‘You lot,’ she adds, looking at Anna. ‘You older girls didn’t have much time for him, did you? I’d have thought you’d have been delighted to have a good-looking boy around. But perhaps, with three girls, it was tricky. There’d be jealousy.’

I glance at Anna to see how she’s taking this. Her mouth is set in a thin line.

We change into our walking boots. Despite the sunshine, there’s a nip in the air and I wrap my scarf around my neck, do up the zip on my coat and raise the faux-fur collar. We walk across a wide lawn, and I can’t stop looking, taking it all in. There’s a huge Victorian greenhouse to the side and barns behind it. Over to my right a swimming pool, still in its blue winter coat, is surrounded by lichen-covered stone. There’s a wooden changing room and beyond that, a tennis court. We walk past a shrubbery that obscures a compost heap that fills my nostrils with the smell of rotting vegetation and damp earth, then we veer off down a gravel path that leads to woodland. Anna is walking fast, picking up real momentum, as if she can’t slow down because she fears that if she did, she’d turn back. I watch her thick hair bouncing, the sway of her hips.

In the wood the air cools even more and the mud paths, untouched by the sun, are a black and claggy mess of human and dog prints. The air is full of birdsong. We hear a lot in our garden, but nothing like this. It’s an orchestra, melodies sung back and forth through the trees.

Anna turns her head and says over her shoulder, ‘Glad you brought your boots?’

‘Absolutely.’

She slows down to let me catch up, even though the path is too narrow for us to walk side by side.

‘This must have been heaven for you as children,’ I say.

‘It was. When it was just us and Pansy and Freya, it was like we were the only people in the world. We made up such great games. Everyone got along, even Rory. We looked after each other. It was short-sighted of Mum and Dad to invite the Ritchies. It changed the dynamic.’

‘They had never met Lorna and Angus?’