It would be different for the Paxton family, of course. Louise had left a husband and two daughters, rather than one ingrate nephew. They’d be mourning her now, in full and genuine measure. And one of those mourning her-Sarah Paxton-would be there, on the doorstep, within half an hour of our departure. I could easily have waited for her. Henley couldn’t have prevented me, even if he’d wanted to. But I didn’t. When it came to it, I was impatient to be gone, eager to avoid the encounter.

What it amounted to, I suppose, was fear. The fear that Sarah Paxton might resemble her mother too closely for me to fob her off with the account I’d given the police. But she wouldn’t necessarily welcome the truth. Nor would anyone else who’d loved Louise Paxton. Because the truth made what had happened to her seem just a little too complicated for comfort. To enlighten might also be to antagonize. So I preferred to do neither.

There was another fear as well, running even deeper. The fear of what I might learn in the process. Who was Louise Paxton? What sort of woman was she? What sort of mother? What sort of wife? And what had she been trying to change, that evening on Hergest Ridge? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answers. We’d met and parted as total strangers to each other. Perhaps that’s what we ought to remain. If we could.

I flew back to Brussels on Sunday as planned. The following morning, I returned to my office at the Berlaymont and informed my head of unit that he would soon be losing my services. Around the same time, I read later, at a village churchyard in Gloucestershire, Louise Paxton was buried.

CHAPTER FOUR

Resignation isn’t easy if you’re a fonctionnaire titulaire de la Commission Européenne. In fact, it’s next to impossible, because any attempt to resign is officially interpreted as a request for long-term leave of absence. When I handed in my notice to my gratifyingly dismayed head of unit that morning in July 1990, he treated it as an application for what we Eurocrats called a congé de convenance personelle. Unpaid leave, to put it less grandly. A sabbatical, if you like. A career on ice. For a year in the first instance, but automatically renewable for a second year and a third after that; conceivably, even longer. Opinion was divided over whether, theoretically, it could ever come to a conclusive end short of retirement.

But technicalities didn’t interest me. I was leaving with no intention of coming back. My colleagues might be saying au revoir, but I’d be bidding them adieu. That evening, I took a few of them to Kitty O’Shea’s, an Irish bar-cum-English pub near the Berlaymont that supplied an escapist haven for displaced Celts and Anglo-Saxons, to toast my departure. Taken aback by my generosity, they were clearly reluctant to say what they really thought. Poor old Timariot. Giving up an A6 post in the Directorate-General of Economic and Financial Affairs for-what was it?-cricket bats. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Robin?” asked Ronnie Linklater in a soulful moment brought on by a third scotch and soda. “I mean, absolutely sure?” I told him I was. But he obviously didn’t believe me. It was true, though. I was certain I was doing the right thing.

My only frustration was that I couldn’t do it immediately. Three months’ notice loomed oppressively ahead. I tried persuading my head of unit that Timariot & Small were in extremis without me and he agreed to recommend an early release. But those whose approval was needed were away for the rest of the summer in their Tuscan villas and Provençal retreats. I would simply have to wait.

I was still waiting two weeks later when I returned to my flat in the rue Pascale one evening to find a letter waiting for me forwarded by my mother from Steep. It had originally been posted in Worcester, with my name and Petersfield address written in two different hands. I recognized neither. But one of them, it transpired, belonged to Sarah Paxton.

The Old Parsonage,

Sapperton,

Gloucestershire

5th August 1990

Dear Mr. Timariot,

I have hesitated a long time before writing this. I learned of your existence from Henley Bantock. He did not know your address and the police, though very kind, said they could not release such information. But they did offer to forward this letter to you.

If it reaches you, I do hope you will agree to meet me. It is more important to me than I can properly explain to learn as much as possible of my mother’s state of mind during the last day of her life. My sister saw her that afternoon, but I had not seen her in over a week. I am having particular difficulty coming to terms with that fact. I am not sure why.

Something about not saying goodbye, I suppose. But you did say goodbye to her, in a sense. It really would help to talk to you about how she seemed and what she said. Could we meet, do you think? It need not be for long. And I will happily travel to wherever causes you least inconvenience.

If you are willing to meet, please ring me on Cirencester 855785, or write, if you prefer. Either way, I would be very glad to hear from you.

Yours sincerely,

Sarah Paxton.

The appeal was simple and direct. I could try to help her cope with her mother’s death. Or I could ignore the request. She didn’t know where I was. She had no way of tracing me if I didn’t want to be found. I was safely out of reach. All I had to do was pretend I hadn’t received the letter. Screw it up and throw it away. Burn it. Forget it. She’d cope without me. There was nothing we had to say to each other. That’s what I kept telling myself, anyway. Until I picked up the telephone and dialled her number.

To my surprise, she insisted on coming to Brussels. I suggested she wait until my next visit to England. But, even if I’d been able to say when that would be, I doubt she’d have thought it soon enough. There was an urgency-a hint of desperation-in her voice that made me regret contacting her almost as soon as I’d done so. And there was a resemblance to her mother’s voice that worried me even more. It wouldn’t have taken much to imagine I was actually talking to Louise Paxton. As a result, in the days that passed between our conversation and her arrival in Brussels, I could only picture her in my mind’s eye as a younger version of her mother: an idealized re-creation of a dead woman.

That, I suppose, is what I set out apprehensively expecting to meet the following Friday night. She’d come for the weekend and was staying at the Hilton on boulevard Waterloo. We’d arranged to meet in the foyer at six o’clock. This turned out to be a bad choice. The place was filled with clacking quartets of jewel-draped women. I cast around amongst them, looking for one young face in the middle-aged crowd, still subconsciously expecting to recognize her. But there was nobody there who even remotely looked the part.

I was on the point of giving up and seeking help from the concièrge when somebody said from close behind me: “Robin Timariot?” I knew at once who it must be.

Sarah Paxton had her mother’s slightness of build and much else about her that was immediately reminiscent of the woman I’d met on Hergest Ridge. Yet the differences seemed to amount to more than the similarities. Her hair was darker and cut much shorter. Her eyes too were darker, their gaze less open. She was clearly young-twenty-one or twenty-two I’d have guessed-but the freshness of youth was overlaid by something else. A hardness not of feature but of mind. An earnestness amounting almost to a warning. She wore little make-up and no jewellery bar a silver locket on a chain around her neck. Her dress was simple and practical: a plain blouse, loose calf-length skirt, flat-soled shoes; and unpretentious satchel-style handbag. She had enough of her mother’s looks and bearing to turn heads if she wanted to. But her expression implied a wish to do no such thing. It could have been the visible effect of bereavement, of course, but somehow it seemed too entrenched-too permanent-for that. Her smile had a stiffness about it, her handshake a coolness, that mere shyness couldn’t explain. Suspicion. Yes, that was it. A barely veiled scepticism about the world and the people she met in it. Me included.