But as Laura walked up to her, Sybil moved backwards, and Laura followed her heavy body in its starched dress into the living room. Sybil sat on the corner of a sofa, and nodded at Ann, who had followed them up. ‘Do bring tea now,’ she said.
Laura said how much she had wanted to talk to Sybil, feeling that surely Sybil would appreciate this appeal to her judgement. But Sybil said nothing. Laura said that Giles and Alistair had been in touch, hoping that this mention of other members of the group might move them onto common ground. ‘Alistair’s article was quite unforgivable,’ Sybil said. Laura knew that he had covered pages of a Sunday newspaper with his views on Edward’s disappearance and anecdotes about their friendship, but she had not had the stomach to read it. ‘If you haven’t read it, don’t,’ Sybil said.
‘Why did he do it, do you think?’
‘Fame. Edward’s made him famous. He’s everywhere now – the spy I knew, my friend the traitor.’ There was such bitterness in her tone.
‘But he isn’t a traitor – you know that, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ Sybil said. But her voice was strange. It was as though she was deliberately echoing the willed blandness of Laura’s voice. Surely that was not possible. Tea came and Laura drank a little. She asked how Toby had found Mrs Last, and how the children were, and Sybil asked about Rosa and the birth. There were pauses between sentences, and gradually Laura had to accept that this went beyond Sybil’s usual stiffness. ‘Toby’s having rather a hard time of it,’ Sybil said at last. ‘He had been hoping to move into the House of Lords soon, you know.’
Laura should have felt resentful, perhaps, that Sybil seemed to be putting her husband’s career above Laura’s husband’s very existence. But she did not feel resentful. She felt ashamed, realising that the horrible mystery that surrounded Edward had made her a blot on Sybil’s world, that her presence now was an embarrassment or worse. She muttered something sympathetic, and was not surprised when Sybil did not respond. Instead, Sybil asked her a question. ‘Did you know Robin Muir?’
‘I remember the name, someone from the embassy. Yes, I met him to ask for Edward’s leave—’
‘That’s right – rather senior chap. His wife’s an old friend of the family. He died two weeks ago.’ Laura tried to voice condolences, but Sybil went on talking. ‘His wife says he had a heart attack when he saw the news about Edward. He died of it. And Lord Inverchapel is very ill. He’s been ill for years, of course, but this has pushed him over. They say he won’t be long for this world.’
Not long for this world. It was a phrase that seemed very unlike Sybil, as though she was moving into a kind of tragic cliché. Again, Laura tried to say how awful such news was.
‘Isn’t it?’
Now Laura recognised that the intimacy she thought they had found that day in Patsfield amounted to nothing; Laura was beyond the gates, she was the outsider. She could never be forgiven for the path Edward had taken away from the group, away from Sybil’s certainties and traditions. There was no bond, no loyalty now between the two women, and Laura felt the break of it as she walked to the front door and went alone and vulnerable down the broad white steps to the waiting car and the dazzle of the flashbulbs.
It was nearly three months after the birth that Laura and her mother went to Dr Turner together with Rosa, for a check-up. Dr Turner was pleased with Rosa: ‘Bright as a button,’ he said as she made pursed faces at him. But he was not pleased with Laura. Laura was startled into self-consciousness as he took her pulse and asked her questions about her diet and sleep and commented on her thinning hair and dull skin. She had spent the last few months focused on Rosa rather than on herself, and it was only now under Dr Turner’s frowning scrutiny that she realised she was failing at her own work of femininity, that she had forgotten about the face she turned to the world.