J dropped into a chair and was silent for a long moment. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised … but it is a dreadful shock … I know he was a great age, but he was always …’

She took a chair opposite him without invitation, and sat quietly, folding her hands in her lap. When J turned to her she was waiting, judging her time to tell him more.

‘He didn’t suffer at all,’ she said. ‘He grew very tired, over the winter, and he went to bed to rest. He died very peacefully, just as if he fell asleep. We had brought many of his flowers into his room. He died surrounded by them.’

J shook his head, still incredulous. ‘I wish I had been here,’ he said. ‘I wish to God I had been here.’

Hester paused. ‘God is very merciful,’ she said gently. ‘At the moment of his death he thought that he saw you. He was waiting and waiting for you to return, and he woke as his bedroom door opened, and he thought that he saw you. He died thinking that you had come safe home. I know that he died happy, thinking that he had seen you.’

‘He said my name?’ J asked.

She nodded. ‘He said: “Oh! You at last!”’

J frowned. The old fear that he was not first in his father’s heart returned to him. ‘But did he say my name? Was it clear that he meant me?’

Hester paused for a moment and then looked into the gentle, vulnerable face of the man that she meant to marry. She lied easily. ‘Oh yes,’ she said firmly. ‘He said: “Oh! You at last!”, and then as he lay back on the pillow he said “J.”’

J paused, and took it all in. Hester watched him in silence.

‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how to go on without him. The Ark, and the gardens, the royal gardens – I have always worked beside him. I have lost my employer and my master as well as my father.’

She nodded. ‘He left a letter for you.’

J watched her as she crossed the room and took the sealed letter from a drawer in the table.

‘I think it’s about me,’ she said bluntly.

J paused as he took it from her. ‘Who are you?’ he asked again.