Oh yes? ‘How long have you lived in Florida, Auntie? I seem to’ve lost count.’

‘I guess it has to be going on ten years, dear. And poor Uncle Murray’s been gone for eight of them. If I’d had children and grandchildren, I might not have stayed here. And I can’t tell you how much your mother misses you and her granddaughter, whose wedding it broke my heart not to be at. If I hadn’t gone down with that terrible flu bug Ruby’s daughter brought with her from Chicago…’

While her aunt went on bewailing her absence from Carla’s wedding, Leona was thinking, If my mum really missed me she’d come home.

‘My sister is looking a lot better than when she arrived,’ Ray said.

Leona glanced across the pool to where Rebecca was laughing at whatever the scrawny woman in the red bikini had just said.

‘I’d go so far as to say Rebecca is now a different person,’ her aunt added. ‘And I’d like her to stay that way.’

‘But she’s my mother, and I want her to come home,’ Leona replied.

‘Oh my goodness – hasn’t she told you yet, dear?’

‘Told me what?’ But Leona had no need to ask.

Chapter Eleven

On the day Leona returned from Florida, Howard boarded a plane for Munich. Given their missions, it seemed to Marianne as though two more strands, grey in hue, were now woven into the family tapestry.

Leona had called her immediately, to convey her unhappy news. Marianne had just replaced the receiver when Howard rang up from the airport to ask her to stay in close touch with his mother while he was away.

Howard’s conflicting emotions accompanied him on the flight: the filial responsibility he was briefly leaving behind, and the painful pleasure ahead. It was some weeks since he had visited Ben. Could talking to a young child on the phone maintain the bond between them?

Howard doubted it. Like it or not, time and distance could not but diminish his chance of having a real father-son relationship with Ben when he grew up. Love was a vital component of that relationship and Howard’s for Ben was guaranteed until the day he died. But the other way round? Well – would Howard now be letting his sick father metaphorically walk all over him if Harry hadn’t been a pillar of his childhood and youth? And how was Howard to be that to his son with Ben living in Germany and he in England?

Closing his eyes as weariness overcame him, he allowed himself to relive the nightmare of his father’s changing from the kindly man he really was to the unpleasant person illness had made him.