“Are we going?” she asked. The question surprised them, so seldom did she take any initiative. “Peter will want me to play with him. He’ll miss me if I’m not there.”

“Do you enjoy these trips to Brinkbonnie?” James asked. Sometimes he wished he had a son, someone noisy and robust to bring life to the house. Even now, when most of her friends had Walkman cassette players and bedroom walls covered with pop-star posters, the only sound to come from Carolyn’s room was the practice scales of her violin.

“Oh, yes!” she said, her eyes gleaming. “It’s the best place in the world.”

When they arrived at the Tower, the front door was still open, but there was no sign of Alice. Max and Judy were in the sitting room drinking tea, not speaking. In the wide, wood-panelled hall there was a pile of baby equipment.

“Look at this!” James murmured to Stella as he stepped over buggies, camping cots, packets of disposable nappies. “ It’s like a travelling circus.”

Peter appeared at the top of the stairs on the first landing and called Carolyn to join him. She dropped her holdall with the rest of the luggage and ran to meet him, but by the time she reached the top he had disappeared into the small room where they kept their toys and were allowed to play. At the top of the stairs Carolyn paused. The house was very quiet. Her parents must have joined Max and Judy. The silence was broken by a muffled whimper. Carolyn moved quietly along the landing and listened again. The noise was coming from Aunt Alice’s bedroom. Aunt Alice was crying. Carolyn stood quite still and felt her own eyes fill with tears. She felt betrayed. That was the sort of behavior she expected from her mother, not from her aunt. Now it seemed all adults were similarly unreliable. She turned her back on her aunt’s room and looked for Peter.

Chapter Three

Mary Raven sat in her car and dreamed of her secret lover. She had met him, one beautiful summer’s evening, at a barbecue on the wild, uninhabited part of the Brinkbonnie dunes owned by the Northumberland Wildlife Trust. The party had been organised by the Trust, and she was there partly because she was sympathetic to the cause and partly to cover the event for the Otterbridge Express. At first it was a predictable evening. The fires took too long to light, the sausages were burnt on the outside and pink in the middle, and bossy women with jolly Girl Guide voices shouted to them as if they were children:

“Come on, everyone. There are hundreds more sausages.”