I looked at Bridie, and she gazed back at me. Her manner of speaking had been so matter-of-fact and steady. I’d never be like her. I didn’t have her trusting uplands of eyes, that mild light hazel green that was home to mountain thyme and blooming heather and griefs salved and healed over and knitted up. My eyes were still swamps with tracks of mascara leading out.

“I wish I had a picture of Catherine. Even if it was imaginary.”

“Let me see.” Bridie paused. “My son will be here next Saturday. Pat’s found him some work in the village. Half a day, puttying windows into a greenhouse at Upton Hall. He’s never in funds.” She patted my arm. “Lord, I didn’t mean to imply you had to pay him.”

“Of course I’d pay him,” I said. “Not that we’re ever in funds, but—”

“No, he’d be delighted to do it for nothing—”

“I’m sure that for this we could manage a reasonable sum—”

“Dear Yvette,” Bridie said, “he would do it as a favor for a friend of mine.”

I swear, I had merely been musing aloud over the possibility. But now she was saying it . . .

“If you could ask him, Bridie,” I said, “I would be grateful.”

—

James was writing a sermon when I got home. I could tell from the rhythm of his typing. Rippling out fast, then stopping, then another rush. If it had been a letter or a memorandum the rap of the keys would be more regular, following a precomposed train of thought. Sermons on the other hand were fits and starts of inspiration and used a lot of paper. I heard the ping of the carriage return and then, to my surprise, a long sigh. He never sighed in front of me these days. It was something new James never seemed to do, expressing as it did dejection or at the very least fatigue. The sigh told me he hadn’t heard me come in.

I slipped my feet out of my shoes but one heel dropped onto the linoleum and his voice came immediately. “Yvette? Darling, is that you?”

Cheerful, composed, with a new and quite dreadfully annoying musical note. I strode directly into the study where he sat bolt upright behind his typewriter in black bib and white clerical collar and black jacket and trousers and white teeth and shining black hair, every inch a vicar. It was just impossible. Nobody was really every inch a vicar. Every real priest had a corner or cranny of anger or weakness or ennui.

“Why did you sigh?”

“What?” He frowned a light quizzical frown.

“Just now. I heard you sigh when I came in.”

He smiled. “Perhaps it was a sigh of satisfaction. I’ve done awfully well this afternoon. Now, are we to have herrings for supper?”

I gave a high shriek, whirled my handbag around my head, and slung it at him.