“Did Mum ever mention someone called Sébastien?” he says suddenly.

“Doesn’t ring a bell. Why?”

He says nothing.

“Tom?”

“Oh . . . I was looking at the photo albums a while back. You know, when you asked me about Mum wearing a scarf. I guess I wanted to sort out all those people.”

The Haddad clan dressed properly even on the beach: grown-ups in suits or dresses, hats for both men and women, teenage boys sweltering in trousers and blazers. Crowds of people in each shot, with their names crammed in underneath the photograph. Tiny block capitals in white ink on the black page of the album, so close together that it’s a job to tell who was who. Maurice, Anatole, Alphonse. There’s bound to be a Sébastien somewhere among them.

“Probably one of the uncles, or the cousins. You haven’t brought any of the albums, have you?”

“No.”

He strokes the dog. His bare feet, I notice, are propped on a book entitled Aims and Methods of Vegetation Ecology.

I nod at the book. “Is the information going in through your heels?”

He looks up, brows raised. “All vegetation ecology is studied this way.”

“Honestly, Tom.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

“Anyway, I’m off to Redwood House,” I say, smiling at him. “I promised Bridget Moore I’d see her again. I’ll be back by suppertime.”

He might be a teenager: we might be back in Fulbrook, in the vicarage there, in the warm burrow of our home. Him upstairs with a record playing, me setting off, not knowing exactly when I’ll be back. It’s happened enough times. A vicar’s son, he’s used to it.

—

I drop in at the church on my way to Mrs. Moore, going no farther than the noticeboard in the porch where I pin up an announcement about the special service on the last Sunday of Advent. I only have three tacks so I scavenge one from another message, redundant now, scrawled with my own handwriting. Found in church: one silk headsquare. Please apply to the vicarage. I shove this slip of paper into my pocket and set off for Redwood House.

One silk headsquare. I turn over the word in my mind as I drive. Headsquare sounds old-fashioned. People say headscarf much more often. Yvette had to learn to tie hers in the English fashion under her chin for warmth. She abjured any clothing that gave her an exotic or wealthy air. She needed plain English plumage, she said.

And that scarf was so brightly colored.

Suddenly, on this overcast afternoon, I remember the day of the photograph in the boat.

It was summer 1945, just after the war, and we were bobbing on the small choppy waves off Glymenopoulo beach. Célia, Peter, Yvette, and I in the sunshine and wind, the salty spray cool on our faces. And Yvette said . . .

—