The Banker's Niece 34: The Rock crumbles

Jane sits up in bed. With its down duvet and organic unbleached brushed-cotton linen, her bed is her favourite place in the world and something she would definitely take with her to a desert island. In deference to the weather she’s fished out her long-sleeved, ankle-length nightdress and wearing it makes her feel like an old maid, as they used to call them – which she is, she supposes (except for the ‘maid’ bit). It’s not an unpleasant feeling. In fact it’s rather comforting. And she’s always preferred Miss Marple to any other fictional detective.

    William was right. The supper did cheer her up.

    They sat in the pub's dining area at a proper table and because it was Monday they had it to themselves. The cheesy potato pie was sublime, as William promised - mashed potato glued together with strings of extra-tasty Cheddar, crunchy topped and so hot it stripped the roof of your mouth. Thank goodness she isn’t vegan yet.

    She explained her lack of car by saying that she became stuck in snow leaving work and had to call a taxi and excused her tears by saying something about the difficulty of adjusting to life in the country, leaving her friends behind, having trouble at work etc etc. Not really lies but not really the truth either and she felt slightly guilty, but William seemed to accept the stories.

    Then they fell to talking about their families.

    William told her about his father’s insistence on changing for ‘dinner’ every night and using proper linen table napkins and Jane told him about her mother still using a non-fillable fountain pen which she had to keep dipping into a bottle of ink and of how she ran her finger over every letter which arrived to see whether the address was printed (bad) or embossed (good).

    Jane laughed so much she almost fell off her chair. It was extraordinary how you could switch so quickly from despair to merriment.

    She was cross with herself for not having gone out with William before. He’d often asked but she’d always demurred as she couldn’t bear to think of the gossip they would engender if she (a single woman) appeared in the local pub with her neighbour (a single man).

    There had been some funny looks from the old codgers on the bar stools but she didn’t care now. Her conscience was clear. They’d got the sex thing out of the way. They were good friends, that was all.

    Apart from her brother Ollie, she’d never had a male friend before. It wasn’t at all bad and, if a foretaste of the future, she almost looked forward to it.

    They didn’t even have to go through all that palaver when they said good night. He stopped at her house, getting out of the car to see her to the back door, where they kissed each other decorously on the cheek and then parted. Lovely.

    And the warm glow is still with her, so much so that she’s picked up her spiral-bound shorthand notebook and decided to make one of her lists. But not just any old list (sort rubbish, do washing load, clean bath).  A proper life-changing list. It’s time – more than time – to get herself in order, and the happy outcome of the contretemps with William has given her confidence. But where to start?

    She taps her pencil against her teeth and steadies the notebook on her raised knees.

    She likes pencils. They’re more subtle somehow than ballpoint pens, more conducive to catching those ideas which flit like ghosts through the dusty rooms of the brain.

    She writes ‘List’ at the top of the page and thinks about tomorrow, and the answer comes to her. Henry. Point number one.

1 Henry

First thing in the morning she’ll ring him and give in her notice. That way, she’ll get in first. That might salvage both her pride and her career in publishing and, given her behaviour, it would be the honourable thing to do. After all, it’s what politicians do when they make a mistake.

    Whether Henry accepts her resignation and she does in fact leave Courtney Press and what she’ll do if she does are, she thinks, questions she can leave unanswered for the moment.

Which brings her to point number two.

2 Joe the Taxi

Even if she does leave Courtney Press she’ll still be working out her notice. So she’ll have to ring Joe as well first thing to see if he can give her a lift in, which – if he can - will be a great opportunity for him to see her calm and normal for a change.

    At the same time, she can prepare him for taking her to Exmoor to retrieve Clio, explaining that a visit to a friend went wrong due to circumstances entirely beyond her control (snow) and giving the impression that she’s totally on top of the situation.

    The fact that he is – according to Lauren – in his late fifties and unattached (a widower) and that he reminds Jane of Alan Bates as Gabriel Oak* has absolutely nothing to do with Jane’s desire to appear sane in his eyes. It’s because he lives in Muddicombe and she would hate the locals to get the wrong idea about her.

And thinking about good and bad impressions leads her into the next item on her list.

3 Lauren (and Gavin)

Gavin may be a prat but he’s Lauren’s prat and she should apologise to Lauren for being so rude to him, as well for her behaviour in general at the party since it was Lauren, as far as she remembers, who salvaged the situation by finding the vomit receptacle, leading Jane to a discreet corner of the room and ringing Joe.

