginia Cottage.
In retrospect, Lou could see that her father had been involved with Marian long before her mother’s death, and that Ellie might well be her half-sister, but by the time she was old enough to realise this, it no longer seemed to matter that much. Marian could be kind enough when she remembered. And Ellie—well, Ellie truly deserved David’s epithet ‘sweet’.
She was blonde like her mother, but lacked Marian’s statuesque build. She was small, blue-eyed and shy, with a pretty, heart-shaped face, in total contrast to Lou, who was taller, and thin rather than slender, with a cloud of unruly dark hair. Lou had pale, creamy skin, and long-lashed grey eyes that were undoubtedly the best feature in a face that she herself dismissed as nondescript. And she had learned, over the years, to appear calm and self-contained.
At school she had soon found herself Ellie’s unofficial protector, and she seemed to have carried this role into their adult lives, although, admittedly, she didn’t see as much of her stepsister these days, as Ellie lived and worked in London as a copy-editor for Trentham Osborne.
And now, with amazing suddenness, Ellie was going to be married, and someone else would be looking after her. Someone called Alex Fabian.
‘I met him at the office,’ she’d confided to Louise only a few weeks before. ‘Apparently he’s a banker, and Daddy and he were doing some kind of business deal.’ She frowned. ‘I didn’t think he’d really noticed me, but he rang the next day and asked me to go to the theatre.’
‘Terrific,’ Lou said absently, focusing rather on the words “business deal”. ‘Is
