To Carve Identity

By Susan Steggall

Novels traditionally end with a ‘happily ever after’. To carve identity begins with a ‘happily into the future’.
In 1949 Ellie Gilmartin returned to her native Glasgow after travelling to Australia to learn the truth about her parents’ tragic lives (The heritage you leave behind, 2021). If her professional career as a sculptor was progressing nicely, her private life was in limbo as she reflected on her long-distance relationship with solicitor Jim Blackwood. Fortune smiled on Ellie. Jim came looking for her and so their future began.
The novel follows these two very different people as they negotiate married life – first in London, then in the NSW Hunter Valley town of Maitland. For Jim, marriage represents companionship, stability and family. For Ellie it is more complicated: how to be wife, mother and professional sculptor in mid-twentieth-century regional Australia. That she succeeds is due to determination and a belief in her talent but at story’s end she must truly fashion her own identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Steggall
• Release date: Mar 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9780987494450

Susan Steggall

http://steggalls.com

Book preview

Chapter 1

Clouds as grey as Ellie Gilmartin’s mood hung over England as the ocean liner approached the coast. By the time the ship arrived at Southampton Docks misty rain had all but obliterated the landscape – so different to the day she had arrived in Sydney under a clear blue sky only six months earlier in October 1948. She had gone to find out why her mother, Finella, returned to her birth country of Australia leaving two-year-old Ellie in Scotland with her war-damaged father, Aidan, and his devoted sister Agnes. Now Ellie had come back to resume her life as a sculptor.

Ellie made her way to the station to continue her journey to Glasgow. The train travelled through fields crisscrossed by dry-stone walls and dark hedges. In the distance, she could see the remains of a bombed-out church – a sad reminder of the thousands of British dwellings destroyed during World War II. The train halted in towns whose old buildings and narrow streets hemmed in the railway stations. Everything was drab, colourless – houses, people and sky – or so it seemed to Ellie. She had come to love the Australian countryside with its unruly eucalypt forests and honey-coloured sandstone escarpments. She had delighted in the careless luxury of the wide roads and rambling gardens surrounding red brick bungalows in country towns.

At Glasgow’s Central Station, she gave a taxi driver directions to the suburb where her aunt lived with her new husband, Dr Peter Jameson. Ellie opened their gate, mounted the steps to the front door and rapped on the brass knocker. The door opened and Agnes rushed out.

‘It’s good to see you again girl. Come inside.’

‘Steady on Agnes,’ came a masculine voice from the hallway. Ellie looked over her aunt’s shoulder to see Peter Jameson’s familiar bearded face and bulky figure. He embraced her warmly before taking her suitcase.

Ellie took a bottle of wine from her bag. ‘I’ve brought you this. It’s from the Hunter Valley, in New South Wales, and supposed to be very good.’

‘We’ll have it with dinner,’ Peter replied. ‘I’ll show you to your room.’ Ellie followed him up the stairs to a white-painted bedroom furnished with a four-poster bed and matching dressing-table on which sat a vase of spring flowers. Ellie was grateful that it looked nothing like her bedroom in the house of her childhood.

‘I’ll leave you to freshen up,’ Peter said.

Ellie checked her appearance in the long mirror, tucked several strands of chestnut hair into her chignon. She put on a fresh blouse and applied lipstick before re-joining the others.

It was easy to slip into a conversational game of ‘What, who and where.’ Agnes regaled her with the latest marriages, which brought a smile to Ellie’s face. ‘Aunt, don’t start that please!’

Agnes’ roast lamb and treacle pudding went well with the full-bodied Australian wine. Peter took a cautious sip. ‘It is quite different to French vintages.

‘There’s been a grape-growing tradition in the Hunter region since the nineteenth century. Australians are very proud of their wines.’

Peter took another sip. ‘I could get used to it. Always happy to try something new.’

Once the dishes were cleared away, Agnes’s face took on a worried expression. ‘Ellie, I know you have many questions for me – and we must talk about the old house – but can we leave it until tomorrow please?’

