I felt ever so slightly embarrassed.

“This one’s on me.”

The three of us appeared to be the only people staying at the hotel, midweek and out of season. At dinner Mary Lou remained pale and ate next to nothing. But Rick talked for all three. The walk he’d explored had the damnedest views. Truly inspirational. Streams, trees, the treeline, flowers. After I had grasped that we were going to walk tomorrow I ceased to listen and endured my preoccupation with Mary Lou instead. She didn’t seem much interested in what Rick was saying either. She stood up suddenly, so that oddly enough I got to her before Rick, who had been talking about the snowline. He took her from me and led her away. When he came back he apologized for her, which amused me all down one side of my face.

“She’s enchanting, Rick. I thought it was a literary convention but, you know, when she feels faint she doesn’t go green and ancient—she just goes even more transparent.”

“She said she wouldn’t go with us tomorrow.”

“Doesn’t she like anything? I mean—”

“You could say,” said Rick carefully, “Mary Lou isn’t physical.”

“Cats? Dogs? Horses?”

He blushed, a slow burn.

“You were there, Rick, the two of you. Recently.”

“It’s a place where you lived for a long time, Wilf.”

I thought of the place where I had lived for a long time. The only place. The quaint old house, the water meadows, trees, hedges, bare downs closing in the two sides of the wide valley, the huge oaks and clumps of elms that Elizabeth said were dying. I felt detached.

“Did you like it?”

“Hell, yes!”

“Why?”

I never thought to hear a grown man say it, but he did.

“It’s so green. That white horse cut in the side of the hill—everything’s so ancient—”

“When I was there last they had motocross up the hill on one side of the White Horse on Sundays. The university archaeological society was skinning the turf on the other.”

“But the people, Wilf! The customs—”

“Incest, mostly.”

“You’re—”

“No, I’m not kidding. And don’t forget the coven.”

“You are, you are, yes you are, Wilf!”

“Usually reliable sources. Wilfred Barclay’s Stratford-on-Avon.”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“What were you looking for? My finger prints?”

“I had to talk to her. There’s a great deal only she knows.”

“Well, I’m damned.”

“And papers.”

“Now look, Rick Tucker. Those papers are mine and nobody, nobody, is going to go mucking about with them.”

“But—”

“It was a condition. The house is hers, then reverts to Emmy in the event of. The papers are mine.”

“Of course, Wilf. She said it was all very civilized.”

“Elizabeth? She said that? Why, it was—”

I stopped, not so much out of residual loyalty as caution. Elizabeth had been covering up, of course. It had been a rending, hateful match which would have broken my heart if I had had one and to which only Julian had managed to bring legal decency. I had given everything on my side, not out of generosity but just to be shot of the whole thing. Julian saved us from advertising the mutual hatred which linked us indissolubly for better or worse. Perhaps like me by now, she had worn away all but a vestige of the hatred and accepted the huge scar? Or had I? Had she?