That was not quite true. And Jonathan knew it was not true. He did not say. He only looked at her. She was taking her clothes from the wardrobe and folding them and putting them in her case. He left the room.

She packed everything. All her clothes, folded in the case, except for the clean ones she would wear. Then she went to the bathroom and washed, and gathered up her bottles and things, and brushed her hair, hard, and even put on some make-up, though she didn’t usually do that in the mornings. She took her case downstairs. She wanted to be gone before Richard returned, persuading Jonathan to take her to the station, saying that she would talk to him later, in London, in a day or two when he came, if he came, to see her.

When she got to London it was raining. She realised she had left her raincoat hanging by the back door. It did not matter. She could buy an umbrella easily enough.

She had taken a liking to the girl. But she was a foreign girl, from a long way off; from Japan, after all. She had been bound to leave, sooner or later. And now she had. That was what visitors did. Visitors came and stayed awhile, and then they left. The girl had come in flustered this morning and run upstairs, and when she came down again she looked very neat and clean, contained and Japanese once more, her suitcase packed and placed beside her. She noticed too late that the girl had left her red raincoat behind. She ran out with it just as the car turned away down the drive, hoping Jonny might see in his mirror and stop. Not to worry, she thought. He could take it to her sometime, couldn’t he?

The trip to the station and back took an hour at least. She spent the morning waiting for one or other of her sons to come home. She made soup for lunch and laid the table for the three of them. When Jonny came in he saw the table and asked if Richard was back. No, she said, but I thought I heard him coming into the yard. I laid for the two of you.

He slammed the door of the Land Rover, went in the back door, down the little corridor to the kitchen. They were sitting at the table having lunch like on any ordinary day, the two of them sipping soup and a place at the end of the table laid for the girl perhaps – or perhaps it was laid for him, as if he had just been out on the farm and was coming in a little bit late. There would be a bowl warm on the Aga, soup kept warm for whichever one of them it was. Such an everyday scene, except for the fact that one place was missing, and you did not know which of them it was who was meant to have been there. The two of them looking at him, spoons raised. Sunlight coming in the window over the sink, where a flypaper ugly with trapped flies dangled and shuddered in the draught.