When Edith had drunk her tea she departed, full of thanks, saying, ‘I’ll look forward to next Tuesday!’

Olivia showed her out, then glided back into the room. Still in the charming voice, she said, ‘Edith used to be a missionary in Bangladesh. With the Baptists. Now she’s retired I think she’s a bit lost, poor soul. This gives her a purpose.’

She moved to the piano, stood against it, her back very straight. Her face altered, as if something had dropped from it. In a tight voice, she said. ‘Did she want you to come?’

Half prepared, Anna said truthfully, ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Then why did you?’

‘Because I wanted to.’

‘She told you about me?’

‘All the time when I was little. About your childhood together, your friendship. It made me long to have a friend like that myself. You had something very special.’

Olivia’s eyes were fixed away from Anna across the room. In their expression Anna thought she glimpsed something hard and malevolent. Then, as if roused from her thoughts, she said, ‘Look, I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve another pupil due in a few minutes – piano this time. Would you be free to come again, say tomorrow evening? I don’t have any teaching late tomorrow and you could meet Krishna.’ She gave Anna one of her sudden, overwhelming smiles. ‘I’d so like to have a talk with you and hear about Kate after all this time. She was, as you say, my very best friend.’

Anna found herself agreeing eagerly. At the front door, Olivia took her gently by her upper arms and reached up to kiss her. Anna felt Olivia’s breath on her cheek, smelled again the pungent perfume she had noticed in the room, some sort of scented hair oil.

‘You will come, won’t you?’ Olivia stood looking tiny under the high doorway, vulnerable again now.

‘Of course. Seven o’clock.’ Anna waved, backing down the drive.

In the car she sat for a time once more, breathing heavily, aware of the fast beating of her heart.

What on earth’s come over me? she thought. She knew that her emotion stemmed partly from the strangeness of touching the past, of beginning to close a circle. But it was more than that. It was something in Olivia herself that had stirred her in this way, and not to anger or resentment, the emotions she had felt obliged to carry with her, but to something quite unexpected. Reaching down to try and put the key in the ignition she realized her hands were shaking. She was fluttery and energized as if newly in love.

Chapter 32

Ben opened the door the next evening, still in the flip-flops.

‘Hi.’ He squinted out through the round spectacles like a mole, round face pressed into an anxious look, then smiled. ‘You’re Anna.’ He stood back to let her in. The house felt cool. She had put on an old sleeveless dress made of Indian cotton in pale blue and white stripes, long unworn because Richard said it made her look like Little Bo-Peep. She carried a bunch of white roses.