“Perhaps.” She glances around the kitchen, her eyes warm. “I used to come up here as a girl, with Lucy Horne, to visit Daniel, Harvey Corey’s son. Lucy and Dan weren’t fitted for school; it was cruel to keep them there, year after year, trying in vain to spell archipelago. So I used to do their homework for them. I remember Dan making that egg rack.” She moves to the dresser and picks it up, a miniature wooden table with a dozen circles cut out of the top. “See these smaller holes? They’re for bantam eggs. Dan wanted to make me one, to say thank you for the homework.” She lifts it higher, blows away dust. “But Mother and I never had more than two eggs in the house at a time, so instead he made me a tiny rack for my thimbles. It was very useful. I did a great deal of patching and darning in those days.”

She sits down when I set the coffee on the table. Suddenly it’s too quiet in here, too still, and the tension builds.

I break the silence. “Thank you for the dahlias.”

She glances up at the ceiling. I know instantly that she’s thinking of the bedroom, where the flowers are. The bedroom and the bed, the sheets, their crispness, their scent of lavender. So am I, of course. The flush that has been fading from her cheeks builds again. She adds milk to her coffee, paying close attention to the task.

“You needed something nice,” she says in a small voice.

“I did,” I tell her. “I do.”

Her embarrassment vanishes. The look she gives me now is watchful, almost stern. I remember our last conversation in the dark of the lane. Well might she be wary.

“Singapore,” I burst out, seizing on another subject. “Penny told me. Are you going to see your brother?”

She’d told me about him at the party. His adventurous wartime escape from the invasion.

“Yes.” She relaxes. “All these years, and I’ve never been! And Edward must have come here a dozen times.”

“He went back there after the war, then?”

“Oh, yes. It’s his home.” Sipping her coffee.

“When are you going?”

“In . . .” She looks at her watch. “Thirty-two hours. I’ve had a great many jabs. Edward and I will spend some time in Singapore, then we’ll go up through the Malay Peninsula to Penang. Then he’ll let me loose. I’ll make for Thailand, I think. Apparently the food is excellent. I probably won’t be back until February.”

“Good heavens!”

“I know. Here I am, a middle-aged woman, and I’ve led such a sheltered life. How on earth will I manage?”

“Honestly, I didn’t mean that—”

“No, you’re right to be amazed. The idea’s ridiculous, really.”

Her lip curls, she’s quite merciless.