A Half Forgotten Song

CHAPTER SIX

Dimity stood and stared. There was a car parked outside Littlecombe; a flawless deep blue with flowing black arches sweeping over the front wheels and a bright metal grille gleaming at the front. A wholly different thing to the battered, muddy old machines that usually went rattling through Blacknowle, or the wide, ungainly buses that ran east and west along the top road, belching clouds of black smoke behind them. This car looked like it belonged in a fairy story, or one of the movies Wilf went to see occasionally, on visits to his uncle in Wareham; returning with stories of vastly wealthy men and graceful women in silk gowns living in a world so clean and lovely that nobody ever cursed or got ill. Dimity peered through the window. The seats were of deep brown leather, with neat rows of stitching. She longed to run her hands over them, put her nose up close and inhale the scent of them. There were some sprigs of cow parsley caught under the left corner of the front bumper, and Dimity bent to remove them, wiping away the smears of green juice with her fingertips. In the curving, mirrored metal, her reflection stared back at her, warped and misshapen. A flash of hazel eyes and knotted bronze hair; a smudged face and a scab on her lip made by one of Valentina’s fingernails, which had caught her as she’d dodged a blow.

“Quite a beauty, isn’t she?” said a voice close at hand. Dimity knew it at once, and she caught her breath. Charles. She whirled around and stepped away from the car.

“I wasn’t doing nothing! Only looking!” she gasped. Charles smiled and held out his hands.

“It’s all right, Mitzy! You can look. If you like, I’ll take you for a drive sometime.” He stepped forwards and pressed a brief kiss onto her cheek. “You look well. It’s nice to see you again.” He said it calmly, as though he didn’t know that their reunion was the one thing she’d dreamed of for ten long months. Charles looked past her at the car, his expression one of guilt and rapture. Dimity couldn’t speak. His kiss was burning into her skin, and she put up her hand in case she might be able to feel the wound. “I shouldn’t covet this car so. It’s only a machine. But then, can’t a machine, can’t something man-made, also be a thing of beauty?” He spoke almost to himself, running his fingers along the roof of the car with a rapt expression.

“It’s the most beautiful car I ever saw,” Dimity managed to say, breathlessly. Charles smiled, glancing at her appraisingly.

“You like it, eh? It’s brand-new. A friend of mine got his up to sixty miles an hour! Sixty! It’s an Austin Ten-the new Cambridge model. Twenty-one brake horsepower; four-cylinder, side-valve engine…” He trailed off, reading the utter incomprehension in her face. “Never mind. I’m glad you like it. I wasn’t even sure I needed a car. It was Celeste’s idea really, but now that I have it I can’t remember how I managed without. It seems so outmoded and restrictive to rely on trains and taxis. With a car, the world is your oyster. You can go anywhere, at any time.” He paused and looked over at her, but Dimity could think of nothing else to say about it. She could see that he expected her to, and felt desperation making her throat clog up and heat build at the top of her nose. “Well, I’ll take you for a drive soon, I promise. Go on into the house-Delphine’s been dying to see you.”

She did as she was told, however reluctant her feet were to move away from Charles and the heavenly blue car. Inside the house, voices were raised. Dimity knocked, but could tell that she hadn’t been heard. She edged cautiously into the kitchen just in time to see Élodie, so much taller than she had been, stamp her foot on the floor, fists clenched at the ends of rigid arms. Her black hair was cut into a shoulder-length bob that swung around her jaw as she yelled.

“I’m eight years old and I will wear what I like!” she said, her voice piercing and loud. Celeste turned from the sink and put her hands on her hips.

“You are eight years old and you will do as you’re told. Fais-moi des vacances! That is your best dress and those are your best shoes. We are in Dorset, by the sea. Take them off and find something more suitable to wear.” Celeste’s blue eyes were even more arresting than Dimity remembered. In anger, they seemed to glow.

“I hate all my clothes! They’re so ugly!”

“C’est ton problème. Go and get changed.”

“I will not!” Élodie screamed. Celeste fixed her with a look that would have made the blood run cold in Dimity’s veins had it been directed at her, even accustomed as she was to Valentina’s sudden assaults. Slowly, Élodie’s hands went limp, and her mouth opened a little, and a scorching blush flooded her face. She turned to run from the room and bumped straight into Dimity. “Oh, great! You’re here again. How simply marvelous!” she said, pushing past her.

“Merde. That child, she will fight me all the way!” Celeste sighed, pushing a hand through her heavy hair. “She is too much like me. Stubborn as a mule, and just as bad-tempered. Mitzy! Come and say hello.” She held her arms wide and Dimity stepped into a quick, surprising embrace. Delphine got up from the table, grinning. “How are you? You’ve grown! Even prettier than you were,” said Celeste, holding her at arm’s length. How could that be? Dimity thought of the long, biting winter; the chilblains on her toes, the way the wind chapped her cheeks and how long she and Valentina had gone without a decent, filling meal. Delphine was hovering excitedly next to her mother, and as soon as Celeste released Dimity, she stepped in to hug her, too. Dimity felt a rush of happiness, and something like relief; so powerful she thought for a second she might cry. Their affection was like a language she hardly knew, like occasional words emerging clearly from a confusing babble of sound.

She quickly rubbed at her eyes with her fingertips, and Delphine, seeing how moved she was, laughed with delight.

“It’s so nice to see you! We have so much to catch up on…” she said.

“Have you eaten, Mitzy?” asked Celeste.

“Yes, thank you.”

“But I bet you could eat more, right?” said Delphine, taking Dimity’s arm and looping it through her own. Dimity shuffled her feet and didn’t like to answer, when in truth the kitchen smelled wonderful, as usual. Celeste smiled.

“Don’t be polite, Mitzy. Say if you would like some,” she said.

“Yes, please. I would.” Celeste cut two thick slices of yellow cake and wrapped them in a napkin.

“I’ll have some, too-now I’ve finally stopped feeling sick from the journey. Daddy drives the new car so fast we get thrown about in the backseat like pinballs! We drove into the hedge at one point-there was a tractor coming the other way around a corner. You should have heard Élodie scream!”

