Northanger Abbey

‘My family. My father gets a little stir-crazy in the city if he’s here too long.’

Before Cat could ask why a grown man’s schedule should be dictated by the preferences of his father, Susie Allen swept through the double doors in an elaborate multi-layered confection of muslins. ‘Cat, darling, over here,’ she called, as if her entrance hadn’t already earned the attention of the whole room. She continued towards them in a cloud of floral perfume. ‘I thought I’d better come and get you. Andrew’s got us an invitation to a preview of Jack Vettriano’s latest show this evening, and it’s over the bridge in some little town in Fife, can you believe it? So he’s outside in the car.’ All the while she was speaking, her eyes were raking Henry from crown to toe, making a mental catalogue of his attributes. She gave him a sultry look that Cat feared was meant to be seductive. ‘And is this your dance partner, Cat? Aren’t you going to introduce us?’

Although she knew she ought not to grudge sharing Henry with Susie, who was the only reason Cat was there in the first place, still she felt a twinge of resentment. ‘Susie, this is Henry Tilney. Henry, this is my friend and neighbour Susie Allen, who has very kindly brought me to Edinburgh.’

Susie extended a hand as if to be kissed. Instead, Henry jumped to his feet and shook it delicately. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, head cocked as if assessing her for the pot. ‘That’s a lovely frock, by the way. I love the way all the layers are cut on the bias so they cascade like a waterfall.’

Susie gave him a shrewd look. ‘Thank you. Are you in textiles yourself? A designer perhaps?’

He laughed delightedly. ‘God, no. I just have a sister, that’s all. Ellie likes to lecture me on the finer points of women’s fashions. She’s got her eye on a design course at the College of Art.’

Satisfied that he wasn’t a gay man in disguise, Susie tucked a hand under Cat’s arm. ‘Sounds like she’d be a perfect pal for you, Cat. I hate to drag you away when you two are just getting to know each other, but we’re on a tight schedule.’

Henry inclined his head politely. ‘It’s festival time. Everyone’s always running to catch up with themselves. No doubt I’ll see you around at the Book Festival. I usually grab a coffee there in the morning.’

‘’Kay,’ Cat said. She followed Susie to the car, completely oblivious to the ache in her feet and ankles.

Amazing. Awesome. Astonishing. Henry Tilney had seen her at her worst, red-faced, sweating and cursing. And still he seemed keen to see her again. That was some consolation for knowing she looked such a mess. Whatever their next encounter might be, she couldn’t look any worse.

4 (#ulink_7759256b-38b9-5315-927c-978f9109f5d3)

Her complete failure to recall anything about Jack Vettriano’s latest collection of paintings was not something Cat was proud of. She’d always admired his work when she’d encountered it on cards and prints. It was the sort of art she could imagine practising herself one day. On any other occasion, she’d have been riveted to see the originals and she’d have snatched at the chance to talk to the artist himself. But Henry Tilney had driven all other thoughts from her mind. She’d even have been hard pressed to remember which town they’d been in, principally because she’d spent the entire journey on her phone researching Henry.

Her first port of call had been Facebook. Disappointingly, Henry didn’t share his information with people who weren’t his friends. And since they had no friends in common, there was nothing she could glean by a more circuitous route. Next she tried Google. There, she did find a Henry Tilney, but since this one was a much-decorated general who had made his name in the Falklands war before Cat had even been born, this obviously wasn’t her dance partner. Out of curiosity, she clicked on the ‘image’ button. Even allowing for the scale of the photo on the phone, the resemblance between General Tilney and her dance partner was so uncanny that the relationship between them was immediately obvious. Father and son, no question about it.

General Tilney had made his reputation on a night operation against the Argentinian ground forces. He’d been a lieutenant-colonel at the time, which Cat thought sounded pretty impressive. In spite of his rank, he’d led the sortie himself, single-handedly accounting for an improbable number of the enemy before finally effecting a single-handed rescue of one of his men who had been wounded and trapped behind enemy lines. ‘Almost superhuman,’ one newspaper cutting said. Clearly not a man you’d want to cross, which possibly explained Henry’s deference to his father’s wishes.

