James had left the interview feeling like a sixteen-year-old in love for the first time, and even now, thirteen years later, he was obsessed with her fragile beauty. She was right, the knitwear design idea had been a failure, and as soon as she had married she had given it up. She seemed not to have the strength to see anything through. Even motherhood, it seemed, was too much for her, and after the birth of Carolyn she had been so severely depressed that she had spent six months in hospital. Her father, an insensitive and self-centred man, had found her illness embarrassing and cowardly. He had never visited her in hospital and since then the family had had little to do with him. Stella claimed to hate him. James had seen her through the bad times, almost glad, it seemed, of an excuse to spoil and cherish her. Even now he considered her before anything. He had been offered a job in Fleet Street but turned it down without discussing it with Stella. He knew she would never survive the move.

He had been working and was home later than Stella had expected. He saw her waiting at the window and felt guilty for making her anxious.

“Do we have to go?” she asked as soon as he came into the house. “I’m not sure I can face it.”

“Nonsense,” he said gently. “You know you’ll enjoy it once you’re there.”

“I won’t,” she said. “ I don’t know why we go. You don’t even get on with Max particularly.”

“Oh, well,” he said easily. “ It’s always relaxing to be with Aunt Alice.”

“She doesn’t sound very relaxed at the moment.” Stella was defensive. “ She phoned not long ago and asked to speak to you. She’s worried about the development on the land at the edge of the village. She wants your advice.”

“That’s not worry,” James said. “It’s guilt because she sold the land in the first place. There’s nothing I can do about it now. We reported the Department of the Environment’s decision in the paper.”

The Express was a local paper with a limited circulation, but James Laidlaw took his journalism seriously. It was not all advertisements and wedding photographs. He had done a piece once about the poor standard of care in an old people’s home, which had been taken up by the big Newcastle papers, and a feature about a county councillor’s corruption had forced the subject of the article to resign.

Carolyn, who was twelve and their only child, appeared quite suddenly beside them. She was wearing a coat and carrying a holdall. She was slight and pale as a ghost, so quiet that they often hardly noticed she was there. Her mother dressed her in old-fashioned clothes, with skirts too long for her, so she looked younger than she was.