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Isabel laughed. She imagined Brother Fox hiding a purse away somewhere, a purse with a few gold sovereigns, perhaps—his life’s savings.

“You’re very kind,” she said. It was true. People who looked after animals were by and large kind people; they simply practised kindness, unlike those who made much of it. Thus, thought Isabel, are virtues best cultivated—in discretion and silence, away from the gaze of others, known only to those who act virtuously and to those who benefit from what is done.

She went back into the house to find that Jamie, having checked on Charlie, was clearing up in the kitchen. As he removed the newspaper on which Brother Fox had lain, a small piece of fur fell to the floor. Isabel picked it up. “A memento,” she said, handing it to Jamie. “The Victorians loved putting hair in jewellery. I could put it in a locket.”

Suddenly she smiled, and Jamie, for whom smiles were as infectious as yawns, grinned. “What are you thinking about now?” he asked.

“I suddenly remembered something that I hadn’t thought about for a long time.”

“Tell me.”

Isabel looked doubtful. “It’s silly.”

“Life’s silly.”

“All right. A long time ago, when I was a student, I volunteered to work for a month in France. It was during the summer. A gorgeous, sultry August.”

She had told him about this before. “The place for kids from Paris? The children who’d never seen a cow?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her expectantly. “And?”

“And there was another girl there. There were three of us, in fact—all Scottish, as it happened. There was somebody in Edinburgh who recruited volunteers for this place. Anyway, there were the three of us. Me, a rather frightened-looking girl called Alice, and Jenny. Jenny was the one I was thinking of.” She smiled again at the memory.

“What about her?”

“Well, she had a boyfriend,” Isabel continued. “And she talked about him non-stop. He was called Martin. Martin says this. Martin says that. Martin and I went to Germany once. Martin will be visiting his aunt right now, as we speak. I wonder if Martin is all right. And so on. All the time. She was so annoying.”

“Maybe she loved him,” said Jamie.

“That’s putting it mildly. But it drove me up the wall. Alice was too timid to say anything, and so she just sat there and listened to the Martin stories. I switched off.”

Jamie shrugged. “People get … how should one put it, fixated?”

“Yes,” said Isabel. “You could say that. But it was not so much her talking about him that I was thinking of. It was the mention of mementoes.”

“She had a memento of Martin?”

Isabel’s smile widened. “Yes. His boxer shorts. She slept with a pair of his boxer shorts under her pillow. We all shared a room and I saw them. They were a sort of red check. She took them out from under the pillow before she went to bed, waved them about a bit and then put them back under the pillow before she got into bed. Stupid girl.”

Jamie burst out laughing. “How touching.”

“She was so stupid,” said Isabel. But then she thought: Was she? People fell deeply in love, and the clothing of a lover can so easily become symbolic of the object of that love. She glanced at Jamie. She could easily talk about him, just as Jenny had talked about Martin. Just as easily. And would she sleep with his boxer shorts under her pillow? Yes, she thought, I could. Yes. Like a silly schoolgirl, I could.

“Actually, she wasn’t stupid,” she said. “Not really. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Jamie reached out and touched her gently. “I have an old pair of boxer shorts if you’d like them,” he said, in mock seriousness.

“But I have you,” she said.

“Of course.”

SHORTLY AFTER THREE that morning, Jamie woke up and slipped out of bed. Half-awakened, Isabel watched him drowsily from her side of the bed. He had gone to the window and had drawn back a curtain sufficiently to look out on to the garden.

“What are you doing?”

He replied in a low voice, not much more than a whisper. “I wonder how he is.”

“He’ll be off. Simon said a few hours.”

Jamie moved back from the window. “I’m going to go and check.”

She said