“I saw you had cow parsley stuck under the metal at the front,” Dimity said, and Celeste smiled.

“So Charles introduced you to his new baby before he even let you come in and say hello? This is no surprise. I’m afraid he loves that thing more than he loves any of us,” she said.

“Not really, he doesn’t. Not more than us,” Delphine said, nudging Dimity’s shoulder when she took these words seriously.

“No. Like a child with a new toy. The thrill of it will start to fade before long,” said Celeste.

“Come on-let’s go down to the beach! I’ve been dying to go paddling. I thought about it all the time at school. They make us wear these awful itchy socks, even when it’s sunny.” Delphine towed Dimity towards the door.

“Ask Élodie to go with you,” Celeste called after them.

“Oh, all right.” Delphine sighed, leaning around the banister to shout up the stairs. “Hell-odee!” As they left the house and crossed the garden, Dimity turned to look for Charles. The car sat gleaming on the driveway, but there was no sign of its owner anywhere. Reluctantly, she looked away.

They spent that afternoon and the next catching up on all that they had seen and done in the intervening ten months since Delphine and her family had left Dorset. They roamed the fields and hedgerows picking herbs and spotting fledgling birds; keeping Élodie appeased with long loops of daisy chains around her neck and twisted garlands of poppies for her hair. They sat on the beach, at the high-tide line where a boundary of cuttlefish bones and dry, weightless fish eggs split the sand from the pebbles, watching Élodie do cartwheels and scoring her out of ten for each one, until she was breathless and red in the face, tired and dizzy enough to settle to some quiet task like drawing in the sand, collecting sea glass, or popping the blisters on a sheaf of bladder wrack. Delphine was particularly interested in hearing about Wilf Coulson, even though Dimity was deliberately vague on the subject of him.

“So, is he your boyfriend?” she asked, in hushed tones. She glanced up at her little sister, who was a silhouette against the sparkling sea, trailing a stick across the sand in ever-increasing circles.

“No! He’s not that!” said Dimity.

“But you’ve let him kiss you, you said?”

“Yes, I have. Not very often, just once in a while. When he’s been kind to me. Really he is just a friend, but you know what boys are like.”

“Do you think you’ll marry him?”

Dimity laughed easily, and for a while tried to pretend she had many offers, many alternatives. Plenty of time to wait. “I doubt it. He’s a bit skinny, and his mother hates my guts and no mistake. I don’t think he’d even dare tell his pa he goes about with me sometimes. Though I may tell him myself one day-he comes down to see my ma often enough.” As soon as she spoke, Dimity regretted the words.

“Why does he do that?”

“Oh, you know. To buy remedies and the like. To hear his fortune,” she invented hastily, the lie making her face flush.

“I know who I’m going to marry,” said Delphine, lying back with her hands clasped behind her head. “I’m going to marry Tyrone Power.”

“Is that a boy at your school?” Dimity asked, and Delphine laughed.

“Don’t be daft! There are no boys at my school. Tyrone Power! Haven’t you seen Lloyd’s of London? Oh, he is just divine… the most divine man who ever lived.”

“Is he a movie star, then? However will you meet him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. But I will-and I will marry him or die alone,” Delphine declared with quiet certainty. They paused to reflect on this, listening to the scratching sounds of Élodie’s spiraling, the constant susurration of the restless water. “Mitzy? What’s it like? Kissing a boy?” Delphine asked at length. Dimity considered this for some time.

“I don’t know really. I thought it was disgusting at first, like having a dog push its wet nose into your face. But after a while it’s okay, I suppose. I mean it’s nice.”

“How nice? As nice as having somebody brush your hair for you?”

“I don’t know,” said Dimity, at a loss. “Nobody’s ever brushed my hair but me.”

“I can plait with five strands, you know, not just three,” said Élodie, who was passing near the older girls.

“It’s true, she can. Élodie’s very good at hairdos,” said Delphine.

“I’ll do yours for you later,” said Élodie. She paused, apparently as surprised as Dimity by this sudden show of generosity. “If you want.” She shrugged.

“I’d like that. Thank you,” said Dimity. Élodie glanced up at her and smiled. A flash of her small, white teeth, as pretty and rare as wood anemones.

Later that week, Charles took Dimity out in the car, just as he’d promised to. The Austin Ten tore out of the driveway away from Littlecombe at such a speed that Dimity grabbed the door handle with one hand and the edge of the seat with the other. The inside of the car was ripe with the smell of oil and warm leather, a heady smell so thick she could almost taste it. The seat itself was hot enough to radiate through her skirt, heating the backs of her legs until sweat began to prickle there.

“And you’ve really never been in a car before?” Charles asked, winding down his window and gesturing for her to do the same.

“Only the bus, once or twice, and sometimes a tractor trailer to go potato picking, or cobbing before the harvest,” she said, suddenly apprehensive. Charles laughed.

“A tractor trailer? I really don’t think that counts. Well, hang on tight. We’ll go up to the Wareham road so I can really open her up.”

Dimity could hardly hear him above the thunder of air through the open windows and the roar of the engine on top of that. As they swerved along the lane between rows of Blacknowle’s cottages, she saw Wilf and some of the village lads lingering by the shop. She put her chin up haughtily as the car sped past, and was pleased to see them watch, agog, as the sunshine glanced from the blue paintwork, and the wind caught at tendrils of her hair. Wilf raised his fingers, surreptitiously, but though Dimity caught his eye for a second, she deliberately looked away.

“Friends of yours?” Charles asked.

“Not as such, no,” Dimity said. Charles treated them to several loud blasts of the horn and then glanced at her, merrily, and Dimity laughed-could not help herself; it bubbled up inside her like something boiling over, mixing with her nerves and bursting out, irrepressibly.

At the top road Charles turned left towards Dorchester, and with a lurch of the gears they were away, gaining speed until Dimity thought they couldn’t get any faster. The sides of the road were a rich green blur, the landscape seemed turned to liquid, flowing by. Only the sky and the far pale sea were unchanged and Dimity gazed out at them as they roared along, swerving out around a sluggish bus and other, slower cars. The air through the window was warm but still cooling compared to the heat of the day, and she put her hands up to her hair, twisting it into a knot and holding it so that the back of her neck would dry. From the corner of her eye she saw Charles look at her, keenly, dividing his attention between her and the road.

