Lily’s eyes stray to the footstool next to the wardrobe. It has a picture of a Cavalier on horseback with three hunting dogs. She crouches down and brushes the woven fabric with her left hand, the letter still clutched in her right. She can’t remember exactly where it came from. Perhaps it belonged to her mother? Yes, that’s right, she’s sure. Edna re-embroidered it a few years after the funeral. Lily has always found the Cavalier rather dashing. She bangs the fabric with the palm of her hand and watches the dust billow up into the air. She pretends it’s the dirt kicked up by the horse’s hooves as it thunders across the woven landscape, the spaniels yapping at its heels. She thinks that perhaps she used to do this when she was a child.

It is then she realizes the squeak of the sun lounger has stopped.

She jumps up and looks out of the window. Edna is gone. She feels the hair stand up on her arms, and her heart leaps into her throat. She yanks open the wardrobe door and looks for somewhere to hide the letter. Anywhere. There is a pair of old moccasins near the back, and Lily jams both the scrunched-up letter and envelope into one, inside and up into the toe. Then she closes the wardrobe door and presses her back up against it.

She hurries downstairs to find Edna standing in the front room holding an overcoat.

“What have you been doing up there?”

“Nothing,” says Lily.

Edna considers her suspiciously.

“I thought I might change into something cooler.” Lily can’t help but skate her eyes toward the grandmother clock. Has it been moved? Surely not, or she would be hearing about it by now.

Edna blinks. “But you didn’t. You’re wearing exactly the same thing you were a half hour ago.”

“Yes, I changed my mind.”

Edna’s eyebrows furrow, but she clearly has something else on her mind since she lets the topic go a little too easily. She thrusts an arm out toward Lily. “Here,” she says, pressing into Lily’s hand a page from a notepad covered in spidery blue ink. “The list I made yesterday.” Edna stares at her. “You said you were going into the village.”

“I did?” She can’t remember saying any such thing. But it would be the perfect opportunity to get rid of the letters. If only they weren’t both so irretrievable. She can’t think of any reason to head back upstairs now, let alone for fiddling with the clock.

“Well, are you going or not?”

Lily glances at the list in her hand. “I shall never manage all this.”