Two hours later, Hilary landed at Gatwick. From the aircraft window, it was odd to see traffic driving on the left again and the numbers and letters on the car number plates seemed abnormally big.  Frank met her in Arrivals and drove her back to Water Langley.  She hardly spoke and, half way up the A12, he snapped, “What’s the matter with you?  Cat got your tongue?” but she was too unhappy even to respond.

At home, Margaret was washing, ironing and packing.  Hiding her unhappiness to Margaret would be more difficult - impossible - but Hilary wasn’t ready to talk, and Margaret didn’t press her, just hugged her.  Hilary felt the tears welling up inside her, not just in her eyes, not just in her throat, but bursting from her heart and her soul.  She took a deep breath.  “Hello, Mum.  Have you had a good week?”

“Very busy, getting ready to go on holiday,” said Margaret, picking up one of Frank’s shirts and starting to iron it.  “We’re having another Barbara Crisis and Alice came to see me yesterday.”

“Alice?  Alice Newton?”

“We had a really nice cup of tea and a chat in the garden.”

“Alice came to Water Langley when she knew that Constance and John were in Marbella?  Oh Mum!”

“Hil, Alice is my Goddaughter.”

“Constance is so upset about Alice, about her not ringing and not going to see her.  You’ve no idea!”

“Believe me, I have, Hil.  Do you suppose that Connie never speaks to me?  But, I did get Alice to promise to go and see Connie more often.”

“Well, I really hope she does.”

“You’d better unpack your Marbella stuff and get it into the washing machine,” said Margaret.  “I want to get that done before Australia rises and shines and Barbara rings me again.”

Determined to keep occupied, Hilary did domestic chores until the early evening, including preparing the evening meal, which consisted of everything that remained in the fridge, served with a very English salad, lettuce, tomato, sliced cucumber and beetroot, arranged separately on the plates.  Hilary explained to her grandmother how the Spanish mixed the salad vegetables together and used peppers, asparagus, sweetcorn and olives, but Mrs Rayner replied, “That doesn’t sound very nice.”

Just as they were sitting down to eat, Barbara rang from Australia.  “What’s the matter with her?” Hilary demanded, as her mother rose from the table.

Mrs Rayner sighed.  “Your Uncle Brian and your cousins Bruce and Scott.”

They carried on eating.  Frank, who didn’t like salad very much, got up, saying, “Got to put the cases into the car.”

Mrs Rayner shook her head at the two lettuce leaves and slices of cucumber he had left on his plate.  “That’s a criminal, that is.”  Then she got up and took Margaret's plate and cutlery over to where she was sitting by the phone.

“No, Barbara, you mustn’t do that,” Margaret was saying, as she took her plate.  “You mustn’t even think of it.”  Margaret took another mouthful of lettuce.  “You married Brian, for better for worse, for richer for poorer – remember?  I was there, standing right behind you, as your bridesmaid.  Where God has joined, let no man put asunder… Yes, I do believe it, Barbara… No, no!  What do you expect?  You’re fifty three!  Do you really expect it to be like Romeo and Juliet now?”  With the phone tucked under her chin, Margaret cut herself a mouthful of ham.  “No, it isn't.  It isn't for Frank and me either.  We toddle along.  I do the choir and he watches his sport.  We can't be teenagers in love for ever, Barbara!”

They set off for Wells-Next-the-Sea after church on Sunday morning, Frank tapping his fingers impatiently on the roof of the car, as Margaret talked to an engaged couple about wedding music after the service.  “They wanted “A Whiter Shade of Pale”.  Would you believe it?”  Margaret said, as she got into the car at last.  It seemed to Hilary that everybody was talking about weddings.

When they arrived at the hotel in Wells-Next-the-Sea, Hilary had her usual twin-bedded room, with its faded carpet and candlewick bedspread and dark dentist waiting-room furniture.  The only bathroom and toilet for ten rooms was down the corridor.  Dinner, announced by a gong, consisted of soup, followed by roast meat, then pie or fruit salad, all served on heavy white plates, and the only available drink was tap water in heavy, bevelled glasses. 

“It’s so nice that you still come on holiday with your mother and father, Hilary,” said Mrs Burr, the hotel proprietrix, to Hilary's discomfiture.

The Bowles family had been coming to this hotel during the same weeks in July for many years, alongside several other middle-aged couples, whom they had come to know well, although, in reality, it was only the husbands who were the friends.  “I'll leave you girls to have a nice chin-wag!” announced Frank, as he and the other men wandered off to the bar after dinner and, in the lounge, the wives and Hilary stared at each other without interest. 

“Let’s go for a walk,” said Margaret to Hilary, after a polite interval. 

