When Marcus was tiny, his dad had run off to Spain and not come back. There was a black mark next to his name that was never quite explained. It had been Darren trying to squash himself onto one of the school’s plastic chairs come nativity. Darren standing at the side of the pitch cheering encouragement and shouting at the ref. And when we were twelve and they’d started a trampolining club, Darren drove the minibus, turning out every week for a term to give a handful of us a lift there and back, playing what he called proper music and asking about school. Darren had left at fourteen, kicked out for punching out a teacher who’d tried to cane him. How we’d loved to hear that one! When I got something right in the office, he’d say, “Good girl,” and I’d feel a sort of doggy joy.

Still, I don’t think any of us fancied the idea of Darren dropping in to enlighten us about the Yardbirds or the Moody Blues in the rose garden, to tell us at length about the problems involved with modernizing old plumbing.

So we left it at that. I laid my cheek back on Marcus’s thigh. He held the end of my plait between his fingers. Once, before we were going out, I’d had him brush my hair. His mum was out and we were up in his bedroom. The curl made it knotty. I’d shown him how you had to start at the bottom. He went so slowly, like I was made of something much more fragile than I was. By the time he finished his breath was all funny.

Em took up a spoon and began stirring the beans. For a second, I thought I saw a flicker of irritation cross her face, but then she said, “Happy memories,” in a passable imitation of the vicar. “Did I ever tell you about our honeymoon, Patricia’s and mine, hunting for fossils on the west coast of Wales?”

The game was Em’s idea too. She found the diamonds in a charity shop. When the old died, their families emptied their wardrobes and dressing tables and took the contents to Sue Ryder or Prospect. In and among the usual rubbish, there were musty morning suits, monogrammed golf clubs, cashmere twin sets, satin purses embroidered with seed pearls, clip-on earrings like great dazzling barnacles in trays of costume jewelry.

In the manor kitchen, Em took the necklace out of her bag. We were in the big room, where it was always cool and dim. There were giant flagstones on the floor. We made tea there on the camping stove, and in its deeper recesses, the milk would last for days.

The diamonds were dull until she took them to one of the low, long windows and held them up to the light.