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him.’
    ‘He could not have been stopped by anyone.’ Like her father, Amy had tried to take away the taste, had hidden her own terrible anguish from this childish parent and from her sisters.
Eliza, twelve months Amy’s junior, was a sensitive soul, while Margot, not quite fourteen at the time of her father’s suicide, had been far too young to witness Amy’s shock.
‘It really is time for you to mature, Mother. Finding him like that devastated me but, like him, I was unwilling to cause you further distress. We have nursed you for long enough.’
    Louisa focused on her daughter. Of the three girls, this one had the most interesting appearance. Slender yet strong, with dark blonde hair and huge brown eyes, Amy might have been described in
theatrical terms as a show-stopper. Eliza, paler and more ethereal, was possessed of her own fine beauty, while Margot was all sunny smiles and bouncing curls.
    ‘I have to move on, Mother.’
    ‘Move on?’
    ‘Make plans.’
    ‘Ah.’ Louisa stood up and smoothed a skirt that was at least three years old. ‘I am sorry that I have been such a dreadful mother. I am also sorry that I allowed myself to
believe that you were unmoved by Alex’s death.’
    ‘You had your own grief to contend with. We all knew that you and Father had a good marriage.’ This was, without doubt, one of the most awkward moments in Amy’s life.
Attempting to teach a parent good sense was not usually the task of a daughter.
    ‘I depended on him.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Too much, perhaps.’ Louisa picked up her magazine and tossed it into a wooden rack. ‘I shall go upstairs for a while,’ she said evenly. She gazed at her daughter for a
few seconds, then left the room and ascended the flight. She needed to think. But one resolution remained untouchable, non-negotiable. She would never throw herself on the mercy of a man whose
father had taken away property and money at the turn of a card.
    She sat on a wicker chair at her bedroom window, her eyes turned towards Pendleton Grange. She could not see her old home, but she did not need to. Every creak of a floorboard, every sound of a
closing door, every sight and smell was etched deep into memory. Louisa had not set eyes on the Grange for five years. She avoided it like a plague, causing Moorhead to drive the pony and trap the
long way round whenever his mistress left Caldwell Farm.
    Two defining moments, then. The first had arrived courtesy of the German army, the second had been delivered from a pack of cards. The king of hearts had not been good enough; the ace of spades
had won the day. That blackest of cards had been a suitable choice for Thomas Mulligan, now deceased. The king of hearts? Alex had certainly been the ruler of her heart. Now, a dark, secretive
creature resided in luxury at Pendleton Grange, a proud and unapproachable sort with a soft accent that did not match his hard interior, his forbidding face.
    Amy was probably in the right, as usual. The girl had been born sensible, knowledgeable. The more Louisa concentrated on the recent past, the more she realized her own deficiencies. ‘Poor
Amy has been mother to me, to Eliza and to Margot,’ she whispered into the silence. ‘She is not wayward, she is merely direct.’
    Louisa considered her own failings, knew that she should be pulling herself together. ‘But how does one change quickly, radically? What must I do to improve myself? Oh, Alex, where are
you?’ Silly question. Had Alex been here, she would not have needed to change. Or . . . or what if he had remained disturbed, out of order? She would have been forced to alter her ways, had
that been the case.
    She leaned back against the chair’s hard shoulder, thought about her relationship with Amy, with her other two girls. The children had raised themselves, she supposed. Oh, there had been a
succession of nannies and governesses, followed by education at a good private school, but Louisa could not remember spending