Alec nodded. He had no idea what she was talking about. And could this really be the same tree? He had his doubts. But her face had acquired that particular waxy glaze that meant her pain was on the flood. ‘We ought to go,’ he said.

She gestured with her hand. She wanted to stay a little longer. Sit there on her own. She was expecting someone. She didn’t know who. Not yet. But someone. ‘I’m very tired,’ she said. ‘Don’t know if I can stand up again.’

‘I’ll help when you’re ready,’ he said.

‘Will you?’

‘When you’re ready.’

He crossed the garden and joined the others on the patio, where they had gathered under a sun umbrella.

‘Everything all right?’

‘Fine,’ he said.

Stephanie brought out a jug of home-made lemonade, and for twenty minutes they made small talk, a shrill to-and-fro of pleasantries that only Ella felt free to ignore, twisting in her seat to stare at Alice’s back, at those fascinating creatures slung over her shoulders, those little savage heads, their glass eyes prinked with sunlight. It was a sight she would remember even into middle age, long after she had forgotten the house and the people who lived there, or even why they had gone. She asked about it when her mother came to visit her and the grandchildren in New York (the Thanksgiving of 2037), but Kirsty had no memory of mink heads, though she could recall, she said, clear as day, the storm on the drive home, and, of course, the birthday party the following week. And all that that entailed.

12

When the phone rang he snatched up the receiver, certain it would be his contact giving him a time and a place to hand over the bag, but it was the automated wake-up service informing him that it was 8.30 a.m. He lay back on the pillows. He was in a large clean bed in a large clean room. Muted colours, everything new. A large window with a net curtain looked over the narrow street. There was very little noise. Filtered sunlight fell on the glass-topped table.