I thought rapidly. ‘When are the tests and where?’

‘That’s just it. There’s a bit of a wait.’

I started up. ‘I’ll ring Nathan. You’re on his insurance.’

Minty’s phone number was still stored on the phone’s menu in the sitting room and, with the flick of a button, I was talking to Nathan. ‘Nathan, Ianthe has to have some urgent tests. I wanted to check it’s OK to go ahead and use the insurance.’

Nathan cleared his throat. Always a bad sign. ‘I’ve been meaning to get in touch about this. I’ve had to take both your names off.’

‘I see.’ Pause. ‘Or, rather, I don’t.’ But I did. ‘Is this because you had to put Minty on instead?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Couldn’t you have told me?’

‘I should have done, but it slipped my mind. I’ll explain why one day, but it was necessary. Don’t worry, I haven’t made any other alterations.’

‘Let me get this straight. Ianthe can’t use the insurance for urgent tests, but we can summon the gasman to mend the boiler. We can die safely in a heated house.’ I struggled to keep calm. After all, what else should I expect? I said, more to myself than to Nathan, ‘What am I going to do about Ianthe?’

‘I…’ I heard Minty make a comment in the background and Nathan covered the receiver with his hand. There was a muffled and, judging by Minty’s tone, rather heated exchange. ‘Rose,’ Nathan came back on the line, ‘if you want some help…’

‘It’s fine, Nathan, don’t bother.’

I put down the phone and looked at my feet. Ianthe always said that she could not go on for ever but I expected her to. The room grew chilly, and I with it. I shook a little, whether from anger or fear I wasn’t sure. One thing was certain, however: I was on my own.

I lied, and told Ianthe that everything was arranged, and she was to have the bill sent to Lakey Street so that I could check it out before forwarding it to Nathan.

She seemed reassured and insisted in her quiet way that she wished to look at the garden and led me down the path, stopping frequently to assess a plant. I followed reluctantly. ‘You’ve been neglecting it,’ she scolded. ‘What a shame.’

‘I haven’t been out in it much.’

‘You should.’ She bent down to examine a clematis and her flowered dress made a graceful waterfall. ‘This has got wilt, Rose. If you cut it right back, you might save it.’ She looked at me severely, questioningly. ‘You’ve been letting things go. Whatever has happened, you must not give up. Others depend on you, and you must set an example to the children, and to me. We all depend on you.’ Lecture delivered, she pinched an olive leaf between her fingers. ‘I never thought you’d grow,’ she told it.

Smarting as I was, I laughed all the same. ‘I never thought I’d see you talking to it. Give it a few more years and you won’t recognize it.’

Ianthe turned away. I could almost taste her fear and anxiety and I could have bitten out my tongue. Maybe I don’t have any more years hung unspoken between us.

‘Mum…’ I thought rapidly. ‘Mum, I was going to ask you to help with the fountain. I need an extra hand.’

At once her face cleared. ‘Of course.’

I fetched the trug, the trowel and the bucket, and began to clear the debris that had accumulated. Even in water, leaves do not rot very quickly and those I extracted from it retained their shapes. We worked together, not saying much. Ianthe peeled back the wire covering the motor and held it, while I inserted my finger into the mechanism and scooped out the body of a dead tadpole and clods of mud. ‘OK, Mum,’ and she eased the wire back into place. I switched on the mechanism and the water dribbled, then flowed down into the cleansed pool. I made a few extra adjustments to the larger stones Poppy, Sam and I had collected years ago at Hastings, and stood back to admire our handiwork.

Ianthe brushed down the front of her dress, which was spattered by stagnant water. ‘I’m glad we did that.’

When Nathan’s mother died he said he wanted to remember her as she had once been, before the illness took a grip, and that I should too. It was a good, helpful thought, and typical of Nathan. There 0and then, I resolved that that was how I would think of him when I went back over the memories. The man who took trouble with his mother-in-law and spent time helping her with tax and pensions. Not, perhaps, how he wished to occupy his spare time, but he did it. The man who had told me privately that some people were damn ignorant about how the world functioned, but did his utmost to help all the same.


*

The following evening the doorbell went unexpectedly. It was Vee, flushed and panting. ‘Transport’s terrible round here,’ she said.

‘Always was,’ I said.

