“The other story is that he was dog-napped. William Kennet saw him being driven out of the village by a huge criminal-looking type dressed as a vicar.”

“Ha! That’s the man who rescued me!” I explain about Bailey’s new master.

“An archdeacon.” Philip whistles. “And he saved your life. We should make sure to tell Mr. Kennet. He thought the vicar disguise was very low.”

I’m on my feet, this being more comfortable, looking out of the window at Beacon Hill. “I saw Yvette last night.”

“What? You mean, you had a dream?”

“No. I’d just driven back from Norwich, I was in pain, and I took two tablets instead of one.” I turn back to Philip. “I woke up and there she was, sitting at the end of the bed. She was mightily real. She talked to me, and when she left she even managed to rattle the latch on the door.”

“Good grief. How incredibly unnerving!”

“Yes, it was.”

“How was she?” He reddens. “What a stupid thing to say.”

“No, not at all.” I find myself smiling. “It was exactly like that. As if she’d just dropped in. She seemed fine. Very much her usual self.”

When he speaks next it is idly, in a friendly way, his cheeks still flushed. I’m not ready for what he says, but I have to accept I’ll never be ready.

He asks me, “What did she say?”

—

One summer evening I put a match to a candle, began to compose a sermon. Became distracted by a small white shape on the edge of my vision that grew sharper and brighter as I wrote: the corner of a page of the Church Times lying within the pool of light. Rural parish, Hampshire. A signal flare, telling me, You have some way to go.

It’s only fifteen miles from Alver Shore to Upton. Three minutes’ flight in a Hurricane, half an hour’s driving on country lanes, but it took me years and years. I made a wrong turn, you see. Yvette asked me if I would come with her, to meet her kind woman friend, and I refused. Ended up going the long way round. I’ve been a terribly stubborn case, needed such a lot of pushing. Althea Brock, Tom, Frobisher, Ellen. Even Yvette had to come and help. And now I’m nearly there, with Philip before me.

—

At my bidding, Philip is telling me what it was like when he drew his stillborn older brother. I can’t see any other way of approaching the subject.