Jonny had not said how long his girl would stay. She had been careful not to ask. He had committed himself to working on the farm through the harvest. She supposed that Kumiko would be with them that long at least. Then they were to go away, travelling in Europe, until when she did not know. She hoped that he would bring her back after.

It was surprising, how things turned out. It occurred to her how many plants she had in the garden that came from Japan, which had crept in without her thinking where they were from. She had been coming to love things Japanese even when she had thought she disliked them. She had come to realise it only by their names: her tree peonies and cherry trees, the autumnalis that flowered so kindly through the winter; Skimmia, Pieris, Chaenomeles, evergreen shrubs that flowered in the early spring. Others, probably, that she hadn’t thought of. The wisteria itself, though she regretted sometimes that she had not put in the Chinese variety, which she now thought more elegant. A deep pink camellia. Joséphine had a Camellia japonica. There was a painting of one by Redouté in the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge, Redouté who had painted the plants in Joséphine’s collections, whose paintings were almost more famous than the flowers.

He’s there in the field again.

Who?

Richard, of course.

This morning they woke in the same room, Jonathan in the spare bed beside her.

He’s always there, in the mornings, when I look out.

The talk the night before had been all about where they had been in the Lakes and what they had done, what hills they had climbed, the boat they took out on Windermere. And you, she had asked Richard, what have you been doing? Waiting, he said. Watching the weather. Watching the crop. (And now in the evening, she had thought, watching the rest of us talk.)

So there he was again in the early morning, out in the field beyond the hedge. Watching.

In Tokyo Jonathan was the Englishman. She thought at first that there was Englishness in everything that he did. But Richard was more English than he was. Or maybe it was only the surface that made a man English or not English. Once you knew him well you didn’t see that any more.

Claire said that Richard looked like his father. Handsome and fair-haired and blue-eyed. English.

All she knew about Jonathan and Richard’s father was how he died. That was all he had become. Whoever he was, was hidden behind it. So much of him hidden, even here in this house and in his family. Maybe his death had been in him years before, when he was alive as well. Maybe Claire knew that all the time. That was why she was so careful of Richard.

How long shall we stay now? she asked Jonathan.