“What happened in London-” I began, eager to erect a line of defence before it could be crossed.

“Was a mistake? A misunderstanding? An unfortunate and never to be repeated lapse?” Her eyes mocked me. “You can do better than that. You did at the time, as I recall.”

“It isn’t going to happen again.”

“You think I want it to?” She sat down in the chair and studied me with a puzzled frown. “You’re no different from most men, you know. Arrogant enough to believe that what you want is all-important. Pusillanimous enough to deny what it is you really want.”

“What I want is the truth about Louise Paxton.”

“No it isn’t. It’s the exact reverse. You want me to validate your fantasies about her. To say ‘Yes, what you wish she’d been is what she truly was.’ Well, I can do that.” She crossed her legs, artfully judging just how much thigh the bathrobe would fall open to reveal. “If you think it’ll add to the excitement.”

“I’m not here for excitement.”

“Really? All this way for a dry debate about verity and falsity? You disappoint me. You also fail to convince me.”

“Why did you make up that story about Louise meeting a man on Hergest Ridge and planning to run away with him?”

“I didn’t. I’d hardly have suggested you were the secret man in her life if I’d invented him in the first place, would I? That would have been absurd.”

So it would. Which left room for only one conclusion. That there had indeed been such a man. And Sophie had mistaken me for him. “It wasn’t me, Sophie. As God’s my witness, it wasn’t me.”

“No?” Her frown softened. “Well, perhaps not. Even I can make mistakes. Though one I never make is to regret them. But if it wasn’t you…”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. I felt so sure at first. I felt so certain the mystery of her death would draw him out. That’s why half of me still suspects you, Robin. Still fears you could be cleverer than you seem. There’s something about you. Some impression she left on you, that’s too strong and enduring to explain. Unless you were her lover.”

“I wasn’t.”

“So you say. So you say.” She rose, moved to the window and gazed out for a moment. I saw her flex her shoulders and arch her neck. She tightened the sash around her waist, then turned and walked slowly across to where I stood. “But I don’t quite believe it. And neither do you.”

“It was somebody else.”

“Or nobody else.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Just like the man who was so… insatiable… that afternoon in Bayswater… wasn’t you?” Her eyes took their measure of me. As the mind behind them judged whether the distance between us could or should be bridged. “Is that what you mean?”

“No. It isn’t.”

“Then why do you keep coming back?”

“I won’t. This will be the last time.”

“I don’t think so. I’m the closest you can get to Louise now. And you just can’t leave her alone, can you? Even in death. Now why should that be? Unless I was right all along.”

“I don’t know. But you’re not right.”

“And not entirely wrong?” She moved closer, smiled and raised one hand to her mouth, slipping first one finger, then two, between her teeth. She bit down gently, then slowly removed them. “Do you want to stay? Or go?”

I wanted to do both, of course. But I knew I couldn’t. If I succumbed a second time, there’d be a third and a fourth and a fifth. Her claws would sink into me, deeper and deeper. Her lies would become mine, her husband my victim as well as hers. How like her had Louise really been? I wondered. Much more so than I could bring myself to admit? Or much less than Sophie cared to pretend? There had to be an answer. But I’d never find it in Sophie’s arms. “I must go,” I said, taking half a step backwards.

“Must and will aren’t the same.”

“This time they are.”

“And next time?”

“Like I told you. There won’t be one.”

But she didn’t believe me. Or perhaps she just wasn’t prepared to let me have the last word. As I walked from the room, she flung a parting remark at me with the conviction of a prophetess. “Be seeing you, Robin.”

I drove south down the A49 to Leominster. As far as Leominster, I could tell myself I meant to keep to the homeward route. But must and will, as Sophie had said, aren’t the same. From Leominster I took the Kington road and saw the hills I’d walked along more than three years before rising slowly on the horizon, darkened by shower-cloud and the massing of memories. Always I was drawn back, it seemed. To the point of intersection. The place of meeting and parting. The ridge of no return. But swifter now than before. For now I had a quarry as well as a quest.

I travelled fast, in hopes I should

Outrun that other. What to do

When caught, I planned not. I pursued

To prove the likeness, and, if true,

To watch until myself I knew.

Who was he? There was no way to tell. He wasn’t waiting at the Harp Inn, where I lunched alone and watched a rainbow form beyond the squall-line over Radnor Forest. He didn’t tap me on the shoulder as I stood by the cairn on Hergest Ridge where Louise and I had sat together that lost summer’s evening of long ago. I came and I went. But nobody joined me. The sun shone feebly as the wind honed its solitary edge. And the rain came in hastening gusts, blurring the edges of sight, smearing the margins of perception. There was nothing to give him a name. Or to deny him mine. There was only the doubt, as there had always been. And the still unanswered question. “Can we really change anything, do you think? Can any of us ever stop being what we are and become something else?” Or someone else. Perhaps that’s what she’d really meant. Perhaps that’s what she’d been trying to tell me. All along.

I’m not sure what stopped me driving up to Whistler’s Cot. Stealth? Caution? A touch of dread? Something of all three, perhaps. Something, at all events, that made me park at the bottom of the lane and walk up from there.

Rainwater draining from the fields ran in curling rivulets down to meet me as I went. Sunlight glistened on moisture-beaded leaves and wet slate roofs. The truth, I sensed, retreated ahead of me, out of sight though never far off. Over the hedge, perhaps, where Paul had hidden that day. Or round the corner. Always just beyond the next encounter. Like the one awaiting me at Whistler’s Cot.

A car stood half in and half out of the garage, its boot raised on several box-loads of mops, brushes, soapflake cartons, polish tins and aerosol cans. Just about every window in the house was open, red-and-white check curtains billowing out in the breeze. And the frantic whirr of a washing machine in its spin cycle could be heard from within above the growl of a vacuum cleaner.

If I’d realized what all this activity implied, I think I’d have turned and fled. But I was so distracted by the half-grasped meanings of other less commonplace occurrences that I simply stared in bemusement. And then it was too late. Because Henley Bantock had emerged from the rear of the house clutching a well-filled black plastic refuse sack-and pulled up at the sight of me.

“Mr. Timariot!” He peered at me round the tuft his fastening of the sack had created. “Good heavens, it is you. What an unexpected pleasure.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know… That is…”

“Don’t be sorry. This is just the excuse Muriel and I need to take a break. You find us in the midst of the end-of-season clear-out. The last of the holidaymakers left at the weekend. But they didn’t take all their rubbish with them.” He grinned and plonked the sack down in front of him. “Why don’t you step in and have a cup of tea?”