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.Porters swarmed all over the platform, pulling at the peaks of their caps, sharp eyes on the lookout for the sweetest bit of business, the unwary traveller.Her father stood up at once, sliding back the door of their first-class carriage.He adjusted his hat with the air of a man accustomed to getting things done.Before he reached the bottom step, his left hand was already raised, half in summons, half in greeting.He moved rapidly along the platform, his gold-topped cane swinging in elegant rhythm with his footsteps.‘Come along, girls,’ their mother urged.Her voice was tight, the edges of her words jagged.May was already standing, fixing her bonnet without a word.Their mother tugged at her gloves, glancing irritably in the direction of her other two daughters.Neither moved.Hannah decided to count to ten before she even opened her eyes.Eleanor sat still, paralysed in equal measure by terror and delight at her sister’s bravado, drawing strength from her tightly held hand.‘Eleanor, do as I say – at once.’Hannah gave her sister’s hand an extra little squeeze of encouragement and opened her eyes.She looked innocently at her mother.‘Are we there yet, Mama?’Eleanor stifled a giggle.Her mother blinked rapidly.She pulled sharply on the drawstrings of her reticule, refusing to meet her eldest daughter’s eye.‘Please don’t be childish, Hannah.Gather your things.Your father’s gone to get a porter.’She swept angrily out of the carriage, ushering May down the steps in front of her.Hannah watched as the feathers of her mother’s hat brushed against the top frame of the narrow doorway.They bobbed wildly for an instant, their careful arrangement distorted into sudden parody.A blue peacock’s eye drooped sadly, then swayed drunkenly back to its proper position again.That moment, out of nowhere, Hannah was assaulted by a feeling of sudden, raw pity for the departing back.She could see, with a fleeting, startling clarity, all the secret years of disappointments, measured by her mother’s small step, by the unyielding set of her shoulders.Eleanor’s cheeks were pink with suppressed laughter, her eyes shining.But when she turned back to Hannah, her sister seemed to have gone away from her.She was suddenly somewhere else.Her gaze was fixed on something in the distance, her expression had become blank again.Eleanor had seen so much of this in recent months that she now knew not to ask.She was too young, she’d understand when she was older, she wasn’t to worry.She’d grown tired of her sister’s responses, all of them the same, all of them filled with nothing, empty of reassurance.Quietly, she gathered up her book, her gloves, her ridiculous straw bonnet, and waited while Hannah smoothed her dress and pinned the crown of her travelling hat to the thick coil of hair they had plaited together that morning.Finally, Hannah turned away from the mirror and gestured towards her mother, now waving at them furiously from the platform.‘Let’s go, Ellie, and get this over with.’She led the younger girl towards the door, where a porter’s outstretched hand helped them both safely down the steps.Hannah kept her eyes lowered as they made their way up the platform towards the exit.She felt the familiar lurch in her chest as she thought about this life which others had decided for her.Once level with their mother, both girls stopped and waited obediently for her to take the lead.‘Hannah, do look up.’Hannah did as she was told, startled by the unexpected change in her mother’s tone.It was no longer sharp; there was no sense of that edgy, unspoken anxiety that her eldest daughter was about to let the family down.Instead, the words had come almost as an appeal, with an undertow of resignation, a new sense of enduring the inevitable.Hannah was surprised: she had thought that those feelings were hers and hers alone.She searched her mother’s face, but could find no clue there, no change in the familiar expression.Her chin was resolute, her grey eyes directed down the platform as she searched for her husband.He was by now well in front, having made his way through the knotty crowds, a porter respectfully by his side.He had stopped just before he reached the barrier, waiting for his wife and daughters to catch him up.Hannah could see nervousness locked into every line of his body, in the way he pulled at his moustaches: first the left, then the right.She felt a hot surge of indignation as she looked at him.She was glad that he was suffering.She wanted him never to forget the last time his family had stood on this platform; she felt cruel enough to hope that he could still feel the shame of it all.Beyond her father’s slightly stooped shoulders, Hannah could make out the familiar outline of Constance MacBride – broad, squat, vastly hatted, apparently unchanged after five years.She was the one who had changed, Hannah realized, with a sudden, surprised stab of revelation.From thirteen to eighteen is a long time: enough to change from child to woman, enough to know the world a little more.From sixty-five to seventy is nothing, surely, just a very small proportion of a very old and unsurprising life.Beside Constance stood a tall, solid-looking figure, a man dressed in a black frock coat, already tipping his stovepipe hat to Hannah, his eyes, even at this distance, searching out hers
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