‘You will.’
‘Mags, you may just have to—’
‘I won’t!’ Margaret shouted.
She ripped her earphones out of her ears and stamped to the window, standing there with her back to the room and her shoulders hunched. Then her shoulders abruptly relaxed. ‘Hey!’ she said, in quite a different voice.
Elinor half rose. ‘Hey what?’
Margaret didn’t turn. Instead she leaned out of the window and began to wave furiously. ‘Edward!’ she shouted. ‘Edward!’ And then she turned back long enough to say, unnecessarily, over her shoulder, ‘Edward’s coming!’
However detestable Fanny had made herself since she arrived at Norland, all the Dashwoods were agreed that she had one redeeming attribute, which was the possession of her brother Edward.
He had arrived at the Park soon after his sister moved in, and everyone had initially assumed that this tallish, darkish, diffident young man – so unlike his dangerous little dynamo of a sister – had come to admire the place and the situation that had fallen so magnificently into Fanny’s lap. But after only a day or so, it became plain to the Dashwoods that the perpetual, slightly needy presence of Edward in their kitchen was certainly because he liked it there, and felt comfortable, but also because he had nowhere much else to go, and nothing much else to occupy himself with. He was even, it appeared, perfectly prepared to confess to being at a directionless loose end.
‘I’m a bit of a failure, I’m afraid,’ he said quite soon after his arrival. He was sitting on the edge of the kitchen table, his hair flopping in his eyes, pushing runner beans through a slicer, as instructed by Belle.
‘Oh no,’ Belle said at once, and warmly, ‘I’m sure you aren’t. I’m sure you’re just not very good at self-promotion.’
Edward stopped slicing to extract a large, mottled pink bean that had jammed the blades. He said, slightly challengingly, ‘Well, I was thrown out of Eton.’
‘Were you?’ they all said.
Margaret took one earphone out. She said, with real interest, ‘What did you do?’
‘I was lookout for some up-to-no-good people.’
‘What people? Real bad guys?’
‘Other boys.’
Margaret leaned closer. She said, conspiratorially, ‘Druggies?’
Edward grinned at his beans. ‘Sort of.’
‘Did you take any?’
‘Shut up, Mags,’ Elinor said from the far side of the room.
Edward looked up at her for a moment, with a look she would have interpreted as pure gratitude if she thought she’d done anything to be thanked for, and then he said, ‘No, Mags. I didn’t even have the guts to join in. I was lookout for the others, and I messed up that, too, big time, and we were all expelled. Mum has never forgiven me. Not to this day.’
Belle patted his hand. ‘I’m sure she has.’
Edward said, ‘You don’t know my mother.’
‘I think’, said Marianne from the window seat where she was curled up, reading, ‘that it’s brilliant to be expelled. Especially from anywhere as utterly conventional as Eton.’
‘But maybe,’ Elinor said quietly, ‘it isn’t very convenient.’
Edward looked at her intently again. He said, ‘I was sent to a crammer instead. In disgrace. In Plymouth.’
‘My goodness,’ Belle said, ‘that was drastic. Plymouth!’
Margaret put her earphone back in. The conversation had gone back to boring.
Elinor said encouragingly, ‘So you got all your A levels and things?’
‘Sort of,’ Edward said. ‘Not very well. I did a lot of – messing around. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d paid more attention. I’d really apply myself to it now, but it’s too late.’
‘It’s never too late!’ Belle declared.
Edward put the bean slicer down. He said, again to Elinor, as if she would understand him better than anyone, ‘Mum wants me to go and work for an MP.’
‘Does she?’
‘Or do a law degree and read for the Bar. She wants me to do something – something …’
‘Showy,’ Elinor said.
He smiled at her again. ‘Exactly.’
‘When what you want to do,’ Belle said, picking up the slicer again and putting it back gently into his hand, ‘is really …?’
Edward selected another bean. ‘I want to do community work of some kind. I know it sounds a bit wet, but I don’t want houses and cars and money and all the stuff my family seems so keen on. My brother Robert seems to be able to get away with anything just because he isn’t the eldest. My mother – well, it’s weird. Robert’s a kind of upmarket party planner, huge rich parties in London, the sort of thing I hate, and my mother turns a completely blind eye to that hardly being a career of distinction. But when it comes to me, she goes on and on about visibility and money and power. She doesn’t even seem to look at the kind of person I am. I just want to do something quiet and sort of – sort of …’
‘Helpful?’ Elinor said.
Edward got off the table and turned so that he could look at her with pure undiluted appreciation. ‘Yes,’ he said with emphasis.
Later that night, jostling in front of the bathroom mirror with their toothbrushes and dental floss, Marianne said to Elinor, ‘He likes you.’
Elinor spat a mouthful of toothpaste foam into the basin. ‘No, he doesn’t. He just likes being around us all, because Ma’s cosy with him and we don’t pick on him and tell him to smarten up and sharpen up all the time, like Fanny does.’
Marianne took a length of floss out of her mouth. ‘Ellie, he likes us all. But he likes you in particular.’
Elinor didn’t reply. She began to brush her hair vigorously, upside down, to forestall further conversation.
Marianne reangled the floss across her lower jaw. Round it she said indistinctly, ‘D’you like him?’
‘Can’t hear you.’
‘Yes, you can. Do you, Elinor Dashwood, picky spinster of this parish for whom no man so far seems to be remotely good enough, fancy this very appealing basket case called Edward Ferrars?’
Elinor stood upright and pushed the hair off her face. ‘No.’
‘Liar.’
There was a pause.
‘Well, a bit,’ Elinor said.
Marianne leaned forward and peered into the mirror. ‘He’s perfect for you, Ellie. You’re such a missionary, you’d have to have someone to rescue. Ed is ripe for rescue. And he’s the sweetest guy.’
‘I’m not interested. The last thing I want right now is anyone else who needs sorting.’
‘Bollocks,’ Marianne said.
‘It’s not—’
‘He couldn’t take his eyes off you tonight. You only had to say the dullest thing and he was all over you, like a Labrador puppy.’
‘Stop it.’
‘But