“Mitzy, don’t move,” he said, but the words were almost lost in the din.

“Beg pardon?” she shouted back.

“Never mind. Nowhere to stop just here, anyway. Will you do that for me later-twist your hair up like that? Exactly like that? Can you remember how you did it?” he said.

“Of course I can.”

“Good girl.” Valentina appeared in Dimity’s mind, and she chewed her lip as she thought about her, and how to phrase what she felt she must. Word of the Aubreys’ return had carried to The Watch on the grubby tide of its visitors, like the driftwood and trash that swept along on the channel currents. Dimity could not keep it a secret.

“My mother will say…” she began, but Charles cut her off with a wave of his hand.

“Don’t worry. There’ll be money to keep Valentina Hatcher on our side,” he said, and Dimity relaxed, relieved not to have to ask.

When they got to Dorchester they made a quick circuit of the town before taking the same road back in an easterly direction, every bit as rapidly as before. Dimity held her fingers in the streaming wind, playing with the feel of it, letting it force her hand back on her wrist, then holding it steady, flat; then letting it flex her fingers into a fist.

“I understand it now,” she said, almost to herself.

“What do you understand?” Charles asked, leaning closer to hear her better.

“How a bird flies. And why they do love it so,” she said, never taking her eyes from her hand as it cut through the rushing air. She could feel the artist watching her, and she let him, not challenging his gaze by returning it. She stared at her hand as it flew, her fingertips glowing in the sunlight; she breathed in the fiery smell of the car and felt the rumble of the world going by, and to her it seemed a wholly new place, a place of a scale and wonder that she hadn’t known before. A place where she might fly.

Charles had in mind a painting of the soul of English folklore. He told them this over lunch one day, as Dimity filled her mouth with chunks of cheese and pickles, piled onto slices of tough bread that Delphine had made herself. It was chewy, but she had put fresh rosemary into the dough, as Dimity had suggested, so the flavor was as delicious as the aroma.

“I painted a Gypsy wedding in France. It was one of the best things I have done,” the artist said, without pride or modesty. “Somehow you could taste the earthiness, the connection between those people and the land they lived on. Their gaze-I mean their inner gaze-was on the here, the now. They could feel their roots reaching down into the ground, and back through the years, even though some of them had no idea who their fathers had been, or their fathers’ fathers. Never looking too far ahead, never looking too far afield. That is the key to happiness. Realizing where you are, and what you have right now, and being grateful for it.”

He paused to take another mouthful of bread. Celeste took a steady breath, and smiled slightly when he looked up. Dimity got the impression that she might have heard the speech before. When she looked at his daughters, they both wore glazed, faraway expressions. Either they had heard it before as well, or they weren’t bothering to listen. The speech was all for her, she realized. “Take Dimity here,” he said, and her own name made her jump. “She has been born and raised here. This is her land and these are her people, and I’m sure she would never think to leave. Would never assume the grass was greener elsewhere. Would you, Mitzy?” His eyes were on her and their gaze was steady, compelling. Dimity started to nod her head, then understood he wanted a negative reply, so shook it instead. Charles tapped a finger on the tabletop to show his approval, and Dimity smiled. But Celeste gave her an appraising look.

“It is easy to see things as they appear to be, and to make guesses, and form opinions. Who is to say that they are correct? Who is to say the happiness of the Gypsies wasn’t in your own mind, and then in your hand as you painted them?” she said to Charles, with a challenging tilt of her chin.

“It was real. I only painted what was there, in front of me…” Charles was adamant, but Celeste interrupted him.

“What you saw in front of you. What you thought you saw. Always, there are questions of…” She waved her hand, searching for the right word. “Perception.” Charles and Celeste locked eyes, and Dimity saw something pass between them, something she couldn’t decipher. A muscle twitched in the corner of Charles’s jaw, and there was a tense, angry look on Celeste’s face.

“Don’t start that again,” he said, with stony calm. “I told you it was nothing. You’re imagining things.” The silence at the table grew strained, and when Celeste spoke again her voice was far harder than her words.

“I was merely entering the discussion, mon cher. Why not ask Dimity, instead of telling her how she feels about it? Well, Mitzy? Do you want to always live here? Or do you think it might be better to try living somewhere else? Do you have strong roots, roots that keep you tied to this place?”

Dimity thought again of the long winter-swaths of sea mist rolling in like clouds sunk low, so that the whole world contracted to the sullen earth in front of her feet; a fine layer of ice on the slurry pit by Barton’s farm, which broke when she stumbled onto it, splashing her boots with foul black water; grounded fishermen cutting the reeds for thatch instead, working in rows, their arms swinging to and fro, the swish and crunch of their scythes loud in the deep quiet. Days when the whole world seemed ended and dead, and Dimity made her way to and from The Watch with her canvas coat pulled tight around her, the hems of her dungarees soaking wet, and her old felt hat dripping from its brim; hearing the wheeze and whistle of swans in flight above her head, invisible in the murk. How she longed to fly away with them, longed to fight her way free of the stifling cold and the way each day started and ended the same. There were roots indeed, holding her tightly. As tightly as the scrubby pine trees that grew along the coast road, leaning their trunks and all their branches away from the sea and its battering winds. Roots she had no hope of breaking, any more than those trees had, however much they leaned, however much they strained. Roots she had never thought of trying to break, until Charles Aubrey and his family had arrived and given her an idea of what the world was like beyond Blacknowle, beyond Dorset. Her desire to see it was growing by the day; throbbing like a bad tooth and just as hard to ignore.

She realized that Charles and Celeste were both waiting for her reply, and she found a way to answer that was honest but ambiguous.

“My roots are here, and very deep,” she said, and at this Charles nodded again, satisfied, and cast a glance at Celeste, but Celeste watched Dimity a while longer, as if reading the vast unspoken truth behind the words. If indeed she saw it, though, she said nothing; she held out her hand for Élodie’s empty plate, which the child handed to her without a word.

