‘Aunt Diana?’ the young male voice inquired. ‘This is Mike.’

‘Oh, Mike, how glad I am to hear your voice. Did Ben tell you what a miracle that door is? Constance doesn’t even realize it hasn’t always been here, and she’s out in the garden right now, checking on her bulbs. And the fence, too, it’s all just wonderful.’

‘I’m glad,’ Mike said, in a tone which made Diana realize that she’d deflected him from another purpose.

‘What’s on your mind?’ she said.

‘I wondered if I could come to see you,’ Mike said.

‘Of course, and bring your friend if you’d like,’ Diana said, not at that moment able to remember his name.

‘I’d like to do that again,’ Mike said, ‘but this time I’ll come alone. Could I come about four o’clock?’

‘Today?’

‘If that’s okay.’

‘Four is just fine,’ Diana said.

She hung up, knowing that Mike had something hard on his mind. She did not know him well enough to think in which direction to worry. An emotional problem? Money? Mike had so many people to turn to—his beloved brother, his parents, his grandfather—Diana couldn’t think what she might particularly offer. Fond of him, grateful to him, she hoped whatever help he thought she could give would be within her capacity to offer.

The phone rang again, and again Diana picked it up expecting to hear her brother’s voice. This time it was Jill.

‘Well,’ Jill said, ‘I can hear by the tone of your voice that you didn’t lose her in the desert.’

‘Only briefly,’ Diana answered, and found herself telling the story as a comic incident, and ended by adding, ‘And she went swimming.’

‘How are you?’ Jill asked.

‘Oh, back to myself just about, but it was a wonderful two weeks. Constance got quite used to David.’

There was a silence on the other end of the phone.

‘She’s just learning to give the devil his due,’ Diana added quickly, for of course Jill could still wish that, if there were to be three, she might be the third, ‘let me call her for you.’

Constance had by then come in from her brief tour of the garden, for it was very cold, and, even if she did not remember that she’d spent the last two weeks in the hot desert sun, her body sent its messages.

‘Come talk with Jill,’ Diana said. ‘We’ve just been away for two weeks in the desert, and she wants to welcome you back.’

Constance took the phone.

‘Diana says we’ve been away, but the only news I have is that we’re living with a man. At least, I think we are, but I can’t seem to find him anywhere, and he isn’t on my memory board.’