Harold was trying hard to keep some sort of control. ‘Protest is also building over the Sussex site. The antis have discovered that the houses would be built on part of an old smugglers’ route. The heritage people are jumping up and down.’ Harold dug his hands into the pockets of his fashionable linen suit.

‘I believe it,’ said Julian.

The two men were silent.

‘Maybe,’ offered Harold, ‘we could palm off the Lincolnshire project on the council.’

‘I think not.’

Julian took another look at the figures. If a profit warning on the next quarter’s results was going to be necessary, then the share price would be affected. He ordered Harold to arrange a couple of emergency meetings and to get himself a cup of coffee. Harold disappeared.

Although he had known for some months that this might happen, Julian needed a few minutes’ grace. Daily, he had watched the figures, adjusting projections here, strategy there, but his fire-fighting tactics had not been sufficient.

At some point, he had made a mistake and, like the gene pool heading for extinction, taken the wrong turning. Nothing overtly dramatic, but decisive nevertheless. Kitty had talked about evolution, and wrong turnings littered evolutionary history. He was desperate for this not to happen to Portcullis. Nor should it have done so. In theory the genes for survival were in place – his team, their experience, the backers and shareholders. Surely it was a question of reshaping projections and vision to fit into an altered context. Yes. He must act. He would act. He spread his fingers along the edge of the desk and pressed down hard to release the pressure in his shoulders, then rang for Angela.

Thus, Julian went into battle to hammer a rescue package into shape.

By the end of the day, he was exhausted, all attack played out. Gradually, the building emptied, leaving a series of lit rooms. Julian got up, extracted a bottle of whisky from the cabinet and poured himself a slug.

Much later still, he picked up his papers, stowed them in his briefcase and left the office. He needed to go home, to his real home, and the need was so powerful that he could think of nothing else.

When he arrived he found he was almost gasping with relief.

Inside Cliff House, the heat had gathered and the rooms were stifling. Julian flung open the windows one by one and let fresher salt air stream in. He leaned on the window-sill and listened for a long time to the sea. He may have lost his way temporarily in the City’s wild and dangerous waters but he had returned to this anchorage. As he always did.

Then he went to bed.

Agnes spent a good part of Saturday morning recovering from the morning nausea. This was of a different variety from the one that floored her late in the afternoon and different again from the late evening bout that Mother Nature slipped in for good measure before bed. So far, she had tried everything: eating cream crackers, no breakfast (that had been bad), a brisk walk, copious amounts of food. Nothing helped and, struggling to achieve all that she had to do, Agnes was astonished that reproduction ever took place, because it was so awful.

She was in the study preparing for a day of financial planning. Probate was through, and she had to face the problems that riddled Flagge House.

Money? Yesterday she had endured a session with Mr Dawkins and the bank manager, and walked over the house with Mr Harvey to work out the priorities. In the Action file on the desk lay various forms for grant applications, all complicated.

She slid her fingers inside the waistband of her trousers and pulled at it gently to give her growing stomach a breathing space. An unseen agency had packed her head with wet wool wadding and reduced her concentration to the level of the average rabbit.

Should she tell Julian about the baby? Surely the tiny package of cells growing inside her had rights. ‘Picture your baby,’ she would say. A smart, hungry, demanding squaller who needs you. When you look back over your life, you will want him or her in the family photos. In place, and part of you. You will have wanted to stand on the rugby touchline cheering him on, or to have ferried a daughter to a late, late party in an unsuitable new dress. Little things that make the throat prick with tears and pride and which make the photograph more alive and better than the one without them.’

The shabbiness of telling and distressing Kitty shamed her; her weakness in having done so shamed her – and she feared the future to which she saw no solution. But she longed to see Julian, with a miserable, aching longing.

She looked round the study, still cluttered with her uncle’s things. A massacre in Africa, dying children, whale slaughter – these and other outrages she had tackled in her work, grown angry over and recorded so that others might feel the same. Yet the terrible truth was that when it came to this point, her own predicament and desires won out.

Agnes picked up the phone and dialled.

An hour later, she drove up to Cliff House, where Julian was waiting.

On the phone, she had said simply, ‘It’s me.’

There was a pause. Agnes, I’m so glad you rang. Can you come down here. Just for the afternoon. Please.’

