The Necklace They Gave Me Last novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Tea With Pauline

Pauline's car was waiting at the curb the next afternoon, a black sedan with a driver who did not look at me.

Dermot had said he would follow in his own car and wait at the gate.

I had said that was not necessary.

He had said, "I know," and he had gone out to start the engine anyway.

The house was quiet when I came up the drive.

Pauline met me at the door of the glass conservatory, in a cream cardigan with her silver hair twisted up, and she opened her arms.

"Oh, my darling girl," she said.

She held on to me for a long time.

I let her.

For one terrible second I wanted to cry into her shoulder, because she was warm, and she smelled like the lavender she wore when I was fourteen and she had braided my hair for my first school dance.

"Sit, sit," she said. "I've had the kettle going since noon."

She poured tea into a pale blue cup and passed me the sugar before I asked for it.

"I want to say it first," she said. "Last night was a disgrace. Your father was under such strain, and Dorian has no gift for kindness. I told Dorian so when he posted that dreadful thing."

"He called me unwell in front of four million people."

"I made him take it down."

I had checked my phone in the car, and it was still up.

I put my cup down without saying so.

"Your father cried in the study last night," Pauline went on, laying her hand over mine. "He won't tell you. His heart is not good, Susannah, the doctors are worried, and he would give anything to have you home."

"Then he can say so himself."

"He's proud. You know he is." Her eyes were wet. "Dorian tells me you have something of your mother's. A necklace."

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