“Take all the time you want,” he said. “The job doesn’t start till March, so we have time.”

“Time.” She looked at the clock. Time to be getting ready for lunch with Dominic. Time to be going out into the sparkling London day and descending into the tunnel of the Underground to emerge on Edgware Road and eat African food with a good friend, while talking theater, and politics, and music, and books. It was too much stimulation, too much London, to be taking on board the thought of a life in Lamott, North Dakota.

“Do you mind if I stay at home?” she said. “I don’t feel I can face going to lunch right now.”

“Of course not,” he said. “Do you want me to stay with you? We can fix a sandwich or go to the pub, and go to Nyala another day.”

“No, you go ahead,” she said. They had always been considerate with each other about social arrangements, and she had been, quietly, proud of that. But how on earth could she stretch the consideration for a lunch date on Edgware Road to encompass a year in Lamott, North Dakota? “Say I’ve got a headache or something, and tell him I’m sorry.”

“Take your time,” he said. “And don’t agree to do anything that you’re going to hate or resent. It’s easy for me to say it’s only for a year or so, but it’s a year we’d be remembering for all our lives.”

From somewhere, she found a smile. “No pressure, then,” she said.

Fee was planting bulbs in the garden, frowning thoughtfully over the newly turned earth. She stopped frowning when she saw her daughter arrive, and smiled and waved a companionable trowel.

“I’m getting the ranunculus in for the spring,” she told her. “It’s wonderfully therapeutic to plant bulbs; it gives you something to look forward to and reminds you of all the calm and stable parts of home life. Oh, Emma, honey, whatever is the matter?”

“I have always said,” she said later, when Emma had finished her story, “that Matthew was a particularly intelligent sort of young man.”

“Well, I knew he was good at his job,” said Emma. She balled up her Kleenex, picked a ranunculus bulb from the bag beside the flower bed, and twirled it in her fingers. “These are such funny things, they always look like little bunches of bananas for garden gnomes. But if this is where his intelligence leads us, I’d frankly be as happy to give some brain cells back.”

“I’m not talking about that sort of intelligence,” said Fee. Gently but firmly, she rescued the bulb. “Although he obviously has that as well. But plenty of young men in the world are brain smart—Matthew is wise, too. He understands that if this is going to happen, it can only happen on the basis that you go along with it willingly and without feeling you’re making too much of a sacrifice. That’s very wise of him.”