2001
The winter air was thick with cold and Lizzy felt the ice in her lungs as she climbed the steep hill from the car park and up to the house. She didn't think she would ever get used to parking her car where the tennis courts once were, or not being able to park on the driveway, which was now blocked off with two very official looking removable posts. The transition from family home to tourist attraction was going smoothly for the house, which was enjoyed a lavish and careful programme of restoration. There had been a serious repainting of the window frames, a thorough tending of the gardens and the deepest of spring cleans. Inside pictures were being restored and items rediscovered after a full cataloguing of the attics, including the rediscovery of a trunk of authentic and delicate gowns from the early 19th century, some of which, according to their labels, had belonged to Elizabeth Darcy herself. Of course, there had been a massive fuss made about the dresses, which had been acquired by the V&A to be restored and then form the basis of a new exhibition. Lizzy recognised a sparkly red gown with gold thread as one that she had dressed up in as a child, parading down the halls and posing for pictures that Maggie took with her new polaroid camera, before discarding the dress at the foot of the staircase and running upstairs to play skittles in the long gallery. The hill was steep; much steeper than she had remembered it being when dragging her sledge up it after careering down it during the winter, Mr Staughton calling to her from the top, promising hot chocolate and buttered seed cake whilst Winston watched from his study. The cold was taking her breath away and she struggled for moment to reach the top, the icy wind blowing in from the peaks causing a chill in her bones.
Lizzy had always thought herself slightly resilient to the cold of a Pemberley winter, but this year was particularly harsh; she blamed it on her hormones. She was now five months pregnant but felt as if she was about to burst. For the first three months she had continually thrown up, which hadn't made the commute to Manchester every other morning particularly pleasant. There had also been a smell in the lecture hall of her class on a Thursday which made the baby grumble and her stomach churn with nausea, the lecturer had been very polite about it and given her a bin to prevent any further vomiting occurrences disturbing the rest of the class.
"Hi there, I was wondering if you would be able to help me," she had asked the kindly faced woman at the Student Advice desk on the second day of term.
"I will try," the woman smiled; she had a warm Mancunian accent, the badge on her lanyard said that her name was Barbara.
"I was told that I needed to register a name change to ensure that it's correct on my transcripts?" Lizzy had been dreading this day, it felt so pretentious. She had loved being able to coast as Lizzy Darcy, getting the odd smirk from an English Lit undergrad or a glance of recognition from the occasional lecturer, but mostly she had been anonymous at Manchester.
Barbara took Lizzy's name and student ID and begin to tippity-tap into the keyboard; they had only recently moved over to a new computer system and she wasn't used to it yet, preferring the old-fashioned methods of cards and files.
"Right, so I will need your marriage certificate, have you brought it with you?"
"Marriage certificate?"
"Yes, your marriage certificate… for your change of name?" She glanced down at the protruding bump between them.
"Oh," Lizzy wrapped her coat around her tightly, "no, I haven't got married…Uhm…Well…"
"Have you changed it by deed-poll or been legally adopted?" Barbara's tone was getting ever so slightly more official with each word she spoke.
Lizzy reached into her bag and pulled out the envelope that contained the letter and legal information from her uncle's office, which documented the change in her name from simply 'Miss Elizabeth Darcy' to 'Lady Elizabeth Darcy', the title to which she had to answer to now she was the daughter of a Duke and not merely the granddaughter of one. Barbara scanned through the letter, before taking it to a colleague, who squinted over it before looking at Elizabeth as though she was bonkers. Barbara came back and placed the letter back on the desk, taking time to fold it flat.
"Did you get this for Christmas? Because I know it says you're a Lady, but those gift packs aren't legally binding, we couldn't update it on your degree certificate… do you understand, love?"
"Yes, I do understand that, but this is real," she smiled at Barbara, who proceeded to look at her as if she was a simpleton. "Honestly, I have the card for my Uncle's office and you can speak to them and they will confirm it… I wouldn't usually have bothered, but apparently it's a requirement."
"Well, yes," Barbara grumbled as she took the card and then retreated to her colleague, who phoned the number, both women stood looking at her from across the sea of office furniture. The smaller woman looked up at Barbara and nodded, Lizzy could see her visibly redress herself and she returned to the counter with an ingratiating smile.
"All of that seems to be in order, Lady Elizabeth, so I will get your records updated and we will reissue last semesters transcripts and send them out to your home address, which is… let me check… Oh, Pemberley?"
"Yes."
"Pemberley as in Pride and Prejudice?"
"Yes."
"And you're Lady Elizabeth Darcy?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
There was a prolonged silence and Lizzy was quite convinced that Barbara was broken.
"Is everything alright?"
The woman handed over the paperwork, nodding silently before sitting at her desk.
