“Oh, God!” shouted Ben from the garden. He crossed rapidly in front of the kitchen window and came in at the back door, a bundle of drooping plants in his hands. “Julia,” he said, using her full name to emphasize his displeasure. (How infantile men are, Lilian thought.) “Julia, the lupines are all dug up. Will you please tell those people for Christ’s sake not to bring their filthy dog here again?”

“Yes, dear,” Julie replied seriously, apparently memorizing the message in order to convey it with complete accuracy. “Can’t they be replanted?”

He shook his head. “The blighter’s chewed them.”

Lilian wiped the draining board and hung the wet dish towel on a rod to dry. “I’ll bring Simon in, shall I?” she said smoothly, and made her way past Ben into the garden.

“Leave the pram,” Julie called. “Ben will bring it.”

Outside the kitchen door, the grass was sparse and trampled, and flaked with wood shavings from the recent passage and unpacking of furniture. Beyond, however, it became lavishly green, in need of cutting and scattered with spring flowers. The garden, more delicate than ever in the already dying light, was surrounded by ancient trees and, on one side, by a thick, trim hedge of box. A memory even as one stands here, Lilian thought, saddened by anticipation of her own nostalgia—and yet pleased all at once to have come out at this moment, to find the scene imposing some sort of misty symmetry on the untidy events of the day. I may cry, she told herself with surprise, as she lifted the sleeping Simon.

Ben, still grasping the ravished lupines, looked at her with interest as he came out of the house.

Lilian gathered up the trailing blanket with her free hand and walked slowly away. He will say: “Poor old Lilian,” after I’ve left, she reminded herself. In the kitchen, she handed Simon over to his mother. “Now I must really go and pack,” she said.

Lilian leaned from the window of the train. “I’ll telephone you from London,” she told Julie.

It will come right again, on the telephone, they assured each other silently.

Julie, suddenly pale and tired, brushed away tears. “It’s cold. I should have brought a coat.”

“What?”

“It’s cold.”

“Next time I’ll come in the summer.”

Crying, Julie laughed. “It’ll still be cold. But come back soon.”

“Do you have everything you need?” Ben asked, too late for ambiguity, glancing at the magazine stall.

“Yes, thanks. Oh, goodbye.” The train drew away. “Goodbye!”

“Goodbye! Lilian … goodbye.”

They waved, close at last for a moment, before the train ran into the darkness.