‘But you can’t base a relationship solely on gratitude.’ Marnie suddenly felt sorry for the glamorous Louisa. ‘Do you still have to go for check-ups and things for your health – even after ten years?’ she asked curiously, wondering what it must have been like to live under the threat of dying at such a young age; admiring Louisa’s head-on attitude to life. ‘Is that still a problem or are you completely in the clear now?’

But Louisa brushed this question aside. ‘Who’s ever completely in the clear about anything?’ she said breezily. ‘I’m fine and I’ve been very lucky. I do still have check-ups and it’s a great relief whenever it’s over for another year, but in between times I don’t let myself think about it. Medical history’s boring and I’ve had too much of it.’

From the expression on Louisa’s face Marnie guessed that this was not as easy as she made it out to be, but since she was the last person to probe for more information than anyone wanted to give she did not press her about it.

‘Let’s not talk about me any more.’ Louisa tossed a pebble into the pool below them and pulled her jersey on again although Marnie thought it was still pleasantly warm. ‘It’s your turn now. Tell me more about what happened in the West Indies. Something momentous obviously did happen.’

So Marnie told her about the strange events surrounding her mother’s terrifying illness, of how the old lady had rescued her and how they had formed an unlikely bond that still represented the strongest attachment Marnie had ever sustained for anyone. ‘Perhaps that’s just because we were separated so soon,’ she said bleakly. ‘Perhaps it wouldn’t have lasted if she’d known me better. I’m crap at keeping relationships going. I might have spoiled it.’

Just as she had when she read to the class, Marnie seemed to Louisa to enter an almost hypnotic state when she described the dark events that had taken place in her childhood. It was clearly a very vivid memory and they both became so completely absorbed in the telling of it that they lost all sense of time.

Earlier, when the sun had felt so hot, it had been easy for Louisa to be transported by Marnie’s storytelling and imagine herself on a Caribbean island, but as the afternoon wore on there started to be a chill in the air. A sharp breeze sent the cloud-shadows racing across the hills, so that it looked as if the dark patches of the still winter-dead bracken were on the move, dragged across the surface of the land like an outworn carpet. Further away, a few of the high peaks were still capped with snow and little pockets of white clung in the hollows below rocky outcrops: a reminder that spring could still withdraw its favours, thought Louisa.