Was I starting to give up hope? Not just for a baby, but for the man I had married in Egypt and loved in Alver Shore during those years before Catherine? To lose him as well as Catherine, to live forever with this lookalike, trying every day to forget how he used to be—how could I ever be strong enough for that?

“Would you like to look up now, at the view?” Philip said. “You can lean your head back against the chair.”

I let my eyes wander upward beyond the garden. The distant summit of a long hill rose above the trees. I drove over this hill on my way to the village, but it looked so different from here. It seemed to have no solidity today, as if it and the blue sky and the pink-tinged clouds were all painted flat upon a screen.

“That’s Beacon Hill,” said Philip. “A nice place to walk.”

I imagined us up there, two diminutive painted figures, one with a leaping stride, the other trotting behind. “I’d never keep up with you.”

“But you were imagining it, at least. Going for a walk with me.” He let his drawing arm drop, the soft pencil loose in his hand, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. The sweater fell from his shoulders like the smock he didn’t want to wear. “I won’t leave you behind, I promise. And I’ll carry the picnic.”

“So we’re having a picnic now.”

“It’s a long way, there and back. And the slightest exercise makes me starving.”

That was true of me too. I smiled. “What shall we take?”

“The olive oil, for starters. Some bread. Swiss chocolate.”

“Swiss chocolate? I’d have to sell my great big diamond.”

“You’ve got time. We won’t go till the weather’s warmer.”

A quiet descended, broken by intakes of breath, sighs, the hushing sound made by bodies moving in winter clothing. The scrape of a shoe on the floor. The occasional muttering of a young man deep in thought, a tutting followed by urgent shading-in. Sheets of paper rustling as he took them off the board and let them fall to the floor. The sun came out and everything loomed into brightness.

“Oh,” I said, as if I’d just been woken.

He got up without a word and went to put the kettle on.

I knelt on the floor in a patch of sunlight and leafed through the drawings he’d made. The first Yvette was very correct, shoulders back and knees together, a shine on her neat hair. Thoughtful, a bit pent-up. “Train Passenger,” I called over to Philip. “No, wait: The Dentist’s Waiting Room.”

“Ha!” he said, splashing water into the teapot.