She could see a crisp white apron just behind her. ‘I hope it’s all right, madam,’ said Nanny Bloom, ‘but Pearl spotted you from the nursery window and was so desperate to see you.’

‘Of course she was,’ Agatha said, her tone softening. ‘Come over here, my darling. Come and give Mummy a cuddle.’

Chapter 1

26 April 1930

The cat flattened its ears back, hissing angrily, but thirteen-year-old Pearl ignored the warning. Pulling the doll’s skirt over the cat’s tail and back legs, she rearranged it so that it covered the animal’s lower abdomen. Cleo let out a throaty growl.

‘She doesn’t like it,’ Milly, her younger sister, cautioned.

The sisters were together in the summerhouse, which was at the other end of the extensive gardens surrounding their parents’ home. An old-fashioned building, dating from pre-Victorian times, it had four rooms: a bedroom, a fairly large living area and a small kitchen. There was also a tiny boxroom for storage. Their mother had spent the whole of the previous year, when Pearl and Milly were twelve and nine respectively, refurbishing it for them. When it was finished, it looked better than some of the cottages in the village and, best of all as far as Pearl was concerned, it was the envy of all their friends.

Though none of it was new, the cottage was elegantly furnished. It had a sofa and matching chair in the sitting room, a chest of drawers painted pale grey in the bedroom, lace curtains at the windows, and an assortment of rugs on the floor. The kitchen area had everything they might need for a meal: plates, cups and saucers, pots and pans. Not that the girls cooked for themselves. Even though they considered themselves quite grown up, their mother wouldn’t allow it.

‘But Martha in the kitchen cooks sometimes,’ Pearl had protested. Martha was only fourteen and in service. ‘I’ve seen her boiling eggs and helping Cook.’

‘You are a young lady,’ her mother insisted, ‘and young ladies do not work in kitchens.’ So that was an end to it. Nobody argued with Agatha, so they had to content themselves with Martha bringing a box of food over from the kitchen if they wanted to eat in the summerhouse.

Now the cat, its eyes wide in terror, growled again.

‘Oh Pearl,’ Milly protested. ‘She doesn’t want to dress up. You’re hurting her.’

‘She’s just a cat,’ Pearl snapped, ‘and she’ll do what I want.’ She was putting a bonnet over the cat’s head. Under the skirt, Cleo’s tail swished back and forth.

Pearl and Milly may have been sisters, but they weren’t at all alike. They didn’t even look alike. Of the two of them, Pearl was the stronger personality. Blonde with a slightly round face and green eyes, everybody agreed she was going to be tall and elegant when she grew up. Pearl was confident and authoritative, whereas Milly had a gentler disposition. Slightly on the plump side, Milly had long straight hair that was quite dark, and her eyes were brown. Her mother said her only asset was her pert little nose but, because she was forced to wear glasses, even that was spoiled.

‘Dorothy Parker says, “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses”,’ her mother had told her. At ten, Milly wasn’t sure what that meant but, judging by her mother’s expression, it wasn’t good.

The two girls also had very different tastes when it came to the games they played. Milly enjoyed dressing up in her mother’s old cast-offs. She would don one of her mother’s dresses and parade in front of the long mirror in the summerhouse, or dance to the music of the gramophone and pretend she was at a ball. Right now, she was wearing an old blue and red cocktail dress which was much too long for her, while on her head she wore a white turban with a long ostrich feather at the front. She also had a pair of her mother’s shoes (her whole foot fitted in the toe) which made a very satisfying click-clack sound as she walked about. Pearl never dressed up, and she had some strange ideas about what she considered ‘fun’.

Milly sighed. Surely her big sister was too old to be dressing an animal. Milly gave up doing that sort of thing when she was six. It was beginning to distress her as she watched Pearl put her whole weight onto poor Cleo’s body so that she could force the sleeve of a doll’s cardigan over her front legs. The cat’s ears flattened once more as she tried to wriggle herself away, her back arched.

‘Please, Pearl . . .’ Milly whimpered.

Her sister looked up crossly. ‘Oh, will you shut up!’

And then it happened. With a sudden movement, Cleo jerked her body forward and lashed out with her paws, letting out a loud and angry yowl as she did so. Pearl screamed as Cleo raked her claws down the girl’s face and bit her arm. Milly took in her breath noisily. There was a moment of stunned silence as Pearl let go of the cat and blood pooled on her chin.

Cleo jumped down from the sofa, pausing for a moment to growl angrily as the doll’s bonnet, still tied around her neck, rolled from her head and fell to the floor. Pearl buried her head in her hands and bawled.

Milly was stunned. Her sister never cried. Never!

