‘When will I see you again?’

‘I don’t know that either,’ Luciana stroked the child’s face with her finger and pushed her fine, straight hair behind her ear, ‘but I have something for you and it’s the beginning of a treasure hunt. You could say it’s the first clue.’ She placed a small package in the child’s hand.

‘What’s a clue?’ asked Marnie.

‘It’s something that helps you to solve a mystery or to find something. A sort of helpful hint if you’re on a quest.’

The child looked at the packet and then looked at Luciana. ‘Can I open it now?’

‘No, not yet. You can open it when you get home to your father. Keep it safe and think of me sometimes. Remember what we’ve shared together and remember that your visits made me happy when I didn’t think I could ever be happy again. Will you do that?’

‘I swear,’ said Marnie solemnly. ‘I will never forget you, not ever. Will you send me a letter? Nobody ever sends me letters.’

‘Yes,’ said Luciana. ‘Yes, that I can promise you. I will write to you for as long as I can and each letter will be like another clue in a treasure hunt.’

When the sweet couple left, Luciana did not go to wave them goodbye as most of the other guests did. She had no taste for watching the departure of the child. She had not thought it possible that she could mind so much.

Dr Gladstone Henry had not only endorsed her opinion about Patsy’s illness, he had confirmed some other suspicions that had nothing to do with Marnie or the diamond pendant. The grievance Luciana had been nursing so carefully and the lump which she had recently found in her body were one and the same: the cancer of the spirit had become a cancer of the flesh.

You sent me this, Luciana told Carlos, her husband. You caused it by dying first and leaving me alone. Soon I shall die too, so I will not need to fall over the cliff after all – but you had better be waiting for me when I come, wherever you are.

She looked at her reflection in the glass, and a stranger looked back at her – a stranger with white hair and a wrinkled skin, though inside she felt herself to be the same as she had always been.

Truly, Luciana thought, old age is a terrible disguise. We become unrecognisable even to ourselves.

Part Two

Glendrochatt

Chapter Three