‘Of course.’ As Ellie reached over to kiss her aunt on the cheek, an odd feeling passed over her. It was as if, for Agnes, nothing had changed. Perhaps on the outside, she, Ellie, looked the same person who had set out from Glasgow with such optimism and zeal to right the wrongs done by her father to two Australian corporals in World War I, but she wasn’t the same on the inside and could never be again. ‘Of course,’ Ellie repeated. ‘Later will be fine. See you in the morning.’

It was a minute or so before Ellie remembered she was in a bedroom at her aunt’s place, not her own in The Terrace. She closed her eyes to re-align herself with this new reality and to conjure up Jim Blackwood’s open, caring face, piercing blue eyes and fair wavy hair. There was no formal understanding between them. The hostile, very public, clashes with her mother’s relatives in Australia had taken such an emotional toll that it had been impossible to express her feelings for him until it was too late.

She relived their brief farewell kiss at Maitland’s railway station, pictured the last-minute streamers they had shared between ship and shore at Circular Quay. The paper garlands had snapped as the ship moved away from the wharf but, Ellie hoped, the invisible threads that had begun to weave a bond between herself and Jim would hold strong.

Ellie got out of bed, shivering in the coolness of the Scottish spring although the sun was peeping through the clouds. She turned her face to its weak warmth, wondering whether the moon was shining in Australia. Reluctantly she turned away from the window to dress and face her aunt.

In the kitchen, the kettle was whistling on the stove, an aroma of freshly toasted bread in the air. Agnes wiped her hands on a perfectly starched apron covering her ample figure and primped her iron-grey hair with nervous fingers before greeting her niece.

‘Good morning,’ Agnes said, brightly. ‘Peter was called out to a sick child. It’s just the two of us for breakfast.’

Ellie brushed a light kiss on her aunt’s cheek. ‘I have so many questions and I was very angry when I discovered the lies about my mother, Finella, and baby brother dying here in Scotland instead of in Australia.’ Ellie glanced out the window at two sparrows building a nest in the apple tree. ‘Perhaps it’s the long sea voyage and its buffer of time… but… I’m not so angry, now.’

‘What about Aidan and those two Australian soldiers?’ Agnes interrupted, clenching her hands. ‘It wasn’t bad, was it?’

‘Yes, it was. Instead of protecting them he sided with his commanding officer and betrayed them.’

At the sight of her aunt’s crestfallen face, Ellie felt a surge of pity for the older woman. Agnes would have to live with the guilt of her mendacity, so perhaps Ellie could be magnanimous in her forgiveness. ‘

Now that you are settled with Peter, I’d like to sell the old house as quickly as possible. We could visit it this morning before I see a real estate agent.’

‘But what will you do then? You’re welcome to stay with us for as long as you like.’

Inwardly Ellie shivered at the idea. She’d become used to her independence, free of Agnes’ suffocating control and had no intention of relapsing into that situation. She covered these thoughts in a show of purpose.

‘I sent Alexander Dunsmore, Head of Sculpture at the Glasgow School of Art, a telegram from Nice to let him know I was returning to Scotland and received a favourable response from him at Gibraltar. He has a teaching position that will suit me. As soon as the house is sold, I plan to rent a flat in town,’ Ellie said firmly. ‘I also intend to take up that offer to study sculpture at the Slade School of Art in London, which I had to put on hold – if they’ll still take me.’

An image of the larger-than-life figure of Alexander Dunsmore rose in Ellie’s mind. His sandy whiskers, old fashioned tweed suit and worn Scottish brogues represented the traditions of Ellie’s student days – a world that she wasn’t sure she could re-enter.

There was an air of neglect to Ellie’s family home: empty garden beds; the path littered with leaves. She unlocked the front door and turned on the light. Inside there was also a feeling of abandonment, not helped by seeing the hallway and living room bare of adornment. It was natural that Agnes had taken all her possessions to her new life, but the emptiness only added to Ellie’s impression of no longer belonging.

