‘Oh, by the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you: I’ve had a letter from Stephen’s sister.’

‘Stephen who?’ said Georgie.

‘You know, Stephen. Stephen Nolan. Australian Stephen.’

‘Oh God,’ said Georgie. She wasn’t sure if it was because feelings had already been running high, but hearing his name brought her a pang of almost liquid sadness.

‘Yes. She’s coming to England in April, going to various places with a connection to family, a sort of mini heritage trail, you can imagine. Anyway, she wants to meet us. I was going to ask if you’d come down for a night or two when the time comes, so we could tackle her together. You may remember things I don’t. I expect she’d like to hear about him, when he was young.’

‘He was only ever young,’ Georgie said quietly.

‘What? Oh yes, I see what you mean. God, that was awful, when he died. Awful. It’s surprising how often I think of him, even now. He just comes into my mind. Does he you?’

‘Yes. Well actually, no and yes. Sometimes I’ll go for a year or two and hardly think of him at all; and then the thought of him will come up out of nowhere and he’ll be on my mind a lot.’

‘I wonder if we were more traumatized by it than we knew at the time?’

‘Probably,’ said Georgie. ‘Before that it had never even entered my mind as a thing that was possible, suicide. Let alone someone of our own age.’

Cass sighed. ‘I know. It was as if we lived in a house that didn’t have that room in it. And then it did, after all.’

‘Yes, and once the door to that room had been opened, you could never quite close it again. Never forget that it was there.’

‘Poor Stephen,’ said Cass.

‘Poor all of us,’ said Georgie.

18.

England, 2017

Hazel was planning to visit the place in Cornwall where Stephen had stayed that summer, which was still in the family after all this time. The night before she left for England, she got out the box of her brother’s papers. It occurred to her that there might be information about the Clarkes she hadn’t previously paid attention to. There was a thick white envelope, addressed to Stephen in London, with handwriting she did not recognize. She must have missed it, before. She took out the letter, glanced at the signature. Celia. That was the mother of the woman she was going to meet, Cass. Thanks to her family history research, Hazel now knew that this branch of the family were descended from William Gale’s second wife, Sarah. Celia was the one who had given him the medal, her mother had told Hazel.