Panic closed Meg's throat, cramped her stomach. She forced it back, forced herself to think reasonably. It couldn't be Roger. The rapping knuckles had been much too tenuous. But whoever it was would have heard the elephant knocking against the windowsill.

She crossed the room, pulled back the latch and slowly opened the door. Theo Dent stood in the hall, looking as awkward as Meg felt.

"I'm sorry… I didn't realize," he said, the rest of his face coloring to match the end of his nose, which Meg assumed was pink from exposure to the chill wind. Damp beaded his curly hair. "I just came on the off chance… I didn't expect… I don't know why I came, really," he finished lamely. "I missed my train. There won't be another until the commuter rush."

Meg pulled the door open wider and stepped back. "I didn't intend to come here, either," she said as Theo entered. She smiled at him, struck by a feeling of kinship. "I've no right to be here. It just seemed…"

"You do, you know." Theo wiped his hand under his nose and sniffed. "She left it to you."

Meg stared at him. Roger had talked of the flat in cash-in-hand terms so often-sell it and use the money for something else-that somehow the idea of ownership hadn't penetrated. She looked around the room, seeing it in a new perspective. She would actually possess this flat, be able to do with it as she pleased-sell it, lease it, even live here if she chose.

For a heady moment she imagined herself inhabiting these comfortable rooms, putting her own stamp on them, but the vision faded. She sensed that Jasmine's imprint was too strong for her own less assertive personality to take root. And Roger… she'd never escape from Roger here.

But the reminder of ownership gave her a new confidence. She knelt and turned on the radiator, then switched on a lamp and shed her coat. "I'll make us some tea."

Theo followed her into the kitchen area and watched her quietly for a while. "You must have spent a lot of time here with her. I envy you that. I suppose I thought that if I came here I could… I don't know… place her here more firmly."

"It's not fair, her leaving the flat to me instead of you." Meg turned from the kettle to regard him earnestly. "I argued with her about it, but she wouldn't-"

Theo held up a hand. "You mustn't say that. She did enough. All these years she did enough. More than she should." He took off his spectacles, looking blindly around for something to wipe them on. Meg handed him the tea towel. "You see, I've been a rotten failure all my life, and Jasmine always picked up the pieces." He hooked the spectacles back over his ears and pushed them up the bridge of his nose with a forefinger. "Everything always sounded so glorious at the start, and then somehow-" He shrugged and let the sentence hang.

Meg poured boiling water into two mugs, sloshed the teabags around for a bit, then plopped them in the sink. "There's no milk. Sugar?" Theo nodded and she stirred in a spoonful before handing him the mug. They moved to the table and Meg sat in her usual chair. She rubbed at a smudge in the wood's dark gloss, marveling at this sudden surge of proprietary feeling. She'd never really possessed anything-a few bits and pieces bought for the furnished bedsit, her sister's castoffs-never anything that inspired a sense of pride, of expanding the boundaries of her self past her own body.

"The table belonged to our Aunt May," Theo said, watching her. "I'm surprised Jasmine kept it."

"She never talked much about it. The years you lived in Dorset, I mean. I know you came to England to live with your aunt when your father died, but that's about all." Meg sipped her tea and studied Theo, searching for some resemblance to her friend. There was something, perhaps, in the set of his eyes, the oval shape of his face. He looked younger than his forty-five years, almost boyish-his face seemed curiously unmarked by experience.

Suddenly aware of how she must look, she ran her fingers through her hair. She'd left the bedsit without so much as a wash and a brush. "Jasmine talked about you, though," she continued a little hurriedly, covering her discomfort, "things you did as children. And she was pleased about your shop. She thought you'd finally found something that suited you."

Theo took his glasses off again and covered his face with his hands. "I couldn't tell her," he said, his voice muffled by his palms.

Meg waited a moment. When he didn't continue she said, "Tell her what?"

He raised his head. "It's just like the rest. A cock-up. I can't hang on much longer."

"But-"

"I thought that's why she wouldn't see me-that she just didn't want to hear it again. She'd told me this was the last time. "No more free rides, Theo." What was I to say?" He swallowed. "Then when she called and wanted to see me-"

"Would you have told her?"

Theo shrugged guilelessly. "I was never much good at lying."

"You must have been in a panic."

Theo nodded. "Didn't sleep that night, trying to work out what to say."

"She wouldn't have been angry with you."

"That would almost have been better." Theo's mug sat untouched on the table before him. He picked it up and drank thirstily, then licked his lips. "You don't understand what it's like to let someone down again and again. If she'd shouted at me, that I could have managed. Other people have done it often enough." He smiled. "But I'd wait for the flash of disappointment on her face-she could never quite conceal it-then she'd smile and make excuses for me. As if it were somehow her fault. I couldn't bear it."

Meg hesitated over the words forming on her lips, unsure of her right to ask them. "Will you be all right now? With the mortgage taken care of?"

Theo put his glasses on, pushing them up the bridge of his nose with the gesture Meg already found familiar. The light from the table lamp bounced off the lenses, shielding his eyes from her. "If probate doesn't drag on too long, if trade isn't too abysmal, I might scrape by. I know this is a terrible thing to say, but this happened just in the nick of time."

Kincaid stepped through the street door, then paused in the stairwell of his building, rotating his head to ease his aching neck and shoulder muscles and running a hand through his already rumpled hair. He'd spent the afternoon doing the kind of thing he most disliked, following up the vague and tenuous connections in Jasmine Dent's life. Former co-workers, employers, her doctor, her dentist, her insurance agent-anyone who might remember a name, an incident, provide a thread attaching past and present.

He came up blank, as he had suspected he would.

The murmur of voices came to him as he reached Jasmine's landing. Pausing, he cocked his head and listened, assuring himself that the sound issued from Jasmine's flat.

He fitted his key in the lock and quietly opened the door. Margaret Bellamy and Theo Dent sat at the dining table. They turned at the sound of the door, their faces frozen in that startled, guilty expression of children caught out at something forbidden.

"Mr. Kincaid?" Meg recovered first. She flushed and half rose from her chair.

"A tea party?" Kincaid said, and smiled at them. "Is anyone invited?"

Meg pushed her chair back. "Here. Let me-"

"No," Kincaid said as he turned toward the kitchen, "I'll get my own. I know my way around well enough."

They sat in awkward silence, their eyes fixed on Kincaid as he filled the electric kettle and put a tea bag in the pottery mug he'd begun to regard as his own. After a few moments, Meg turned to Theo and spoke with determined cheerfulness. "I know your village. I'm from Dorking, and I must have passed through it a hundred times on the way to my granny's in Guildford. Is your shop the one just at the crook in the road?"

Theo nodded, still watching Kincaid. "That's right. Across from the clock and the bell-ringer."