    She ought to have spoken to Lauren this morning, instead of avoiding her by entering through the back door. She’ll use the front door tomorrow.

Maisie and Tom are best left alone for the moment as they’ve no doubt had more than enough of her which leaves one final item to be tackled in the débâcle that is her life at the moment (as Sam would put it).

4 Mother

Because of her migraine on Saturday and her hangover on Sunday she didn’t answer the phone when her mother rang and she’s not yet returned the call. She’ll do that at the first available opportunity as she wouldn’t want her mother to be worried. That might lead to her visiting which sort of wastes all the effort of moving to the other side of the country.

Oh, and one other item.

5 William

Not a problem any more of course but she doesn’t want to be in his debt. She’ll text him when she wakes and ask him to come over for breakfast. She has croissants in the freezer and eggs in the fridge. She could even open a tin of baked beans for him if he wanted. He’ll enjoy that after the milking.

She puts down the pad and pencil and wriggles her feet under the hot water bottle. The house is growing cold and it’s more than time for her to switch off the light and burrow under the covers.

    There is however one thing that still niggles and she might as well clear it out now, while she has the impetus.

    She puts on her fleecy dressing-gown and slipper-boots and pads through to the spare bedroom where her computer lives.

Even if she does have to pay £10 to subscribe to the archive, finding the item is easy – too easy, like it was bumping into Sharon first time or coming across the job ad. But then she does know the name of the publication, the date and the item’s position so she doesn’t have to read anything into that.

    As she opens the page however, that ease – that sense of events unfolding without her input – makes her stomach knot and she remembers that she collapsed the last time she saw the words. But perhaps there was no connection between the two events. They were a coincidence, nothing more.

    ‘There’s no such thing as coincidence,’ snaps Sharon’s voice in her head.

    It doesn’t make her feel any better.

    She reads again the snippet that caught her eye in the village shop.

The Rock crumbles
In a shock announcement last night, singer Rick ‘The Rock’ Rockford, 61, revealed that he is to marry for the first time. Renowned for his playboy lifestyle and string of young, beautiful and famous girlfriends, Rick has finally settled on 58-year-old boffin, Dr Christine Beckford (pictured above with Rick). ‘I’ve always liked intelligent women,’ said Rick, ‘and now at last I’ve found one.’
FULL STORY – PAGES 4 AND 5

She falters.

    Does she carry on? What will she find?

    But maybe this is the final room, and once she’s dusted it everything in her new life will come right.

   

RICK’S TURNAROUND
Has old age finally caught up with him?
Rick Rockford last night dealt his fans a double whammy when he announced not only that he is to marry but also that he has left super-group Minotaur.
    ‘I’ve bought a house in the country,’ said Rick. ‘I’m moving back to Devon where I come from in order to concentrate on writing music. I’ve had enough of life on the road.’
    At one stage dubbed ‘the Peter Pan of rock’, Rick has begun increasingly over the last few years to look his age (see pictures, right). Is he now acting it too? Or is this latest move just one more fad?
Founder
Minotaur crashed into the charts in 1981 with their debut album ‘Ariadne’s thread’. Rick, who co-founded the band, attributed its success to a broken heart.
    ‘I’m on the rebound,’ he told your Daily Star at the time. ‘I had to throw myself into something.’
Consolation
He also threw himself into the rock and roll lifestyle, becoming as famous for his love life as his career. (See list of girlfriends, below.) When challenged about his behaviour he always maintained that he was faithful: 'I only ever date one person at a time,'
   And on the subject of marriage, he was adamant. ‘There was only one woman I ever wanted to marry,’ he said, ‘and she wouldn’t have me.’
    So why the change, and just who is Christine Beckford, his fiancée?
Mystery woman
According to official sources, Dr Beckford works for the marine-environment charity Making Waves, heading up a research facility at the University of Devon. Rick claims she is an old friend.
    ‘Chris knew me before I became successful. She has her own career. She’s not after me for anything,’ he says wryly.
    Our reporter tracked her to a decaying mansion in a remote part of the county (see picture, left).
    ‘We’ve not seen Chris for weeks,’ said a housemate.
    Locals spoke of ‘the hippies on the hill’.
    ‘We don’t know what goes on up there,’ said the landlord of the Fox and Hounds in the nearby village of Buckland Abbot. ‘And we don’t want to neither.’

