Of course, Lindsay might well feel she did not want, or need, rescuing. Well, Lindsay was wrong. Lindsay needed rescuing from herself as well as from her mother. She had to learn to trust, to perceive that pain and abandonment were not always and inevitably attendant on love. She had to be made to see that some men could be trusted, and that the right man could transform a woman’s life, just as Charlotte’s life had been transformed by Max, and—to take another triumphant example—as Gini’s life had been transformed by Pascal.

She had reached the river; Charlotte stopped. She clipped on the dogs’ leashes, walked along the narrow road, and paused on the bridge. Thinking about marital contentment and tranquillity, she watched a fish move through the reeds. Then, seeing the hills were now mauve, and the light was beginning to fade, she hustled the dogs together, stepped back into the road, and began making for the fieldgate just beyond the bend. Before she could reach it, and at a point where the road narrowed, she heard the car. It was on her in seconds, swerving on the bend, being driven far too fast. It cut in close, a large, brand-new silver BMW. She felt its slipstream clutch at her coat; its rapid passage sprayed her with mud. Charlotte shouted angrily after it, but its driver, a man, neither acknowledged her nor slowed. Charlotte watched the car turn into a track farther on, and begin to bump its way up the steep gradient to the beech woods beyond.

Feeling shaken, wrapping her old coat more tightly around her stomach and her unborn child, Charlotte walked on. She encountered no one on this stage of her walk, and glimpsed only one other pedestrian, a man, walking along the river road below, with what looked like a lurcher dog. He paused at the bridge, as she had done. The wind gusted. Charlotte shivered, and whistled to her own dogs. They had had their romp: it was time to return.

She made her way back through the village, past the graveyard, the Norman church, the almshouses, and the tall drystone wall that bordered the manor gardens. Lights now shone from the windows of the cottages she passed, and Charlotte’s heart lifted. Her despondency and unease faded. She wanted to be at home with her sons, and her friends, and her husband; she wanted afternoon to ease toward evening, and the evening to lengthen companionably as they sat together by the fire.

She passed two people only on this, the last stage of her walk: two girls, in school uniform, making their way back to the manor. One was Cassandra Morley, a pretty fifteen-year-old who sometimes baby-sat for her, and whose mother—a brittle divorcee—Charlotte disliked. Her companion looked like Mina Landis, who had moved to the area recently, whose father was the commanding officer of the nearby U.S. air force base. Charlotte had invited Mina’s parents for drinks that evening, along with a few other local friends.