‘Nobody gets on really well with Judith,’ says Fliss shortly. ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t have said that. Judith’s got lots of good qualities but empathy isn’t one of them. Well, I’ll leave it to you. Cara might like some space to decide what she’s going to do and there’s plenty of that here. It’s very early days for her after her husband’s death and it’s all very well to put on a brave face and be all gung ho, but you’re not thinking straight when you’ve just lost somebody very special.’

Sam looks down at his coffee. He thinks: well, you certainly know all about that.

He feels the same kind of tenderness and love for Fliss that he felt towards Hal earlier. He owes them both so much. Suddenly he has one of those rare longings to open up, tell her his dilemma, but he can hear Cara and Hal coming back along the passage and he suppresses it.

As they drive along familiar lanes, past Buckfast Abbey, through Hembury Woods up towards Holne Moor, Fliss is thinking of times past and how Hal and she drove this way twenty years before. Back then, it was a spring day: a chiffchaff swinging on a branch of budding crab apple, a clump of early purple orchids on a grassy bank, two painted ladies fluttering above a patch of violets growing in a crevice of a dry-stone wall. They parked by Venford Reservoir and walked out to Bench Tor, looking down into White Wood; seeing the gleam of water far below, between the branches of the trees that clung to the coombe’s steep sides. They heard the cuckoo, and suddenly they spotted him, watching his dipping flight as he dropped down towards Meltor Wood. Then Hal had taken her in his arms and kissed her and the next afternoon, when the family was gathered for tea in the hall, just before he went back to join his ship, he’d announced to them all that he and Fliss were going to get married.

As the car bumps over the cattle grid and up on to the open moor, Fliss stretches out a hand and lays it on Hal’s thigh. He gives her a quick sideways glance.

‘Do I deserve this token of affection?’ he asks.

She smiles. ‘It’s good to be bringing a dog up on the moor for the first time again,’ she says. ‘There have been so many. Mrs Pooter, Mugwump, Rex, Rufus. And now Honey.’

‘I think we were right to resist a puppy,’ Hal says. ‘I think a seven-year-old is a good age for us.’

Fliss looks out at the autumn face of the moor, a patchwork of rusting bracken, bleached grasslands and tall stands of golden gorse. Venford Reservoir reveals itself: a shining jewel of blue, reflecting the clear sky, set within its banks of rhododendrons and trees.