THEY SET OUT ACROSS the badlands on a benign morning. There had been no great wind or rainstorms throughout their stay. Diana was grateful for that though she suspected David would have enjoyed either.

‘For your sake,’ she said over her shoulder to her brother in the back seat, ‘I’m sorry there hasn’t been any Shakespearean weather.’

‘Another time,’ David said. ‘I’ve become addicted to this sky, you know.’

Diana had been thinking of it as their last trip, and perhaps it would be, but it was far better to be of David’s optimistic turn of mind even if it brought disappointments with it. She had lost the habit of looking forward except as a way to prevent potential disasters, of which Constance’s wandering away was really no more than a metaphor. The episodes Diana couldn’t avoid took place in Constance’s mind, electrical storms Diana could read only in her eyes without knowing what centres had been struck.

Constance pointed to one of the large desert rabbits, whose large, translucent ears were as curious to them as the red, white and blue eyes of the roadrunners. Diana saw off to the left the shadow of a hawk and did not call it to anyone’s attention, glad they were in a car which could outrun that rabbity destiny.

‘Oh, Larry!’ David called in falsetto from the back seat, for he had spotted an ocotillo in fuller bloom than any they had seen before, the tips of its spidery branches in a delicate red flame of flowers.

Diana was sorry to turn out of the badlands on to a road with traffic enough so that all she would now see were the large trucks which blocked her view ahead and bore down on her behind. She drove in their vice for nearly an hour, and her passengers were silent in their different apprehensions. David’s timidities, when they weren’t an inconvenience, often touched Diana, for they had been among his first offerings of trust after their long childhood estrangement. She could feel both her passengers ease a little as she turned on to the big highway though it was really more difficult driving for her with its too many options.

‘How long have you lived with us?’ Constance suddenly turned and asked David.

‘Two weeks,’ David said.

‘That’s hardly any time at all,’ Constance said, mildly surprised.

‘Has it seemed an eternity?’ David asked, teasing.

‘No,’ she said, ‘but I feel used to you.’