Flo is in the picture. She sits at the side of the group, which listens to a much older woman at the head of the pond who has taken advantage of the shade. Flo is older here too, her hair longer, her face drawn and unsmiling. And yet she’s still glamorous in middle age and dressed fashionably for the ‘70s.

The other pictures in the wallet continue the theme of the first photograph. Sun-blanched portraits of the summer idyll that once existed in the vicarage garden, decades before. The same women, with only a few additions, appear in each picture. All appear happy, some are laughing, some hold hands, some wear floral tiaras. As a group they repeatedly appear arranged in a rough, informal ring on the lawn, in which they partake of a kind of sisterly celebration. In one scene, a trestle table is loaded with fruit, bread, cakes, wine. In several other snapshots, two women kneel in the centre of the ring and appear to be constructing some form of wheel, or wreath, from sticks entwined with bright flowers. In several other photographs a kind of dome rises in the background; half a sphere woven out of hawthorn.

All of the women appear ordinary. Mums, daughters, grandmothers, neighbours perhaps. But the wheel and odd creel add a subtle pagan touch to the enigmatic gatherings.

In each ensemble, the only woman permanently without a smile or a sun-browned face, who rears proud but pale and unhappy at the side of the gatherings, is Flo. Often she sits beside the elderly woman who was addressing the group in the first picture at the pond. The matron repeatedly holds Flo’s elegant white hand as if offering motherly reassurance at a difficult time.

Jess returns the photographs to the wallets and neatens the stack before easing the drawer closed.

Behind her, Flo silently lowers herself to her pillows.

Her mooching over, Jess turns about and tiptoes to her armchair to begin the vigil of the night carer.

* * *

Inside the room next door and within the old bed, Izzy sleeps. Her arms tightly hug her panda. Her forehead glistens with sweat and her lips work at unspoken words.

In the armchair beside Flo’s bed, Jess has succumbed to the sleep of the exhausted. Beyond the orderly bedroom, beyond the dim sepia rectangle of the open door, the vast house breathes quietly.

While Jess sleeps deeply, her head on one side, mouth slightly open and body slumped into the armchair, her client lies embedded within plump cushions. With her eyes open.

Outside the vicarage the oceanic sounds of a great surging begin within the woods, growing until the nocturnal wind thrashes the mighty, ancient trees.

Flo sits up in bed. An emaciated figure, her thinning hair wild. She stares at the door as if alert to a summons. And begins a gentle rocking, back and forth.