‘Now that I’m leader,’ he said one morning as he bashed the top of his boiled egg with a spoon, never having quite mastered the more refined way that Grace simply sliced the top from hers, ‘I think things are going to change. I shan’t be able to go away so often, for a start. There’s more to the job than just turning up for rehearsals like I used to. I’m going to have to kick the Grand Prix into the long grass for a while, too.’ He looked up then and caught her eye. ‘You won’t mind having me around here a little more often, I hope?’

What was that expression on his face? Grace wondered. Was he telling her something, asking for forgiveness for all the times he had been away and she had just stoically accepted it? Was it something more significant than that? At the time, it had been a fleeting thought that she had dismissed, but now, in light of this terrible news about Melissa, it occurred to Grace that it might have been something more. Had Charles being made leader marked the end of his marriage to Melissa? Was Grace now, finally, after eighteen long years, going to get her husband back?

Next there were flowers. Charles had returned home one evening with a huge bouquet. He was taken to grand gestures and flowers were not an unusual gift, even though the Hall had a budget for floral displays and a garden well stocked with cutting blooms. These were special, though, a hand-tied arrangement of unseasonal roses, anemones and peonies in her favourite pale pinks and blues. It was an expensive and thoughtful gift.

‘What’s the occasion?’ Grace asked as he produced the bouquet from behind his back with a comical little bow.

‘Do I need an occasion to buy my beautiful wife flowers?’ he had asked, but Grace had the sense again that something had shifted.

And now, not two weeks later, came the news that Melissa had committed suicide. The two things had to be connected.

The weather forecast came on the television and Grace’s thoughts were interrupted. She pushed herself up from the sofa awkwardly as if she had aged ten years in ten minutes, and went to turn the set off.

Leah!

The thought sprang urgently into her mind. Who was going to look after Leah? She could only be eighteen, like Clio, no age to be left without a mother. And it was almost Christmas. The thought of Leah being alone now, of all times of the year, made her eyes flood with tears. Yes, technically Leah was an adult, but she was far too young to be alone in the world. Grace tried to imagine Clio on her own in a tiny house with no one to comfort or protect her, but found that the thought was too shocking to contemplate.