‘What have you found out about him?’ Susie asked from the front seat.

‘What? Who?’

Susie chuckled. ‘Your dance partner. No point in pretending, Cat. I know what you’re up to, tapping away on your phone. What have you found out about Henry Tilney?’

‘Nothing much. His dad’s a general.’

‘General Tilney?’ Mr Allen interrupted. ‘The Falklands hero?’

‘That’s what it says on Google.’

‘He owns Northanger Abbey,’ he said. ‘One of those medieval Borders abbeys. It got turned into a fortified house at some point. I remember a film company trying to rent it for some Gothic horror movie, but Tilney wouldn’t even take a meeting. I can’t imagine him being much of a dancer.’

‘Pay attention,’ his wife scolded. ‘It’s the son we’re interested in, not the General.’

Fortunately for Cat, who was mortified by Susie’s fascination with Henry as all teenagers are by adult interest in the objects of their attraction, they arrived at their destination.

On the return journey, Susie talked incessantly about the guest list, while Mr Allen managed to squeeze in a few comments on the paintings themselves. Left to herself, Cat hit on the brilliant notion of checking out Henry’s sister. What had he called her? Allie? No, Ellie, that was it. Back on Facebook, Cat searched for ‘Ellie Tilney’, but without success. She tried ‘Ellen’ but that didn’t help. She waited for her companions to pause for breath then asked, ‘Susie, what’s Ellie short for?’

‘I’m not sure. Eleanor?’

And so it was that Cat found herself face-to-face with Henry Tilney’s sister. Eleanor had the same thick blonde hair and brown eyes set in pale skin and a finer-boned version of the same features. Like her brother, not exactly beautiful, but striking. There were the usual photos of parties and dimly lit bars, Ellie mugging at the camera with an assortment of young men and women. Cat scrolled through the photos until she eventually came across one of Ellie and Henry leaning into each other at a sepulchral café table with espresso cups in front of them. Definitely the right Eleanor Tilney, then.

She clicked on the ‘about’ button and discovered Henry was indeed her brother. He was also a lawyer, an occupation that would have struck dread into the heart of most seventeen-year-old girls. Lawyer equalled boring, lawyer equalled know-all, lawyer equalled run for the hills. Except that Cat’s brother James had just been accepted as a trainee barrister in a set of chambers in Newcastle upon Tyne and she knew James equalled none of those things. So his profession did not quench her interest in Henry as it might have done with another girl.

Mining Eleanor’s Facebook page offered the information that she had another brother, Freddie, a captain in the army. But there were no other titbits about Henry. Still, at least now Cat knew he was respectable. And in spite of her longings for romance and adventure, deep in her heart she knew respectable was not something to despise. She gazed out at the gathering dusk, remembering the coolness of his hand against hers, the dancing laughter in his unusual eyes and the promised prospect of meeting at the Book Festival. Not to mention a Borders abbey. That was more than enough romance and adventure to be going on with.

The next morning found Cat suspiciously early at the breakfast table. She could barely contain her impatience while she waited for Susie to complete her morning preparations. Cat sat by the window, unable to concentrate on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. She frowned at the clouds hanging low over the distant hills of Fife, wondering if she should read in them a portent of gloom to come.

But by the time Susie finally pronounced herself ready to set off for Charlotte Square Gardens and the tented village of the Book Festival, the clouds had scattered, bathing them in warm sunshine as they climbed the steep hill of Charlotte Street. This time, Cat was determined to subscribe to the pathetic fallacy. The sun shone; therefore only good things could happen to her.

The event for which they had tickets was not due to begin till noon, but Susie minded the lengthy wait as little as Cat did, for it gave her the opportunity to see and be seen. It also provided her with plenty of time to bemoan the fact that she still hadn’t run into any of the legion of friends and acquaintances she knew to be in the city. ‘Honestly, Cat,’ she complained, ‘a more paranoid person than me would think they were deliberately avoiding me. I’ve been tweeting my movements on a daily basis, even texting some of the girls, but somehow we keep missing each other. I really must make more of an effort, if only for your sake, darling.’

