A mittened hand rested on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry to hear that. Things must be very hard for you,” came the reply. “Why don’t we go back into the vestry and I’ll put the kettle on.”

“Thank you. You’re very kind.”

This encounter led to one practical improvement to Jean’s situation. She had not disclosed the details of her recent sorrows with regard to the Tilburys but had hinted at the ending of a love affair, and her feelings of regret and isolation. Her mother’s reduced horizons had also come up in conversation, and Mrs. Melsom had immediately volunteered to come and sit with her on Saturday afternoon so that Jean might enjoy a little freedom. They would play cards, or chat or do their crocheting together in silence—whatever Mrs. Swinney preferred. There were other good sorts at the church who would be happy to do the same on subsequent Saturdays, she was sure. Maybe, by degrees, she might be tempted downstairs again.

For Jean’s aching heart, of course, she could offer no remedy and didn’t try. There were only the time-honored methods—endurance, distraction, work—of which Jean was well aware, having had recourse to them once before in the matter of Frank, and recalled now without confidence. Previous experience taught her that the pain would not be unending—but neither would it subside smoothly, incrementally, but rather in a series of crashing waves, some of which might still knock her off her feet.

It was the first Tuesday in December, a few days before the Echo was to carry the Strange Case of the “Virgin Mother” as its front-page story, when Jean was hit by one of these waves as she tidied her desk and filed away all her correspondence and notes. The personal letters from Howard, which had come to her home address, were not included in this archive but remained in her dressing table drawer, awaiting the day when she felt resilient enough to reread them. The sight of Gretchen’s handwriting on that first brief note—I have always believed my own daughter (now ten) to have been born without the involvement of any man—made her feel suddenly queasy, and she had to go to the window and press her face against the cool glass.

“I’m just going for a walk,” she whispered to Larry, who was talking on the telephone, feet up on the desk, at his end of the office.

He gave her a thumbs-up without any interruption to the flow of his speech.

It was that hour in the late afternoon when the winter sun is just above the horizon but giving no heat. Her shadow stretched the length of the path, long, flared legs scissoring as she walked along, kicking through the last spiny chestnut shells and feeling the crunch of twigs underfoot. She could hear the distant shouts of children, playing, and somewhere deep in the trees a dog barking. Her scarf was still on the hook in the office and the cold air drilled into her ears.