‘You won’t be long?’

‘I won’t be long.’

When she came back with two mugs, she sat on the edge of his bed and told him about the games Edward used to play; about the bag of plastic dinosaurs he had always insisted on taking with him wherever he went and how he and Amy had loved to play in the old wooden castle that had been made years before for Giles when he was a little boy too. When Rory had finished his drink she tucked him in tight and watched his eyelids beginning to droop as if they had become too heavy to hold open any longer. She went on talking softly until she judged he was really asleep before she got cautiously off the bed. She stood for a moment looking down at this small replica of her husband with his perfectly proportioned body, grace of movement and wonderful looks – so different from her own son. Two tears trickled slowly down her cheeks and her throat felt tight. He had called out for his grandmother in his sleep, but it occurred to her suddenly that not once, even at the height of his nightmare, had Rory called out for his mother.

She turned out the bedside light and slipped quietly out of the room.

Chapter Nine

The following morning, Christopher woke early and decided to go for a walk before breakfast.

No one else was about as he let himself out of the door into the courtyard. He thought how cleverly the old farm buildings had been converted by the Grants to provide the facilities for their flourishing arts centre – an example of good manners in architecture. He went round the side of the accommodation wing and came out at the edge of the park. The air was full of birdsong, and if, in the morning light, the rhododendron bush below his bedroom window had lost its magic, moonlit luminosity, it still looked beautiful: the heavy white flower clusters just touched inside with yellow as though some medieval monastic artist – a master of restraint – had dipped his finest brush in ochre paint and drawn barely perceptible lines down the centre of each petal. Across the valley below, transparent wisps of mist were draped along the river, giving the landscape the look of a Chinese picture painted on silk, with the tops of trees rising above the early haze and the far hills rolling into the distance. What a place to live, thought Christopher – lucky, lucky Grants.