‘Definitely. I should be there by twelve at the latest.’ She sounded, Finch thought, the most cheerful she had been since Michael’s stroke. ‘I’ve just been talking to Daniel. He says he’s quite happy now to manage without me. Isn’t that great?’

Finch laughed with pleasure. ‘It certainly is.’

‘Michael’s really not going to like me deserting him, but still … this means I can pop in once a week or something, line somebody up for when Daniel has his days off and Leo can’t make it … and I’m free.’

He felt his heart lift. ‘That’s brilliant news, Romy. I’m so happy for you.’ And for me too.

She laughed, sounding almost drunk. ‘OK. I’ll text when I’m home.’

The lights of a car flashed through the sitting-room window. ‘Better go,’ Finch said, getting up. ‘I think that’s Grace.’ As he closed his phone and went to greet his stepdaughter, he felt a glow of optimism.

It was so good to see her. They had a delightful supper together: Finch cooked sausages, butter beans and baked tomatoes, added a green salad – Grace’s go-to comfort meal from long before Finch had met her and Nell. It was warm enough to eat outside, and he brushed off the slatted wooden garden table, dug out the faded turquoise cushions for the chairs and lit three fat candles. It was not since Nell was alive that he’d had supper in the garden by candlelight.

Grace was in a buoyant mood. Nell had always worried about her, saying she was too neurotic to be happy and never settled at anything long enough to find out if it would make her so. But Finch had seen a change in recent years. Sam, he thought, was a steadying influence. Living with him had stopped her drinking so much – which Nell had worried about too – and given her a solid, loving base from which she could fly.

‘To Mum,’ Grace said, lifting her glass to chink against Finch’s. Supper was finished, cherry stones lay on a saucer amid crumpled paper napkins, an empty dark-chocolate-bar wrapper and the remains of a bottle of Pinot.

‘To Mum,’ Finch echoed. And for a moment they sat in silence and remembered the woman they had loved so much. He smiled at Grace, thinking how beautiful she looked in the candlelight, with her thick corn-blonde waves tucked behind her ears and her mother’s huge grey eyes. She was not like her mother in physique. Nell had been slight and fine-boned, while Grace was tall and strongly built, with long limbs and square swimmer’s shoulders – her father’s, he presumed, although he’d never met the man. Grace had had no contact with him since she was about ten – he just wasn’t interested.