Agnes must have sensed this too. She began pulling back curtains and plumping up the cushions on the two remaining lounge chairs. ‘It’s a very comfortable house,’ she said in an uncertain tone. ‘You should get a good price for it, especially now that Glasgow is on the way up again. You do want to sell Ellie?’

‘Yes, more than ever Aunt Agnes. I don’t belong here anymore, especially after finding out my life was a lie.’ Ellie heard her aunt’s sharp intake of breath, but she could not take back the accusing words – did not want to.

In the kitchen, the pots and pans hanging on their hooks looked like relics from the past. Ellie turned her back on them and walked upstairs to her bedroom. Here she greeted with pleasure the bright rug and bedspread, the prints on the wall, the sculptures she had created as a student, the clothes in her wardrobe. ‘I’ll be taking all these as soon as I’m settled,’ she said turning to Agnes who remained at the doorway. ‘I’ll need to clean the house too.’

‘I’d like to help,’ Agnes whispered.

Ellie acknowledged this with a tilt of her head. ‘If there’s anything of Aidan’s you want – his war service mementoes for example – please take them. I want nothing of my father’s, nothing at all. Just as he…’ her voice trailed away with an unspoken condemnation of Aidan who had erased his wife, Finella, from his life. Ellie had put that ‘heritage’ behind her. ‘I’ll go and see the agent straightaway. I want this finalised as soon as possible.’

Making her way to the Glasgow School of Art the next morning, Ellie felt again, the peculiar twin sensations of never having been away and of being a stranger. Pausing on the corner of Renfrew Street she looked back over the city, its old stone buildings surrounding George Square, enjoying the quirky turrets that adorned many structures, the legacy of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his highly original dreams for Scottish architecture. Ahead of her was the reassuring sight of the plum-coloured buildings of the art school. A flash of bright pink Rhododendron blossom brought a smile to her face as she remembered the riot of colour the previous year. She picked a sprig and threaded it through the top buttonhole of her jacket.

Pushing open the heavy front door also brought on the sensation that the real Ellie was somewhere else, out of her body, looking down at a stranger. She walked up the stairs to Alexander Dunsmore’s office. At her knock on the door, a gruff ‘Come in’ sent her spiralling back to the past.

‘Miss Gilmartin.’ Alexander Dunsmore was smiling. ‘Sit down and tell me about your adventures, although…’ he looked at his watch, ‘I’m sure they are so numerous they might take a long time.’

‘Yes,’ Ellie laughed. ‘I won’t bore you with details. Let’s just to say I found out more than I bargained for about my parents. But that’s all in the past now. I want to look to the future and take up my career again – if I can,’ she ended.

‘We have a place for you – your previous employment but without the administrative work,’ he replied. ‘You were an excellent teacher, and we have more students than we can handle. Spend a week getting used to the place again before you start officially.’

‘That would be perfect,’ Ellie exclaimed, ‘but there is one matter…’

‘The offer you received last year from the Slade School of Art?’

‘Yes, but I don’t want to turn my back on your generosity.’

‘How about giving us until Christmas, before you think of setting out for the delights of London?’

Ellie’s face broke into a wide grin. ‘That would be wonderful. Couldn’t be a better plan if I’d thought of it myself.’

Chapter 2

Ellie pushed open the door of the art school, excited and nervous to be there. She climbed the wide wooden staircase worn smooth by countless generations of students to the staff common room. She donned her work apron and headed for the sculpture studio – a long, high-ceilinged space furnished with rows of heavy timber tables. Busts of anonymous men dressed in approximations of Roman and Greek attire graced rows of shelves around the walls above cupboards in need of a coat of paint. The studio’s saving grace was the series of large windows along both sides that allowed natural light to flood in.

From a wooden chest in one corner, Ellie picked out a block of clay, juggled it from hand to hand, assessing its cool velvety-smooth weight, the old urge to create welling up strong and fierce. She would not aim for anything too ambitious. Perhaps model a conventional bust. As Ellie began to shape the wet earth, her fingers, as they had so often done in the past, took on impulses of their own. She closed her eyes to summon the face that meant so much to her. Losing track of time her fingertips formed the amorphous mass into a life-sized human head. When she opened her eyes, she had modelled a fair likeness of Jim Blackwood.

