As I rise to my feet, I catch sight of a dark shape on the edge of the pew under the window. I stretch my arm toward it, but at the barest touch of my fingers it slithers off the pew onto the floor. Switching on my torch, I stoop down into the narrow space between the pews and retrieve it. The fabric is very fine and light—silk, at a guess. A woman’s headscarf. Perhaps one of the flower arrangers left it behind. I lay it down on the pew and rummage in my pockets for the church key.

The beam of light from my torch strikes the colors, catches my eye. Blue and orange on a cream background, the blue Mediterranean, the orange hot and burned.

My heart thumps, a slow counterpoint to the lightning of my mind that tells me, before my eyes have made sense of the image, that the design on the scarf will be of a train. Yes: the beam of torchlight plays over a jumble of carriages rollicking through mountain meadows behind a puffing engine. And a farmer’s wife will be waving at the train. Look, a peg-top woman with round face and blob of a blue hat and blue clogs. She’ll have a cow. There she is, the merry cow, tail switching, laughing like the cow on the cheese box.

Daubed over the sky, a banner of cheerful orange capitals that I know, a split second before I read them, will make the words LE PETIT TRAIN DÉPARTEMENTAL.

The little local train.

Adrenaline sweeps through me, darkens my vision, shrinks the world. I stand for a minute, one hand at my mouth. I could swear I’ve never seen this scarf before. But I knew it. When I saw those colors, I knew the shapes and words they were going to form. As if I’ve held it in my hands before. As if it’s been next to Yvette’s skin.

I’m being ridiculous. I imagine Tom saying, Get a grip, Dad.

“Get a grip, Dad,” I echo him aloud. I pick the scarf up and head for the door. On my way out I leave a scribbled message pinned to the noticeboard. Found in church: one silk headsquare. Please apply to the vicarage.

—

By the time I go to bed I’ve nearly convinced myself it’s a case of déjà vu. I’ve driven for hours, I tell myself. My tired eyes and brain fell out of sync for a moment. I have left the scarf downstairs on the kitchen table, the bright design safely extinguished in darkness. In the morning I bet it’ll mean nothing to me.

I wind up my tin alarm clock. The rain stopped on my way back from the church, but the dripping from the trees is as loud and steady as the downpour.

FOUR

Yvette

12 February 1964