Meg said regretfully: 'I'd love to, Alice, but I'd better not. The final packing and getting them off will be a formidable business and by the time I get back from Norwich I'll be ready for bed. And I shan't be hungry. I need to make a high tea for them before we leave. I could only stay for an hour, anyway. Mrs Duncan-Smith says that she'll ring from Liverpool Street to say that they've arrived safely.'

Uncharacteristically Alice dried her hands and walked with her to the door. Meg wondered why in chatting about the dinner party and her walk with Adam Dalgliesh, she hadn't mentioned that mysterious female figure glimpsed among the ruins. It wasn't just that she feared to make too much of it; without Adam Dalgliesh's corroboration she could so easily have been mistaken. Something else, a reluctance she could neither explain nor understand, held her back. As they reached the door and Meg gazed out over the curve of the sunlit headland she experienced a moment of extraordinary perception in which it seemed to her that she was aware of another time, a different reality, existing simultaneously with the moment in which she stood. The external world was still the same. She saw every detail with a keener eye; the motes of dust dancing in the swathe of sunlight which fell across the stone floor, the hardness of each time-worn slab beneath her feet, every nail mark pitting the great oak door, each individual grass of the tussock at the fringe of the heath. But it was the other world which possessed her mind. And here there was no sunlight, only an everlasting darkness loud with the sound of horses' hoofs and tramping feet, of rough male voices, of an incoherent babble as if the tide were sucking back the shingle on all the beaches of the world. And then there was a hiss and crackling of faggots, an explosion of

fire, and then a second of dreadful silence broken by the high, long-drawn-out scream of a woman.

She heard Alice's voice: 'Are you all right, Meg?'

'I felt strange for a moment. It's over now. I'm perfectly all right.'

'You've been overworking. There's too much for you to do in that house. And last night was hardly restful. It was probably delayed shock.'

Meg said: 'I told Mr Dalgliesh that I never felt Agnes Poley's presence in this house. But I was wrong. She is here. Something of her remains.'

There was a pause before her friend replied. 'I suppose it depends on your understanding of time. If, as some scientists tell us, it can go backwards, then perhaps she is still here, still alive, burning in an everlasting bonfire. But I'm never aware of her. She doesn't appear to me. Perhaps she finds me unsympathetic. For me, the dead remain dead. If I couldn't believe that I don't think I could go on living.'

Meg said her final goodbye and walked out resolutely over the headland. The Copleys, facing the formidable decisions of what to pack for an indeterminate visit, would be getting anxious. When she reached the crest of the headland she turned and saw Alice still standing at the open doorway. She raised her hand in a gesture more like a blessing than a wave and disappeared into the cottage.

BOOK THREE. Sunday 25 September

By a quarter past eight on Sunday night Theresa had finished the last of her long-deferred homework and thought she could safely put away her arithmetic book and tell her father that she was tired and ready for bed. He had earlier helped her wash up after supper, the last of the Irish stew to which she had added extra carrots from a tin, and had settled as he always did in front of the television, slumped back in the battered armchair by the empty fire grate with his bottle of whisky on the floor by his side. Here, she knew, he would sit until the last programme had ended, staring fixedly at the screen but not, she felt, really watching those black and white flickering images. Sometimes it was almost dawn when, awake, she would hear his heavy feet on the stairs.

Mr Jago had rung just after half-past seven and she had answered the telephone and taken a message saying that Daddy was in his painting shed and couldn't be disturbed. It wasn't true. He had been in the privy at the bottom of the garden. But she hadn't liked to tell that to Mr Jago and she wouldn't have dreamed of fetching her father, of knocking on the privy door. Sometimes she thought, with a curiously adult perception, that he took his torch and went there when he didn't really need to, that the ramshackle hut with its cracked door and wide comfortable seat was a refuge for him from the cottage, from the mess and muddle, Anthony's crying, her own ineffectual efforts to take her mother's place. But he must have been on his way back. His ears had caught the ring and, coming in, he had asked her who had telephoned.

'It was a wrong number, Daddy,' she had lied, and from habit made a quick act of contrition. She was glad that he hadn't spoken to Mr Jago. Daddy might have been tempted to meet him at the Local Hero knowing that it would be safe to leave her in charge for an hour or two, and tonight it was vitally important that he didn't leave the cottage. He had only half a bottle of whisky left, she had checked on that. She would be gone for only forty minutes or so and if there were a fire, the secret fear which she had inherited from her mother, he wouldn't be too drunk to save Anthony and the twins.

She kissed him briefly on a cheek which was prickly to her lips and smelt the familiar smell of whisky, turpentine and sweat. As always, he put up his hand and gently ruffled her hair. It was the only gesture of affection which he now made to her. His eyes were still on the old black and white screen where the familiar Sunday faces could be glimpsed through an intermittent snowstorm. He wouldn't, she knew, disturb her once the door to the back bedroom she shared with Anthony was closed. Since her mother's death he had never entered her bedroom when she was there, either by night or day. And she had noticed the difference in his attitude towards her, almost a formality, as if in a few short weeks she had grown into womanhood. He would consult her as if she were an adult about the shopping, the next meal, the twins' clothes, even the problem with the van. But there was one subject he never mentioned: her mother's death.

Her narrow bed was directly under the window. Kneeling on it, she gently drew back the curtains letting moonlight stream into the room, seeking out the corners, laying its swathes of cold, mysterious light on the bed and across the wooden floor. The door to the small box room at the front of the cottage where the twins slept was open and she passed through and stood for a moment looking down at the small humps closely curved together under the bedclothes then, bending low, listened for the regular hiss of their breath. They wouldn't wake now until the morning. She closed the door and went back into her own room. Anthony lay, as he always did, on his back, his legs splayed like a frog, his head to one side and both arms stretched high as if trying to seize the bars of the cot. He had wriggled free of his blanket and she drew it up gently over his sleeping suit. The impulse to snatch him into her arms was so strong that it was almost a pain. But, instead, she carefully let down the side of the cot and, for a moment, laid her head beside his. He lay as if drugged, his mouth pursed, his eyelids delicately veined films under which she could imagine the upturned, unseeing eyes.

Returning to her own bed, she pushed the two pillows down under the blankets and moulded them to the semblance of her body. Her father was very unlikely to look in, but if the unexpected should happen at least he wouldn't see in the moonlight an obviously empty bed. She felt beneath it for the small canvas shoulder bag in which she had placed ready what she knew she would need; the box of matches, the single white household candle, the sharp penknife, the pocket torch. Then she climbed on the bed and opened wide the casement window.