Moving back from the piece, Ellie narrowed her eyes in critical fashion. It wasn’t quite right – the jawline needed strengthening, the brow some re-modelling. How to convey the colour of his eyes?

She covered the unfinished work with wet hessian and placed it on a high shelf out of harm’s way.

When the terracotta bust was completed and fired, she positioned it on a shelf so Jim would watch over her. To quell the now familiar anxiety that she might never see him again, she turned to the tableau piece she had begun – a group of three androgynous forms that owed much to Giacometti’s elongated upright figures. It wasn’t quite what she visualised in her mind’s eye but would perhaps evolve in the hours ahead. While waiting for a set of test-glaze tiles to dry, an image of the craggy escarpments and wild bush of the Hawkesbury River appeared before her. She could almost taste the lemony tang of eucalypt forests, feel the warmth of the summer sunshine.

Perhaps she could work with human figures in landscape, use wood and clay – include openings in her pieces, like Barbara Hepworth – to express her growing attachment to the southern continent. Ellie hurried to the chest where the clay was kept and took out two blocks, one of pale earthenware, the other of ruddy terracotta. She set to work, kneading and pulling. Soon, she had a shape about half human height, unlike anything she had made before. It was as if a living being had emerged from forms ancient at the dawn of creation. She began a second piece. This time a cloaked and hooded figure appeared, again as if hewn from the same primal rock.

Next, she manipulated the Giacometti look-alikes into creatures semi human, of the natural world. She ran her fingers over their surfaces, grainy like sandstone. At a polite cough she looked up to see Alexander Dunsmore watching her, a quizzical expression on his face.

‘Something has changed you, hasn’t it? Keep going. Push it as far as you can.’ He wheeled around and left as suddenly as he had come, leaving a bemused but exhilarated Ellie leaning on the workbench, as if her slender body were too frail for the power of inspiration pulsing through her.

It was a race against time to finish her sculptures for the annual summer exhibition. For several weeks she arrived early at her workbench and left late – as much to finish her pieces as to avoid spending too much time with the Jamesons. Ellie wanted to get on with life, and that meant away from her aunt’s cloying behaviour. ‘You’d think being married would be enough of a new life for her,’ Ellie said to the clay portrait on the shelf above the benches.

Although Jim Blackwood gazed down at her with what, to a fanciful Ellie, seemed like a sympathetic grin, she felt a strange hollowed-out feeling, her emotions compressed into a small remote space. On her way to visit a flat recommended by a real estate agent she passed young lovers embracing on a park bench and felt a longing for Jim that left her spent.

The flat had two bedrooms and was on the third floor of a recently renovated block not far from the centre of Glasgow. Inside, the walls had been freshly painted in pastel colours that complimented the art deco panelling. The landlord had even installed a showering device over the bathtub. The rent was higher than she had bargained for, but if she budgeted carefully and rented out the second bedroom she could manage. She would ask her painter friend Faye if she’d be interested.

‘I’ll take it,’ she said to the agent. ‘I would like to move in as soon as possible please.’

Ellie was so busy with classes, tutorials, and the lectures on contemporary sculpture that Alexander Dunsmore had asked her to present that she had little time to confront the problem of Jim Blackwood. They had exchanged letters concerning the details of her inheritance from her mother, nothing of a personal nature. In his latest letter Jim wrote he was taking time off, travelling, and would perhaps visit her in Glasgow. She sent him an aerogram outlining her plans for the coming year, only to receive a reply from the legal firm’s receptionist that Jim had left Maitland for New York to attend a conference; no forwarding address.

Leaves littered the footpaths, and the days were shortening. On the BBC News, weather reports predicted a cold winter. It rained most of the time.

‘I am so sick of this weather,’ Faye grumbled one wet Sunday afternoon. ‘You’ve told me before but tell me again. Why did you come back to this miserable climate after the blue skies of Australia?’

Ellie glanced up from the novel she was reading. ‘I had to come back for several reasons. In Sydney I was offered part-time tutoring but I needed the good money I can earn here so I can study in London.’

