Tom lifted his head and the misery in his eyes struck into her.

‘Can’t I?’

‘Oliver wasn’t stoppable. We both know that.’

Heavily Tom stood up and they looked at each other. A restraint was growing between them, bred out of the horror of the night and the fear that it had changed everything.

‘What now?’ he asked her, almost whispering.

She believed that there was nothing else for her to say, but it sounded like a knell as she spoke. ‘I can’t leave Darcy now.’ Stiff, cold little words. ‘Not now. Because he needs me.’

‘And you think I don’t?’

Tom looked utterly changed. His shoulders were hunched and the assurance had drained out of his face, leaving it grey and exhausted. Helen made a move towards him, longing to comfort him, but he fended her off.

‘Well?’ There was to be no kindly pretence. Tom wouldn’t have that.

‘I don’t think that you need me as much.’ The truth hurt her physically as if she was being ripped in half. Sympathy, respect, tenderness, she thought, versus love. Painful, inescapable, real love.

But how can I hurt Darcy now? And if not now, whenever?

Bewilderment and hurt seethed around her. She saw that Tom was leaving her. He walked away, in a wide circle around where the red stretcher had lain.

Panic gripped Helen.

‘Wait,’ she called after him. ‘Tom. I love you.’

He didn’t stop, or even look around. ‘I don’t think so.’ The door opened, and shut with finality.

‘Tom?’ she shouted. ‘Tom!’

But the silence was unbroken and she felt the weight of the house around her, sombre and stricken with tragedy. Somewhere, Oliver was lying dead. He was alone, among strangers. He was gone, and the little conflicts of their world went on without him. As if it mattered, as if it mattered. Pity for him washed through her like a river.

Helen went upstairs through the brooding house. She lay down and let the tears for her friend come, breaking in long waves until the first tide of grief subsided and she sank into the sleep of exhaustion.

Later in the day Darcy came back. He was calm, and very gentle to her, almost as if it was Helen’s brother who had died instead of his own. She watched him as he stood by the window with the curtains looped back in one hand so that he could see the sun-golden front of Christ Church. The brightness of the day was in bitter contrast to the darkness they carried with them. The curtains had been drawn, and the high room was airless.

They spoke very little. Helen was not even sure that she knew this different Darcy, white-faced with shock but still with all his diffidence gone. The burden of making – and she recoiled from the horrible word – arrangements seemed to have fallen squarely on him, and he was meeting it capably.