“Well, thank you. That’s a nice thing to say,” she said, keeping her voice steady.

It seemed impossible that he wouldn’t notice her transformation, but he just gave her a quick smile and kept his eyes on the road, as a sensible man would.

They had left the suburbs behind now and were driving through the Kent countryside of sunken lanes and hedgerows tangled with honeysuckle and brambles and teeming with butterflies. At Shoreham, a stream ran through the middle of the village. A gang of children was wading bare-legged in the water with jam jars and nets; they turned as one and stared after the car with tribal hostility as it passed over the bridge.

The house was on the edge of the village, in a large, unkempt garden consisting mostly of shaggy lawn, with fruit trees and beds of straggling wildflowers. Beyond the trees a rustic tennis court had been shaved into the grass.

Aunt Edie was reclining on a wooden sun lounger, swathed in shawls in spite of the heat, which by now was shimmering, intense. She was drinking cider from a bottle and reading a Dashiell Hammett. It was hard to see exactly what she looked like, as her face was so crowded; as well as a yellow sun visor, she was wearing a pair of modern cat’s-eye sunglasses over her regular spectacles and had a large sticking plaster across her nose. An elderly spaniel lay at her feet, stirring itself to aim a few dutiful yaps at the visitors before slumping back beside her.

“Hello, Auntie,” said Howard, bending to kiss her powdery cheek. “This is Jean,” was the extent of his explanation for Jean’s substitution for his wife and daughter, and all that Aunt Edie seemed to require.

“You’ll be thirsty, I expect. Help yourself to cider—you know where it is,” she said, waving an arm toward the open back door.

While Howard went to fetch the drinks, Jean spread out the woolen blanket on the tussocky grass and sat, cross-legged, awaiting interrogation, but her hostess was serenely incurious. Jean was glad now of Gretchen’s sun hat, as there was no shade where they sat and the trees were quite useless in this regard, with their lowest branches dipping almost to the ground. She was grateful, too, for the element of concealment, in case her recent upsurge of feeling was readable in her face.

“I like your getup,” Aunt Edie said, laying aside her book and peering at Jean over both sets of glasses. “Very practical. I’ve never worn a pair of trousers. Do you think it’s too late to start?”

“Not at all,” said Jean. “I think you’d look elegant in trousers.”

“Useful for cycling, I should think.”

“You’re not still roaring around the village on your bicycle?” said Howard, catching the end of this exchange as he returned with two bottles of cider. “I thought you were going to get rid of it after your accident.”

Aunt Edie’s hand strayed to her bandaged nose. “I admit, I was a bit shaken up. But I’ve decided I can’t quite do without it. It’s so useful for going to the library and so forth.”