“Ha!” I cried, at the cheek of him, and turned the car with a skid of tires on the gravel, and shot off down the drive, jinking past a pothole or two, very pleased by their astonished faces in the rearview mirror. I found the main road and drove at a clip all the way back, fifty miles an hour and hang the fuel. When I got to Alver Shore I parked on the seafront and picked my way down over the pebble beach. The winter sun was setting. The sun was often so weak at this time of year, I used to wonder how it managed to trudge on westward over the ocean. But today it was strong enough to light the whole of America.

FIFTEEN

She eats meat, doesn’t she? Your friend?”

Tom’s feeding himself porridge as he talks, using the largest spoon in the house.

“I expect so,” I reply, bewildered. “Why?”

“I’ll need to know what to cook.” This comes out indistinctly between one enormous mouthful and the next.

“It’s just a drink, Tom. She’s not staying for supper.”

Tom puts down his bowl and spoon. “Dad, of course we invite her to supper. You expect her to trek out to this awful barn for a packet of pork scratchings? That’s inhumane.”

“I’d hardly offer her pork scratchings!”

“What, then?”

“I’ve got some peanuts and crisps.”

“He’s got some peanuts and crisps,” Tom intones, lifting his eyes to the ceiling.

He’s right, of course. I wonder if I’m getting used to the awfulness of this place. Blakemore’s study being a case in point: I should have done it before the party, but now that motivation is gone. I only go in there to fetch floor coverings for Bailey, and that increasingly seldom as Bailey becomes more continent.

“Oh, yes. She had a sausage roll at the party.”

“Aha. Fairly definitive evidence of meat eating.” He starts to scoop up the last of his porridge. “Keep going. I want all the details. Name, looks, the lot.”

“Really, Tom, you are brutal.”

“It’s the only way, with you. It’s like dealing with a—who are those monks who never talk?”

“Trappists.” I relent. “She’s called Ellen Parr. She’s a widow, and she’s lived in Upton all her life. Her late husband—I mean, she and her late husband—used to run the water mill on the edge of the village. She’s tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.”

“I suppose you met her at some wild church-related bun-fight?”

“No, actually. She’s not a churchgoer. She helped me sandbag some elderly people’s doorways during the flood. She was in waders, being a miller, and very competent.”

“Age?”

“Astonishingly, I haven’t asked her.”

“You must have some idea.”

“Late forties? Early fifties, perhaps. Really Tom, I’ve got no . . . I’ve got no designs.”