and yet he still thinks he’s the young ox he was thirty years ago.’
‘Let me go and help them,’ said Jack, feeling guilty at being a mere spectator.
‘No, don’t,’ said Charlie, clamping his hand onto Jack’s arm to stop him. ‘There’s nothing worse than stripping a man of self-belief in his abilities. Trust me, I know this. He’ll struggle, but he’s always been so very capable.’ Then he added on a sighing breath: ‘No one so proper, so capable as Anne.’
‘Who’s Anne?’ asked Bridge, brows dipping in confusion.
‘That’s a line from Persuasion, isn’t it?’ said Mary.
Charlie was impressed. ‘How clever of you to recognise it.’
‘Anne Elliot,’ said Mary, explaining for the benefit of the others. ‘She’s a character completely in the background, forgotten, overlooked, who gets her second chance with the man she loves, the dashing Captain Wentworth. It’s he who says the line because he knows she’s someone to be totally relied on. It’s my favourite book of Jane Austen’s. Everyone always goes on about how fabulous Mr Darcy is but compared to Captain Wentworth… whoof.’ The sound was heavily loaded.
‘It’s my favourite of hers too. Isn’t it marvellous?’ gushed Charlie, delighted to have found a fellow Austen fan. ‘Can you remember the part of the story when Wentworth says the line about Anne being capable, Mary?’
‘Of course I do.’ Mary’s eyes glittered.
‘It’s when we readers find out he still has feelings for her.’ Charlie smiled a smile of literary joy.
‘No, that’s when he puts her in the carriage with his sister because she’s tired. His will and his hands put her there. Oh my, you can just imagine him helping her in, can’t you, Charlie? His hands on her waist as he lifts her.’
Mary’s smile was as broad and reached all the way up to her eyes. Jack couldn’t ever remember seeing his meek PA so animated before. Then again, he couldn’t imagine she had cause in the office.
Charlie clasped his hands. ‘Yes, of course you’re right. And when his declaration of love is made in that letter… oh my!’ He began to quote as if he were Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic.
‘You pierce my soul, I am half-agony, half-hope—’
Mary took over: ‘Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.’
‘You see, Wentworth feared that Anne’s feelings for him were dead, at the point when his for her are too big to contain,’ Charlie enlightened a bemused Jack and Bridge.
‘There is no more romantic book ever, anywhere,’ said Mary. ‘Anne is such a lovely girl, sitting on that spinster shelf, invisible, unable to truly move on from her one and only love who flirts in front of her and she’s only in her mid-twent—’ Mary stopped abruptly, realising she might as well have been talking about herself and Jack. Then she scrambled to find something else to say because her sudden halt made that conclusion even easier to jump to. ‘…twenties, which is absolutely no age. But back then it was… a very different ballgame to be single like Anne.’
‘That was always my nickname for Robin: Annie, after her,’ said Charlie with a fond expression. ‘Because there is no one more capable than him. No one.’
‘I was a Heathcliff girl myself,’ said Bridge with a sniff. ‘But then, I’ve always been attracted to twats.’
‘I’m sure we have a copy of that book upstairs in the room,’ said Jack. ‘There’s a sort of reading corner with a chair and—’
Charlie interrupted him. ‘Oh, Jack, would you go and get it, please? I’d love to read it while I’m here.’
‘Okay,’ said Jack and promptly headed upstairs.
‘You have to read Persuasion, Bridge,’ urged Mary.
‘And I will now, I promise. You’ve sold it to me.’ Bridge had really taken to this young woman and felt as if she’d known her so much longer than she had. She turned her attention back to the window. ‘Well, they’ve made it to the car. They’re having to clear the snow so they can get in the door. I can’t tell where it starts and they end, they’re all white blobs.’
Jack came back downstairs, handed the book to Charlie. It had seen better days and the corners of the spine were frayed but at least the pages seemed to be all there.
‘Thank you, Jack,’ he said, clutching it to his chest. ‘I feel as if you’ve just given me an early Christmas present.’
An alarm rumbled from Robin’s phone on the table at that moment.
‘Oh, that’ll be for my tablets,’ said