âI need a wife and you need a future. Will you marry me, Serena?â
She said slowly, âSupposing I fell in love with someone? Suppose you fell in love with another woman?â
âI have had ample time to meet a girl I wished to marryâthe risk is slight. And you?â
âMe? Well, I havenât met many men.â She sighed. âIâm not sure that I believe in love.â
âBut do you believe in liking, in friendship, in sharing your life with someone who shares your interests and enjoys your company?â
She said thoughtfully, âYes, I do believe in that. And I do like you. I donât know anything about you, but sometimes one meets someone and one feels at home with them at onceâlike old friendsâ¦.â
âIndeed, and that is how I feel with you, Serena. Comfortable.â
He smiled at her then, and she smiled back, feeling, for the first time in weeks, secure.
SERENA LIGHTFOOT, awakened by the early sun of an April morning, rolled over onto her back and contemplated the ceiling; today was her twenty-sixth birthday. Not that it was going to be any different from any other day in the year; her father certainly wouldnât remember, Matthew, her younger brother, a curate living some way away and recently married, might possibly send her a card, and Henry, her elder brother, a solicitor and family man, wouldnât give her a thought, although his wife might possibly remember. There was Gregory, of course, with whom she had that old-fashioned thing, an âunderstandingââ¦
She got up then, wasting a few minutes hanging out of the window to admire the view; she never tired of itârural Dorset. Away from the main roads, the village was half hidden by a small wood, the hills were close by and beyond them lay the quiet countryside. The church clock struck seven and she withdrew her head and set about getting dressed, then skimmed downstairs to the kitchen to make the early-morning tea.
The kitchen was large, with a lamentable lack of up-to-date equipment. There was a scrubbed wooden table ringed around by sturdy chairs, an old-fashioned gas cooker flanking a deep sink and a vast dresser along one wall. There was a shabby rug in front of the cooker and two Windsor chairs, in one of which there was a small tabby cat to whom Serena wished a good morning before she put on the kettle. The one concession to modernity was a cumbersome fridge which, more often than not, ran amok.
Serena left the kettle to boil and went to the front door to fetch the post. There was a small pile of letters in the post box, and just for a moment she pretended that they were all for her. They werenât, of course: bills, several legal-looking envelopes, a catalogue or two, and, just as she had expected, two birthday cards for herself. And no card from Gregory. But she hadnât really expected one from him; he had made it plain to her on several occasions that birthdays were scandalously overpriced and a waste of money. Gregory didnât believe in wasting money; her father and brothers approved of him for that reason. Serena wasnât sure of that, but she hoped in a vague way that when they married she would be able to change his frugal ways.
She went back to the kitchen and made the tea, offered milk to the cat and, as the clock struck the half hour, took a tray of tea up to her fatherâs room.
This was a large, gloomy apartment with heavy old-fashioned furniture, closely curtained against the morning brightness. She tweaked one curtain aside as she crossed the room, the better to see the occupant in the vast bed.
Mr Lightfoot matched the room, gloomy and the epitome of a late-Victorian gentleman, whiskers and all. He sat up in bed, not speaking, and when Serena wished him good morning, he grunted a reply.
âA good morning for some,â he observed, âbut for those who suffer as I do, daylight is merely the solace after a sleepless night.â
Serena put the tray down and handed him his letters. That her fatherâs snores shattered the peace of the house was something on which there was no point in remarking. She had long ago learned that the only way in which to live with him was to allow his words to flow over her head. She said now, âItâs my birthday, Father.â