As a child, Hilary had been content to play on the beach and in the sea for two solid weeks.  Nowadays, Hilary and Margaret spent their holiday walking around Wells-Next-the-Sea, searching, in vain, for the sea at low tide, and reading, in baking sun, quite as hot as Marbella.  Margaret said Hilary didn’t read enough and had brought books for her, “Bleak House” and “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” (by Anne Bronte), but Hilary only read newspapers and magazines.  She mulled over her conversation with Andy at Malaga Airport, and, every time she re-ran it in her mind, it surprised and wounded her afresh.  The days blended into each other.  On Saturday, when they had been there almost a week, Hilary and Margaret were sitting on the beach, leaning against a sandbank of coarse, tufty grass, when Hilary's tears spilled over at last.  Margaret wrapped her arm around her shoulders, tighter and tighter as she wept, and handing her one tissue after another from her handbag.  “Is this about Andy?”

In broken sentences, she explained.  “I sort of proposed to him and he said No.  Even in 1976, I shouldn’t have done that.  I should’ve let him do it.”

“Rubbish!” retorted Margaret.  “If we left all the important things to men, Goodness knows where we’d all be!  But it sounds to me, Hil, as if Andy’s being very sensible, a bit too sensible for you, perhaps.”

“I knew we couldn't get married until he’d finished training.  I just thought we could get engaged.”

“Yes, but Hil, love, you are both of you very young, not yet twenty-one.  Yes, I know - it’s what all parents say.  But neither of you have been out with anyone before.  If you got engaged, and things between the pair of you went stale, or one of you fell in love with someone else, it’d be harder for you to take a few steps back.”

The idea of Andy being in love with another woman made Hilary feel sick.  “I don’t know what I'd do without you, Mum.  I love you so much!”

Margaret held her until she stopped crying.  “I love you too, Hil.  You are the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“What shall I do?” asked Hilary.

“Wait, love.  That’s all you can do.  You said it yourself, that you’ve got to wait until Andy’s qualified.  Then you’ll both be twenty-four and that’s quite soon enough to be thinking of getting married.  I didn’t get married until I was thirty-one, as you know.  And… just between ourselves… I once proposed to a boyfriend - not Dad - and he said No.”

Hilary's draw dropped.  “Who?”

Margaret laughed.  “I thought you’d ask that.  I suppose it’s no secret.  Granny knew all about it at the time and I'm sure all Water Langley has worked things out.  It was Bill Macready.”

“But wasn’t he supposed to be celibate?”

“Yes, and that was why he said No.”

“But didn’t you know he was celibate?  Oh, Mum, would you rather not talk about it?”

Margaret shrugged.  “I was desolate at the time, but it’s all in the past.  Yes, I knew he was celibate.  He went round telling everybody, from the moment he arrived in Water Langley, that he was devoting his whole life to God.  But he was young and everyone thought he’d grow out of it.”

“But it wasn’t very fair of him to go out with you, if he intended to be celibate, I mean.”

“We weren’t officially going out.  Also, I made all the running… I was very forward for a 1950s girl, I suppose, but he was twenty-five and I was nearly thirty.  He said he loved me in a Christian sense only, although he liked kissing and cuddling just the same as all other men.  He was at Water Langley for two years and then, when his curacy was up, he got posted to Northern Ireland.  That’s when I proposed to him.  I wanted to go with him.”

“Oh Mum!”  Hilary squeezed Margaret's hand.

“We had a terrible row.  I loved Bill more than I'd loved any man and I know he loved me.  We could’ve been very happy together.  I'm sure of that, even now, but it wasn’t to be.  I married Dad, and here we are.”

“Poor Mum.”

Margaret looked at her watch.  “We’d better get back for dinner.”  They got up, brushing sand from their clothes.  “Don’t the Newtons arrive back from Marbella today?”

“Yes.”

“After dinner, ring up Andy and have an ordinary chat.”

Hilary smiled uncertainly.  “All right.”

Back at the hotel, the husbands could hardly tear themselves away from television room and the Montreal Olympic Games to eat dinner.  Hilary ate very little, and, after the meal, every muscle in her body quaking, she made her way to the hotel payphone. 

“I'm just going across the road to post some post cards,” said Margaret, as Hilary pulled open the payphone door.  “I'll give you a bit of privacy.  See you in a minute.”

Still quaking, Hilary rang the Newtons’ number.  Their plane should have landed at Gatwick mid-afternoon but the ring tone rang out for about two minutes.  It was strange that you could always tell when a phone was ringing into an empty house.  Deflated, Hilary was just replacing the phone, when a man charged into the hotel, stormed across reception and wrenched open the payphone cubicle door, almost pushing Hilary to the ground.  “I must have the phone!” he was shouting.  “I must call an ambulance!  I’ve just knocked someone over in the car.  A woman … by the post box.  Oh God, oh God!”

Hilary ran the door and down the hotel drive.  In a moment, Margaret would appear from around the corner, asking if she had been able to contact Andy… wouldn’t she?