‘Oh, it was most fortunate. Friends of Mama telephoned yesterday. They have arrived from Paris for a spring holiday and taken her off for the afternoon. It was a very big relief! She never goes out now. She just stays at home and does her garden and her tapestry and so on.’

‘So we are free?’

‘For a little while. I must be back by five.’

Driving the short distance to Jericho we spoke only of the weather, how pleasant the air smelled after last night’s rain, how green the land was looking, how happy she was that spring had arrived and the winter had gone. I made polite comments and then we turned up past the mossy pillar and she parked the car where Maurice had parked his, on the main track. We walked up the little path towards the walls of the house, through the iron gate, to the little terrace, past the broken broom, the rusted tricycle and the fat pot split like an orange. At the door she turned towards me, a faint smile on her lips, a key, the same as the one I had been sent, in her hand.

Together we opened the shutters in the main room and let the sunlight stream across the neglected, newspaper-covered furniture. With the full light of day it looked sadder even than it had looked the first time I had seen it; there was an odour of damp and mustiness.

Standing in the centre of the room she ran her hand through her hair, stood still.

‘Maybe’, she said suddenly, ‘we should sit outside. This is sad, I think.’

I followed her into the wreckage of the garden and we found two battered little tin chairs, the paint peeling, the rust bleeding, tipped side by side like rubbish in a ransacked tomb. She trailed hers across the ragged grass into a patch of sunlight and I followed, with the envelope.

‘You have read everything, I suppose? Did you have time?’

‘I spent all of yesterday reading, trying to put it all together. There is not a lot, I can’t fill in all the picture.’

She shrugged slightly, twisted the wedding ring, looked up at me suddenly. ‘You know now that this is not real? This ring? Mama told me that she had told you the truth anyway, she cannot bear the lie … I’m sorry. You would have found out from his letter. I’m not Mrs Colcott at all.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you.’

‘Oh no! I am not. I feel that I am anyway. Legality is not so important until you come to legal things, is it? Do not fear. I have no claims on your family!’

‘Let me remind you that I am all that remains, I presume at least, of my family. So what you really mean is that you have no claims on me. Is that it?’