Jennifer was already on her feet.

‘I should talk to the boys. Explain.’

‘Jen,’ Alistair said, ‘just let them go. Let them do what they want to do.’

She ignored him, hurrying after her sons.

The rest of us – six adults plus Lucy – sat in silence for a moment, none of us quite sure what to say next. It was as if a bomb had gone off and we were slowly emerging from the rubble, trying to assess the damage.

‘Another lovely meal all together,’ grunted Russ. Rowan jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.

‘Such a shame you’re leaving early,’ she said to Alistair again.

Alistair refilled his wine glass. ‘Well, I think things here have pretty much run their course, don’t you? No point in stringing it out any longer.’

‘The kids seem to be getting on well, really getting to know each other.’

‘Perhaps.’ He threw a glance at Sean. ‘But I’ve always maintained that one needs to know when to cut one’s losses.’

The silence resumed and we continued eating, listening to the distant shouts of the children running through the vineyard below. After a few minutes, Lucy pushed her chair back and walked off towards the garden without saying a word.

Later, as the men wandered out in search of their children and we finished taking all the tea things back through to the kitchen, Izzy caught my eye.

It was time.

Chapter 64

64

Daniel

Daniel trailed after the two bigger boys, stubbing at the dry, stony earth with the toe of his sandal. He was tired and bored and didn’t really know what they were doing down here in the woods. They’d done throwing stones into the gorge, and climbing trees, and whittling sticks into sharp points, and now he was just following them because he didn’t know what else to do.

All in all, today had been a rubbish day. The ice cream at lunch had been nice, but that was about it. Everyone else had gone off to do fun things except his family, they didn’t really do anything; he just went into the village with his mum, had lunch and came back again, then Mum had gone to sleep and Lucy was being really weird and Dad didn’t want to play with him. Then Jake and Ethan’s mum had told everyone at dinner that they were going home early, like tonight, and that seemed really unfair because it meant that the only children left at the holiday house were him and his sister and Odette, who had told him six times now that she didn’t like boys.