‘I’m not moaning. I’m just making conversation.’

‘He doesn’t realize when he’s doing it.’

‘Because I’m not doing it.’

‘You see? Moaning.’

Florence waited for the two of them to settle down. Perhaps they were a little less mature than she’d considered. ‘No need to apologize,’ she said. ‘I don’t like to talk about myself too much, that’s all – and you’ll find Mr Mayhood is the same. In fact, he’s worse.’

They passed through the cool of the station. Behind the kiosk window, the attendant – whom she didn’t know but dimly recognized – leered when she wished him a good morning. ‘You too, Mrs Mayhood, you too,’ he called back. The mill of rumours in these parts required no grist to thrive. There were too many people round here with too many small-minded preoccupations and she was long past caring about any of them. Still, she couldn’t help but think it must’ve been the ripest gossip of his working week, to see a married woman strolling through his station with two handsome youngsters off the London train.

When they reached the car, the Savigears were noticeably quiet and she couldn’t tell if they were looking at the Austin with approval or contempt. They stowed their luggage in the back and Charlie sat beside the pile, deferring to his sister’s greater size without a second thought. Once the key was turned in the ignition and the engine stirred, Joyce said, ‘Lovely motor, this.’

‘Well, it’s reliable enough.’

‘They’re built to last, these,’ Charlie chimed in from behind. ‘Heavy, mind you, but I bet they go a fair old whack.’

She cleared her throat. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘We’re not used to being driven round like royalty,’ Joyce said. ‘We could’ve walked it, easy.’

Florence jounced the gearstick into reverse. ‘I’m not used to having passengers. But it’s only so that you can get acquainted with the route. Next time, you can hoof it.’

‘Suits us.’

On the way back home, she kept to the speed limit, while the Savigears fell into another silence, taking in the scenery. It seemed that they were quite content to orient themselves without her saying anything, so she spared them the guided tour that she normally conferred on guests – they didn’t get too many visitors, apart from her old friends from architecture school in Liverpool, dear Fred Cort and his array of sweethearts, and the more capricious clients who came to check they hadn’t lost their minds by setting up a practice so far from the city. She found it a refreshing change to drive without the burden of small talk and local history.

They dipped under the railway arch and skirted by the fields along the narrow Ockham Road, with sunshine flickering behind the trees and a pleasing, intermittent shade from every house they passed, until they came to the thin strip of junction, islanded by grass, that she would often tell people (as part of her tour patter) was the turning that her father used to miss at least three times a week, even after twenty years of living here. This road – Alms Heath – was the one she always liked to walk down after school, in the days when she still knew her neighbours and they crossed their driveways just to ask how she was doing. They’d be banging mud and cowpats from the heels of their boots as she went by, or hosing down their weekend boats and horseboxes, or sitting out in their front gardens with enormous pitchers of gin fizz and home-made cider. And it struck her now, as she coasted on towards the house, that no part of what she saw out there today was visible to the Savigears. When they peered through the windscreen, they must’ve seen a place entirely untouched by their own footprints, as yet meaningless, unspoiled. The Ockham of her parents’ time was gone and she could only think of it as necessary ground – a site on which to build something important and long-lasting.