“Where shall we go then, Mitzy? Where is most rich with the folklore of this place? We’ll go somewhere and I’ll draw you surrounded by the old magic,” said Charles. Dimity felt pride swelling her up, to be consulted, to be the expert. Then she realized she had no idea where to suggest, and wasn’t really sure what he meant by the old magic. She thought rapidly.

“Saint Gabriel’s chapel,” she said abruptly. It was a ruin in a copse on a hill, said to be haunted. The village boys held vigils in it, daring one another to spend a night there alone, with no campfire, no flashlight. Huddled in among the damp green stones, hearing all kinds of fell voices in the shifting wind.

“Is it far?”

“Not far. An hour to walk it, I suppose,” she said.

“We’ll go this afternoon. I’d like to see the place, get a feel for it.” His face had come alive with a kind of inner fervor, an intense enthusiasm. “Will your mother spare you?”

“If there were coins for her, she’d spare me forever,” Dimity murmured, then felt stupid for saying so. She remembered the idealized description of Valentina she’d given them last summer, and remembered that only Charles had met her-only he knew that it had been half-truths at best. “That is… I mean…” she floundered, but Celeste put out her hand and patted Dimity’s.

“Only a fool would take coins in exchange for something priceless.” She smiled, but then she looked at Charles and the smile faded a little. “You said you would take the girls to Dorchester this afternoon. To buy new sandals.”

“It’s not urgent, is it? Tomorrow we’ll go, girls,” he said to them, with a nod.

“That’s what you said yesterday,” Delphine protested gently. “My toes are touching the ground over the front of mine.”

“Tomorrow, I promise. The light is perfect today. Softer than it has been.” He seemed to talk almost to himself, turning his gaze to the tabletop. Feeling some scrutiny, Dimity looked at Celeste and found the woman watching her with a strange expression. When their eyes met, Celeste smiled and went back to collecting up the plates, but not quickly enough for Dimity to mistake what she’d seen. Celeste had looked worried. Almost afraid.

For three weeks the weather set fair, with a warm sun and soft breezes. Charles drove them all west to Golden Cap, the highest cliff along the Dorset coast. They climbed up through woods and fields, lugging heavy baskets packed with food, with sweat blooming through their clothes, to burst out onto the summit into fresher air and an endless view that took their breath away.

“I can see France!” said Élodie, shading her eyes with her hands.

“No you can’t, you dope,” said Delphine with a chuckle.

“What’s that then?” her sister demanded, pointing. Delphine squinted into the distance. “A cloud,” she declared.

“No clouds today. I have decided it,” said Celeste, spreading out a striped blanket and unpacking the picnic.

“Ha! Then it must be France,” said Élodie, triumphant.

“Vive la France. Come and eat your lunch.” Celeste smiled. “Dimity, come. Sit. Ham sandwich, or egg?”

When the picnic was finished, Charles lay back, tipped his hat forward over his face and slept. Celeste gave up swatting at the flies and wasps that had come to feast on the leftovers and lay back as well, resting her head on Charles’s stomach and shutting her eyes. “Oh, how I love the sun,” she murmured. The five of them whiled away the afternoon there, the three girls watching the drowsy bees sway from flower to flower amid the furze and heather; spotting ships far out to sea; waving and hallooing the other walkers and holidaymakers who appeared on the Cap. Elderly couples with dogs; young men and women with their fingers entwined; families with sturdy children, flushed from the climb. As they nodded and smiled, Dimity realized that they didn’t know. These strangers didn’t know that she was not an Aubrey but a Hatcher; there was nothing to betray the fact that she was not one of the family. And so, for a while, she was one of them, she belonged with them, and this made her happier than she had ever known. She could not keep from smiling, and had to turn her face away from Delphine at one point because the feeling got so strong it prickled her nose, and threatened to turn into tears.

As the shadows lengthened at last, they packed up the hampers and made their way down from the summit. They drove the short distance to Charmouth and spent an hour or so hunting in vain for fossils before taking tea and scones at a little café beside the rocky shore. Dimity’s skin felt dry and stretched from a day in the sunshine, and she could tell from the quiet way they spoke that the Aubreys were feeling the same pleasant weariness that she was. Celeste didn’t even scold when Élodie piled so much cream and jam onto her scone that she couldn’t fit it into her mouth, and dropped a huge blob of it down her blouse. As if startled that there was no remark about this, Élodie pointed it out.

“Mummy, I’ve spoiled my blouse,” she said, mumbling around the hefty mouthful.

“That was stupid, hmm?” said Celeste, not breaking off her distant gaze, which was fixed on a high, floating gull. Delphine and Dimity exchanged a glance and laughed, and proceeded to pile their own scones every bit as high as Élodie’s. Dimity’s stomach churned slightly, unused to such rich food, but it was too good to pass up.

“Mummy, can I go for a swim?” said Élodie, after a contented silence.

“I suppose so. If one of the big girls goes with you,” said Celeste.

“Don’t look at me-you know I don’t like swimming when it’s rocky, not sandy,” said Delphine.

“Mitzy, will you? Please, please, pretty please?” Élodie begged.

“I can’t, Élodie. I’m sorry.”

“Of course you can! Why can’t you?”

“Well, because…” Dimity fidgeted, embarrassed. “I can’t swim.”

“Of course you can swim! Everybody can swim,” said Élodie, shaking her head stubbornly.

“I can’t,” said Dimity.

“Is this true?” said Charles, who had not spoken for half an hour or more. Dimity nodded, hanging her head.

“You’ve lived your whole life by the sea, and never learned to swim?” He was incredulous.

“There’s never been any call for me to swim,” said Dimity.

“But there may be, someday, and when that time comes it could well be too late to learn. No, it will not do,” said Charles, with a shake of his head.

