Now her head was resting on her knees, and the very last thing Dan wanted was for her to be miserable; he only wanted to make her happy, and yet, he thought, how had Peter fared? Alison should know the answer to this, and if she didn’t, she ought to find out. He placed his hand very tenderly on her back, and she let it stay there, but she was speechless, because hearing her brother’s name was an agony; he resided in her conscience, and her neglect of him was a terrible cross to bear. She’d never intended this to happen, this severing of all ties with the person who’d once been her most trusted friend and protector; she hadn’t meant to abandon him for ever, but then she hadn’t known what she meant to do – there hadn’t been any kind of plan at all. In Paris, where she’d first stopped running for a while and found a job as a waitress, she’d felt reinvented, as if after all it was possible to sweep away a past life and begin again. She was just Al-ees-on to her Parisian colleagues, a hard-working English girl with decent French, what a find, what an asset when the bistro filled with les Américains, who seemed not to realise any language existed other than their own. She’d rented a chambre de bonne, a former servant’s garret on the sixth floor of an apartment building on the Rue de Courcelles, and from that address she’d written her three letters to Daniel, and one letter to Peter, too, to tell him she was alive, to express her love and gratitude, and to say goodbye. She thought about that letter now, still imprinted on her mind all these many years later. She hadn’t told him about the rape – wouldn’t share that nightmare with anyone and least of all Peter. So, she’d written:

I saved your life only once, but you saved mine every day, and now I’ve left, I want you to remember, always, that you are beloved to me. But I think you meant me to go far away, so I shall, and I’ll try and live the life you wanted for me. I don’t know when I’ll see you again, but I’ll keep you in my heart, and I know you’ll keep me in yours.

Always and for ever,

Your Alison xx