I struggle through the crowd toward the drinks table, buttonholed at every turn, extricating myself again. I can feel the heat under my collar. I barge the queue with fulsome apologies and a fixed expression of congeniality that doesn’t fool Clive.

“Are you okay, James?”

“Absolutely fine.” I sound a little short, so I remedy it. “It’s steaming-hot in here.” A strange, spicy sort of smell is coming off me. I hold my sleeve to my face. Yes, it’s Tom’s sweater. Something half familiar, rather like Lapsang souchong tea. They smoke the tea leaves for Lapsang souchong.

“I’ll open the French doors,” Clive says soothingly. “What can we get you?”

I’ve forgotten to ask Ellen what she’d like to drink. I opt for two dry sherries, snaffle a sausage roll and a serviette, and hope for the best. By the time I reach her I’m a bit calmer.

“I was also lucky,” I continue. “To get away with my life, I mean.”

“Like my brother,” she says. Sausage roll in hand, she recounts her brother Edward’s extraordinary flight from Singapore at the very moment of its capture by the Japanese, a journey undertaken at enormous risk, to Ceylon by way of Sumatra. He was at home in the East, this brother, having sailed from England with no known destination at the age of fourteen. “Edward once told me he was a wharf rat of long standing, and that I should trust him,” she concludes. “So I did.”

Her eyes for a moment are far away. She’s thinking of her brother, perhaps, riding those seas of Asia. Clive is opening the French doors and we both move toward them. She steps out into the garden ahead of me. Will she be cold? I hope not. She’s wearing a thin woolen—I would say sweater but it’s too elegant to be called that—and a swirling skirt of some velvety material. Both garments are similar in color, the top slightly more violet than gray, the skirt the other way around. Walking behind her I see why her hair is so obedient today. It’s been twisted into a roll at the nape of her neck and stuck with a single long silver pin.

Some men are smoking cigars: she steers clear of them, her nose wrinkling. The Sutton boys have brought Bailey outside to sniff the air, keeping him in check by a long string attached to his collar. I hope he doesn’t get tangled in the legs of guests.

“So what is your creed, then, Mrs. Parr?” I ask.

I thought Frobisher had released his hold. Clearly not, or not entirely. But it doesn’t sound so bad, out here in the fresh air.

“Ellen, please.”

“Ellen. Does your paganism have a hereafter?”