“I fell asleep once in my Hurricane. Only for about half a minute. I’d lost a thousand feet, but otherwise all was well.”

“My goodness,” she says wonderingly. “You must have been very tired.”

“I expect so. Ellen, I enjoyed our evening together so much. I want you to know that. I wish I could go back to it. I wish we could sit around the table again.”

She smiles. “Tom and I were very mean to you.”

“Were you? I don’t remember.”

“About the tinned potatoes.”

The sorrow engulfs me, so much so that I only realize we’re coming up to the vicarage when she pulls onto the side of the road and switches her indicator on. She’s not going to turn into the drive.

“You wouldn’t believe,” I tell her, “how happy that made me.”

“And you can’t be happy now?”

I turn and look at her. She is lit on one side by the interior light, the planes of her face carved out of the gloom. She watches me, steady and solemn. I feel as if I’ve seen her properly for the first time.

“I don’t know if I can, Ellen. Not at the moment. So much happened, long ago, and it’s forcing me to question everything, even myself. I’m sorry for babbling on . . .”

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

I climb out carefully, holding Bailey, and look back at Ellen. Her hair is down, tucked into the collar of the coat. Now I can see from the wide shoulders that it’s a man’s coat: it envelops her, the cuffs go down over her wrists. I deduce that her husband had been tall.

“You know,” she says to me, “things can change. Even if they lie in the distant past. Even if they are shocking, ugly. It’s a matter of seeing them in a new light.” She gives me a sudden, startling smile, and puts her vehicle into gear. “Look after yourself, James. Look after Bailey.”

I close the passenger door, and she drives away.

—

In my bedroom I undertake another fruitless search through the notebooks to see if I could possibly have missed anything. I examine every page, the schoolwork pages included, for a scribble in the margin, for anything that might indicate where the rest of the story is.

Maybe that was all she wanted to say. Maybe she felt too ill to write any more.

No. She was going on until the end. She wouldn’t give up.

I know perfectly well why I felt that pit in my stomach when I rang Tom this morning. I’ve known it all day. I need to ask him if he took the last book, or books, away with him.