Hampshire

Hampshire is where Emma Corrigan’s parents settle after moving out of London, turning visits to her family into encounters with a home and social world that have changed since her childhood. The village is also the setting for her mother’s new routines with Kerry, whose closeness to Emma’s parents sharpens Emma’s sense of being on the outside of her own family.

From Twickenham to Hampshire

Emma grew up in Twickenham, where her parents used to live. By the time she visits for her mother’s birthday, they have moved out of London to a village in Hampshire. The relocation separates the family’s present from the place where Emma remembers growing up: Hampshire is her parents’ new home, not the childhood setting she carries with her.

The return begins with Emma travelling by train, resolved to make this visit better after a television programme about daughters reuniting with their mothers leaves her chastened. The destination is therefore more than a place to celebrate a birthday. It is where she hopes to act on a renewed determination to value her family, even as old feelings surface almost as soon as she arrives.

A shared social world

Kerry and her husband, Nev, have also moved to a village nearby, about five minutes’ drive from Emma’s parents. The short distance means that Kerry and Emma’s mother see one another often. When Emma arrives, she finds them together in the kitchen: their similar feather-cut hairstyles and brightly coloured tops, their laughter, and a half-finished bottle of white wine make their ease with each other immediately visible.

That closeness is reinforced by golf, which Emma’s mother took up with Kerry after moving to Hampshire. Their lives now include matches, golf-club dinners, and parties with their club friends. Emma’s one attempt to join in ends in humiliation: unaware of the dress rules, she arrives in jeans, is lent a skirt and spiked shoes, and cannot make contact with the ball. The others exchange glances and send her to wait in the clubhouse. Golf thus becomes a concrete marker of a social routine shared by her mother and Kerry but not by Emma.

Family history and belonging

Hampshire’s present-day family circle carries the weight of an earlier household history. Emma remembers Kerry’s arrival with a red suitcase, a new voice in the kitchen, and unfamiliar perfume. Although Kerry was Emma’s cousin, she seemed grown-up to Emma; Kerry’s mother had died, and Emma’s parents repeatedly told their daughter to be kind to her. Kerry was given Emma’s room.

The memory explains why the sight of Emma’s mother and Kerry together can feel like more than ordinary companionship. Looking at an old photograph of herself with her parents, Emma thinks of the time before Kerry came into their lives. She also recalls giving up a familiar park because Kerry found it boring and Emma wanted to be like her. The move to Hampshire does not create that sense of displacement, but the close, everyday bond between her mother and Kerry gives it a present-day form.

Visits, exclusion, and change

The birthday visit brings the tensions into focus through a gift. Emma arrives eager to give her mother a present she considers especially good; later, her flowery card lies forgotten among the wrapping paper while her mother leafs through a brochure with excitement. Emma is suddenly close to tears and accuses Kerry of having known about the spa treat she planned to give their mother, recalling that she had told her about it months earlier. The episode turns an attempt at celebration into another painful measure of who shares information and attention within the family.

A later family meal exposes a different part of Emma’s history with Kerry. Jack Harper casually asks Kerry about the difficult decision to turn Emma down for work experience at Kerry’s firm. Kerry laughs and denies knowing what he means; Jack specifies the application and rejection. The exchange reveals a past professional slight within a family relationship already shaped by comparison and unequal closeness.

The wider family story does not remain fixed at exclusion. In a later conversation, Emma’s father tells her to forget the money she owes her parents and insists that she owes them nothing. Emma looks between her parents and feels that they are seeing one another properly for the first time in years, as if they might be starting again. Her mother then suggests taking a holiday together the following year. Hampshire’s significance lies in this contrast: it is the home Emma returns to carrying old hurts, but the family relationships associated with that home are also capable of moving toward renewed understanding.