‘Happy birthday, Mrs V!’ said Mrs Samson, touching for a moment Alice’s shoulder and leaving a faint row of flour prints on the blue of the dress.

Alice showed her hand.

‘That’s it,’ agreed Mrs Samson. ‘The boys are in charge all right.’

They manoeuvred her on to the terrace, but getting her up the bank on to the lawn was more difficult. Alec raised the small wheels at the front, tilting the chair backwards, while Larry leaned his weight from behind.

‘I can help!’ called Osbourne, hurrying towards them from the direction of the stile. ‘Many happy returns,’ he panted.

‘Where’s Stephen?’ she asked.

‘This side please, Dennis,’ said Larry.

‘Righto.’

They gathered around the chair, lifting it up the bank like Sicilian villagers struggling out of the sea with a seated Madonna in re-enactment of some half-remembered miracle. Ella watched from the top of the bank, a scarlet balloon in her hand.

In the orchard the tablecloths were patterned with the shadows of the leaves. Larry wheeled his mother to the head of the table. Una came out with a sunhat she had found in the hall, a large straw affair with a wide ribbon that tied under the chin. In the shade of the brim Alice’s face was hardly visible. A butterfly settled for a moment on the stillness of her arm, then went on, drunkenly, across slabs of green light.

‘Someone’s here,’ called Kirsty.

It was Judith and Christopher Joy, who had strolled from their cottage in matching linen jackets and panama hats. They carried gifts: a pot of luxurious hand cream from Jolly’s in Bath and, from a beach in County Galway, a large pebble that Judith Joy had painted in healing colours. Next to arrive was Mrs Dzerzhinsky. Her present was an illustrated calf-bound edition of Gibran’s The Prophet, and as she put it into Alice’s hands Alec overheard her murmur words in a language that was not English, a blessing perhaps, or a piece of folk wisdom from the old country, wherever that was. He had noted this recently, how people needed to communicate to Alice something intense and private, to give voice to the seriousness she provoked in them, as if her affliction flushed out the trivial from their lives and made them all mystics and philosophers.

The last of the guests was the art teacher, Miss Lynne. She said it looked like a scene from one of those endlessly long but delicious Italian films. She tucked her head under the brim of Alice’s hat to kiss her. She said she’d love to paint it all.