Still Rowena stared at me. “Some things you can’t drive away from. Or fly. Or run. Or even crawl. Some things have to be.”

What I said next wasn’t provoked so much by irritation at the opacity of her reasoning as by fear of what she might be beginning to discern: that she and I had both seen-or been shown-some part of the truth about the events of that day. But we hadn’t understood, hadn’t recognized it for what it was; and we still didn’t. “Can we really change anything, do you think?” Louise had asked me. “Can any of us ever stop being what we are and become something else?” “Yes,” I’d replied. “Surely. If we want to.” And then I’d watched her walk away to her transformation. From life to death. From enigma to conundrum. “If you’re right, Rowena, what good would my protection have been?”

She smiled. And looked away at last. “No good at all,” she murmured. “None whatsoever.”

I caught the disappointment turning to anger in Sarah’s face. This wasn’t what she’d hoped I’d achieve. This wasn’t what she’d expected of me. “Your mother’s death wasn’t inevitable,” I went on. “But it wasn’t preventable either. Surely you can see that.”

Rowena gazed past me, past both of us, her eyes scanning the bleak heathland beyond the pond. Dusk was encroaching, gathering like some grey presence at our backs, advancing with the steady tread of something that doesn’t need to hurry-because it’s bound to happen. “Soon it’ll be too dark to see anything,” she said. “I think I want to go home.”

I took care to ensure I was the first to leave The Hurdles that evening. I had no wish to confront Sarah with my failure to dent Rowena’s delusions. Not least because I wasn’t sure they were delusions. And that, I knew, was the last thing Sarah wanted to hear. Just as it was the last thing I wanted to admit. “Perhaps it was too soon,” Sir Keith said by way of consolation as he saw me off in the darkness of the driveway. “Perhaps we can try again when she’s more receptive.” I muttered some vague words of concurrence and shook his hand in farewell, not daring to tell him what I’d realized at Frensham. Rowena’s problem wasn’t an inability to face the truth. It was a refusal not to.

A few days later, Sarah phoned me at work to propose a meeting before term ended at the College of Law. I detected in her voice an eagerness to remove any awkwardness between us before it grew into something more serious. It was an eagerness I shared. Probably on account of it, she agreed to let me take her to an expensive French restaurant in Haslemere. And probably for the same reason, she dressed for once as elegantly as her looks and figure deserved.

Rowena’s name cropped up before the canapés, Sarah having no truck with prevarication. “Daddy thinks it was a mistake to spring you on her. After she’s thought about what you said, maybe she’ll see things differently.”

“I wouldn’t bank on it.”

“We have to. If she says any of those bizarre things in court, God knows what the consequences may be.”

“Does she have to be called?”

“It’s not our decision. But, without her, the prosecution can’t be as specific as they’d like to be about Mummy’s movements and intentions. I’d be reluctant to dispense with her testimony if I were them. Apart from anything else, it would look so odd.”

“Your father mentioned a note your mother left for him in Biarritz. Wouldn’t that be sufficient to-”

“Unfortunately, he threw it away before he’d heard about Mummy.”

“Then… what about the friend she was supposed to be staying with that night?”

“Sophie Marsden? No good either, I’m afraid. Mummy never contacted her. She must have been planning to surprise her with the picture.”

“I see.” Actually, I saw more than I liked. There was a disturbing vagueness about Louise Paxton’s actions on 17 July. In the hands of a competent barrister, it could be made to amount to legitimate doubt. “So… only Rowena…”

“Can testify to Mummy’s exact plans on the day in question. Precisely.” Sarah didn’t trouble to hide the concern in her voice. “And it’s vital Rowena should testify-if Naylor’s line of defence is to be nipped in the bud.”

“But I can go some way to doing that myself.”

“I know. And I’m grateful. But we don’t want to have to rely on the evidence of a stranger, do we?” She caught my eye and blushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean- Well, you were a stranger to Mummy, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said thoughtfully, my mind casting back to the glaring brightness-the dazzling unknowingness-of that day on Hergest Ridge. And to some lines of Thomas I’d read only recently. Which Sarah, if I’d spoken them aloud or even referred to the poem they occurred in, would have understood completely. As I couldn’t allow her to-under any circumstances.

The shadow I was growing to love almost,

The phantom, not the creature with bright eye

That I had thought never to see, once lost.

At the end of the meal, over coffee and petits fours, Sarah announced that Sir Keith was taking her and Rowena abroad for Christmas and New Year. It made good sense, with too many reminders of family Christmases past waiting for them in Gloucestershire. Biarritz was ruled out on the same grounds. So it was to be Barbados, where none of them had ever been before. Perhaps the novelty of the location would restore Rowena’s sense of proportion. I endorsed the hope, though with little confidence. We parted on the pavement outside, in the icy splendour of a starlit winter’s night. With a fleeting kiss and an awareness on my part that no recital of seasonal good wishes could strengthen the chances of a happy new year for Sarah or her sister.

Which made me sigh, remembering she was no more,

Gone like a never perfectly recalled air.

CHAPTER SIX

The Timariot family celebrated Christmas 1990 much as we’d celebrated every Christmas since my parents’ move to Steep. A festive gathering at the home of Adrian and his wife, Wendy, had become customary, if not obligatory. They lived in a large detached house on Sussex Road, overlooking Heath Pond. Large it needed to be, since they shared it with four children-two sons and twin girls-plus an overweight labrador. The rest of us were expected to revel in the resulting chaos. My mother certainly appeared to. As did Uncle Larry. But Jennifer’s impersonation of a doting aunt was never convincing. And Simon, depressed at not spending the day with his daughter, tended to decline into drunken self-pity. Which left me to pretend I enjoyed listening to the wartime reminiscences of Wendy’s father, interrupted as they frequently were by his grandsons’ temper tantrums.

I’d always admired the way Hugh and Bella handled the ordeal. Hugh would inveigle Adrian into an intense shop-talking session, while Bella spent half her time in the garden, wrapped in a fur coat and puffing at a cigarette. Wendy had banned the practice indoors on account of the danger to the children from passive smoking. Which I thought mighty ironic, since I’d never known the horrors to do anything passive in their lives.

This year, of course, Hugh was missing. So was Bella, whose links with us continued to grow more tenuous by the day. Superficially at least, it didn’t seem to make much difference. Nor, I recalled, had my father’s absence the first Christmas after his death. A family is more resilient than any of its members. It persists, amoeba-like, in the face of loss and division. It is infinitely adaptable. And therefore prone to change. At its own pace, of course. Which is sometimes too gradual for those it most affects to notice.