‘My mother, Sylvie, had the brains to do anything. But in her family, girls, particularly pretty girls, didn’t pursue a career.’ He sighed. ‘She’s a housewife.’

‘No other job?’

Andrew shook his head. ‘She was working in the Myer department store’ — Galina’s favourite shop! — ‘when she met my father. She married at nineteen. That’s what girls did in the 1950s.’

‘Then you came along.’ But as soon as she spoke, she realised this could not be the case. Andrew was twenty-seven, a year older than she was, which gave him a 1960 birth.

‘I was their final attempt after several miscarriages,’ Andrew said. He was about to say more when he checked his watch. ‘If we’re going to walk the circuit of the gardens, we should start now.’ He smiled. ‘We mustn’t be late. My mother is a domestic queen; she’s the domestic queen. Right now, she’ll be putting the final touches to the culinary counterpart of a collection of Old Masters.’

At that precise moment, Sylvie Morrow was in the act of breaking and entering a derelict house in the next street to her own. The dinner preparations were complete, Andrew and his new girlfriend were not due for another hour and a half, and, most crucially, this might be her last chance. She’d had a hunch about this house from the moment it went up for sale. And even if her hunch were nothing other than a strong desire to add to her letter collection, it didn’t matter. Hunch or hope, she had to investigate.

Affixed to the rickety fence was a placard, WHELAN THE WRECKER IS HERE. Sylvie had noticed it that morning when driving home with the shopping. There was as yet no demolition equipment on site, but she’d been given due warning. The gate was half-open and wedged tight in a tangle of rubble and grass; with a quick glance up and down the street, she slipped in.

The once-beautiful garden was in ruins. How sad old Mrs Payne would be. Not that Sylvie had known her, in this neighbourhood people kept to themselves, but she had nodded to her a few times and complimented her on the garden. It had been one of the district’s best, with an exuberant array of bulbs and annuals, a raised circular bed of roses in the middle of the lawn, and mature camellias, hydrangeas and rhododendrons lining the fences. Daphne bushes and gardenias had been planted close to the front gate, and when Sylvie was passing, she would pause to take in the season’s perfume.