Dan lifted Alexa’s hand to his mouth, and kissed it. He said to Isabel, looking at Alexa, ‘Julian is very keen indeed on your mother.’
Isabel looked away. She thought of saying ‘Yuck’ loudly, but decided to let her expression do the talking instead.
Dan said, laughing, ‘Have you had enough?’
She nodded, pushed her chair back and stood up.
Alexa was looking up at her. ‘Are you pleased?’
She nodded again.
‘It might mean two changes of school.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘And friends, too.’
Isabel thought of Rupert’s invitation to go bowling, in Andover, with a group of them. She was good at bowling. He’d be surprised at how good she was.
She said, rather loftily, ‘I’ll get new ones.’
‘D’you know,’ Dan said to Alexa, his voice admiring, ‘I rather think she will.’
Isabel drifted away from the kitchen and went slowly through to the sitting room. Granddad was on the sofa with a newspaper on his knees and the television on, and his eyes shut. She watched him for a second or two.
‘I’m not asleep,’ George said.
She came further into the room. George opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘They’ve told you, have they?’
‘Yes.’
‘You OK with it all?’
Isabel perched on the arm of the sofa. She swung a foot. ‘I am.’
‘Even though it’s all so vague?’
‘I’d rather that it was vague than horrible.’
‘No more boarding school.’
‘No!’
‘Home every night to your sisters.’
Isabel slid off the arm of the sofa so that she was sitting next to George. ‘Granddad?’
‘Yes, pet.’
‘Are you staying for Christmas?’
George chuckled. ‘It would have been grand, but not this time. Another year, we’ll see.’ He leaned sideways and rapped Isabel’s arm lightly with his reading glasses. ‘D’you know what me and Great-Granddad Eric are doing? Do you? We’ve been asked over to your other grandparents, us four old fogeys in paper hats together pulling crackers. Your granny wants to cook a goose. I’ve never eaten goose in my life. It’ll be something, don’t you think?’
Isabel considered him. Of all her family, he got the gold star for being no trouble to anyone. She thought of the flat in the Marylebone Road and the silk lampshades.
‘D’you want to go?’
He winked at her. ‘D’you know, I don’t mind.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. It’ll educate me. Granddad Eric’ll be shining up his shoes already. Maybe we’ll have a sing-song. I might even’ – he winked at Isabel again – ‘get round to teasing your granny. When we’ve had a couple.’
Isabel smiled at him. She leaned sideways and kissed his cheek. ‘I’m going up to bed.’
‘Sweet dreams, princess. And thanks for lending me your bedroom.’ He put his reading glasses on and picked up the paper on his knee. ‘Look under the pillow when I’m gone,’ he said. ‘You never know what you might find there.’
Isabel pulled her earplugs out of her ears. There were extra sounds from downstairs, not just the usual noise of the twins making a commotion, but someone arriving, the door opening, pleased voices. Isabel laid her earplugs on top of her iPod and swung herself upright so that she could push her feet into her black ballet pumps – they were scuffed enough, now, to satisfy her – and shuffled across the room to open the door.
‘Isabel!’ Alexa was calling. ‘Isabel! Come down. There’s someone I want you to meet.’
She dawdled across the landing and looked down into the narrow hall. Alexa was standing below her, unbalanced by having Tassy on one hip, and Flora was jigging beside her, clutching one trouser leg. A bit further on, by the door, just beyond a wagging Beetle, was a young man with a pinkish face and neat Army hair, in jeans and a waxed jacket, and in front of him was a girl with fantastic hair and truly amazing boots that went right up over her knees, almost to the hem of a white wool coat that wasn’t, really, any longer than a jacket.
Alexa glanced up at Isabel. ‘Darling, come on down. Come and meet Mel. Mel and Freddie.’
Mel manoeuvred herself past Beetle and came to the bottom of the stairs. She lifted the hair off her forehead and let it fall back again, slippery and shiny. ‘Hi,’ she said.
Isabel slithered down two steps. ‘Hi.’
‘You’re Isabel.’
‘Yes.’
Mel put a booted foot on the bottom step and smiled up at her. ‘I heard about school. Congratulations.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’
Mel turned her head and looked back at Freddie. He came forward towards the stairs, Beetle grunting beside him. The two of them stood there, looking up at Isabel. They seemed to her like two people in an advertisement for scent or shampoo, beautiful and gleaming, like perfect pieces of fruit.
