‘I noticed when I drove up that your boundary wall over by the river is knapped flint and brick. Used in Hampshire and here since Roman times. Needs repairing.’ He took a final squint up at the house. ‘Bucket repointing on the brickwork,’ he said, ‘and you’ll probably have to stipple it for the weathered effect. Otherwise, you’ll have the heritage people down on you.’ He inserted himself into his van. ‘Guttering? Well, needs completely replacing. Cast iron, I’m afraid, but we might get away with fibreglass for the hopper heads.’

Then, mercifully, Mr Harvey drove carefully away.

The house was bleeding to death and, for the moment, she was powerless to provide a transfusion.

Within an hour, Peter Bingham was on the phone to report that he had had a telephone call from a London estate agent, who wished to know if Flagge House was for sale. A housing association and a developer, who specialized in converting older properties into multiple-occupancy, had both expressed interest.

‘Stop there,’ said Agnes. ‘Have you been speaking to Mr Harvey? Whether you have or you haven’t, the answer is the same.’

While Agnes dealt with Mr Harvey, the sisters were upstairs practising packing for the Sound of Music holiday. Or, at least, Maud was. The bedroom was chilly, and when a depressed Agnes joined them, she scolded them for not turning on the electric radiator that she had bought in an effort to head off Maud’s fires. Shoes clacking on the wooden floor, she crossed the room and turned it on.

Outside, the river ran strong and fierce, still swollen with spring rain.

‘We wanted to save you money,’ said Bea, edging closer to the heat.

Maud sailed about the bedroom, dropping pieces of clothing here and there and shuffling, to no point, through a discarded pile of blouses and stockings. Patient Bea waited on the sidelines and, every so often, stepped in to restore order.

‘Only one suitcase, dear, don’t you think?’ Bea sorted the stockings into colour-coded heaps.

‘You were always so bossy,’ said her elder sister. ‘Always.’

Bea’s busy hands did not stop. ‘Was I? Dick didn’t think so. He liked the way I kept house.’

Maud’s large eyes were veiled. ‘Dick,’ she said spitefully, ‘was a saint.’

Bea dropped the stockings and plumped down on the edge of the bed. ‘Yes, he was, wasn’t he?’ The characteristic serenity had cracked, and she showed her distress. And I miss him so.’

Agnes sat down beside Bea and slid her arm around her shoulders. ‘What do you miss most?’

Bea picked at the folds in her skirt. ‘I miss… I miss the journey. We moved forward… I can’t explain quite what I mean. But, whatever it was, it ended when he died.’ The concertina of material twitched between her fingers.

Not to be outdone, Maud was still rattling through her clothes. She held up a blouse against her chest, threw it down, picked up an alternative. ‘The buttons are off this one.’ She swung round and accosted the pair on the bed. ‘Where did this… journey with Dick begin? Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought you lived all your married life in Shaftesbury. Or are you speaking in some kind of code?’ Her voice crescendoed with echoes of a child’s rage.

Agnes squeezed Bea tight. ‘Darling Bea.’

Bea held out her hand for Maud’s blouse. ‘Give it to me. I’ll mend it.’

Maud clutched it hard to her chest. ‘Will it make you feel better?’

‘Maud!’ Agnes summoned her patience.

‘Give me the blouse, dear.’ Bea turned so pale that Agnes was alarmed.

‘Have you taken your pills, Bea?’ she asked.

Maud gave the blouse a final inspection and tossed it over to her sister. ‘There.’

Agnes retrieved it from Bea’s lap, folded it and laid it to one side. ‘You can sort it out later. You are all right, aren’t you, Bea?’

‘Oh, yes, dear. Of course.’ Bea was looking more her normal self. She seemed embarrassed by her revelations and twisted her wedding ring up to her knuckle. ‘Don’t mind what I say. I was confused. But the habit…’ she considered ‘… of being with someone has to be unlearned.’

‘Alors.’ Maud hovered in front of her sister. ‘Marriage is there to be endured, like bank managers and politicians, because there is nothing else.’

‘Maud, that’s foolish,’ murmured Bea.

‘I may be many things, but not a fool.’ In a rare gesture, Maud placed a hand on Bea’s shoulder. ‘I wish,’ she said, ‘that I missed John.’

There was a lull in the jealousies and hostilities.

Julian rang the day after. ‘Agnes? I’ve been thinking. Would you like to come sailing at the weekend? I’ll tell you about Kitty as I promised.’

