Darcy stood up and put out his hands to swing her down from the low wall. There was no more to add. Helen felt that the old, peaceful intimacy had come back between them, and that they could keep it for ever now.

They circled the church once more and stood beside the long mound of fresh sweet earth. Long moments passed and the stillness lapped around them. Helen looked away at the low hillside, believing that Darcy wouldn’t want her to see his tears now.

At length he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, like a schoolboy.

‘I’m glad you were here,’ he said softly. And then, ‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’ Back to Follies. They turned away together and left the deserted churchyard.

Outside Follies House, neither of them looked at the bridge or the river beneath. Darcy’s hands rested on the wheel.

‘Be happy, won’t you?’ he said, uncertainly. Helen looked down at her bare fingers.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered, ‘if I deserve that.’

Darcy smiled at her. ‘You do. And he deserves you. Tom Hart is a good man.’ He leaned across and opened the door for her. Helen stepped automatically out, the shock wave that his words had set up ringing in her ears. He knew, then. Of course he knew.

‘Go on,’ Darcy told her. He lifted his hand in a brief salute, let in the clutch, and drove sharply away.

When he had gone, Helen didn’t look round at the steps, or up at the big red house. Instead she turned and started walking up St Aldate’s. Ahead of her lay Carfax and the ugly jumble of chain stores and bus stops. Beyond that was the calm spread of North Oxford, and Tom’s rented house in the garden square. She walked quickly. The pavements were hot under her feet and drifted over with the litter of the city’s summer invasion. Two coaches were parked beneath Tom Tower, disgorging their loads of tourists who streamed into the green space of the Quad. Carfax was wedged with buses and the faces in the shopping thoroughfare beyond had turned suddenly middle-aged. The year was over.

Helen walked under the shade of the tall plane tree in St Giles, and then into the leafy residential streets that fanned out beyond it.

When she came into the little square, her eyes fastened at once on the white-painted house. She saw with a beat of relief that the first-floor windows stood open on the wrought-iron balcony. Tom must be there. As she came through the late-afternoon hush she was almost running.

The front door was ajar. She pushed it open and walked into the hall. The pictures had been taken down from one wall, and were being packed into waiting crates. Tom’s year was over too.

Helen felt a surge of panic. Was she too late?