Veronica looked up then, distracted from her own preoccupations, it seemed. ‘Oh yes, dear, do come back and play here. That seems rather dangerous. You’d be much better on dry land.’

‘She’s fine,’ Connie said brusquely. She thought Veronica had probably over-protected her child. Besides, what right did the woman have now to interfere?

Alice had found a stick on the bank and was poking at the vegetation on the opposite side of the burn. There were huge heads of cow parsley that were higher than the girl; the lacy leaves and ribbed stalks must have seemed like a forest of trees to her, exciting and mysterious.

‘Come back!’ Veronica called, her voice seemingly close to panic. ‘Oh, do come back, please.’

Alice turned and frowned, but ignored the stranger.

‘She’s fine,’ Connie said again. She remembered the way Veronica had looked at Alice when they’d been invited to lunch. ‘Really, I think children need to feel they’re having adventures. They have to learn to deal with some risk, don’t you think so?’

‘How can you say that?’ Veronica was almost beside herself. ‘You of all people! You allowed a child to die in your care.’

Alice must have heard the shrill voice and turned back again, troubled by the tone, though she hadn’t taken in the words. There was a moment of quiet. Water running over pebbles. The distant rumble of a tractor. Connie couldn’t trust herself to speak. She wouldn’t lose her temper in front of her daughter.

‘I’m sorry,’ Veronica said at last. ‘That wasn’t fair.’

Perhaps infected by the tension between the adults, Alice began to lash out at the cow parsley with her stick, beating down the plants and stamping on them to make a path into the middle of the vegetation, her furthest foray ever away from the cottage. Connie started to pile up cups and plates. Now she just wanted Veronica to leave. She could see that really they would never do more than tolerate each other. The notion that they might be friends – that she could be included in the charmed circle of people invited for delicious lunches in the big white house – was ridiculous.

‘Look what I’ve found!’ Alice was almost hidden from view and her voice had a strange, muffled quality. Connie stood up, glad to leave Veronica’s side. She walked towards the water, the movement shaking the stress from her muscles. She crossed the burn, balancing on a large, flat rock in the middle so that she didn’t get her shoes wet.

Alice was standing in an untidy clearing in the patch of weeds, looking down. ‘Would you like it, Mummy? Could we keep it?’ And she bent to pick up the squashed leather bag.

Chapter Twenty-Five