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She felt, moving through the lovely rooms, taking the dogs out for windy walks high above the grey winter sea, that this was what she was meant for, that she had somehow come home.
    So confident was she, so queenly, that when Martin did propose she felt no elation, no sudden lurch of delight and relief, just a warm acknowledgement of the inevitable. It was Boxing Day and they were racing along Seacombe Cliff, shouting into the wind, when he seized her suddenly, breathless and laughing, and said, ‘You will marry me, won’t you?’
    And she said, laughing back, ‘Certainly not!’ and ran away from him, and he knew she didn’t mean it and chased her and pulled her to the ground and pinned her there, on the cold exciting turf under the racing wild clouds, and made her promise. Then he carried her home to Dummeridge and his father opened champagne and whenever she looked across at Cecily, Alice knew she could have made no other choice. She was loved here.
    That night, relaxed and warm and full of power and confidence, she had an orgasm in Martin’s arms. He had one rather later. She was a bit confused – the champagne perhaps – as to why she had had one and how much it had to do with what he was doing to her, which wasn’t, actually, much at the time, but she felt great triumph that her body had taken her over, as she had been so anxious for it to do. It did occur to her that the release that had happened to her body didn’t seem to have overwhelmed her mind at the same time, but she pushed that thought aside, as clearly, if she had had an orgasm with Martin she must be more in love than she thought, which meant in turn that it would, as a feeling, grow. She slept gratefully in Martin’s arms until five, when he gently disentangled himself and went discreetly back to his own room. They met at breakfast in a mood of mutual, and visible, triumph, and Cecily, noting this with inexpressible relief, felt that thirty years of negative life had at last turned a corner.

CHAPTER THREE
    They were married, in 1977, by unanimous agreement, at Dummeridge. Alice’s mother, quite overwhelmed by Cecily, allowed all decisions to be made for her, including a shopping trip to Bournemouth for her wedding clothes. She returned, saying a little fretfully that she had never cared for green, but she was clearly elated, and refused to describe the trip in order to show her husband and her daughter that she too could have her lovely secrets. Alice didn’t care. She went down to Dummeridge every weekend without fail, and made plans – where Martin should look for a job, what kind of house they should seek, where they should go for their honeymoon, what her dress should be made of, what she ought to put on her wedding present list.
    â€˜You mean I can actually ask outright for six cream bath sheets and a Spode blue Italian soufflé dish and a dozen wine glasses and a tin-opener?’
    â€˜I most certainly do. People expect it.’
    â€˜Wowee! Now,’ Alice said. ‘Let’s think what else—’
    Martin was offered a job in Salisbury which he took with alacrity, and not long afterwards Alice and Cecily found a cottage on the edge of Wilton, with three bedrooms and a charming elevated fireplace made from an old bread oven, and an apple tree in the garden. It was May and the tree was luscious with blossom. In June, Alice left the art school, packed up her bedroom in Reading and moved down to Dorset. Her mother, truly wounded now, did not even try to stop her because it was so glaringly evident to everyone why she was doing it. Her father, however, did try.
    â€˜Are you sure,’ he said to her, propping his attractive bulk against the kitchen cupboards and cradling a glass of whisky against his chest, ‘that your head hasn’t been turned?’
    Alice said waspishly, ‘Well, that’s certainly something you would know about.’
    He laughed. He had always