A Girl’s Guide to Kissing Frogs. Victoria Clayton

said Astrakhan Collar to Gary. ‘If you do not sniff, cry, speak or move until I get off the train, I will give you two pounds. He raised a finger as Gary opened his mouth to say something. ‘Not one syllable more.’

      Gary sat as though entranced for the remainder of the journey. When we were within five minutes of arriving at Haltwhistle, I stood up and began feebly to pluck at my case.

      ‘Sit down,’ said Astrakhan Collar. ‘I will assist you when we reach the station.’

      There was a hint of something almost like violence in his voice, so I did as I was told. When we drew alongside the platform, he went to the window and shouted for a porter. So peremptory was his tone that the stationmaster himself came running up.

      ‘Take this lady and her belongings off the train,’ said Astrakhan. I could not be sure but I thought another note changed hands. The stationmaster appeared in our compartment faster than a genie after a hasty rub of the lamp. My suitcase, Siggy’s cage, the bag of rubbish and I were manhandled off the train. I had no time to express my gratitude.

      I heard a scream of joy. ‘Marigold! My angel!’

      My mother was skipping towards me down the platform.

       7

      I put my arms round my mother and hugged her, registering the familiar maternal scent of orange blossom, joss sticks and damp from the hall where our coats hung.

      ‘Hello, Dimpsie darling.’

      She did not like to be called Mother, Mum or Ma because it made her feel old. She was forty-six, which is certainly not ancient.

      Her eyes glistened with happiness. ‘It’s been such ages.’

      I acknowledged to my shame that it had been. Who can put their hand on their heart and say with absolute truth that they have fulfilled the expectations of a fond parent? She examined me by the dim lights of the platform.

      ‘You look wonderful, poppet, so beautiful and glamorous. But you’re shivering. Let’s run to the car. It’s right outside.’

      ‘Sorry but I can’t. Run, that is. My leg.’

      ‘Oh yes, poor sweet! Is it agony?’

      ‘Not at all.’

      She embraced me again. ‘Well, let’s hop then.’

      She hopped all the way to the exit, laughing gaily, while the stationmaster brought my case and I followed at a more sedate pace with Siggy. The car, a Mini, painted purple and stencilled with flowers in primary colours, was, as she had said, parked at the station entrance, much to the annoyance of the taxis and the local bus. We jerked away. The car was old, the road was slippery with snow and Dimpsie was a bad driver.

      ‘I barely slept a wink last night I was so excited you were coming! You’re looking so gorgeous, sweetheart. I can hardly believe you’re my daughter. You take after your father, of course.’

      ‘Only superficially – look out!’

      The car mounted a kerb and rolled off it with a suddenness that made the chassis judder on its springs.

      ‘Sorry, I can’t see where I’m going. Your case is weighing down the back so the headlights are up in the air. Headlight, I should say. I meant to ask the garage to put in a new bulb.’

      I closed my eyes, envying Siggy’s ignorance of the danger he was in. We headed west to Gilsland and then turned north on the snaking road that climbed to Black Knowe and Reeker Pike.

      ‘How lovely that you’ve got a little holiday, darling. Everyone will be so thrilled to see you. Evelyn rang this morning to ask you to dinner tomorrow night. I don’t suppose you can drive with that leg. I’ll run you across.’

      ‘With or without the leg. I’ve never taken a driving test.’

      ‘Goodness, Marigold, haven’t you? Never mind, I’ll take you about whenever I can. The only trouble is I’m standing in at reception for the moment. The last girl had some sort of breakdown, poor lamb. I tried to get her to do some yoga breathing, but if you’re always in tears you can’t control your diaphragm. Boyfriend trouble I think, but she didn’t confide. Tom was furious.’

      Tom was my father. I felt the car slithering on bends, imagined it plunging over the precipice, turning over and over before crashing into the river and bursting into flames.

      ‘How is Evelyn?’

      ‘Marvellous, as always.’ My mother worshipped Evelyn Preston with the same devotion she had once given to Laetitia Pickford-Norton. ‘She hasn’t changed a bit. I’ve put on weight, my jaw line’s saggy and my neck’s beginning to go, but Evelyn looks marvellous, she hasn’t changed a bit! And she’s ten years older than me.’

      I had noticed that my mother was a slightly more generous armful. I felt mean for noticing but I couldn’t help it.

      ‘She certainly doesn’t look her age. She came to see me in The Firebird. Did you know?’

      Several months ago, Evelyn had nobly taken a cab from Brown’s Hotel where she usually stayed when in London, all the way to Hammersmith, to watch me dance in an absurd costume that shed feathers so fast that by the time Prince Ivan had destroyed the egg containing the soul of the magician Kashchei and set the princesses free I was practically naked, but for a tissue-thin flesh-coloured body suit. Evelyn and I had exchanged kisses and congratulations briefly in my dressing room afterwards before she had rushed to catch a plane back to Newcastle.

      ‘So she did. I’d forgotten. That’s so like her, she’s so loyal to her friends.’

      ‘What did she say about it?’

      ‘She said you were brilliant, far better than anyone else.’ This was both kind and untrue. But what Evelyn knew about ballet could be written on a grain of rosin.

      ‘I suppose Shottestone looks just the same?’

      ‘It’s looking wonderful. How she does it with only a cook and a butler and two daily helps, I can’t imagine!’

      Dimpsie intended no irony. For one thing she was too loyal to be critical of Evelyn, and for another Shottestone Manor was large and ancient and you would have needed a fairy godmother with an inexhaustible wand to run it without staff. One of my earliest memories was of Evelyn’s commanding features bending over my pram. Apparently she had been my first visitor at Gaythwaite Cottage Hospital, my father having been called away elsewhere. She had looked into my cot and said, ‘That baby’s hair is remarkable. You must call her Marigold.’

      Dimpsie had at once agreed, though my father, who liked plain names, had intended that I should be called either Jack or Jill. My father’s personality was essentially combative, but I guessed he had given in because Evelyn’s patronage was extremely useful. As well as being chairwoman of the hospital board and a governor of the little school to which they intended to send Kate, she had a finger in all the local pies. Besides, Evelyn was good-looking, and in those days he probably had designs on her.

      In the days of my youth I had spent almost every day of the school holidays at Shottestone Manor and Evelyn had treated me like a second daughter, something she was fond of pointing out. There was no denying her generosity – not that I wished to, nor that she had been influential in the course my life had taken. Luckily Dimpsie’s nature was not competitive. She had humbly accepted that Evelyn’s rule was absolute.

      ‘It will be lovely to see Shottestone again. And I’m dying to see Dumbola Lodge, too, of course.’

      ‘I’m afraid it’s looking awfully shabby. Tom says we can’t afford to have it redecorated. You’ve got a treat in store, darling. Rafe’s home. You used to admire him so much, remember?’

      ‘Is he?’ I felt a quickening of interest. Admiration was too