The cat managed to shake the cardigan off but the ribbons on the bonnet and the skirt remained in place. Milly bent to remove them, but the cowering cat spat at her and bared her teeth. Milly snatched her hand away as she watched Cleo going backwards, putting as much distance between herself and Milly as she could. By the time she’d reached relative safety underneath the chest of drawers, the offending hat was dislodged.

Milly turned her attention back to her sister. Pearl had pressed her handkerchief to her face and was holding it out to inspect it. When she saw all the blood, Pearl gasped.

‘Look what she’s done!’ she shrieked. ‘I’m bleeding to death. I shall have a scar. She’s ruined my face.’ As she leapt to her feet, her expression changed from pain to anger and Milly guessed what was coming. ‘I’ll kill her! I’ll kill the stupid animal.’

Milly made a dash for the door and, as soon as she opened it, Cleo flew outside.

‘Why did you do that, you stupid idiot?’ her sister gasped. ‘Now you’ve let the damned thing get away.’

‘Sorry,’ Milly murmured, although of course she wasn’t one bit sorry. She glanced anxiously at her sister. There was every likelihood that Pearl would lash out and hit her now, but she didn’t regret letting Cleo escape to safety.

Pearl stood in front of the tall mirror dabbing her face. There was a long scratch from her cheek to her chin, but it wasn’t bleeding quite so much now. However, the bite on her arm looked pretty bad. Milly asked if it hurt and, by way of response, Pearl threw herself over the arm of the sofa and howled.

Milly recalled the tale she’d overheard the butcher boy telling Mrs Cunningham the cook. Apparently, Old Sam Clark (whoever he was) found a cat stuck in the ’edge but when he pulled the animal free, it scratched him. His wife had washed the wound and put on a bandage but Old Sam got blood poisoning. ‘Two days,’ the butcher boy said as Mrs Cunningham shook her head sadly, ‘that’s all it took and ’e was a goner.’

Milly was suddenly worried. Supposing Pearl got blood poisoning? Supposing she only lasted two days? ‘You should get that bite seen to,’ Milly ventured. ‘We need to get help.’

‘I can’t walk all the way to the house,’ Pearl groaned. ‘You’ll have to fetch somebody.’

‘But what if you’re a goner by the time I get back?’

Pearl sat up, her eyes wide. ‘Fine, but you’ll have to help me,’ she said dramatically. ‘I think I might faint.’

Milly hitched up her mother’s dress and, putting one arm around her sister, they set off across the garden. As they reached the ha-ha, a steep, manmade dip in the grass, designed to stop sheep roaming into their grounds, she was forced to kick off her mother’s high-heeled shoes. Milly helped her whimpering and tearful sister over the change in ground levels and they continued towards the house.

When they got to the gravel path, they could hear raised voices coming from the house. Milly was walking gingerly. The gravel dug into her feet and it wasn’t easy with Pearl leaning on her so heavily.

‘Sounds like Mummy and Daddy are having an argument,’ Milly remarked.

With a scoff, Pearl pooh-poohed the idea. ‘Daddy wouldn’t dare argue with Mummy,’ she hissed. But sure enough, they could soon make out their father’s strident voice coming through the open French windows of the sitting room. He was speaking in a kind of authoritative tone that neither of them had ever heard from him before.

‘This is one time when I’m having my way, Agatha, so you had better get used to it.’

‘What did you say?’ their mother demanded.

‘You heard me,’ he replied. ‘She is coming here.’

As they crept closer, the two girls saw their mother rising up sedately from her chair. ‘Now you listen to me, Charles,’ she said, her voice cutting the air like a knife. ‘If you think I’m going to disrupt the whole household so that you can entertain your floozy, you’ve got another think coming.’

Outside in the garden, Pearl and Milly froze, all thoughts of Pearl’s wounds suspended. They stared wide-eyed at each other, their mouths agape. Milly made to go inside, but Pearl suddenly pulled her sister under the heavy wisteria boughs and they pressed themselves close to the wall.

‘What’s a floozy?’ Milly whispered.

‘Shhh.’

‘I’m not entertaining her,’ their father said, his tone measured. ‘I’ve already explained to you, she needs looking after.’

‘Think of the scandal,’ Agatha went on, now verging on hysteria. ‘The servants will talk. Good God, we’ve got the fashion show to raise funds for the underprivileged in two weeks’ time.’

‘Agatha, it’s not that important,’ their father retorted. ‘We can give a donation instead.’

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Agatha snapped. ‘It’s far too late to cancel. The world and his wife will be here. Lady Gwendolen Fitzalan-Howard is coming to open the occasion. Have you any idea how many strings I had to pull to get her to come? No, Charles, that woman can’t come here, and that’s final.’

‘I’m not arguing with you,’ their father said resolutely.