Maybe the Kitty problem had been dealt with. Agnes anticipated being gracious and understanding, and prepared to dissipate any awkwardness, but was not offered the chance to do either. Julian greeted her at the station – Agnes’s car was being serviced – and drove straight to the beach. There he busied himself with the boat, a J24, issued requests and Agnes’s high spirits did an about-face. The wind blew in smartly from a choppy sea and, despite the oilskins, her extremities were a mass of gooseflesh. Ignorance made her clumsy and Julian’s commands became sharper. ‘I said I was a novice,’ she protested, when he ordered her to wind a sheet round the cleat.

He seemed amazed. ‘What difference does that make?’

Eventually, sail flapping and sheets clacking, they nosed their way out of the protection of the point and headed for open sea.

Once beyond the spit, the wind screamed and the land bucketed across her vision. Out here, the sun was brighter, tougher, refracting off an expanse of white, wind-tossed water, and Agnes was the dazzled traveller gliding over its waves.

‘I don’t like to mention this,’ Julian hailed Agnes from the tiller, ‘but could you pay attention? The wind’s backing up and it’s going to get rough.’

Agnes hung on grimly to the side of the boat.

‘We’re going about,’ shouted Julian, the wind whipping his hair into a frenzy. Agnes lost her balance and went sprawling against the railing.

‘Novice’s luck,’ said Julian unfeelingly.

How she loathed being useless. She scrambled into a sitting position and rubbed potential bruises. ‘Everyone loves a sailor,’ she said bitterly.

An uncomfortable half-hour later, they beat shore-wards. Agnes shivered with anticipation of dry land, for any pleasure in the sailing had long vanished. She crouched lower on the bench and tried to cover her hands, now enticingly mottled, with the sleeves of her oilskins. In contrast Julian looked on top of the world and glowing.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ she asked, and when he shook his head, said with some feeling, ‘I hate you.’

Back on shore, they queued for fish and chips at the van parked at the harbour entrance then wandered to the nearest bench to eat them. Shuddering cold fits attacked Agnes, and she hiccuped and shivered.

Julian draped his oilskin over her shoulders. ‘You didn’t like that much, did you?’

She shook her head.

He prised the empty chip paper from her stiff hands. ‘It’s a bit early in your sailing career to be subjected to the rigours. I should have made sure that you went out on a sunny pancake.’

‘I have a sailing career?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since meeting me.’

‘I see. Forgive me asking. I just wanted to know, that’s all.’

‘A reasonable question.’ He squinted, balled up the chip papers and launched them at the rubbish bin.

The chips and the strong tea were excellent restoratives. Agnes buried her bare feet in the sand, a thousand tiny abrasions pricking the skin, and slid her hands up inside the sleeves of her waterproof jacket, which almost persuaded her she was warm.

Julian leaned over and wiped a fleck of salt water from her nose. ‘A walk, I think.’

He led her east along the beach in the direction of Cliff House. The tide was way out and they scrabbled for footholds among the stones and layers of beached seaweed. Agnes stopped to pick up a shell with a razor-sharp edge. ‘How long have you lived here?’

She had the impression it was not something he talked about much, but he did now. Chilly parents, a small boy left to his own devices, silent meals, anniversaries unacknowledged. She watched a small figure in grubby shorts haring down the road on a bicycle, bird-watching on the dunes, solitary picnics accompanied by the music of sea birds on the cliff, the tired, cold return to a house where electricity was rationed by cost-conscious parents. Her imagination painted him as very small against the grandeur and sweep of sea and land, and she heard in the screaming wind the sobs of the boy whose tenth birthday had been forgotten.

We have no right to hurt the tender, curled child. Ever.

‘Childhood is a lottery, I suppose,’ she said. ‘You can be born to the wrong parents, in the wrong skin, or the wrong place.’ She let the shell drop to the sand.

They exchanged a look that surprised them both with its impact.

‘The best thing about childhood is that it comes to an end,’ said Julian eventually.

At twelve years old, she had scuttled and lolloped around the walled garden with no purpose, her companion the terror of being abandoned for a second time. ‘That’s why we go back. To make sure we are adults.’

‘Nothing so complicated. In my case, Cliff House was available. I wanted a base.’

The wind slammed a handful of hair into her mouth and she grabbed it. ‘Have it your own way.’

‘I will.’ He grinned and tucked her hand into his elbow.

They wandered on, their feet flicking up seaweed and pebbles, the wind attacking hair and clothes. In the spring light, stone, wood and sand appeared white and insubstantial. The gulls dived. Her hand was warm and safe in his pocket. Surely, once you had been through a love affair and were hovering on the brink of another the feelings and emotions would be the same. But, no, they weren’t. Not at all.