Faye looked suspicious. ‘That’s one reason. You said several?’

Ellie went to the window, keeping her back to Faye. ‘It’s quite complicated really. I have no permanent attachment in Australia – at least not until Finella Cottage becomes officially mine. I met some wonderful people but members of Finella’s family were quite unpleasant. It was a difficult situation.’

‘Come and sit down. I can’t to talk to your back.’ Faye persisted. ‘What about men? Weren’t there any interesting ones? I’ve seen photographs of Australian servicemen. They look handsome and good fun.’ She scrutinised Ellie. ‘Why, you’re blushing. So there was someone. Ellie Gilmartin you certainly are a dark horse.’

‘No, it’s nothing like that!’ Ellie protested and bent her head to her book so Faye couldn’t see the anguish in her eyes. When she dared look up, the expression on Faye’s face said, ‘I don’t believe you.’

A letter arrived informing Ellie that she could take up her postponed studies at London’s Slade School of Art after Christmas. Keeping her own bedroom rather than rent it out was a luxury she could just afford but she would probably return to Glasgow after her year in London if she heard nothing from Jim. By the beginning of December, she had completed her pieces for the end-of-year exhibition – a continuation of her theme of monolithic figures in an ancient landscape.

On the last Friday afternoon of term, a handful of students were completing their final artworks and Ellie was in demand for assistance with all manner of technical problems. When the stragglers had finally gone, she began putting the finishing touches to her biggest piece for the exhibition – a frieze of figures simplified and stripped of detail against a backdrop that evoked the ranges rimming the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney.

Suddenly Ellie sensed something or someone reaching out to her. She looked up to see the stocky figure of Jim Blackwood, dressed in a tweed suit, hat in hand, standing in the doorway. Ellie blinked and shook her head, as if to verify that what she was seeing was real and not a trick of the light. She fixed her gaze on him, lost in the blueness of his eyes.

‘Hello Ellie,’ Jim said.

‘How… how did you get here? Why didn’t…’ Ellie put a hand to her chest to still her wildly beating heart.

‘By aeroplane. It was the quickest way. Can I come in?’

‘Aeroplane.’ Ellie swallowed hard. ‘Please come in. Where? I’ve...’ She broke off, unable to find words in the wonder of the moment. It seemed so natural that Jim was here and yet the most remarkable thing in the world. She wiped her hands on her apron and touched her hair, leaving a streak of ochre on the side of her face. ‘I’ve been working all day. I must look a sight and…’

‘Best sight in the world. What were you going to say?’ Jim seemed to be waiting for Ellie to make the next move.

‘I sent you a letter in October, but Miss Davis wrote back that you’d gone to America.’

Jim put his hat on a nearby stool, his expression uncertain. ‘I took leave from the office after you left to have some surgery on my shoulder. The recovery took longer than expected. I… I didn’t want to put it in a letter. That’s one reason why I didn’t write.’

‘Other reasons?’

‘I thought our friendship was developing into something much deeper. That perhaps… we… but you left Australia in such a hurry I thought you might want to leave everything that happened behind you, including me.’

‘What about the streamers at the wharf? Wasn’t that?’ Ellie gripped the bench. ‘All this time, I thought you’d forgotten me. But now you’re here. I can’t believe it.’

‘Please do believe it.’ Jim grinned, visibly relaxing. ‘I’ve travelled halfway around the world to find you. I’ve applied for a position in London working with Australian veterans and went to New York as an observer to a Geneva Convention conference on POWs. I then spent a couple of weeks sightseeing. Can’t say I enjoyed it, by myself.’

‘I haven’t been alone. You’ve been watching over me all this time.’ Ellie looked up at the terracotta bust. ‘When we parted at Maitland station, I made some sketches of you. It seemed only natural to try a three-dimensional piece in clay.’

Jim moved towards her just as two students barged into the studio. They looked from Ellie to Jim and back again. ‘Excuse us, Miss, we need some white underglaze.’

