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‘Coming,’ he called. Then, softly to me: ‘Might just go for a whiz in the hydrangeas first, though. Got a bit of an experiment going. Did you know if you pee on a pink one, you can turn it blue?’

‘I didn't, but thanks for sharing that with me.’

‘It's the acid, I suppose.’

‘I suppose,’ I agreed, as my favourite nephew – although of course one shouldn't have favourites, but the most like Tim, at any rate – slunk off around the side of the house, shoulders hunched.

I, in turn, squared my own as I went through the sagging, five-bar gate hanging limply on its hinges at the front. I could already see a gaggle of people through the sitting-room windows: old friends, family friends, neighbours from the village, no doubt. People who'd tell me they didn't see enough of me these days. That I spread myself too thinly. Maybe even Neville Carter's parents, I thought with a pang. That rocked me for a second; made me hold the gate. Then I took a deep breath and picked my way in my heels through the filthy yard, which periodically, Tim got the local pikies to tip a load of shingle over. But no amount of shingle could stop the mud seeping through, just as – I paused and glanced up at the modest stone farmhouse – no amount of time could stop the seep of memories.

2

‘Evelyn! Oh my God, I haven't seen you in ages.’

I'd just taken the few steps required to cross the narrow flagstone hall and duck under the low door into the sitting room, when the hated name rang out and my arm was seized. An overweight woman in tight white trousers, tight pink sweater, and an even tighter perm, beamed delightedly at me, her face glowing. She reminded me vaguely of a girl I'd been at school with, Paula someone.

‘It's Paula! Paula Simons, remember?’

‘Gosh. Of… course. How are you?’

‘Really well, thanks. Have you brought your husband?’ Her eyes roved past me, hopefully.

I smiled. ‘No, he had to take our daughter to a music exam, I'm afraid.’

‘Oh, shame.’ Her mouth drooped. ‘I brought a book for him to sign. You should have taken her!’

‘Who, Anna?’ I was startled. ‘Yes, I suppose… but then Jack is my—’

‘Hey, Kay. Kay, look, it's Evelyn Hamilton!’

Another pink-faced middle-aged woman materialized, and this one I really didn't know except… oh heavens, Kay Pritchard. Suddenly I was nine years old again in the school cloakroom, giggling hysterically amongst the hats and coats. Our teacher, Mrs Stanley, had just told us that one of our classmates, Debbie Holt, wouldn't be coming in that day because her mother had died in the night. In the stunned silence that followed, Kay and I had dissolved. Not tears, giggles. Nerves, I suppose. We'd been sent out, but to our horror, couldn't stop, even in the cloakroom. Later I'd been mortified and it had haunted me for weeks. I wondered if she remembered. I also wondered if I was as changed as Paula and Kay: so… old?

‘Oh, Evelyn! Oh God – is he here?’ She glanced around excitedly.

‘He's not, I'm afraid. Will I do?’

‘Oh.’ She pouted. ‘Well, you'll have to, won't you?’ She gave a tinkly laugh. ‘But I want to hear all about it. Did he really go to bed with a different woman every week?’

This, a reference not to Ant, but a Georgian dramatist, whose biography he'd just written and which was currently being serialized, pre-publication, in the Daily Mail.

‘If that's what it says.’ I smiled thinly.

‘You haven't read it?’ Kay's eyes were huge.

‘Er… not that particular one.’ I'd read most of the Byron, and I'd started the one Ant had done on Kilvert, which hadn't been such a success, but not this one, the one Ant referred to disparagingly as his ‘Bodice Ripper’. The whole thing made us cringe a bit, actually. After all, he was a serious biographer, it wasn't usually the sort of thing he did, but the publisher had offered a big advance for something a little more spicy, a little more Byronesque, a little less Kilvert – no more dreary parsons, please! And to be fair, there was really only one steamy chapter, which, naturally, the Mail had chosen…

‘And you're living in Jericho now, I gather?