But Cat was paying scant attention to Susie. She’d managed to secure them a table with a clear view of the entrance. And if Henry was already listening to Janice Galloway reading or to a pair of historians debating the Arab Spring, he would be unable to leave without her spotting him. She was like a pointer, casting about in every direction for the faintest spoor of Henry Tilney.

Yet it was Susie’s desire that was the one to be satisfied. At the next table, a woman dressed in the Edinburgh cultural uniform of linen and cashmere had been constantly glancing across at them. She would peer for a moment, frown then look away, only to turn back a moment later, her expression uncertain. After a few minutes of this behaviour, she leaned across the table and spoke. ‘Excuse me interrupting,’ she said. ‘But are you by any chance Susan Armitage?’

Susie reared back in her seat, flabbergasted. ‘I was once,’ she said, as if caught out in a misdemeanour. ‘But I’ve been Susie Allen for years. I’m sorry, do I know you?’

The woman had lost her air of uncertainty. ‘I used to be Martha Collins. We used to sit next to each other in Speccy Barton’s French class.’

Susie’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Little Martha Collins? Oh my God, I see it now. How amazing. What are you doing here? And what have you been up to all these years?’

The former Martha Collins picked up her coffee cup and moved to their table. ‘The short version? Married, one son, three daughters, widowed. I’m Martha Thorpe now. I’ve got a little business in interior design. We help people refurbish their period properties, that sort of thing.’

‘Gosh. You’ve had an eventful time of it. Not that I’m complaining. I’ve been very happily married to Andrew for a million years. He’s made his money investing in musical theatre.’ Susie allowed herself to preen for a moment.

‘And is this your daughter?’ Martha nodded at Cat.

Susie looked startled, then guilty. ‘Cat? No, not at all, no.’ A look of pain flickered in Susie’s eyes, gone almost before it could be named. ‘Andrew and I have no children. Cat’s a neighbour from Dorset. We’ve got a house there, it’s where we spend most of our time. London’s so crowded and dirty these days. Even in Holland Park.’

Martha’s eyebrows rose. ‘Holland Park. How lovely. We’re in Crouch End. Even though I have a lot of clients in Chelsea and Notting Hill, I wouldn’t be anywhere but North London. So lively. My girls love it there. Though I wouldn’t wish three teenage daughters on my worst enemy,’ she added with a laugh that sounded suspiciously forced to Cat’s ears. As Martha expanded upon the achievements of her own brood, it gradually dawned on Cat that a previously unsuspected disadvantage of being childless was the lack of weaponry one had against the tidal wave of a proud mother’s conversation. For once, Susie was rendered speechless because she had nothing to chip in with. Really, if the Thorpe children were half as gifted as their mother claimed, the only question in their future would be which of them would be Prime Minister. If Cat had not had her own lively interest in her surroundings to preserve her, she might have lost the will to live entirely.

Then, ‘Here come my dear girls,’ cried Martha, pointing at three fashionably dressed females who, arm in arm, were moving towards them along the wooden duckboards, the swagger of their passage forcing everyone else to detour on to the still-damp grass. They looked as if they’d popped out of the same mould, each having slightly less clean-cut lines than the previous sister. So the eldest had features that could almost be described as sharp, while the youngest still had a puppy plumpness that lacked such clear definition. All three had identical tawny hair and eyes of a blue that is sometimes described as icy but which Cat preferred to think of as Scandinavian, having watched too many subtitled TV detective serials.

The trio, who were giggling at some private joke, made a scant acknowledgement of their mother and pulled up more chairs. ‘Girls, this is my old school friend Susie Allen. Can you believe it’s over twenty-five years since we’ve seen each other?’ Martha’s tone was apologetic.

The eldest raised her eyebrows. ‘I bet you didn’t recognise her,’ she said to Susie.

‘Of course I did,’ Susie said.

Martha butted in. ‘Susie, this is Isabella—’

‘Bella,’ the eldest interrupted, rolling her eyes in a ‘pity me’ expression.

‘—and then Jessica, and last but not least, Claire. Girls, this is Cat – I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your surname.’

‘Morland,’ Cat said.

‘Girls, this is Cat Morland from Dorset. She’s a neighbour of Susie’s, come to Edinburgh with Susie and her husband.’