Bent over, tidying the chair and side table of Morag’s mess, Jess is seized with panic and turns. Only to stare in disbelief at the sight of her daughter and Flo, who not only smile at each other, like two children at a birthday party, but are now holding hands.

Swallowing the constriction in her throat, Jess whispers, ‘Izzy.’

Izzy lets go of Flo’s hand, which remains in the air as if pleading for more contact with the child.

‘I want to go in the garden,’ Izzy says, though she may have been sharing her intention with either of the adults in the room.

Outside, with Bamboo, she proceeds to happily caper about the lawn. Two attempts at handstands are dismal failures. Not even close.

‘Stay where I can see you!’ With a weary sigh, Jess slumps into the space she’s cleared on the armchair beside Flo’s wheelchair. And in silence, side by side, both women are lost to their preoccupations. Flo stares at Izzy racing around the lawn as if she’s watching a miracle from heaven unfold before her aged eyes. Jess stares at her sore cuticles and bitten-down nails.

16

From the lane before the vicarage any regular observer would notice how proud Nerthus House seems to have awoken. And how it now appears to smile, though grimly, in a line of lit windows at the front, ground floor. The expression beams from out of a dark, weathered face with its eyes closed, or missing. And, for the first time in years, the new lights of the hall and kitchen cast out a rainbow. A powerful illumination projected through the stained glass wheel above the front door.

* * *

Moving a small set of steps under the cobwebbed, fly-specked fittings, Jess has spent the first part of the evening changing the bulbs of the vicarage’s ground floor. Incrementally, and with some satisfaction, she’s able to survey how she has dispelled the gloom and shadows from some of the dusty rat-runs in Flo’s neglected home. The disarray of the reception and staircase is now floodlit by fresh bulbs. From the dining room a white luminance pours. From the living room, more light bursts from the walls and ceiling.

When she takes another look into the tatty living room, Flo’s chair remains in position facing Izzy, who sits out of arm’s reach as she’s been bidden and is still happily chattering and raising her drawing pad to show Flo what she’s created. ‘There’s three unicorns. The mummy one is pink. Children are blue and green.’

Flo rocks gently and beams at Izzy until her regal laugh charms the living room. A refined trill, the amusement and delight genuine.