March 1981

March 1981 is a hinge in the lives of Edwina and Fern: a month that offers the appearance of a family safely reunited, then gives way to estrangement, police intervention and death. Its scenes are linked less by a single continuous celebration than by the contrast between what characters hope a new beginning will be and what the month brings instead.

Edwina’s remembered celebration

The month opens in Edwina’s memory with the twins turning twenty-one and coming home for the weekend. The family is preparing a Sunday lunch, and even Lucas is expected: for once, the gathering appears to include the whole family. Alicia makes a chocolate cake, Edwina brings out the best china, and blue-and-white hyacinths scent the room. These particular domestic arrangements make the occasion feel secure and lovingly composed, a moment Edwina can return to when insomnia and anxiety keep her awake.

But this is not a memory she can keep uncomplicated. The photographs from the day have been removed from their frames and relegated to a cupboard in the Welsh dresser. Their images provoke questions rather than preserve a settled family story: one boy seems not to resemble the other two; Rowena looks painfully thin; another boy’s identity and the woman’s necklace he wears invite further speculation. The pictures once displayed on desks and mantelpieces have become troubling evidence, still capable of unsettling the family’s sense of itself.

The frame makes the remembered lunch poignant as well as warm. Edwina is permitted, in her own private recollection, to hold on to the nice part; the narrative has already indicated that the apparent safety will not last. The smooth approach to disaster and the sudden reversal give March’s domestic happiness a provisional quality. The birthday scene survives, but as a carefully bounded refuge from what follows, not as proof that the family is home and safe.

Fern tries to move on

For Fern, March begins with a deliberate effort to break a pattern. Homesickness brings Three Paddocks and the approach of the Easter holidays to mind, including the giant chocolate egg her mother still buys her. She decides to walk to college early rather than remain at home moping. She is tired of waking beside an overflowing ashtray and the dregs of red wine, and of the tight chest and slight hangover that accompany her distress. She tells herself she is glad to have given up Charlie Treadaway, whom she now regards as another bad habit and a health hazard.

The walk does not erase the sadness: the March wind makes her eyes stream, giving her a visible excuse for tears. At college, however, she finds distraction and receives extra praise for unusually aggressive fencing. When asked about her weekend, she presents herself as excited to see her boyfriend, an army officer. That confident account sits uneasily beside her earlier attempt to put Charlie behind her. The gap between the story Fern tells people and the attachment she is still trying to loosen becomes important when Charlie comes back.

Charlie returns

After Fern has spent the evening cleaning the flat and worrying about its disorder, Charlie arrives rain-soaked and shivering. He says he has ended his involvement with Fabiana, though he admits the separation was difficult and that he fears she might do something foolish. Fern believes Fabiana will survive. She pours Charlie a gin and tonic, then another when he quickly finishes the first, warms the kitchen and fetches him a towel. Her care takes on a maternal cast, but she is still unsure whether to touch him or trust the moment.

The scene’s small hazards underline Fern’s uncertainty. Charlie lights a cigarette from a gas ring and burns his hair; Fern turns off the gas and says she is going to bed. When he asks to come too, she nods. They drink and have sex through the night. At five in the morning, Charlie remembers that he must pack for his sister’s joint twenty-first-birthday and pre-exam-season party in Oxford. He invites Fern along and describes Rowena’s circle, the ancient college buildings and the bowler-hatted porters at the entrance. When Fern asks whether Rowena knows about her, Charlie’s uncertain answer offers little reassurance. The invitation carries Fern from a private reunion into the public gathering that will precipitate the next crisis.

Police and the news from Oxford

After the party, Fern lies awake beside Charlie in the early hours. A phone rings insistently on the landing, stops, and leaves her anxious. She removes the silver fern necklace from the back of Charlie’s neck and sets the pendant on the bedside table. The gesture is quiet and tentative; the necklace, briefly separated from him, glints among the detritus of his life. Fern eventually falls asleep, but the pause is short.

At seven, the phone rings again and stops. A hammering at the front door brings Jill running, followed by two uniformed police officers and a third man carrying an official-looking letter. They have come to take Charlie for questioning. They are not arresting him yet, but he has to go with them. He sits up confused, gets dressed in shaking legs and worn pale-blue underwear, while Fern is told to leave the room. From the stairs she watches him being taken out to a waiting police car. The abrupt removal turns the previous night’s intimacy into a scene of uncertainty and official scrutiny.

Soon afterward, Fern’s mother, Rosemarie Woolbright, calls with news that Elise Landreth is dead. The available details are unclear: Elise may have choked at a party in Oxford. Fern, still in her nightdress, slides down the wall as her mother’s grief comes through the phone. Jill connects the death with Charlie’s removal: Elise had been at an Oxford party, and Rowena’s party was also in Oxford. The connection is an alarming possibility, not yet an established explanation. March 1981 thus closes these linked scenes with questions rather than answers: a family photograph that will not settle who belongs, a lover taken away for questioning, and a death whose circumstances remain uncertain.