Yes, I do sometimes reflect on the relationships we don't see. We learn once that Lawrie has often in the past gone to Karen for comfort, so I like to think that they have been close up until Karen's marriage. (Though any sense of loss to Lawrie is not touched on at all.) Nicola is close to Rowan and quite close to Peter, but who has Ginty been close to? You would think Anne - she is gentle and uncritical, which Ginty would find soothing; but do we ever actually see them doing anything together?

There are times when Anne seems there to make up the numbers, and occasionally say something that the others dislike; as with Margaret Dashwood in Senses and Sensibility, you can imagine dramatizing most of the books with her entire part cut.