And then Jem turned up, falling in out of the summer rain. He was eighteen and had just finished his A levels. He said – sitting in the kitchen drinking tea without milk and smoking skinny roll-ups, tobacco hanging off his lower lip – that he didn’t know why he had taken so long to come and find her. He had spent his childhood missing her; he’d kept a photograph of her as a five-year-old on his bedside table; he’d always felt like her younger brother and often when he was lonely he’d imagined telling her his troubles. Irene looked at him as he talked. He was tall and red-haired and clumsy, old-fashioned-looking she thought, with sharp collarbones under his grey tee-shirt, a shy, eager smile, and freckles just like her. Guilt and elation seized her. ‘I should have looked after you,’ she said, reaching over to take his hand in hers. ‘We’re each other’s family.’ When her mother eventually died, he had sat beside her at the funeral in a black suit that he must have borrowed because the legs were too short and the arms finished above his bony, freckled wrists.

Now he was a kind, clever man who bent over to disguise his height, stammered when he was nervous, sometimes giggled like a teenage girl, and played mad practical jokes on his friends. He translated French for a living – technical manuals, educational text books, every so often a novel – and for the past year or so had lived in the south of France with his girlfriend.

‘Oui?’

‘Jem?’

‘Irene! I was just thinking of you.’

‘How are you? Is this a bad time to call?’

‘No. Juliet’s just making me a fish soup.’

‘Lucky you.’

‘You should see the mess.’

‘How is she?’

‘She’s been a bit tired lately. They work her hard at the hospital.’

‘What about your work?’

‘I’ve finally finished translating a technical manual for a steel company that specializes in giant girders to make bridges.’

‘Blimey.’

‘Quite. The things I know now. I don’t think they’re all going to come in useful. What about my nieces?’

‘Good. I think.’

‘You don’t sound quite sure?’

‘Oh well. You know how it is – there’s always one you’re worried about. It’s like this free-floating anxiety; it’ll attach anywhere. It’s Sasha at the moment, because she’s so bloody good it unnerves me. It’s not natural. But then maybe I don’t see what’s going on with the others properly, but you can’t watch them all at once, can you? Tonight Aggie tried to shave herself with Adrian’s razor. There was blood everywhere. For a minute, I thought … Oh, I don’t know. Tell me to shut up.’

‘I’m sure they’re all fine,’ Jem said vaguely.

‘I know. But how do you stop yourself worrying? You just have to stop yourself from showing it too much.’