“I rang mine.” Grace was on safe ground. “Here’s to my mum, and yours, Simon. And,” she added quietly, “especially to Mrs. Stafford.”

“Lucy, should we drink to yours too? I suppose it’s a different date in Australia?”

Henry’s charm was so natural that Lucy found it easy to reply warmly. “I’d be very happy to drink to Alex’s mum, Henry. Alex, give me a little after all.” He gave her his glass and poured another for himself. “To Diana, then,” Lucy said with real feeling; and they echoed her.

“Oddly enough, Dad, she’s the person I want to talk to you about. As soon as I ring Elaine at the pub and book a table,” said Alex.

“Fait accompli, Alex. She’s expecting us. We’ve got the table in the window for seven-thirty. But we have an hour in hand before we stroll down, if that’s agreeable?”

Since his visit with Lucy to the Normandy garden, Alex’s world seemed to have shifted a few degrees. He’d always been in awe of his mother’s gentle strength and the diversity of her interests and knowledge; always thought her artistic hobbies were an expression of some aspect of herself that had been submerged for the sake of her marriage. Today, she would have painted professionally, possibly; or sculpted; or been a designer. But she was in the comet tail of a generation and a middle-class convention that put family first, and she’d made the boys and her home her life’s work, with her art embellishing the edges. But today had unearthed a secret—a side to his mother he hadn’t known existed—and he was restless to understand more. His father, he knew, would be unprepared for this line of questioning coming from him rather than Will. Alex’s life had been so full of certainties, so assured, and here was something less tangible, less straightforward, to grapple with.

“I haven’t told you, Lucy and I made an impromptu trip to Normandy. It was lovely there—although it rained almost solidly.” He looked at his father attentively. “Why did you buy the house in L’Aigle? Your choice, or Mum’s wish?”

“How good that you were there, Alex.”

Simon had been about to refill Henry’s glass and, looking up for his permission to do so, caught him smiling at Lucy and his son. Simon read it as a blessing, and it told him Henry had been much more concerned about Alex, with his locked silence about the family deaths and his failed marriage, than anyone would have guessed.