‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. Just be like you were.’

I watch her face, her familiar face. ‘If I can hear something, after the operations, if I can hear, will that help? Will it make a difference?’

‘I don’t know. How can I know that? It won’t make me love you more. How could it?’

‘Will you see him again? The Blind Man?’

‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

‘Right.’

We lie there staring at each other.

‘I’m so sorry about your father,’ Sonja says, and she holds out her arms and I fall into her and she holds me very, very tightly and it occurs to me that I’m sorry for my father.

The four of us make sure that Christmas is full of good food, wine, fires and space. But still it seems to me that we are walking gingerly around each other, walking on eggshells once more. Sonja and I take the dogs out every day, long rambles across bare fields, through frozen meadows, over stiles and kissing gates. Sonja holds on to my arm as if she will never let go and I talk. I talk for hours because I have not talked for so long. I tell her about my mother’s journals and everything I found out after thirty years. I tell her about Miles Brandrin; I talk about Ellen and school, tell her about Moira. I make plans to fix my mother’s deck. The dogs trot in front of us, sniffing in ditches and chasing elusive birds. When we return to the house there are my mother and Ellen, lying on the sofas in the library, reading, talking. In the evenings Sonja and I walk into town and try different pubs, sitting in snug nooks and completing the day’s crosswords. And every night Sonja is waiting for me when I get into bed, reaching out for me before I can pull the blankets round us. But everything seems cautious and frantic at the same time.

Sometimes I sit with Ellen as she sleeps, watching over her, stroking the dogs, who never leave her except for walks. One afternoon I doze, to be woken by Ellen taking my hand. 'It’s OK,’ I say, without thinking, still half asleep, and she nods, as if to say that indeed it is.

Apparently Ellen announces that she would like an Italian meal on New Year’s Eve, fagiano caldo in carpione, to be precise, followed by brustengo lo. My mother, Sonja and I look at each other in horror, me because I haven’t understood a word and Sonja and my mother because they haven’t either. We find Freson’s Savouring Italy in Ellen’s kitchen and pore over it together, leaning on the kitchen table, elbows brushing. Pheasant with shallot sauce followed by cornflour cake. I send Sonja and my mother out to hunt for fresh herbs and dead birds while I prepare the vegetables. They burst through the door later, carrying bags full of chocolates and cheeses, champagne and sparklers, and they’re laughing as the dogs trot behind them, sniffing at the game. Sonja and my mother fill my hands with silver cutlery and shoo me out of the kitchen, gesturing at the table in the dining room — I am to create something fit for a fin-de-siècle meal.