She recognised the trees that marked the site of the farm from a distance. Then the house came into view, with the barns around it, looking square in the centre of its land. She remembered which painter it was. It was Mondrian, when he painted landscapes before he painted abstracts. She and Jonathan had seen an exhibition of his paintings in Tokyo. It seemed an age ago that they did that. It made her sad, that it seemed so long ago. She thought, Mondrian was from Holland and Holland was flat; maybe you felt like painting abstracts if you lived in flat landscape like this.

She had thought the paintings were cold. Jonathan had liked them for their form and restraint. She closed her eyes. It had been a long journey. She sat beside Claire in the front, Jonathan in the seat behind her where she could not see him. Wait for me, she might have said, running after him up there on the mountain. Wait, I don’t want to lose you here. Now let me have a turn, she would say. Let me take a picture now. And he takes the camera from about his neck. And she takes it, hard and black and smooth in her cold wet hands. She holds it by the strap. She does not put the strap safe over her head, but only holds it, holds and swings it, and hurls the camera out into the mist. A black box turning, falling unseen to the lake below.

Here we are, home, Claire was saying.

They turned off the lane into the drive. There was the old iron gate wedged open. Probably the gate didn’t move. She never saw anyone try to move it. There was grass tangled about the base of it that must have grown there for years. Then they were past the gate and driving up to the house. There were the tall straight hedges like walls, and beyond them the garden itself. The garden didn’t look so beautiful as it had when she had left only two weeks before. Because of the rain, of course, but also because the roses, which she thought of as Joséphine’s roses but which were not Joséphine’s roses at all, had finished flowering.

I’ve put you both in the spare room this time. Take your things up and then come down and I’ll make you some tea.