He looked at his mother, hunched in her seat as though the air were hardening on her shoulders. Could she take any pleasure in this? Was that still possible? It was a long time since she had been out of the house – a long time since going somewhere meant anything other than going to the hospital – and when he and Kirsty had gone in with her morning tea (into the shaded room no breeze seemed to freshen) she had been so flustered and confused they had wondered if the outing would be possible at all. She had complained wretchedly that she could no longer find any position to be comfortable in; how at night she wanted to turn on to her side but was afraid she would suffocate. Then, when Kirsty left them alone – Ella calling ‘Mom!’ from the bottom of the stairs – she had said she knew what a ‘kind doctor’ would do, a remark that Larry had refused to understand, though she had followed him around the room with her eyes until Kirsty came back and he could escape into the garden for a smoke.

For days now (months?) he had been trying to gather in himself the courage to speak to her. He needed – and the need was urgent – to appear before her as he truly was, to make himself visible to her: no more the shining target of her old pride, but a man who had proved unequal to those imperfections in himself he had barely suspected the existence of five years ago. And though he supposed she had already resigned herself to the loss of the old dream in which they had been such loyal partners, he was afraid that she would slip away (say ‘die’, Larry!) while some pretence still clouded the space between them. He needed to be recognized. It would take no more than a moment’s attention, a hand raised in blessing, but he would have to choose his moment with the utmost care. And choose it very soon.

To the right of them was Salisbury Plain: low, pale green hills jointed to the sky by fragments of dense, dark woodland. Then as they came within twenty miles of the house, Alice began to point things out. A church where she had once been a bridesmaid. A haunted pub. The gates of an estate behind which some local character had lived out a lordly decline.

To Ella, Kirsty explained: ‘This is where Gran’ma lived when she was a little girl.’

‘OK,’ said Ella, and she put on a short mime of looking out with interest, though there wasn’t much to excite a child from North Beach who had seen canyons and mountains and giant sequoia trees.