Well, it was only to be expected. It had to happen some time. And she already knows most of it.

    But why does it have to be Chris?

    And Devon?

    And the University of Devon?

    And why is her beloved study turning into something out of a nightmare?

    And why is the strength vanishing from her body as if she were bleeding to death?

   

Without warning, like a migraine, the darkness returns. Only now it’s not a wave. It’s the bottomless black hole she remembers from long ago.

*In the film Far from the Madding Crowd

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The Banker's Niece 33: Home alone

Tom turns out to be a Hagrid of a man – large and hairy with a booming voice. Good-looking, but luckily not her type. The last thing she wants is a crush on someone else’s husband, especially someone as lovely as Maisie. Not that crushes are quite the problem they used to be, but even so. You never know when the beast will rear its head again.

    Tom doesn’t fancy her either, she can tell.

    ‘So you’re the idiot who drove into that snowdrift,’ he says with a raucous laugh.

    Jane winces. ‘Er, yes. I’m afraid so.’

    ‘Well, you won’t get your car out tonight,’ he says, peeling off layers: a brown waxed jacket, a bottle-green checked shirt with a quilted lining, an olive fleece. ‘The roads around here are icing over something shocking and no one’s going to want to come out and help you. What are you going to do?’

    ‘She could stay here,’ says Maisie, giving her husband a look.

    He’s silent for a few seconds but he’s turned to his wife and has his back to Jane so she can’t see his expression. The dogs watch intently. Jane wants to vanish through a crack in the flagstones.

    ‘I could probably get her out in the four-'b’-four,’ he says eventually.

    He turns back to Jane. ‘Where d’you live?’

    ‘Near Muddicombe. I don’t think it’s too far. It would be terribly kind of you. Maisie’s had me here all day and I really don’t want to impose on her any longer. And my neighbour will be wondering where I am . . . ’

    She hears herself babbling and pulls up short.

    Anyway, the last sentence is an invention. She’s long suspected that William does watch her comings and goings – how else does he always manage to turn up for drinks and nibbles fifteen minutes after she arrives home? – but she doubts he goes as far as worrying about her.

    But she’s desperate. The last thing she wants is to spend the evening feeling like a lemon, getting in the way of a happy couple. Even dragging Tom out again in such weather is preferable to that.

    ‘Muddicombe,’ he exclaims. ‘That’s miles away. What the hell were you doing up here in a blizzard?’

    ‘I, er, I –’ She can’t think of a single excuse.

    ‘We could try taking her home,’ says Maisie, rescuing the conversation. ‘I’ll come too.’

The journey takes hours as Tom drives very slowly and carefully – not at all the way she would have expected him to drive but perhaps it’s a sign of how bad the conditions are. Jane sits in the back, gnawing her glove. No one tries to talk.

    At last they reach the end of her track. Jane opens her door and leans forward between Tom and Maisie. ‘I can walk from here. Really. Just drop me here. It’s not far.’

    ‘If you’re sure,’ protests Tom unconvincingly.

    ‘Give me a ring,’ says Maisie, turning round. ‘We can have a walk together on the moor.’

    ‘I’d love that,’ says Jane. ‘I will.’

    It feels like it’s the first time she’s told the truth since Tom appeared.

    ‘If you arrange for someone to drag your car out, they can leave it at ours for you to pick up when the snow’s gone,’ says Tom.

    ‘That’s so kind. Thank you so much. I’m so grateful. That would be perfect. I’m so sorry to have been such a nuisance,’ says Jane, wanting to gag herself.

    Clutching a piece of paper with their address and telephone number, she jumps down from the vehicle and scurries off.

The snowy fields light up the night. The track is a mixture of slush and puddles. She jogs through them, not caring about splashes. She can’t wait to get home and shed her embarrassment. She forgets to be frightened of being out alone in the countryside after dark, and thinks instead of the red wine she’s going to pour herself.

But as soon as she pushes open the back door and enters her kitchen she’s hit by a wave of darkness, so strong she can hardly stand. She grabs the nearest chair and collapses on to it.

    She tries to take deep breaths as as she’s learnt in the odd yoga class she’s attended and as Sharon advised when Jane told her about these attacks. ‘They won't kill you,’ Sharon said, but sometimes that’s hard to believe.

    Soon however she does feel slightly better, less out of control, but the darkness is splintering into horrible visions.

