She put on the light and knelt by the trunk, sawing the stout cord with which it had been tied. The lid, thrown open, revealed a few shabby winter clothes: jerseys and cardigans, grey or navy-blue, a dark skirt, a snuff-coloured woollen dress, a camel-hair dressing gown very much worn. There were some shoes, two squashed felt hats, some stockings and underwear. There was nothing that revealed anything about Deborah Mayfield except that she was dowdy, and – to judge by the way her things were mended – economical.

Well, the crate might yield more. Books often had inscriptions, or the bookseller’s name. And whoever did the packing might have thought the crate the proper place in which to put old letters, papers. I might even have been a diary keeper, for all I know, she thought, remembering how in Africa she had always intended to keep a journal and never found the time.

Opening the crate was quite a task; it had been nailed down in many places, with long nails, some of which had to be pried up before she could set the claw of the hammer between the lid and the side and lever the separate sections, up. One section came off with a ripping sound, and below she could see a folded newspaper. She pulled some of that away and saw the spines of several books. They were too closely packed to be pulled out at this moment, and brushing the back of her hand across her wet forehead, she set to work on the next section of the lid. It came up, cracking and creaking, and a voice from the doorway said:

‘Miss Mayfield!’

There was one of those dizzying, sickening slides through time, with the familiar I-have-been-here-before sensation. Here in this lighted hall, with my hand on this rough wood, looking up and looking round, seeing this man framed in this doorway . . .

And it was like the fingertip on the self-starter which sets the engine in motion.

It was the thing she had prayed would happen.

She said, ‘Canon Thorby!’ and tried to straighten herself, but her legs had gone limp as a rag-doll’s and refused to support her; instead, they shot out at odd angles, in a way she could never have voluntarily arranged them, leaving her sitting on the floor, lolling against the crate.

‘Put your head on your knees,’ a voice said from a thousand miles away.

Deliberately she held to that position. I’m not fainting; I’m watching a wild, crazy roundabout, whirring round far too quickly – Ethel, Granny Rigby, Emily Baines and Wesley, Ethel again, Sydney . . .