By the end of the week, he had taught her. Dimity had no swimsuit, so she swam in her underwear, splashing in small circles around him while he held her afloat with one hand underneath her, pressing into her midriff. At first she thought she would never manage it. It seemed impossible, and she spluttered and panicked, swallowing seawater that burned her throat, until she gradually stopped feeling as though the water was trying to kill her. She stopped fighting it and learned to relax, to lengthen her body out and let the water lap her chin, to push through it with her arms and legs, to breathe normally. Delphine swam around them, calling out encouragement and scolding Élodie for laughing. Then, finally, Dimity mastered it. It was late in the day, and the sun was low and yellow, dazzling like fire on the surface of the water. The pressure of Charles’s hand got lighter and lighter, and then vanished altogether, and Dimity did not sink. She felt vulnerable without his touch, frightened without his support, but she swam, scooping with hands and legs and making slow but steady progress alongshore for some thirty feet before she put her feet down. She turned back to Charles with a smile of pure delight, and he was laughing, too.

“Excellent, Mitzy! Well done! Like a proper mermaid,” he called. His hair was wet and dark, plastered to his head, and the skin of his chest shone with water, catching the rich sunlight so that he seemed to glow. Dimity stared; the sight of him was glorious, almost painful, but she couldn’t look away.

“Hurray!” shouted Delphine, clapping her hands. “You did it!”

“Can we go in for tea now?” said Élodie.

Dimity walked with them up to Littlecombe, weary but elated. Her hair hung in salty strings down her back and there was sand underneath her fingernails, but she had never felt as wonderful. There were already five places set at the table. Five, not four, and no question of whether or not Dimity would stay. Celeste had cooked a spiced chicken dish with rice and steamed zucchini from the garden, and they sat down to eat in a storm of chatter about the swimming lessons and Dimity’s first proper swim. She and Delphine were allowed a little white wine to drink, diluted with water, and it made them giggle and turned their cheeks pink, and later in the evening made their heads droop into their hands at the table.

By ten o’clock it was fully dark outside, and velvety moths fluttered in through the window to flirt with the lights. Élodie had curled up against Celeste’s side, within the protective circle of her arm, and was already fast asleep.

“Right. Bed, for you three,” said Celeste. “Charles and I can clear up the dinner things.”

“But it’s early,” Delphine protested, but without conviction. She stifled a yawn, and Celeste smiled.

“I rest my case,” she said. “Go on. Up.” Élodie mumbled in protest as Celeste stood and picked her up off the bench.

“I should go, then,” said Dimity. She got up reluctantly, and realized how little she wanted to return to her own home.

“It’s pitch-black and you haven’t a light. Sleep here tonight-your mother can’t mind,” said Celeste. They all knew by then that Valentina minded little, so long as she was paid.

“You mean… I can stay?” said Dimity.

“Of course. It’s late. You can sleep with Delphine. Go on, child. You are half asleep on your feet as it is! Better to stay than to stumble over a cliff in the dark.” Celeste smiled and ushered them upstairs. With a mixture of happiness and trepidation at what Valentina would say come morning, Dimity obeyed.

With the lights off and the blankets making a tent above their heads, Delphine and Dimity lay side by side for a while, chattering and giggling as quietly as they could. But Delphine soon succumbed to sleep. Behind the soft sound of her breathing, Dimity listened to Charles and Celeste downstairs; to the sound of crockery being washed and put away, and a conversation carried on in hushed tones. From time to time Charles’s laughter rumbled up through the floor, warm and rich. Dimity shut her eyes, but even though she was bone-weary, sleep did not come for a long time. She was distracted by feelings that seemed too big to keep in, feelings she could hardly give name to, she was that unused to them. She dropped her hand to her stomach, to where, all week, Charles had pressed his own hand to keep her afloat in the water. That touch seemed the embodiment of everything she was feeling, everything that was perfect about that summer. It was security; it was protection. It was acceptance, and inclusion, and love. Before long, she thought she could feel his hand there instead of her own, and she smiled into the darkness as sleep stole over her.

The following week, Charles took the car and went up to London. Preliminaries for a commission, Celeste told Dimity, when she asked, and Dimity had no idea what that meant. She tried not to let her disappointment at his departure show. Without him, and without the car, they were more tied to Blacknowle than they had been, but on Friday Celeste took them on the bus to Swanage, to go shopping. At first, Dimity was less than enthusiastic about the trip. Shopping, as far as she knew, meant picking up fish and potatoes for dinner, maybe a cake or some biscuits if a visitor had been particularly generous. It meant comparing the prices of what was on sale, making a few coins stretch as far as they possibly would, and then returning home to be told she had chosen badly. Shopping, as far as Celeste and her daughters were concerned, was a very different thing.

They drifted from shop to shop, trying on shoes and hats and sunglasses. They bought ice creams and sticks of rock candy, and then fish and chips wrapped in newspaper for lunch, hot and greasy and sublime. Élodie got a new blouse, pale blue with a printed pattern of little pink cherries; Delphine got a new book, and a jaunty sailor’s cap. Celeste bought herself a beautiful red scarf, bright scarlet, and tied it around her hair.

“How do I look?” she asked, smiling.

“Like a film star,” said Élodie, whose lips were drenched in mint and sugar from the rock candy. Dimity was more than happy to watch them make their purchases, but suddenly Celeste seemed to notice her empty hands, and she looked uncomfortable, almost angry.

“Mitzy. How thoughtless I am. Come, child. You shall have something new,” she said.

“Oh, no. I don’t need anything, truly,” said Dimity. She had a shilling in her pocket, that was all. Nothing like enough to buy a blouse, or a book, or a scarf.

“I insist. None of my girls shall go home with nothing, today! It will be a present, from me. Come. Come and choose something. What would you like?”

It felt very strange, at first. Dimity had never had a present from her own mother, not in fifteen years; it wasn’t even her birthday, or Christmas. It was peculiar to be invited to spend someone else’s money, on something just for her, and she had no idea what to choose. Élodie and Delphine made suggestions, holding up blouses and handkerchiefs and bracelets of beads. In the end, bewildered and in need of something she could hide easily from Valentina, Dimity chose a tub of hand cream, heavily scented with rose oil. Celeste nodded in approval as she paid for it.

“A lovely thing, Dimity. And very grown-up,” she said. Dimity smiled and thanked her repeatedly until she was told to stop. They rode back on the bus in time for tea, and Dimity watched Celeste covertly, as the Moroccan woman chatted to her daughters, thinking how beautiful she was, and how kind, and how she had called Dimity one of her girls. She realized with new clarity just how different life could have been if she’d been born to a mother more like Celeste and less like Valentina Hatcher.

