Mr. Tilbury considered, his head on one side, but seemed to draw a blank.

“Do you know, I can’t think of anyone who comes to mind. The clinic was down near the coast—Broadstairs, I believe. Before that she was at school in Folkestone. I suppose any friends would have lived down that way. By the time I met the Edels they were living in Wimbledon, and the few people they knew there were recent acquaintances, so I don’t know. My wife has friends now in Sidcup, of course. Mothers of Margaret’s little chums and so on. But you’d have to ask her about anything further back.”

Jean followed him into the shop where the customers, a young couple, were waiting. Newlyweds, Jean decided, from the way the girl clung to his arm and gazed at him so adoringly. Or perhaps newly engaged and wanting a large and costly ring. Jean hoped so, for Mr. Tilbury’s sake. As she squeezed past in the cramped space she could feel the happiness streaming from them.

Later, when Jean had cooked meat and potatoes for dinner, and washed up, and watered the garden, she wrote up her shorthand notes of the meeting and underlined the word Broadstairs. Then flicking back to her interview with Gretchen Tilbury she found a reference to St. Cecilia’s and circled that also. This would be her next focus of enquiry.

There was no urgency, of course. Mrs. Tilbury and Margaret were due at Charing Cross Hospital for their first set of tests and observations soon; the results might preclude any further investigations on her part. But she was already looking forward to it. It was quite a few years since she had been to the coast. There was Worthing, of course, in ’46, but she didn’t count that because of what came afterward.

Perhaps, she thought, turning her mind firmly to Broadstairs, she might even stay the night and drive home the following day. It took no more than a moment’s consideration to dismiss the idea, appealing though it was to imagine waking to the high call of gulls and the shush of waves on sand. It was quite impossible; her mother wouldn’t be left, even for one night. The mere suggestion would aggravate her already highly developed sense of helplessness.

Because they depended on Jean’s salary to live, Mr. Swinney having left neither pension nor savings, she was able to accommodate Jean’s absence for the length of a working day, no more. Crises that could be held off between nine and five-thirty were likely to rear up outside of those hours and overwhelm her. Jean, as a rational woman, had always intended to challenge this principle, but time had passed and she never had, and now the habit was fixed.

There had been occasions in the past when she had regretted this. On Friday evenings Bill, Larry, Duncan the picture editor and some of the subs would go over to the Black Horse in Petts Wood for a drink after work. Once or twice they had invited her along, because she was, after all, one of the guys, but she had declined because she hadn’t cleared it with her mother in advance, and now they didn’t ask anymore.