Hal and Fliss begin a conversation about one of their children and Cara slips out and goes upstairs to her room. It’s colder today and she needs a warmer jersey. She’s packed one of Philip’s, a soft cashmere, warm and oversized, and she shrugs herself into the comfort of it and shuts her eyes just for a moment, acknowledging all that she has lost. She wraps her arms around herself, remembering his kindness, his sense of fun, their own ways of intimacy and love.

‘I never guessed,’ she said to him, after that visit in Copenhagen, ‘that it was Max whom you loved.’

Philip was sitting reading the newspaper and she can remember his swift upward glance, the anxiety and guilt in his eyes. She went to him, kneeling beside him and putting her arms round him. Philip held her tightly, his face hidden.

‘I love you, too,’ he said, muffled. ‘You know that.’

‘It’s OK,’ she reassured him. ‘I love him, too. If you have to love somebody I’m glad that it’s Max.’

Cara stands up. Pausing at the bedroom window, she sees that the rain has stopped although the sun is almost obscured by the mist over the moor. To the south storm clouds are building, towering and toppling over the hills. She hears her name called and then a knock on the door. She calls a response, the door opens and Sam sticks his head around, eyes alight with amusement.

‘Fancy an adventure?’ he asks.

Cara laughs. ‘That depends on what sort of adventure you have in mind,’ she answers. But Sam has already gone.

‘Bring a coat,’ he calls.

Catching up her fleece jacket, she hurries to the door.

‘Come on,’ he calls impatiently from further down the corridor. ‘We haven’t much time!’

She goes after him along the passage to the big central landing and, as he turns left and climbs the stairs, Cara follows, keeping close to the wall. She hasn’t been up to the third floor before. Something about the wooden stairs and banisters has seemed forbidding, unsafe, but Sam is climbing and she has to follow him. Here the building is less well decorated, less lived in. Even on this floor the ceilings are high, so much higher than in her cosy rooms in the west wing. There is a sense of space, of grandeur. The pictures on the walls here are fewer, and the paint on the walls is rougher, peeling in places. She is not surprised. After all, Hal and Fliss have no need for this extra space; its maintenance would not be a priority. On the top landing she looks around. There are several doors, which she assumes lead to bedrooms. Indeed, as Sam makes his way down the passage he gestures at an open doorway.

‘That’s my room,’ he says, but clearly this is not his destination.