Now I realised there was no sign of the jars of earth my aunt had taken to keeping on the windowsill, apparently samples of settings she planned to paint, an eccentric species of reminder if not inspiration. A memory glimmered, but I suppressed it at once. “I’ll keep this safe, I promise,” I said, hugging the book so hard it exuded an earthy smell. “If you need it you’ll know where it is.”

I took the journal down to my car and locked it in the boot. I felt oddly surreptitious, as if someone was watching, but all the guests I could see were engaged in conversation. Julia and Neville were still talking about Roy, who looked impatient to contribute, and I took the opportunity to confront my parents. “Did you throw out those jars of earth Thelma kept in her studio?”

“We would have if they’d still been there,” my mother said, a response that outraged me so much I failed to wonder who’d disposed of them or why they had.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Boys Together

“Down, boy. Lie down now, Basky, there’s a good hound. You won’t hurt Mr Holmes or the doctor, will you? You don’t have to act the way you were brought up. You just guard Mr Holmes’s rooms for him.”

“Mrs Hudson, you’re the hero of the day. She’s more of a man than either of us, Watson.”

“I’ll let the world know when I tell this story, Holmes.”

“You mustn’t, Doctor Watson. Just say Mr Holmes solved another case, or it might harm his reputation.”

I’d asked my students to analyse their choice of a classic from a feminist perspective, not retell the tale, but Veena’s essay earned my approval. Too many of the others were less than grammatical, bereft of sentences and infected with nonsensical autocorrections, and quite a few read more like texts sent from a phone. At least some of the usage had improved during the year I’d taught this group of students, but my course was meant to deal with English literature, not the basics of the language. Reading the last essays of the summer term left me all the more grateful that Roy was so literate. I might have told him so, had he been home.

He should have been by now. I took my time over marking several essays, resisting an urge to underline every error, and as I turned an almost entirely unpunctuated page on its face I heard the last train from Liverpool arrive at the station. It was so close to soundless that it put me in mind of a teenager sneaking home late at night – more precisely, my son. Craning over my desk, I saw a few people leave the station and recognised none of them. As I took out my phone I told myself there was no need to panic.