He attempted to count the banknotes into her hands, so that there could be no argument afterwards. He tried to be exact and businesslike, but the notes dropped to the floor and he was obliged to go down on his hands and knees to retrieve them. As soon as he stood up again he felt an arm around his waist. He shook it off, insisting that he had come on a commercial matter, but somehow or other he found himself on the way upstairs, and then she was saying that she forgave him, that it was a terrible way to behave, not replying to a person’s letters, especially after a person had been taken ill. She sprinkled eau de Cologne on to her sheets, telling him not to be silly when he shook his head.

Carriglas, October 16th, 1931. Sunshine glances over harvest stubble, petals fall in the garden. The apples have been picked, the air smells softly of the season. Almost as though they’ve made a mistake, the strawberry trees blossom, then Michaelmas daisies come.

‘You never forget,’ he said this afternoon, taking the can of tea from me in the orchard, where old trees are being felled. He hesitated, again as though about to say something, but in the end he did not.

For just a few moments Mrs Rolleston forgot that Villana had married the solicitor, and wondered why he was reading a newspaper in the drawing-room. People had always come and gone at Carriglas, servants and visitors, friends, relations, painters and wallpaper-hangers, friends of other friends, the man to repair the banister-rail. Sarah Pollexfen had come. She’d come herself. Linchy had come.

She closed her eyes. The chaffinch flew about the drawing-room, she tore the paper into scraps. ‘Come and get the rabbits,’ her son said, and in the little study Villana lifted the shotgun from the wall. With her eyes still closed, she remembered the wedding preparations, the wedding itself: events and statements came swiftly back to her, and she chided herself for her silliness in forgetting that Villana had married the solicitor.

‘The shreds of summer left,’ she remarked. ‘The nicer side of winter just arriving.’

They listened to her, books and cigarettes for a moment laid down. They honoured her age, they showed a suitable respect: she’d brought them up to that. The solicitor’s newspaper was on his knees, Sarah Pollexfen’s embroidery idle.

‘October is my favourite month of autumn,’ Villana obligingly responded. Her husband concurred, devoting consideration to a survey of the autumn months. November he liked less, he said.

‘I should like arrangements made for the disposal of my jewellery,’ she informed them. ‘I shall be parted from it soon in any case.’

They did not care for that. The finely wrought Rolleston brows of her grandchildren frowned. They did not meet her gaze. They did not wish to have this conversation.

‘Oh, now,’ Villana said.