‘Mr Mortlake?’

‘I told you, dear. But you don’t always remember. Mr Mortlock is Daddy’s friend.’

‘Yes, yes. Who is driving over in the Riley. Of course I remember. Perfectly.’

Awfulness thickened the air in the Tullochs’ over-crowded room. Distress was making Anthea Scudamore frown, and suck her upper lip. Anyone present could only have regretted the difficulty of the situation in which the girl found herself placed. But in fact Anthea, for almost the first time since coming to the Island, perhaps even in her whole life, saw clearly what she must do.

‘Mummy,’ she said, ‘we shall ring through early in the morning. To book. I‘ll come by the afternoon plane.’

‘Oh, but darling, what about your Christmas?’

‘Christmas is Christmas anywhere, and I can’t think of you suffering. In difficulties. With Mr Mortlock.’

‘He writes such affable letters. I can see no reason why Mr Mortlock should turn out difficult. It is just the fact that....’

As though her voice had outlived its purpose Mrs Scudamore died away.

Everything had been arranged, then, and there was really no need for Anthea to inform anyone else who had to know; they were all there, and all knew.

‘What shall we do without Miss Scudamore at Christmas?’ asked Mollie Aspinall of Jeremy Tulloch, whom she had sitting in her lap.

But Jeremy was sucking a lolly.

In the morning Val Tulloch drove Anthea across the Island to the airport, and was determined to say something to the girl, something sympathetic and helpful. Yet could not find the moment or the word. As Anthea sat upright in the car, her half-smile flickered in the shuttered light the tunnels of scrub allowed to reach them, and during the open stretches, whenever Val sneaked a look at it, the smile appeared no less equivocal, directed inward even while greeting the blaze of ripened barley.

8

On arriving home, Anthea was thrust together with her parents’ guest far more precipitately than she had bargained for, or liked. After paying off the taxi, she had run up the veranda steps and in by the living-room door. It was so familiar she could have sung. Except that a gentleman who had been sitting there, rose from the sofa and explained.

‘I am Hessell Mortlock, your father’s friend. Your mother is taking it easy for a bit upstairs, and your father hasn’t come in.’

Then he cleared his throat, and looked.

‘Oh yes!’ she flustered. ‘Of course!’

Surprise had made her snigger and blush regrettably. In Mummy’s room, she realized, everything was too polished, too arranged, for her chapped skin to be acceptable. But she longed to be received back, and hopefully touched one of the little Chinese bowls which were kept filled with pot-pourri on the cedar table.

The little bowl was merciless. It overbalanced.

Anthea Scudamore snorted and giggled.

‘Did you have any punctures?’

‘Any what?’

‘Punctures. In that car.’

‘Why,’ he said, ‘no. You’ve upset the bowl,’ he pointed out.

‘Its proportions are not very good,’ she said, glad to have thought of such a rational explanation.