    She sees all the inconvenience, not to say danger, she’s caused Maisie and Tom, two delightful, admirable, sensible people. Without them she could well be dead by now. What was she thinking, driving off like that?

     She sees her outburst at work and her toes curl. She’s sixty for goodness sake, not an adolescent. Henry’s probably wondering what sort of a nutter he employed. She'll probably never work again in the publishing industry.

    She sees herself at the party two days ago, vomiting into a bin and then flaked out on the floor. A disgrace. A disaster. An insult to her new best friend Lauren, who’s shown her nothing but kindness over the last five months. She remembers her rudeness to Lauren’s fiancé Gavin. She remembers lovely Joe the Taxi who’s now seen her wrecked twice out of their last three encounters, if you count him picking her up after the walk. It makes her feel sick again just thinking about it all.

    She remembers taking nearly a whole week off work because of a migraine.

    She remembers the walk and what she saw at the end of it, in the village shop.

    She thinks of Maisie's rich life and compares it to her own – jobless, husbandless, future-less.

A car stops and footsteps crunch up to the door.

    Jane’s heart starts beating so erratically that she feels faint. All she wants to do is creep out of the kitchen and hide but she doesn’t know if she can manage to stand.

    ‘Janey,’ calls William’s voice. ‘Janey? Are you there? I thought I saw you come home but your car’s not here and there are no lights on in the house and . . . ’

    The door starts to edge open. Jane pulls her coat tightly around her. Perhaps he won’t see her in the dark.

    ‘Janey,’ exclaims William.

    The door is completely open now and he’s standing in the doorway framed against the security light, bringing with him cold air and a scent of sandalwood soap. He’s wearing an old tweed jacket with a white shirt that makes his teeth and eyes shine. He’s looking straight at her.

    To her horror, a sob escapes before she has time to squash it.

    He hurries towards her. ‘Janey! Whatever’s the matter?’

    Tears gush like oil from some newly tapped well.

    He puts his arm round her and, with a sense of relief even greater than the one she feels when she has a migraine and can finally get to bed and draw the duvet over her head, she leans against him.

‘Please,’ she whimpers. ‘Just do it.’

    ‘Janey, I can’t,’ says William, falling on to his back away from her with a noise somewhere between a groan and a laugh.

    ‘Whyever not?’ she screeches. ‘I thought that was all men cared about.’

    ‘Because you’re in too much of a state, and I’m not a pig, whatever you might think about men in general,’ retorts William.

    ‘I’m not in a state. What sort of a state d’you think I’m in? Why d’you think I’m in a state?’

    No man has ever refused her before.

    ‘Because you keep crying, you daft female.’

    ‘I don’t,’ she sobs.

    No man has ever called her a daft female either.

    ‘Look,’ says William. ‘Why don’t we get up and have some supper together. I’m sure that would do you a whole lot more good than us lying here having an argument.’

    ‘We’re not arguing,’ she hiccups.

    William sighs. ‘We could even go down to the Merry Harriers and make a night of it. They do a mean cheesy potato pie and sausages.’

    He swings his legs over his side of Jane’s bed and starts rummaging on the floor for his clothes.

    ‘I don’t eat meat,’ says Jane, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

    ‘Just pie then,’ says William, buttoning up his shirt. ‘It’s my birthday today, you know. I was going to ask you out anyway.’

    ‘OK,’ she says ungraciously. ‘I s’pose I could manage.’

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The Banker's Niece 32: The artist

Jane can hear scrunching. The noise reminds her of something, something from long ago, but she can’t remember what. Then there’s a clunk and a rush of cold air and a woman’s voice says, ‘I saw your roof on my way back and I knew it hadn’t been there when I went out, so I raced home and fetched a shovel and . . . and . . .’ The woman pauses and pants for a while. ‘. . . and are you all right?’

    Jane opens her eyes. She feels as if she’s been woken from one of those dreams when you forget to put your clothes on and have to walk around naked. Or as if she’s still asleep and dreaming.

    Slowly, she takes stock of her surroundings.

    She’s in her car. The driver’s door is open. By the door, framed in whiteness, stands a woman. She has damp grey curls hanging to her shoulders. She’s wearing a pale blue anorak, none too clean. She has a doughy face, blotched red, and is staring at Jane with eyes that see too much.

    Around the woman’s feet, amongst piles of snow, sits an assortment of steaming dogs, also staring at Jane.

    ‘I . . . I . . . ’ Jane stammers.

