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. what will I do?”
    “With Fergus gone, there’ll be plenty for you to do here. You can help Sally.”
    No better than a servant, then, in my own home: that was her plan for me. I ran from the house and made my way down to the riverbank, where Fergus had so often fished. The overhanging trees were stark and bare, frost already forming on the grass. I draped my raincoat over a fallen trunk and sat there sobbing, confronting in all that bleakness the misery Olivia threatened to make of my life. No Fergus to confide in, no schoolfriends to return to, no hope of release. In the end, I dried my tears and resolved not to show any weakness to Olivia, not to give her any hint that she had the better of me. I would bide my time—and escape her yet.
    In the months that followed, life at Meongate hung in a void of financial uncertainty and unspoken animosity. Payne drank away his days and waited for a court action that might add bribery and corruption to his unacknowledged wrongs. Olivia busied herself in consultations with Mayhew that at least distracted her from me.
    Our only other visitor was Payne’s son, Walter, a charmless thirty-year-old who needed but a measure of confidence to be a replica of his father. I avoided all of them and retreated into my private thoughts. When I could, I ventured into Droxford. There, in overheard conversations, I gleaned that Fergus was working as a lift op-erator in a Portsmouth department store (the postmistress had seen him there) and that Payne’s case would come up in April (his conviction was held to be certain).
    On the fourteenth of March 1934, I was seventeen. At Meongate, the event was ignored by everyone except myself. Olivia
     

I N P A L E B A T T A L I O N S
    29
    had gone to Winchester, presumably to see Mayhew. Confined to the house by heavy rain, I entered the library in search of a book to read. I had made more use of it that winter than ever before. That afternoon, I made a new discovery. Pulling out a Walter Scott novel to look at, I noticed a book that had slipped behind the others at the back of the shelf. It was entitled Deliberations of the Diocesan Committee for the Relief of the Poor of Portsea . I opened it at random, thinking I would find it of little interest. But there, at the heading of a new chapter, was the title “Squalor Amidst Plenty”
    and the name of its author: Miriam Hallows, Lady Powerstock.
    There was a dedication as well: “Printed in memory of a fine lady who died as she lived, giving no quarter to complacency.” It had been written by my grandmother, Lord Powerstock’s first wife, the woman Olivia had succeeded. I had looked at her gravestone in the churchyard often enough and wished she could speak to me. Now, here were her words before me.
    I shut the book and hurried upstairs with it, seeking the privacy of my room in which to read what my grandmother had written.
    I had sat down on my bed and was about to open the book when, suddenly, Payne walked in. He was drunk, as always, face flushed and hair awry, collar loose, swollen lips forming uncertainly round his words. I could smell the whisky on his breath from the other side of the room.
    “Olivia tells me it’s your . . . birthday.” He tried to smile, but what emerged was an addled sneer.
    “Yes.”
    “You’re growing up fast.” He swayed across the room towards me.
    I closed the book and lowered my feet to the floor. “I suppose so.”
    He slumped down on the end of the bed: it sagged beneath his weight. “Oh yes. Growing up fast.” He passed his hand across his face, as if to clear his sight. “Growing up . . . into a . . . beautiful young lady.”
    I smoothed down my skirt where it had ridden up beneath me and stared at the floor, hoping he might go if I said nothing.
    “And it’s your birthday. We should . . . should have had a party.”
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    “Oh . . . it does.” He leaned across the bed and slapped his sweaty palm across my left hand where it was