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particularly one such as yourself …
    Gradually, over the following year, Geoffrey’s name featured more and more regularly in Margaret’s letters, and Emily obviously badgered her for details. Then finally, in a letter dated 20th June, 1924.
    My Darling Emily,
    It has happened. Geoffrey has proposed to me. Last night, in fact, and I simply could not wait to tell you. My dear, I have not been ‘keeping you in the dark’ as you suggested in your last letter. I have simply not been daring to hope. I love him so much that I have not dared to believe that he could love back. And, oh Emily, he does!
    I am the happiest woman alive. Just as you and Harry found each other, I have found my perfect love. And now I promise you, my dearest, incorrigible friend, I shall admit my innermost secrets to you and you may tease me as mercilessly as you wish …
    It was the following year, shortly before Margaret’s wedding, that she wrote:
    My Dear Emily,
    What a lovely, lovely present. How do you manage to crochet as beautifully as you write? The little poem accompanying the antimacassars is exquisite. I intend to have it read out at the ceremony.
    But, my darling, your news is the best wedding present of all. I am so happy for you.
    Emily, forgive me if I am being insensitive – I cannot help but ask. The fact that you inform me of your news so close to your confinement, is it because you are frightened? Please, please, my darling, do not be. You are strong and healthy and you will have a strong and healthy child, I know it.
    The letters that followed were joyful. Margaret returned from her honeymoon, as in love as any woman could be, to discover that Emily had given birth to a boy at four o’clock in the morning on the 25th of February and that Harry had been most inconvenienced by the hour of his son’s arrival.
    I sense that as he smoked four cigars and drank a half a bottle of cognac, Harry cannot have been quite as inconvenienced by the hour as you would have me believe, my darling,
    By now my involvement in the world of Emily and Margaret and Harry and, indeed, Geoffrey, who was also proving interesting, was total. It was early afternoon but I couldn’t bear the thought of stopping to make a sandwich, or even a cup of tea. I read on. And on and on.
    Geoffrey was made a junior partner in his law firm and was doing very well. He bought a house in South Kensington and the antimacassars looked beautiful on the new lounge suite.
    Baby Stephen was walking and talking, and Harry tried to pretend that he wasn’t a doting father but he spoiled the boy rotten. Then the news of another impending birth. James Robert was born on the 9th of March, 1930. Late afternoon, five o’clock, a far more civilised hour.
    Evidently Margaret and Geoffrey were unable to have children:
    Emily, My Dear,
    The copy of James’s christening photograph arrived last week. Already I have had it framed and it stands on the mantel beside Stephen’s. I look at them both in the christening robe and feel so proud of my godchildren. How I would love to hold them in my arms!
    My dear, I sense a certain reluctance to discuss the children in detail as you used to do, and I can only surmise that you are being protective of me. Please do not be. If it is God’s will that Geoffrey and I do not have children, then so be it. It makes Stephen and James even more important to me and it gives me great pleasure to hear of every first step, every first word, every first tooth. You are my family, Emily. You always have been. And now your children are too.
    Not one to dwell on regrets, Margaret obviously poured all of her energies into Geoffrey and his work. Geoffrey was now a senior partner and shareholder in the firm and Margaret created her own career working alongside him in the Central London offices of Brigstock, Gracy & Tomlinson, Solicitors. Theirs was evidently a very close and very cerebral relationship.
    He says I am indispensable, not only to him, but to the firm. I