It was just an ordinary evening. There had been hundreds like it, thousands, yet this is the one that plays in my mind, like a scratched record I can’t move on from. The last time we were together before she came. The last evening we were ‘normal’.

And then I remember Eva, setting the table briskly, efficiently, the cutlery clattering over the polished wooden surface. Like me, she has been listening to Beth’s letter.

‘Host family?’ she says sceptically, and then she shudders. ‘It’s like we’re going to the airport to collect a parasite.’

SPRING

1

The phone call came shortly before midnight on the eve of Corinne’s arrival.

Abi lay slumped against her pillows skimming a novel for her book club, wondering when Mark would get home, when the phone in the hall downstairs began its shrill bleat.

Instantly, her thoughts tilted towards the catastrophic. A mugging on his way home. An accident. She swung her legs out of bed and hurried downstairs, anxiety lending an involuntary sharpness to her tone when she picked up the receiver and said: ‘Yes, hello?’

It was met with a corresponding silence.

‘Is there someone there?’ Abi asked sharply, leaning forward to switch on the table lamp, casting a small pool of light over the polished surface. This time she heard something, a swift intake of breath and then a voice she didn’t recognize, saying:

‘Mrs Holland, I am so sorry to disturb you at this late hour. My name is Valentina Catto.’

Words spoken softly with a foreign inflection; there was a depth to the woman’s voice and a slowness to her delivery that lent her some gravity. Abi’s thoughts whirred. Catto – she knew the name.

‘You’re Corinne’s mother,’ she said quickly.

‘That’s correct.’

It was almost one a.m. in France. Beth’s exchange partner, Corinne, was due to arrive from Tours at lunchtime the next day.

There had been a picture alongside her details – Abi brought it to mind now: a round, blank face, eyes that were a little wide apart, a suggestion of slightly prominent front teeth in the close-lipped smile. ‘She looks like a squirrel,’ Eva had commented, which had caused Beth’s face to darken. But Abi had been reassured by the photograph. The last thing they needed was some sultry Mediterranean beauty with manners and affectations older than her years.

‘I am very sorry,’ Valentina Catto said now, ‘but I don’t think Corinne can come to Ireland.’

‘Has something happened?’

‘I am unsure if it is wise for her to come.’

Again, that low, soft tone, a certain formality in the enunciation. Abi felt herself simultaneously irritated by the flimsiness of the message while at once being drawn in by the voice.