Mel said, ‘We’ve come to tell you all something, me and Freddie.’ She glanced at him and giggled. ‘We’ve come to show you …’
She pulled her left hand out of her coat pocket and brandished it, and something flashed in the air, the rainbow flash of a sudden small brilliance.
‘Oh, wow,’ Isabel breathed.
Alexa and Freddie were laughing. So was Mel. Alexa leaned forward, letting Tassy slip unevenly to the floor, and seized Mel’s wrist. ‘You did it!’
‘Yes.’
‘You said yes!’
Mel glanced at Freddie. He said proudly, ‘She did.’
‘Please don’t say she couldn’t resist you.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it!’
‘Actually,’ Mel said, ‘I wanted to. I just – wanted to. It began to feel nothing but perverse, purely perverse, not to.’
The twins were crowding round Mel now, jabbering to see the ring. Isabel slipped a few more steps closer to the bottom. Mel bent so that the twins could seize her hand, and over her back Alexa said to Freddie, ‘Look after her.’
‘It’s all I want.’
Alexa gave him a little smile. She said, simply, ‘You’re a soldier.’
Isabel descended the last few steps.
‘It’s a diamond,’ Tassy announced importantly. ‘It’s a real diamond.’
Mel straightened up and looked at Isabel. She said, ‘You’ll have one of these one day.’
‘Not yet!’ Alexa said.
She put an arm out and took Isabel’s hand. She glanced at Mel. ‘New beginnings …’
Mel nodded. She held out her hand and regarded her ring.
Alexa looked at Isabel. She smiled at her and squeezed the hand she held. ‘New beginnings?’ she said, and she looked very much as if she needed a reassuring answer.
‘Yes,’ Isabel said. She could feel herself nodding and nodding, like some stupid toy. ‘Yes.’
About the Author
JOANNA TROLLOPE is the #1 bestselling author of seventeen novels, including Daughters-in-Law, Friday Nights, The Other Family, Marrying the Mistress, and The Rector’s Wife. She has been writing fiction for more than 30 years; her works have been translated into more than 25 languages and several have been adapted for television. She was appointed to the Order of the British Empire in 1996 for her services to literature, and lives in London and Gloucestershire. Visit her online at www.joannatrollope.com.
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Praise for Joanna Trollope
“[Joanna Trollope’s] books are … like coming home.”— USA Today
“Simply reach for any novel by Joanna Trollope: To do so is to put your finger on the very pulse of Western Civilization —its passions, its concerns, its trends.”— The Globe and Mail
“Wonderfully and compulsively readable. She can be as subtle as Austen, as sharp as Bronte. Trollope’s brilliant.”— Mail on Sunday
“Trollope has shown herself capable of such emo
tional depth, that although you turn the pages quickly, it is with trembling fingers.”
— The Times
“She writes so beautifully in a style so graceful and judicious that you would call it restful if it were not also palpably intelligent.”
— Evening Standard
“[Trollope] aims for the heart… and she hits it.”— The New Yorker
“We grow attached to her characters, whose weaknesses — and triumphs— are our own.”— The Gazette(Montreal)
“One of those rare writers who creates fully human characters living in recognizable worlds doing regular jobs and suffering all the bitter disappointments that flesh is heir to… A writer who seldom strikes a wrong note.”— Kirkus Reviews
“Trollope is a pointillist of domestic relationships. …With well-placed strokes, she brings to life all of her characters.”— The Washington Post
Also by Joanna Trollope
The Choir
A Village Affair
A Passionate Man
The Rector’s Wife
The Men and the Girls
A Spanish Lover
The Best of Friends
Next of Kin
Other People’s Children
Marrying the Mistress
Girl from the South
Brother & Sister
Second Honeymoon
Friday Nights
The Other Family
Daughters-in-Law
Credits
Cover photo © Jan Bickerton/Trevillion
Author photo © Barker Evans
Copyright
THE SOLDIER’S WIFE
Copyright © 2012 by Joanna Trollope
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EPub Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9781443413046
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Originally published in Great Britain in 2012 by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers
First published in Canada by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in this original trade paperback edition: 2012
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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