‘It’s in the cupboard over there,’ Ellie replied, pointing, her eyes not leaving Jim’s face.

The students set themselves up at a bench and settled in.

‘Can we go somewhere quiet?’ Jim asked. ‘Is there a park nearby?’

Ellie glanced at the rain streaming down the windows. ‘It’s Scotland need I remind you? We could go to the Willow Tea Room. It’s just around the corner, in Sauchiehall Street.’

Jim ran a hand through his thick coppery-fair hair. ‘I’d forgotten about European weather.’

As he followed her out of the studio, he put a tentative hand on her face to wipe off the clay. She leant against his hand and felt a quickening response. At the sound of footsteps on the stairs Ellie moved away, not quite ready to share her happiness with others.

She put on her coat and picked up her umbrella. ‘We’ll need this,’ she said, linking her arm through Jim’s. He leaned over and kissed her shyly on the cheek. For a fraction of a second Ellie breathed in the tweedy smell of his clothes before kissing him on the lips. When they broke apart Ellie gave a small skip of joy.

‘I hope this tea-room place is quiet because I have an important question to ask you.’

‘Yes.’ Ellie’s heart began to sing, knowing what her answer would be.

‘It’s a special place,’ she said, pushing open the door of the Willow Tea Rooms, ‘designed by our most famous architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, like the art school.’

Jim nodded although he was taking no notice of the café’s elegant high backed ebony chairs and graceful fin de siècle woodwork, instead keeping his eyes fixed on her.

‘Mackintosh’s wife Margaret Macdonald did a lot of the interior design,’ Ellie continued. ‘She was a leader of the Glasgow Style – a very talented artist.’

A waitress led them to a corner table. There was an awkward moment when Jim pulled out a chair for Ellie. She stumbled and grabbed Jim’s arm causing him to collide with a potted plant.

‘Oh dear,’ he said, his face red. ‘That wasn’t very elegant.’

Ellie laughed in delight and blew him a kiss.

Jim reached across the table and took her hand. ‘I’m planning on staying in Britain for a while. It all depends. Would you?’ He appeared lost for words.

Ellie covered his hand with hers. ‘Say what you want to say.’

‘I know it’s a bit sudden, but this is what I’ve been dreaming of for months. I don’t want to spoil it by saying the wrong thing.’

‘You are a lawyer, Jim Blackwood. I’ve never heard you say the wrong thing.’ Ellie tightened her grip on his hand, conscious of the smoothness of his skin, aware of hers roughened by contact with plaster and clay. ‘You’ve come halfway across the globe. Aren’t you going to ask me that question?’

Jim glanced around. The people in the tearoom were deep in their own conversations. ‘Eilean Gilmartin, will you marry me?’

‘Of course I will. I’ve already said yes.’

Jim looked perplexed even as he laughed. ‘Ellie! I wonder if I’ll ever keep up with your quicksilver mind.’

‘Yes, please do!’

‘That reminds me,’ Jim said letting go of Ellie’s hand. He fished in his coat pocket, bringing out a leather jewellery box. ‘I have something for you.’ Once again, he hesitated, as if searching for words. ‘I needed to give you this regardless of your answer.’ He opened the box and took out a rose gold ring with a star-shaped diamond in its centre, flanked by a pattern of small stones set in delicate white gold filigree. ‘It’s Finella’s engagement ring. The Robertsons sold it, but I tracked it down. We’ll buy another ring of your choosing if you want to… but… this is … for you…’

Jim slipped the ring onto the fourth finger of Ellie’s left hand. By some miracle, or higher destiny, it fitted perfectly.

‘Jim. Oh Jim, you are the most amazing human being.’

He grasped her hand and held it against his face. His voice was unsteady. ‘I thought – I hoped – you’d like it.’

Neither moved, lost in the joy that had taken hold of them. At a quiet ‘ahem’ from a waitress, Ellie reluctantly removed her hand from Jim’s and looked at her watch. ‘We’d better be going. I have to pack away my things in the studio. You are coming with me?’ came out more as a command than a question.

‘I don’t want to let you out of my sight.’