    She what?

    What is she doing here? Where is she?

    ‘Can you stand?’ says the woman, grabbing Jane by the right arm and hauling.

    Jane falls out of the car and the woman holds her up. She hangs on to the woman as sensation to return to her legs. She realises that she’s shaking with cold - or something.

    ‘I’m Maisie, by the way,’ says the woman.

    ‘Jane,’ she croaks.

    At least she can remember her name.

    ‘Look,’ says Maisie, ‘I only live down the road. If you can walk, why don’t you come back with me for a bit and warm up?’

    The dogs are sniffing round her legs and groin. She puts her hand on the back of the tallest, a distant relation of the greyhound, and it gives her a look of deepest sympathy.

    ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘That would be lovely.’

   

The woman leads Jane up a tussocky bank, using her shovel upside down as a walking stick.

    Even though only a few tufts of grass show above the snow, Jane knows the bank is tussocky because her feet keep descending into nothingness. Soon she’s panting too and breaking out in sweat, the shivers gone. The dogs leap in and out of holes and tunnel under the snow with their noses as if the whole thing were a game.

    ‘My car - ?’ she gulps.

   ‘Oh don’t worry about that,’ says Maisie. ‘It’ll be perfectly safe. No one ever comes this way.’

    ‘Oh,’ says Jane.

    Except her.

    They reach the top of the bank and step at last on to something flat and firm. A road she guesses. The snow still reaches the top of her boots.

    Her boots (knee high, fleece lined) and her quilted coat are the only sensible things about her today, she thinks, as she returns to herself, and the events of the morning begin to replay themselves. What on earth is she going to say to this kind woman? How is she going to explain?

    She tries to suppress her memories. She doesn’t want to return. She wants to remain as uncritical as the dogs, as pure as the whiteness all around.

    They kick along the road through loose snow and crest a small rise.

    Jane gasps.

    Spread out before her is the white sea she remembers from her headlong arrival – in that other life – but now it sparkles with a zillion points of light. The sky is a deep clear blue. A sweet breeze sways back and forth like the breath of the planet. She wants to fly.

    Perhaps she is still dreaming.

    Yup,’ laughs Maisie. ‘It catches me too. Every time. With or without snow.’

    The woman heads down the other side of the rise and Jane follows, head fizzing.

        

At the bottom of the slope, huddled in a dip, a cottage appears. Its walls are white, streaked with green. They bulge over the road as if in the last stages of collapse. Its thatch hangs in a heavy fringe over tiny upstairs windows like something out of a fairy tale.

    They make their way round the side, past piles snow with bits of machinery poking out and a crooked open shed filled to the roof with logs. A row of dark firs stands guard behind the shed. They stop in front of a low door, once yellow.

    ‘There’s a knack to getting this open,’ says Maisie, putting her shoulder to the top of door while lifting it by its handle and giving the bottom of it a good kick. ‘That’s why I never bother to lock it.’

    The dogs cluster round as if trying to help.

    ‘Out of the way you stupid animals,’ she says affectionately, still pushing.

    Jane keeps trying to count the dogs but every time she reaches a different total, perhaps because each is different from the others and none bears close resemblance to any known breed so it’s hard to tick them off.

    ‘You do have a lot of dogs,’ she says.

    ‘I know,’ says Maisie ruefully. ‘Tom won’t let me near the Rescue Centre any more.’

    ‘Tom?’ says Jane.

    ‘Husband,’ says Maisie, finally managing to open the door and tumbling through the opening in a tangle of dog legs.

‘Soup?’ asks Maisie, sticking her head into a rickety fridge.

    Unlike William’s kitchen which is an echo of the faded grandeur outside, Maisie’s kitchen is a complete contrast to the scruffy and comfortless exterior.

    It’s warmed by a cream Rayburn, above which hangs an airer filled with drying clothes whose scent almost but not quite masks the scent of the drying dogs, who have arrayed themselves on blankets and cushions around the edges of the room.

    Jane is sitting at a circular table covered in a red and white checked cloth, the red echoed in the roses on the curtains framing the window. The slate floor is covered with rugs which appear to have been made from patches of thick woollen material sewn together like crazy paving.

    Baskets of logs sit by the back door, next to the Rayburn and at the bottom of a step which leads to a white door.

    ‘Everything in this house runs on wood,’ explains Maisie, seeing Jane looking at the baskets. ‘Tom’s a woodsman for the National Park.’