Days later, when Charles was back from London, Dimity walked to Littlecombe through the village with her head held high; past the scattered men with their glasses of beer, sitting along wooden benches outside the pub. She ignored their hisses, cocked a scathing eyebrow at them, and approached the house boldly along the driveway. Raised voices stopped her. Celeste’s first, so she thought it was probably Élodie being shouted at, but then Charles’s voice joined in. The sound made her uneasy. She walked nearer, slowly, tucking herself close to the side of the house, in the shelter of the porch, to hear their words better.

“Celeste, calm down, for God’s sake!” said Charles, and anger pulled the words tight.

“I will not! Must this happen every time you go to London? Every time, Charles? If it is so then tell me now, for I will not sit here in the middle of nowhere while you do that. I won’t!”

“How many times must I say it? I drew her. Nothing more.”

“Oh, so reasonable, you sound! Then why do I not believe you? Why do I think you are lying? Who is she, this pale-headed creature? The daughter of your patron? Some whore you found, to replace the whore you found in Maroc?”

“Enough! I have done nothing wrong and I will not be spoken to this way! It will not do, Celeste!”

“You promised me!”

“And I kept my word!”

“The word of a man. Long years have taught women what such a thing is worth.”

“I am not any man, Celeste. I am your man.”

“Mine when you are here, but when you are not?”

“What do you suggest? That I never leave your side? That I consult with you on my every movement, my every action?”

“If your action is to fuck this girl, then yes, I do suggest this!”

“I told you, she was not my lover! That is Constance Mory, the wife of a man I met at the gallery. She has an unusual bone structure… I wanted to draw her, that was all. Please, you must not pounce every time I draw a female face. It does not mean betrayal.”

“Not always, perhaps. But I have only my experience to learn from,” said Celeste hoarsely.

“What’s past is past, chérie. I’ve drawn Mitzy Hatcher dozens of times, and you don’t suspect anything there, do you?”

“Oh, Mitzy is a child! Even you would not stoop so low. But that is how you love a woman, Charles. This much I know. That is how you love a woman-you draw her face.” Dimity’s heart gave a squeeze, and something hot surged into her blood. It rushed to the tips of her fingers and made them shake. That is how you love a woman-you draw her face. She could not count the number of times Charles Aubrey had drawn her face. Many, many times. Her pulse made her muscles twitch, and she shifted her feet as quietly as she could.

“I love only you, Celeste. My heart is full of it,” said Charles.

“But my face is not in your drawings anymore. Not for many months.” Celeste sounded sad as she said this. “You are so accustomed to me that you do not even see me anymore. That is the truth. So you leave me here by myself, bored and forgotten about, while you go off and have your fun. This place feels like exile when you go, Charles! Don’t you see that?”

“You’re not alone, Celeste. You have the girls… and I thought you hated London in the summertime?”

“I hate being left behind more, Charles! I hate waiting while you see other women, while you draw other women…”

“I told you, it’s-” Charles broke off at a loud crunching sound, and Dimity looked down in horror, at the crushed fragment of clay pot beneath her shoe. She had no chance to run or hide, so she dithered, hung her head. “Mitzy!” Charles’s face appeared around the side of the porch. “Is everything all right?” Dimity nodded dumbly, her cheeks blazing red. “Delphine and Élodie are down by the stream,” he said. She nodded again, and turned away quickly, not to find the girls but to flee.

Late in August the sea mist came in like a wave grown massive, swelling over the cliffs and rolling almost half a mile inland. The droplets of water were almost visible, almost big enough to fall as rain, but not quite. It was rare in summer but not unheard of, and for the first two days, Élodie and Delphine loved it. They threw blankets around their shoulders and played at highwaymen, or murder in the dark; murder in the mist, as it was renamed. The three of them ran around the garden and the spread of pasture along the cliffs, looming up behind each other suddenly, squealing with delighted fear. Élodie asked Dimity for ghost stories, and listened wide-eyed to her tale of a whole army of drowned Viking warriors who left Wareham to attack the Saxons in Exeter, only for their ships to be wrecked by a storm in Swanage Bay. Every year for nigh on a thousand years, they’ve roamed the beach and cliffs on the anniversary of their deaths, coughing up water and weed, looking for their horses and their sunken treasure, and for people to slice open with their swords! Élodie was entranced, and gripped Dimity’s skirt with tight little fists, her mouth hanging open in fascinated horror. The moisture made their hair hang limp, and words fell from their lips like pebbles, carrying no distance at all. The mist was like a cloak itself, turning the world mysterious and hidden, but by the third day all these things were wearing on them.

Élodie’s temper grew sullen, and Delphine’s quiet and preoccupied. The two girls spent more and more time inside with the wireless radio chattering to them; Delphine on the couch reading a novel or Lady’s Companion magazine, Élodie drawing at the table, frowning in concentration and angrily discarding one failed sketch after another. When Dimity knocked at the door, Celeste ushered her in as if relieved to see her, her expression tense and impatient, as though she was being made to wait too long for something important.

“How long will it last, this… brouillard? How do you say it?” she asked.

“The fog?”

“Yes. The fog. I am not sure how you people stand it, without running mad. It’s like death, don’t you think? Like being dead.” Her voice was hushed, intense.

“It shouldn’t be much longer, Mrs. Aubrey. It ought not to have stayed this long already. Only in winter, normally, would it linger for a week.” Celeste smiled briefly.

“Mrs. Aubrey? Oh child, you know I am not that. I am Celeste, that is all.” She waved a hand in agitation. “And still he goes out to paint! What does he hope to paint? White upon white?” she muttered. She crossed to the window and stood looking out with her arms folded. “It is so dull,” she said, to nobody in particular.

The air inside the house was stale and overused, and Dimity thought it small wonder that the girls looked groggy and tired. She thought about trying to persuade them to come out for some air, but then Celeste went to the table and reached up to a high shelf above it, fetching down an atlas. “Come, Dimity, let me tell you about somewhere more alive. Had you heard of Morocco, before you met me?” she said.