Chapter 3

Ellie led Jim back to the art school and up the stairs to the sculpture studio where she covered the piece she had been working on with wet hessian and put it in a cupboard.

‘This is very new to me, seeing you here in your own environment.’ Jim walked over to inspect one of Ellie’s rough-hewn terracotta pieces, a cloaked and hooded figure emerging from a primal landscape. He brushed his fingers across its pitted surface. ‘I’m not sure I understand what you’re doing but I’m willing to learn.’

Ellie blew him a kiss. ‘We both have a lot to learn.’

‘All our lives in which to do it,’ Jim replied. ‘Starting with dinner tonight. Will you dine with me at my hotel? I’m staying at the Grand Central.’

Ellie’s laugh was pure joy. ‘Our first proper date.’

She switched off the studio lights and put her arms around him, tightening her embrace as Jim pulled her closer. He leant to kiss her, tentatively at first, then with mounting confidence. Ellie responded, her need answering his. She pressed against the taut muscles of his rib cage, felt his heart pounding. When, finally, they broke apart, they looked into each other’s eyes, drowning in the depths they found there.

‘I didn’t have much of a role model for a happy marriage when I was growing up,’ Ellie whispered, against Jim’s hair. ‘I hope I am up to the responsibility of loving you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Looking after your love, loving you,’ she replied earnestly.

Jim burst out laughing. ‘In most circumstances it is usual for a husband to look after his wife.’ He kissed her again, lightly this time. ‘My situation wasn’t much more instructive than yours. My parents were happy together but because Mother died when I was nine, ours was a very masculine household. We’ll just have to work it out for ourselves.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll see you home and come back at seven.’

‘It’s not far,’ Ellie replied, taking his hand again. ‘The rain’s stopped so we can walk.’

After a lingering kiss at the entrance to her building, Ellie raced upstairs to the flat and pushed open the door, tripping over the mat.

Faye emerged from the kitchen. ‘Good heavens,’ she exclaimed. ‘What’s up?’

Ellie held out her left hand on which Finella’s diamond sparkled. ‘I’m engaged.’ If she hadn’t been so overcome with happiness, she would have laughed at the open-mouthed amazement on her flatmate’s freckled face.

‘What!’ exclaimed Faye. ‘This morning you go off to art school a career woman determined to finish a piece of sculpture and you come home with a ring on your finger.’

‘His name is Jim Blackwood. He’s Australian. It’s a long story and I haven’t got much time and he’ll be here at seven to take me to dinner.’ The words tumbled out in a rush.

‘Ah. He was your solicitor, wasn’t he? As I said a while back, you are a dark horse, Ellie. You told me all about your ordeals in Australia but gave away nothing of your feelings.’ Faye pushed stray strands of curly auburn hair away from her face before folding her arms. ‘You are not budging until you tell me more.’

‘Although our relationship was initially one of lawyer and client, we started to care for each other when I was in Maitland, but everything was so complicated, and I had to come back to Glasgow to confront my aunt. There didn’t seem to be room for anyone else. However…’

Faye prodded Ellie back to their conversation.

‘Jim came to Sydney to see me off on the ship, and that’s when I understood it could be serious between us. Because I left Maitland in a hurry, I felt it was up to Jim to make the next move.’ Ellie knew she wasn’t being very logical – or chronological – but it was the best she could do. ‘So… It’s not as if I’ve been sitting around waiting for him – I’ve been busy with my work.’ She stood up and moved towards her bedroom. ‘What am I going to wear?’

‘Ellie Gilmartin, you are a strange and lovely woman. The teal taffeta. It goes well with your eyes. Although by the sounds of things he won’t care what you are wearing.’

‘Faye!’

‘Oh, I don’t mean he’s going to rip your clothes off. He sounds too much of a gentleman for that. I mean he must be very much in love with you.’

‘Faye, you are the best friend in the world.’ She whirled in circles her arms raised high in the air. ‘The world is wonderful. I’ve found the most wonderful man and…’

‘Stop it!’ Faye protested. ‘If you say wonderful one more time