The hall at Hopesay Manor was thronged with people sipping champagne and eating canapés. By the staircase stood the most massive Christmas tree Marianne had ever seen, sparkling with white lights that segued through the colours of the rainbow and back to white in a way that would have looked tacky if they’d been attached to the outside of a council house in Peckham, but here looked immensely graceful. Marianne found herself mesmerised by them. At least it gave her the pretence of something to do. After a perfunctory introduction to half a dozen people Marianne had never met before, Luke had deserted her. Establishing incredibly quickly that she had absolutely nothing in common with the two women he’d left her with (Clarissa, who cared for nothing except her horses, and Stella, who wanted only to talk about hedge funds), Marianne had made her excuses and disappeared into the crowd. She’d wandered about forlornly before hiding herself by the fire in the corner of the vast drawing room, trying not to look too much like a wallflower, wishing that Luke wasn’t proving so elusive.
