tells me you’re not quite the stray you’d have us think.’
Hannah looked at Emmeline, smiling behind her hands; it wasn’t difficult to deduce the identity of Deborah’s little birdie.
‘What are you talking about, Dobby?’ said Teddy. ‘Out with it.’
‘Our guest has been teasing us,’ said Deborah, voice rising triumphantly. ‘For he isn’t
Teddy lifted his eyebrows. ‘Eh? What’s that?’
Robbie twisted his wineglass by its stem. ‘It’s true enough my father was Lord Hunter. But the title isn’t one I use.’
Teddy eyed Robbie over his plate of roast beef. Denying a title was something he couldn’t understand. He and his father had campaigned long and hard for Lloyd George’s ennobling. ‘You sure you’re not a socialist?’ he said.
‘Enough politics,’ said Emmeline suddenly, rolling her eyes. ‘Of course he’s not a socialist. Robbie’s one of us, and we didn’t invite him so we could bore him to death.’ She fixed her gaze on Robbie, rested her chin on the palm of her hand. ‘Tell us where you’ve been, Robbie.’
‘Most recently?’ said Robbie. ‘Spain.’
Spain. Hannah repeated it to herself. How wonderful.
‘How primitive,’ said Deborah, laughing. ‘What on earth were you doing there?’
‘Fulfilling a promise made long ago.’
‘Madrid, was it?’ said Teddy.
‘For a time,’ said Robbie. ‘On my way to Segovia.’
Teddy frowned. ‘What’s a fellow do in Segovia?’
‘I went to Alcazar.’
Hannah felt her skin prickle.
‘That dusty old fort?’ said Deborah, smiling broadly. ‘I can’t think of anything worse.’
‘Oh no,’ said Robbie. ‘It was remarkable. Magical. Like stepping into a different world.’
‘Do tell.’
Robbie hesitated, searching for the right words. ‘Sometimes I felt that I could glimpse the past. When evening came, and I was all alone, I could almost hear the whispers of the dead. Ancient secrets swirling by.’
‘How ghoulish,’ said Deborah.
‘Why would you ever leave?’ said Hannah.
‘Yes,’ said Teddy. ‘What brought you back to London, Mr Hunter?’
Robbie met Hannah’s eyes. He smiled, turned to Teddy. ‘Providence, I suspect.’
‘All that travelling,’ said Deborah, in what Hannah recognised as her beguiling voice. ‘You must have some of the gypsy in you.’
Robbie smiled, but he didn’t answer.
‘Either that or our guest has a guilty conscience,’ said Deborah, leaning toward Robbie and lowering her voice playfully. ‘Is that it, Mr Hunter? Are you on the run?’
‘Only from myself, Miss Luxton,’ said Robbie.
‘You’ll settle down,’ said Teddy, ‘as you get older. I used to have a bit of the travel bug myself. Entertained notions of seeing the world, collecting artefacts and experiences.’ By the way he ran his flat palms over the tablecloth either side of his plate. Hannah knew he was about to launch a lecture. ‘A man accumulates responsibilities as he gets older. Gets set in his ways. Differences that used to thrill when he was younger start to irritate. Take Paris, for instance; I was there recently. I used to adore Paris, but the whole city is going to the dogs. No respect for tradition. The way the women dress!’ He shook his head. ‘No way a wife of mine would be allowed to get about like that!’
Hannah couldn’t look at Robbie. She focused attention on her plate, moved her food about and set her fork to rest.
‘Travelling certainly opens one’s eyes to different cultures,’ Robbie was saying. ‘I came across a tribe in the Far East in which the men carved designs into their wives’ faces.’
Emmeline gasped. ‘With a knife?’
Teddy swallowed a lump of half-masticated beef, enthralled. ‘Why on earth?’
‘Wives are considered mere objects of enjoyment and display,’ said Robbie. ‘Husbands think it their god-given right to decorate them as they see fit.’
‘Barbarians,’ said Teddy, shaking his head, signalling to Boyle to refill his wine. ‘And they wonder why they need us to civilise them.’
Hannah didn’t see Robbie again for weeks after that. She thought he’d forgotten his promise to lend her his book of poetry. It was just like him, she suspected, to charm his way into a dinner invitation, make empty promises, then vanish without honouring them. She was not offended, merely disappointed in herself for being taken in. She would think of it no more.
Nonetheless, a fortnight later, when she happened to find herself in the H-J aisle of the little bookstore in Drury Lane, and her eyes happened to alight on a copy of his first poetry collection, she bought it. She had appreciated his poetry, after all, long before she realised him a man of loose promises.
Then Pa died, and any lingering thoughts of Robbie Hunter’s sudden return were put aside. With news of her father’s death, Hannah felt as if her anchor had been severed, as if she had been washed from safe waters and was at the whim of tides she neither knew nor trusted. It was ridiculous of course, she hadn’t seen Pa for such a long time: he had refused to see her since her marriage and she’d been unable to find the words to convince him otherwise. Yet despite it all, while Pa lived she had been tied to something, to someone large and sturdy. Now she was not. She felt abandoned by him: they had often fought, it was a part of their peculiar relationship, but she had always known he loved her specially. And now, with no word, he was gone. She started to dream at night of dark waters, leaking ships, relentless ocean waves. And in the day she began to dwell once more, upon the spiritualist’s vision of darkness and death.
Perhaps it would be different when Emmeline moved permanently to number seventeen, she told herself. For it had been decided after Pa’s death that Hannah would serve as guardian of sorts for Emmeline. It was just as well they keep an eye on her, Teddy said, after the unfortunate business with the film-maker. The more Hannah thought about it, the more she looked forward to the prospect. She would have an ally in the house. Someone who understood her. They would sit up late together, talking and laughing, sharing secrets the way they had when they were younger.
When Emmeline arrived in London, however, she had other ideas. London had always agreed with Emmeline and she threw herself further into the social life she adored. She attended costume balls every night-‘White Parties’, ‘Circus Parties’, ‘Under the Sea Parties’-Hannah could never keep count. Emmeline took part in elaborate treasure hunts that involved the pilfering of prizes, from beggars’ cups to policemen’s hats. She drank too much and smoked too much, and considered the night a failure if she couldn’t find a shot of herself in the society pages the next day.
Hannah found Emmeline one afternoon entertaining a group of friends in the morning room. They had shifted the furniture to the edges of the walls and Deborah’s expensive Berlin rug lay by the fire in a haphazard roll. A girl in flimsy lime chiffon, whom Hannah had never met, sat on the rolled rug smoking lazily, dropping ash, watching as Emmeline tried to teach a baby-faced young man with two left feet to