“No, I had not,” Dimity confessed. She did not mind saying such things to Celeste. The woman had no scorn in her, made no judgments about Dimity’s education. She peered down at the complex drawing on the page. It made no sense to her at all. She searched for the familiar mouse-like shape of Britain, which she remembered from school; only once she’d found it could she gather where in the world this country of Celeste’s birth might lie. She looked sideways at the woman. It seemed unreal to her, that a person might come from so far away and to Blacknowle.

“How did you meet Mr. Aubrey?” Dimity asked.

“He came to Morocco. To Fez, where I grew up and was living with my family. It was magnificent once, a thriving place full of learning and trade. Now it is much declined, though the French have built better roads. But Charles loved it all the more for that, I think. The decay. The decline. The way the buildings are fading and… blurring into each other. He saw me one day in the market, as I went to the Old Town bazaar to order a new mattress. Does that not show how fate works? How powerful it is? That the very morning Charles should be sitting drawing outside the mattress-maker’s shop, a workman should accidentally spill paint all over my mother’s bed? Hmm? It was destined. He came to Morocco to find himself, and instead he found me.”

“Yes,” said Dimity. Was it destiny, then, that there should be watercress growing behind Littlecombe, and that Dimity should go there to pick it, and that a great man like Charles Aubrey should choose to rent this very house, and come here, of all the places in the world? Here, to where Dimity was. To where she had always been, waiting. With a shiver, she hung the words fate and destiny onto this, her own life, her own meeting with him. They seemed to fit, and this startled her.

Celeste sighed and ran her fingers over the map of Morocco with its vast empty spaces of desert and the twin ridges of mountains curving through it in the south. Here she tapped her nail.

“Toubkal,” she said. “The tallest mountain. My mother grew up in its shadow, in the shelter it gave. Her village was built into the rocks at its feet, where the wind through the pine trees was like it breathing. There is no better way to always know your way home than to live beside a mountain, she says. It has been too long since I went back to her; back to Fez. How I should love to see them again!” Celeste put her hand flat on the page, and shut her eyes for a second, as though feeling the heartbeat of her home through the paper. Dimity wondered if she would feel this pull for home if she ever traveled away from Blacknowle. If she would come to love it, once she was far from it; as though distance might give it a shine, a glow it wholly lacked now. The thought that she might never travel away from Blacknowle sat inside her and took something from her, a little bit every day, like a parasite. “It has been too long. When I think of it, of how beautiful it is, it seems strange to me that we choose to be here.” Celeste glanced around at the kitchen’s four walls. “In Blacknowle,” she said, her voice laden with ennui. Dimity felt a sudden nudge of disquiet, a little warning bell in the back of her mind.

Just then, the door opened and Charles appeared with a swirl of mist. Droplets of moisture hung from his hair and his clothes, but he was smiling.

“Ladies. How are we all?” he said cheerily.

“Bored and bad-tempered,” said Delphine, and though she said it lightly, Dimity heard a warning for him in the words. Charles glanced from his daughter to Celeste, and registered her flat expression.

“Well, perhaps this will help.” He held aloft a white envelope. “I ran into the postman in the village. A letter for us from France.”

“Oh! We are not quite forgotten, then?” cried Celeste, snatching it from him.

“Who’s it from? What does it say?” demanded Élodie, as her mother tore open the envelope.

“Hush, child, and let me read.” Celeste frowned at the paper, standing by the window for better light. “It is from Paul and Emilia… they are in Paris,” she said, eyes rapidly scanning the page. “They have taken a large apartment on the Seine, and they invite us to go and visit with them!” She looked at Charles, her face lighting up; Dimity felt all the air dribble out of her lungs.

“Paris!” Élodie gasped in excitement.

“It is only two weeks until school starts…” Charles pointed out, taking the letter from Celeste.

“Oh, do let’s go, though. It’ll be so much fun,” said Delphine, taking her father’s hand and squeezing it.

Dimity stared at her in horror. “But… the mist will clear soon, I know it…” she said. Nobody seemed to hear her.

“Well?” Celeste said to Charles, holding her clasped hands up to her mouth, her eyes wide and avid. He smiled at her and shrugged a shoulder.

“Paris it is, then,” he said. The girls whooped with delight, and Celeste threw her arms around Charles’s neck, kissing him. Dimity stood rooted to the spot, reeling with shock. She felt like she was drowning and nobody could see. She knew instinctively that this time she would not be included.

“But…” she said again, the word lost beneath the racket of their excitement.

Two days later the mist vanished; gone when the sun rose. Dimity climbed the cliff path and stared far out to sea, feeling her eyes stretch after so many days with nothing to see that was farther away than her fingertips. The colors were garish, joyful-the citrine sunshine, the blue overhead, the green and gold of the land with the gorse in full bloom; all mirrored and shifting on the sea. But it was too late, they had already gone. Littlecombe was empty, and Dimity was sure she could feel her heart breaking. But she didn’t cry. She wanted to-her spirits were as heavy as wet sand-but when she tried, when she surrendered, nothing came. There was something else, behind the agony of abandonment. There was the injustice of a broken promise, and bitter resentment of their offhand cruelty. There was anger, then, to keep her eyes dry, because the life she had been left to was that much worse for them having shown her how different it could be. The sun shone brightly, but for Dimity, winter had come early.

Zach spent two quiet days collating the notes he’d made since arriving in Blacknowle, and drawing links between some of the things he’d already known and things he had since learned from Dimity. There were a good number of correlating facts, but also a good few for which there seemed to be no evidence but her say-so. Like her love affair with Charles Aubrey, for one thing. If she had been as big a part of his life as she claimed, why was there no reference to the affair in any of Charles’s correspondence? How could she know nothing about the fate of his family, and why he’d suddenly decided to go to war? How could she have no idea who Dennis had been, if she had been so close to Charles that he had planned to leave his family for her? Aubrey had been a genius for capturing character and expression, and yet with Dennis he had captured neither. Had it been deliberate? Perhaps he hadn’t liked this Dennis, or for some reason hadn’t wanted to record his expression. Perhaps even geniuses had off days, and Aubrey had drawn three such similar portraits because he knew he’d failed to pin it down. And then again, perhaps the drawings weren’t by Aubrey at all.