    Jane isn’t sure what a woodsman does, but she thinks again of fairy tales, and woodcutters heading into the forest.

    ‘This soup is amazing,’ she says.

    She can’t pin down the soup’s taste – it’s so different from anything she’s had before – but she has the sense that it’s feeding more than her body. With every mouthful she feels stronger.

    ‘Own leeks, own potatoes,’ says Maisie.

    Jane finds it hard to imagine how anything could grow in this landscape, but she supposes that even the moor must experience summer at some time.

    ‘You’ll have to come back when the weather’s better,’ says Maisie, ‘and I can show you the garden.’

    Jane looks up. ‘Oh, I couldn’t. You’ve done more than enough for me already.’

    She’s let this woman dig her out of a snowdrift, take her to her house and give her home-grown home-made soup. At the time she was too weak to say no. But that must be an end to it. She hates being beholden to anyone.

    ‘I’d better go,’ she says, pushing back her chair and standing up.

    ‘Of course you can’t go,’ Maisie remonstrates. ‘How are you going to get your car out? Anyway you haven’t seen my studio yet.’

    ‘Your studio!’ exclaims Jane. ‘You’re an artist?’

    How romantic to be an artist – of any kind – and how lucky she is to be consorting with a real live one.

    ‘You could call me that,’ laughs Maisie.

They go up the step and through the white door into an arctically cold passage, at the end of which Maisie opens another door, stands back and says, ‘Voilà.’

    Jane steps into a conservatory with windows on three sides above low white walls. Pieces of felted material in every colour imaginable hang from a line along the back wall, spill from baskets on the floor and cover every available piece of furniture – a sagging armchair, a table against the front window, an upright chair. A milk-churn log-burner glows in a corner, scenting the room with wood-smoke.

    Through the windows the land falls to a stream and then rises again through trees, with the curves of the high moor behind. Everything is snowy, tinted apricot by the setting sun.

    ‘Oh,’ breathes Jane. ‘It’s beautiful.’

    ‘Yes,’ says Maisie. ‘I’m very lucky.’

    She takes a couple of logs from yet another basket and throws them into the burner, which flares into life.

    ‘Sit down,’ she says, clearing the armchair by dumping the piles of material on to the floor.

    Jane sinks into the chair. It has faded-blue loose covers and a shape that speaks of generations of slumped humans.

    Maisie sits on the upright chair.

    ‘What, er, what sort of art do you do?’ asks Jane.

    Art – painting – is something about which she knows next to nothing. Her ignorance embarrasses her.

    ‘I shrink old woollen jumpers in the washing machine and then make them into tapestries,’ says Maisie.

    ‘Oh my goodness,’ says Jane. ‘That sounds like so much fun.’   

    ‘It is,’ smiles Maisie.

    ‘And have you always done that?’

    ‘Oh no,’ says Maisie. ‘I used to be an art teacher. I took early retirement.’

    ‘And what does Tom think about your art?’

    Jane found it hard to imagine a woodsman and an artist having anything in common, except perhaps solitude.

    ‘Well, I was already an artist when we met so he must be OK with it.’

    ‘Oh,’ says Jane, confused.

    ‘Yes,’ continues Maisie. ‘I was in my late-fifties when we married. He’s younger than me.’

    ‘I see,’ says Jane, impressed.

     They carry on talking as the sun sinks behind the hills and the sky turns cobalt.

    Maisie tells Jane about her son and her previous life as a single mother.

    She explains how the tapestries started as a hobby, a way to use up old clothes and an excuse for exploring charity shops. How they began to be snapped up by rich people in large old houses which needed heavy hangings to block draughts. And how eventually the tapestries paid for the room they were sitting in.

    Perhaps it’s something about the strangeness of the day, but Jane’s happy talking to this woman. All her usual reservations about tête-à-têtes have vanished.

    Just as they did with Sharon, she remembers.

    And remembering Sharon makes Jane remember everything Sharon said about destiny and life-plans.

    And remembering that makes her less ashamed of her behaviour over the last few days and weeks.

    And more optimistic.

    She’s on the way to somewhere, even if she doesn’t know what that somewhere is yet and even if she’s going about it in a mad way.

    And if Maisie can start a new life in her fifties, then so can she.

A cacophony of ecstatic barking breaks out in the kitchen.

    ‘That’ll be Tom,’ says Maisie. ‘Come and meet him.’

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