After a late breakfast, they let the weather seal them in. They talked as they never had, without interruptions. First, about the house, the paths and walks through the woods, the orchard, the history of the building, the family photos inhabiting it. Lucy drank in the smells of wood smoke and blossom that warded off the damp, asked about family holidays and memories shared within the walls. Alex spoke a little about Will, and more about his mother. Lucy said something of hers. Both were thoughtful, each was attentive. They were relaxed, no one needed them, Max was being spoiled, Siân was relishing her maternal role—“Stay where you are,” she had told Alex, “and just take care of Lucy.” So they discussed their ordeal in more depth, their impressions of the protagonists involved; and he told her about Calvin’s strange place in the scheme of things.

“Somehow they knew you’d been given the key—information they can only have had from Calvin. Which is, I think, what made you a target.”

Alex’s words told her he was still ruminating on everything he’d learned. She listened without adding much, but contemplated Siân’s relationship with Calvin in a new and troubled light. Later they phoned the gendarmerie, sensitive to the warning not to bring the police in and attract more trouble. While Alex didn’t want to give in to this tepidly, he thought it wise to be pragmatic, so they gave noncommittal statements, and stayed close to each other.

In the early hours Alex had noticed the venison in the freezer mentioned in his mother’s card to Will; and it was sufficiently defrosted for him to start preparing a slow casserole at about five. When he had opened a bottle of fine wine and poured some onto the meat and a little into a glass for each of them, he reminded Lucy that she’d wanted to ask him a question when she’d phoned, breathless from the labyrinth.

For the first time she tensed, and Alex sensed a dilemma, knowing not to push her. The question had usefully preoccupied all her conscious energies while she was confined with Calvin’s friends. Turning the ideas over one way and then another had focused her mind and loaned her a stubborn resilience; but she knew that any words she chose now would unleash strong winds she couldn’t control, and she wondered how she and Alex might be buffeted by them once the question was put. She had never wanted to ask anything more desperately, but never felt less able to do so. She began at a tangent.

“When did you first notice me?” She wasn’t being coy, and looked at him seriously. He understood the question had complex undertones. “I think I want to ask, when did you become interested in me? Can you remember? Was it after my transplant?”