I kissed her, and took her into the sitting room. ‘I’ve just come to check I haven’t a suicide on my hands.’ Vee plumped down in the blue chair, and I knew she must have been talking to Mazarine. The knowledge that they were watching over me made me feel better.

‘Children OK?’

‘Sam comes up a lot and Poppy writes me postcards telling me not to worry.’

Vee smiled. ‘They’re the best.’

Hearing my children praised never failed. Vee leant back in the chair and closed her eyes. ‘I am absolutely exhausted. Completely, utterly drained. Why did I do it?’

I handed her a glass of white wine. I did not need to ask what she meant. ‘Drink this.’

‘All I dream about is being alone, completely alone. And sleeping.’ As she spoke, her features slackened, her skin paled, and Vee fell asleep, just like that. Sipping my wine, I sat and looked peacefully out of the window. After ten minutes or so, she woke. ‘Oh, God, Rose. Why did you let me do that? It’s dreadful. I do it all over the place. I’m terrified I’ll fall asleep in a meeting.’

As long as you’re not speaking, no one will notice.’

‘Beast.’

We laughed comfortably. She poked at her bag, her book bag. ‘Apart from the pleasure of seeing you, I want to use you. One of my reviewers has become temperamental so I sacked him yesterday, which leaves me without my round-up of travel books for the summer.’ Vee’s eyes opened wide. ‘Knowing your histoire, knowing you had plenty of time, I thought of you. You haven’t been gagged by the heavies? It’s not full-time employment. I’ll pay top whack… The thing is, you have only two days.’ She swallowed. ‘And one of the books is…’

I said it for her. ‘By Hal.’

‘Yup.’

Tears suddenly rained down my cheeks, an unstoppable release of emotion, and I was helpless. Vee leapt up and dabbed at my face with a tissue. ‘Stupid,’

My long-term habits are, so to speak, ingrained in my blood and bone and I have to dig deep to break them. A Thousand Olive Trees wasted an hour or two of valuable time lying on the kitchen table before I stretched out my hand and, for a second time, picked it up.

It described the journey he had made on foot through Italy. A ‘journey,’ he wrote in the preface, ‘marked by a succession of painful blisters, a common affliction, which has more effect on history and war than might be supposed.’

He began in the Veneto and picked his way south, along an ancient route taken by the merchants. ‘Those who embark on these old paths are normally looking for secular rewards, the benefit of exercise, the charm of unfamiliar surroundings, a sense of achievement – but are often taken by surprise when they experience a feeling that might be called spiritual.’

Hal’s language was as unfamiliar to me as Nathan’s had become and, if I was not mistaken, he was less goldentongued, and that made me smile. But I could picture his walk, an impatient quick-march that used to leave me gasping. I, too, hefted my rucksack and placed my feet in his footprints and slithered down the stony scree, up the winding path into the hills, through a maquis of wild herbs, so bruised in passing that their aroma scented the hot air.

Blisters forced him to a halt in the village of Santa Maria, which fitted into a curve of the hillside among the olive groves in Umbria. And there he had discovered an olive farm that required an owner. The second half of the book was his account of buying it and settling down to learning about olive-tree cultivation.

I wrote the review, paying A Thousand Olive Trees no more and no less attention than I gave to the others in the round-up. I said that it was a book for dreamers.

Chapter Sixteen

I sent in the review by e-mail, and sat back in my chair, hands clasped behind my head.

Definitely there was a plus to having done some work. A step forward: and I was the better for having given my brain a workout. In the peace and silence of my study, being on my own did not seem to be quite so drastic a fate. I was even beginning to suspect that it had one or two compensations. Had we ever confessed, Vee, Mazarine and I, how exhausting marriage could be? Good management in a marriage was not merely a question of being one step ahead of one’s spouse, but two. And it had been Nathan who taught me that good, competent management is the key to comfort and efficiency, which, if as a principle it lacked poetry, had the merit of being honest.

Did he feel, on his side, I wondered, that he had had to manage me as well as himself? What we had not managed was familiarity. I saw that now. Mark Twain had been right after all. Familiarity is edged with the danger of tedium.

Sun flooded the landing, and I felt the house settle around me, my warm, companionable, familiar setting. The carpet under the window had been stained by damp and the sash window – probably – required replacing. Idly I added it to the list of the must-do and, as idly, flicked into my e-mail in-box. There was one. It was headed SURPRISE, SURPRISE.