She hesitated. Actually, I did want to discuss something with you.’

‘Please.’

So there she was at Cliff House and he was opening the door of the car. He bent over and touched her hair. ‘You don’t look well. Are you all right?’

‘And you? You look awful too.’ He shrugged. ‘Kitty?’

‘She’s away’

Julian took Agnes’s hand and led her through the house.

Lunch was waiting on a table under an umbrella on the terrace. They sat down and Julian passed her a spinach salad. ‘All my own work. Tell me what you’ve been doing. Is your aunt better?’

The conversation was heavy with the unsaid. They exchanged news but it was not until he had drunk half a bottle of wine that Julian told her about Portcullis. He was concerned but resolute. ‘I’ve had to do some thinking. I confess that I had been led to believe in my own myth. I wanted to believe in it. But financial pratfalls happen in a business life, and more people struggle back from the brink than is supposed.’ He looked over to Agnes. ‘Unfortunately there’s a good chance that I will fail the people I employ.’

Agnes reached over and held his hand. It seemed to comfort him. ‘I’m sorry.’ The telephone rang but Julian ignored it. It rang and rang, then went silent.

Agnes stirred in her seat. ‘Where is Kitty exactly?’

Julian frowned. ‘She’s gone to a clinic – the subject of children seems to have come up. Look, I don’t want to discuss Kitty’s business.’

She looked down at the table littered with the remains of their lunch. Her baby needed a champion too, she thought passionately, and she was all it had. ‘But we must talk about it. What is Kitty doing?’

He turned his head abruptly away from her and she tumbled to the fact that he hated to be confronted.

‘She thinks we ought to try for a baby.’

She felt the sun beat down on her skin. ‘Do you want children?’

He stirred restlessly. Actually, I think I do.’

‘So Kitty is going to try to give you one.’ Cold in the sun, Agnes put down her fork. She remembered a famous novelist once saying: ‘Relations with people never finish, only stories have an ending.’ Clever Kitty. She understood the precept so well. Faced with Agnes, the enemy, the pregnant enemy, she had gone underground. Kitty was a natural résistante. Oh, clever Kitty, for she had ensured that if she became pregnant Agnes could not possibly take Julian away. Kitty held the prior claim.

Between them they could bat babies back and forth like balls. Not my baby, she thought tiredly. It is not going to be treated like that.

Later, Julian fetched a rug and spread it in the shade by the long grass. The sun was blazing, the sea had calmed to a murmur and, far out, white-sailed boats tacked to and fro. Sleepy and full, they stretched out on the rug and Julian’s arm cradled her head. ‘You must sleep and get rid of those shadows under your eyes.’ He kissed her eyelids. ‘Then you’ll feel better.’

She obeyed, and drowsiness crept through her limbs, anchoring them with a delicious lassitude.

When she woke, the sun had moved and her arms were flushed pink. Dazzled by the light and by sleep, she turned her head to encounter Julian’s next to hers. ‘Magic’ Her gaze alighted on the long grass. Each blade seemed extra sharp. Some were rolled as tight as a pupa’s case, others were upright razors, yet another hung with downy seed-heads. As she watched, an insect crawled through this green underworld. A small, lumbering creature, intent on survival.

Silently, Julian turned Agnes’s face to his and kissed her. ‘It’s very odd, or perhaps it isn’t,’ he informed her, ‘how the longing for proper love infects you at the wrong moment. Or when you least expect it.’

At sea, the tide turned and began to run in.

They were at the end of the garden, leaning on the gate that led on to the cliff path and talking, when they spotted a figure in a pink linen suit walking towards them.

‘Hallo, Julian,’ said Kitty, her red mouth set in a bitter grimace. ‘Didn’t you hear the phone? I rang at lunchtime to tell you I was coming back earlier than planned.’

Kitty’s groomed exterior was immaculate, but underneath there was a terrified animal (the same animal that had taken up residence in Agnes), who was frantically weighing up the options on how to get rid of that enemy.

‘Hallo, Kitty,’ Agnes said, knowing that Kitty was in mortal terror that she had told Julian about the baby.

The two women sized each other up. ‘This time I’m telling you to get out,’ said Kitty, her voice shaking.