Lizzy reached the top of the hill and hurried towards the porch, desperate to get inside. Instinctively she turned left, before remembering and turning right to enter the house via the staff entrance, she popped her head into the estate office, leaving a cream cake on Maggie's desk and a packet of TUC on Phil's – he didn't care for cake, but she had come to learn that he had a penchant for cheesy biscuits. She also popped a tin of biscuits on top of the volunteer sign-in sheets as she knew Winston had always done, he had always looked after the people who loved the house and she knew that wherever he was, that in the grand scheme of things, he had made the right decision to pass the house onto people who would look after better than they ever could have done. There had been small changes, ones that she hadn't noticed at first – such as how red the carpet on the grand staircase was now it had been deep-cleaned, and how colourful the hideous Mortlake tapestries in the entrance hall were now years of dust and grime had been removed by professionals, rather than simply being vacuumed with the Henry by Mrs Reynolds. Reaching the door to her flat, she took a deep breath, fully aware that it would be freezing, dumping her shopping on the floor, she ran through to the bathroom, not noticing the figure sitting on the couch.
"Hello, Lizzy," the cut-glass tones of Cara Dalhousie seemed hideously out of place coming from the tall, willowy woman with pink dreadlocks.
Lizzy was astonished to see the woman standing there, having only ever seen her on photographs. She was much taller than she had imagined and had a frostiness that was incongruous with her general appearance.
"Cara?" She crossed over with her hand outstretched, "so nice to meet you finally… Matthew told me so much about you."
Cara did not take Lizzy's hand, nor did she smile or move.
"Was that before or after you fucked him?"
She looked her straight in the eye, and Lizzy noticed that behind her green eyes there was a coldness that she had never experienced from anyone before.
"I beg your pardon?" Lizzy had gone to great lengths to avoid positioning herself anywhere near Matthew or his relationship, as far as she was concerned she was doing this herself. Her great-grandma did it and she was certain she possessed the necessary pre-requisites for raising a child singlehandedly.
Cara travelled across the room like lightning, "this bullshit might work on Matthew, but it sure as well won't with me," she hissed.
"I have no idea what you mean," Lizzy said firmly. She felt cornered, wanted to push this leggy stranger out of the way and run down the stairs.
"That." Cara pointed at Lizzy's stomach. "My fiancé's baby, I'm guessing."
Lizzy was silent for a moment, before raising her voice demandingly "Who told you that?"
"Does it matter who told me?" She spoke with a sneer, a condescending tone mixed with a sadistic trill on her breath.
"Yes."
"Maggie told me… Told Matthew. She thought he should know."
"That was Maggie's decision then," Lizzy said crossing her arms in defiance.
"And you're claiming you had nothing to do with it, Lady Elizabeth?" She sniggered, "don't be so ridiculous… You have obviously engineered this whole shitstorm and conveniently left it too late to do anything about it."
Lizzy nodded, furiously, adamantly, "yes, obviously, bravo, that's totally what I did. Well done."
Cara eyed up her opposition; she didn't understand what all the fuss had been about. When she had first met Matthew at some grotty student bar in Tooting he had been drinking to forget about the girl in Derbyshire who had broken his heart; Cara had comforted him and drank with him, showing him a new way of life that was perfectly acceptable if you had a massive trustfund and your dad owned half of Scotland. He had moved in with her within three weeks and she knew that she was in love with him the day he brought her home some organic tofu and a new yoga mat. They arranged to exchange positive affirmations under the gaze of a Shaman priest on the beach in Goa in the summer after graduation, and even though they didn't believe in anything as conformist as marriage, she considered herself engaged and he bought her a silver ring encrusted with a huge moonstone from one of the new age stalls at Camden Lock. When he had returned from Derbyshire after the funeral, he was different, and she knew that something had happened. It hadn't taken much to get the information from him and she made him promise never to contact this Lizzy again. He agreed, not wanting to lose her. There had been phonecalls from Derbyshire that were ignored, Cara recognising the area code; letters were thrown away without being opened; because the best way to pretend something didn't happen is always to ignore it.
"You know, I never understood what he saw in you. You're mediocre at best, Darcy." She looked at Lizzy pitifully, tilting her head to one side. "He told me about that afternoon, up at the Lantern, told me how when he kissed you the only person he thought of was me, how he didn't even enjoy it, didn't even understand how you had managed to get pregnant it was that…disappointing."
Lizzy thought that Cara's anger was sorely misdirected. "Look, I know you are upset about this, but you are taking it out on the wrong person. I didn't cheat on you, he did!"
"You let him!" she raised her voice, then composed herself. "And now we have to deal with this," she pointed at the bump.
"You don't have to deal with anything," Lizzy said with a resoluteness in her voice. "I have never asked for your involvement."
There was a moment of silence and the two women eyed each other up from across the room. Lizzy had always been taught to stand up for herself and she was not going to be bullied by a woman who was taking the moral high ground on behalf of her cheating boyfriend.
"Your issue is more to do with Matthew, and not with me, Cara. If he wants to be involved in this baby's life then there is nothing I can do to stop it, and neither can you. I am sorry it happened this way, believe me this is not the way I envisaged it happening… but here we are."
Quietly, in a low growl, "you will tell Matthew that you do not want him to be part of your child's life."
"I will do nothing of the sort," Lizzy turned on her heel and walked into the kitchen. "Now unless you have something nice to say, I would like to you to leave…and for future reference, this area of the house is out of bounds to the general public."
Cara stomped out of the flat, glaring as she did. Lizzy took a moment to regain her composure before sitting on the floor of the kitchen and crying her heart out.