Dora started the car, put it into gear, steered out into the road. What had pulled Dora into Barbara’s life? She had never resisted it, from that first contact. She’d hummed and hawed, but every time she had agreed. She didn’t believe in fate, in predestination, or anything like that. Yet there had been a fascination with Barbara, an intrigue. She had looked familiar from the start. There was only one man who could have been the father.

Dora could see it now: Geoffrey. She had his eyes, his complexion. She looked like Dora, too, a resemblance which Dora caught if she turned her head a certain way, looked on the oblique, like that Auerbach painting she’d thought of before. She had to find Barbara, tell her. Explain it all. She couldn’t admit trying to murder her. But it wasn’t murder. She was saving her from the Nazis and whatever barbarism they might have been planning for her. Where was Barbara now? She’d sent her away. Did she still have her address?

She had tried to kill the baby. She could never tell Barbara that. Her own mother. Could never tell Geoffrey that, either.

The road came to a crossroads and Dora stopped to get her bearings. The place looked so different, new buildings, supermarkets. Car parks. She pulled out the tourist map from the side pocket in the door, peered at it, at the road signs. It made no sense, but the coast must be to the right. The map was not detailed enough for the side roads, but that was the direction she should be heading for. She heard a clap of thunder, saw storm clouds on the horizon.

Geoffrey. She had to see him. She felt the same urgency now as she had forty-three years ago. Why had she waited so long? What a waste. What a terrible, terrible waste. Those sins, those secrets, didn’t seem so serious now. She’d never loved List. She’d wanted his attention, the way a child wants to please a bully.

She turned down a lane, hedgerows either side so deep and tall they touched at the tips and made a canopy. Stopped. Dead end. It was Geoffrey she had loved. She turned the car, grating the bumper on the roots and verges. Hurry. She was in a hurry. She had to go to Geoffrey, beg his forgiveness, feel his caress, hear his murmuring, Dora, Dora.

She saw a small sign, Anse la Coupe. The road was narrow, turned sharply to the right, left and right again, and there ahead was the bluff, the copse that grew down to the shore, Geoffrey’s hill field with the dell, below it the bay and, beyond, the sea, a deep, dark turquoise. She drove the car down the road, turned into the farm, parked in front of the house, unclipped her seat belt and stepped out.