‘You should have seen the farm,’ Season said. ‘The wheat was all black and drooping for miles. Poor Ed was absolutely heartbroken.’

‘I expect Ursula was, too.’

Season raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Don’t talk to me about Ursula. She’s like one of those terrible women in an Edgar Allen Poe story. She’d have me beheaded if she thought it would help South Burlington Farm.’

‘This is your room,’ Vee told her opening the door of a wide, airy, studio with a sloping dormer roof and a polished wooden floor. ‘You wait till you wake up in the morning. There’s a beautiful view of the canyon. Your shower’s through there, and your telephone’s right over on the desk.’

‘Vee, it’s beautiful,’ said Season. ‘I just know that we’re going to feel right at home here.’

Vee held her arm. ‘You’re okay, aren’t you? I mean, Ed didn’t take it too bad?’

Season lowered her eyes. ‘He didn’t want me to go, if that’s what you mean. He was more upset than he was saying. But he knows I have to get away from Kansas, even if it’s only for a week.’

‘What about your marriage?’

‘Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to see how I feel. Ed doesn’t want to give up the farm and I don’t want him to give it up, either. If I took South Burlington away from him, just for my own selfish reasons, it would be like castrating him. He’s a farmer, Vee, and when I married him I never even realised. But whether I can face up to going back to Kansas or not…’

Vee ran her hand through her sister’s blonde hair. ‘It’s that bad, huh?’

Season nodded. ‘It’s wheat and it’s sky and that’s all.’ Vee kissed her. ‘You wash up, get yourself ready. Carl will take care of Sally. And listen. Season, whatever happens, just remember we love you.’

Season’s eyes filled up with tears. She held her hand over her mouth and the tears slid down her cheeks and clung on her fingers like diamonds. ‘I’m sorry, Vee,’ she said. ‘I’m tired, that’s all.’

‘Sure,’ said Vee, hugging her. ‘I’ll see you in a while.’

Ten

Della McIntosh walked through the terminal at Wichita Mid-Continental Airport at two thirty the following afternoon, dressed in a white cotton skirt and a midnight-blue T-shirt that had more than one of the good old Kansas boys on the baggage-collection carousels taking long and considered looks.

Her red hair was fresh-washed and shining, her sunglasses were propped up in her hair, and if this had been any place in the world except the depths of the American Mid-West, she would have been taken for a very high-quality whore.