But as she put her hand up to switch on the kitchen light she saw a white shape on the lawn: her younger daughter stood motionless in the rain where the river had reached up across the bank. Pauline stood motionless herself, her hand still on the light switch. There was something so intense about the way Viola stood, matching her own intensity, that Pauline wildly wondered, consumed for a moment with guilt and a kind of madness, if she’d spoken aloud, phoned somebody, made her thoughts flesh by mistake so that in some way Viola knew what her mother was planning. Finally her daughter turned and walked slowly through the rain back to the house. Pauline turned too and went quickly upstairs in the darkness to her own bedroom. Her heart beat so fast against her breast it was like a drum; she suddenly remembered walking into the Big Top on Blackheath all those years ago, the way her heart beat then, waiting to find her father.

And she had found her father, after all.

She stood by the window looking down at the flooded river; still the rain fell. With part of her mind she heard Viola getting ready for bed, running water, opening and then closing a door.

Pauline went on standing there by the window. Finally the first light appeared behind the trees right across the river. The rain had stopped. A lone sparrow shivered on the lawn.

‘You were late darling,’ she said to Viola later, carefully making coffee for breakfast, trying not to look at her daughter’s white face, realising it mirrored her own, ‘You could have crashed your Mini in the rain.’

Viola looked up. Totally self-absorbed in her own chaotic thoughts she saw, almost at the edge of her consciousness, that her mother’s face was white and drawn, and something else. Glittery.

‘Sorry Mum,’ was all she said. But for just a moment mother and daughter stared at each other across the kitchen table. Then the phone rang and someone wanted to buy the polished wooden chest of drawers.

‘Oh – one of the drawers is broken inside,’ said Pauline, remembering suddenly, looking at her bruised hand in surprise but the customer did not care.

Pauline bent and kissed Viola briefly. I love you Viola. Whatever happens never forget that. Viola, huddled over the kitchen table, thought her mother might have guessed, decided to at last tell her what had happened. But when she finally looked up to talk to her, her mother had gone.

*

At the shop, the chest of drawers sold, Pauline took a deep breath.

She was fifty-six years old.

She put out her hand to pick up the telephone. She knew she would have to move fast.