Wednesday, the day George took the train to London, was still, airless, mild. The wind had dropped and the lake was smooth, the reflections along the bank perfect. Molly was glad to have Back Rigg to herself. She and George had always led busy and independent lives. She had returned to work when her children were younger before it was the fashionable thing to do, despite being accused of cruelty, neglect, greed. Of course the children had survived, Molly thought. She was really rather proud of them. And what a hypocrisy it was to protest that a mother’s place was in the home and then banish your offspring to a draughty and barbaric boarding school.

Now, after forty years of leading separate lives, they were working and living together, almost constantly in each other’s company. It hardly seemed to bother George. There were times when Molly thought he treated her as a personal assistant and only got cross when she did not live up to the standards of the magnificently efficient women who had performed that function at work. But she was used to being her own boss, to taking her own decisions, and the process of consultation, of considering George’s opinion, of finding herself often persuaded round to his point of view, irritated and belittled her.

He had asked her if she would need the car and had suggested that she should drive him to the station. He could get a taxi back to Crowford in the evening if it was late. But she told him to keep the car. If she needed to go out she would use Ursula’s Land Rover. She got up late and enjoyed the luxury of breakfasting alone, of making the coffee the way she liked it, of reading at the table. She let the hens from the hen house into the wire mesh run and fed them and collected the eggs. And all the time she was thinking of Ursula and Joanna Barton, trying to make sense of it all.

On the way back to the house she heard the repeated sound of a car horn from the road by the lake and went to the front of the house to see what was going on. It was the mobile library from Appleworth announcing its presence in Crowford. She remembered that there were several books in the study that should be returned. She fetched them and made her way down the track to the van.