‘Where’ve you been?’ His mother was drying her hands on a tea towel by the little kitchen window, silhouetted in the late afternoon light. Since he had been home he had noticed how small she was. She seemed to have shrunk. He didn’t remember towering over her as he did now, and he was not a particularly tall man. Compared to the Frosts of Howe Farm, all tall and tree-like, rooted to the land, he and his mother were the last shrunken remnants of an old family, washed up in this quiet seaside town on the edge of a county, not even their own.

‘Just went for a walk.’

She gave him a long look of distrust. ‘You smell of beer,’ she said. He couldn’t tell her he had seen Verity, not because she wouldn’t approve but because she would approve too much.

It had not always been like this. Long ago when he was a boy, a half-Jewish evacuee, standing under the sign for WELLS-ON-SEA, Mrs Frost had appeared, looked down at him, taken his hand and driven him – the first car he’d ever been in – to her home. It hadn’t mattered that Mr Frost barely saw him, or that the children initially thought him alien, or that Mrs Timms gave him less food than she gave Verity and Peter (he was used to far less). All that mattered was that this magical woman found a space for him and loved him. And in return, he had loved them all.

Once, Mrs Frost in a diaphanous white dress had been waiting on the lawn when he and Verity had careered back to the house, laughing and sandy, and Peter was sulkily throwing balls at the dog. She’d insisted on taking their photograph with the tiny aluminium camera she carried around with her. Verity and Peter had grumbled but she had a way of getting them to do as she asked and, with her quiet, terse little smile, they lined up dutifully underneath the oak tree. He remembered the photograph clearly. For a while it hung in a silver frame in the front room – the drawing room – and he would catch sight of it every day. In the picture, Verity was staring straight ahead defiantly. Peter had a sarcastic, silly smile on his face. Arthur, though, looked as if he’d been shot. His mouth was open, vaguely smiling, and rather than looking at the camera, he was gazing at Verity and if you looked really closely, you could see that the tips of their fingers were touching.