Before the small plane landed in Kerikeri I turned and saw the weariness in Jack’s face. Love for him gripped me, terrifying but real.

‘Jack?’

He opened his eyes. ‘Will you marry me?’

I watched the grin spread across his face. ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’ ‘Don’t you dare play hard to get!’

He leant over to kiss me. ‘Pot and kettle come to mind? Yes, all right, I’ll marry you…I think it would be churlish to refuse.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No worries,’ he said, pretending to pick up the paper and read.

I laughed. He still had that stupid grin on his face.

Laura lay in the bath in her granddaughter’s bathroom which had a clear glass window reflecting the blue sky and the sweep of the bay below the garden. The day was warm, like an English spring or a Cyprus winter, but Laura felt cold and very old.

When the water lost its heat, she got up and wrapped herself in a large towel, shivering slightly and once dry, she pulled on her dressing gown again.

Reluctantly she met her eyes in the mirror. It was a defining moment. She was forced to face herself: to admit to the horror of having got something so wrong. She did not like the person she saw. Her voice of long ago clamoured in her head as if it was yesterday.

She was back in that cold Berkshire house she and Peter had never felt at home in and had sold without regret. Those awful words she had shouted at Fleur after Saffie disappeared and they returned to England. She had always remembered the scene but did so now with brutal clarity.

Peter had just returned to Northern Ireland and they were all missing him acutely. They did not know how to fill their days, she and Fleur; they could not talk but circled each other in limbo, a sort of suspended animation. Life seemed to have stopped for Fleur and for Laura too and she resented it and was ashamed.

One morning, out of the blue, Fleur had announced that she was taking Nikki to a chalet in Cornwall belonging to Fergus’s parents. Laura had been furious. ‘Look, Fleur, I’ve stayed behind to look after you and Nikki. I could have gone back to Northern Ireland with your father if I’d known you were going to take off.’

‘Well, now you can go and join Dad and not feel full of resentment.’ Fleur had retorted.

‘You are in no state to look after a child on your own; you can’t even look after yourself.’

Fleur had turned and run upstairs with poor little Nikki scrabbling worriedly up after her. Laura could not leave it. She had followed Fleur upstairs and watched her angrily throwing things into a suitcase. Peter had given Fleur his car and Laura thought she meant to drive to Cornwall.

‘You can’t drive, Fleur. You’re drugged up to the eyeballs.’

Fleur had looked up and said in a voice Laura had never heard before. ‘All my life you have told me what I can’t do, what I’m no good at. Even now, even now! I’m not driving. I’m going on the train. Fergus has offered to drive the car down for me next weekend.’