Throughout our cheerful lunch Sally beamed fondly at her daughter. Pouring the wine, Edward reminisced about his year at Berkeley and their meeting, quite by chance, when Sally’s car broke down on the Bay Bridge. I was sure that this decent and responsible man had never even speculated that his life would have taken a different turn had he chosen not to drive to San Francisco on that particular morning. Watching them, I was confident that this loving house was not a façade. If anything, the daughter had strengthened the family, and Sally’s dream would endure.

*   *   *

The tide had begun to run through the estuary, slipping between the mud flats. Stranded by the falling water, sailing dinghies sat above us on the draining pedestals of silt. A cabin cruiser creaked against its mooring line, waking from its deep riverine sleep into the open air. When we set off in the rowing skiff, the last of the tidal water ran into the channel, carrying away the reflection of the house.

I lay back comfortably among the cushions while Sally pulled on the oars, scarcely glancing over her shoulder as she navigated expertly through the maze of waterways. Two hundred yards from the house we left the main channel of the river and entered a parallel realm of small islands and tributary streams. Edward and Jackie had driven to the railway station at Norwich and would join us at the excavation site, which we could reach more easily by boat.

“Where are we?” Sally rested on the oars and shielded her eyes from the gleaming mud. “They only dig at low tide. If you can manage to stand without falling in, try to spot a church spire. It should lean to the left.”

“I see it.” I stared across a lake of grass. An entire air force could have disappeared into this world of forgotten creeks. “There’s some kind of crane on a barge.”

“Norfolk Lighterage. One of the directors is an aircraft buff.” Sally pulled away with strong arms, knees spread beneath her swelling abdomen. Her smock rose in the shifts of air to reveal her long brown legs. Minute pearls of scar tissue were all that remained of her old needle ulcers.

“What sort of plane is it? Are they sure it’s a Spitfire?”

“Edward thinks so—because of the engine. Usually that’s all there is left. You’ll be impressed, Jim.”

“It could be a Mustang … that used a British engine.”

Watching the mud flats slide past, I listened to the plash of Sally’s oars and wondered why Sally was so keen that David and I visit the excavation site. I thought of the Mustangs that had strafed the airfield next to Lunghua camp and the downed pilots hunted by the Japanese soldiers in their dilapidated trucks. In some ways the banks of mud reminded me of the Whangpoo and the crashed aircraft lying by the irrigation ditches.