Zach pictured Dimity Hatcher in her grubby red mittens, with her changing moods and her odd habits and blood under her nails from a bullock’s heart. The way she’d glanced up at the ceiling when they both heard the sounds of movement. Not a glance caused by habit, but one of surprise, excitement. Almost one of fear. He thought of Hannah, unwilling to talk about it and then stating that there was nobody else living upstairs at The Watch. Nobody living. What, then? Somebody visiting? Somebody dead? Things that go bump in the night? Zach was loath to upset Dimity again by asking questions she had already refused to answer, but at the same time his need for answers was gnawing away at the back of his mind. A niggle he found hard to ignore. He thought of the way she’d flushed, the way her eyes had darted about nervously when he’d shown her pictures of Dennis. He thought of all the long hours he’d spent staring at Delphine’s portrait in his own gallery in Bath; of all the time he’d spent dreaming about her, trying to conjure her fate out of the hidden past. And here was Dimity Hatcher, who had known her, and been her friend, who had wept at the memory of her fate. Dimity Hatcher, to whom he’d sworn he would ask no more questions about Charles Aubrey’s elder daughter.

With a sigh, Zach gave up on his notes and queries for a while, shut his workbook, and strode purposefully out to his car. It had been two days since he’d seen Hannah, but with no mobile phone signal, no texts or calls, it felt like longer. He’d been hoping she might come to the pub to find him, but she hadn’t. He went into Wareham first, to the small supermarket there, and then down to the farm, where he parked on the concrete yard by the house. There was no answer to his knock on Hannah’s door, so Zach carried on down to the beach.

Hannah was standing far out at the end of the submerged rock spur with her arms folded, her jeans rolled up to the knee and a loose blue shirt belling out behind her, catching the wind like a sail. The breeze was strong, whipping the surface of the sea into a thousand tiny crests, spinning salt into the air. Zach called out to her, but with the wind in her ears she didn’t hear him. He put down the shopping bags he was holding and sat on a rock to take off his shoes and socks, watching her all the while. He wanted to draw the resolute line of her spine, the way she was almost lost against the seascape, a single figure surrounded by agitated water that seemed to lie in wait-for her to stumble, for her to miss her footing. She looked at the same time immovable and in grave peril. He thought about whom this drawing would be for, and knew at once that it would be purely for himself; to preserve the simple joy of seeing her. The very same reason that Aubrey drew his women, Zach thought, though he smiled to think how Hannah might react to being called “his woman.” He took a few tentative steps onto the rock shelf, finding it hard to trust the path when he could not see it. He spread his arms out in case he tripped; felt the wind rush around his fingers.

“Hannah!” he called again, but either she still couldn’t hear or was so lost in thought that she didn’t. Zach waded close behind her, cursing as he stubbed his toe on a small, hidden step. Still she gazed out to sea, and for a second Zach stopped and did the same. He wondered if it was still Toby that she was looking for, that she was waiting for. Everything in her stance said she would wait as long as she had to, and Zach wanted to grab her, spin her around to face him and break off the vigil. A flash of light caught his eye. There was a small boat, a very typical fishing boat, making slow progress east to west about a hundred and fifty meters offshore. Zach had barely even noticed it, but now he saw that its progress was particularly slow, and that a figure on board appeared to be studying the shore every bit as intently as Hannah was studying the sea. The flash of light came again-the sun catching fleetingly on glass. Binoculars?

“I think that fisherman fancies you,” he said, close to Hannah’s ear. She jumped and spun around to him with a gasp, then slapped him across one cheek, not hard but not entirely playfully, either.

“Damn it, Zach! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“I did call out to you-several times.”

“Well, obviously I didn’t hear you,” she said, her face softening.

“Sorry,” said Zach. He ran his fingers down her forearm, and took her hand.

Hannah looked away again, following the small boat that was finally motoring out of sight around the coast. Had she been watching the boat, then, and not waiting for Toby at all? Zach squinted at it, and saw a flash of pale purple as somebody moved across the deck. The color was familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

“Do you know that boat? The people on it, I mean?” he asked. Hannah looked away from it quickly, flicked her eyes up at him.

“No,” she said curtly. “Not at all.” She pulled her hand away from his, ostensibly to push her hair out of her face and tuck it behind her ear.

“I’ve brought a picnic. Bought a grill and everything. Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” she said with a smile. Zach held out his arm, and was glad when she looped hers through it as they walked back towards the beach.

They set up the little foil grill he’d bought on some flat rocks up the beach, beyond the high-tide line of shells and cuttlefish bones. It gave off the faint reek of paraffin as Zach lit it, and Hannah shook her head.

“Shame on me,” she said.

“What for?”

“I could have built us a proper cook fire. There’s even a grate and long-handled tools up in one of the barns.”

“Well, I’ll tend to this one, you build a campfire over there. For later.”

“Later?”

“This little thing won’t keep us warm once the sun goes down,” said Zach.

“All right. Give me the wine-I’ll put it in the cooler.” Hannah smiled and held out a hand for the bottle, then took it down to the shore and buried it up to its neck in the fine grit by the waterline. She stayed to wander near the water, gathering driftwood for fuel. The evening grew mild and the wind dropped, so that small waves curled against the shingle with a sound like quiet voices. The sky was pale lemon, a kind light that softened everything. Zach waited for the flames in the tray to die down and then started to cook the prawns and chicken legs he’d brought. They ate them hot, as soon as they were ready, burning their fingers and their lips. Lemon juice and chicken fat shone on their chins, and they drank the wine from paper cups.

Salt in the driftwood gave the bonfire flames a pale green color, almost invisible while the sun was still up, but unearthly and lovely as the sky began to darken overhead. Zach stared at sparks as they spun upwards and vanished into the air. With the wine in his blood and his stomach full, the world suddenly seemed very serene, as though time had slowed; or as though there, in Blacknowle, the rest of the world mattered less than it once had. The firelight got caught up in Hannah’s hair and made her lovelier than ever; not so much softening her hard edges as gilding them. She stared into the fire with her chin on her knees, and Zach thought he could see something of his own tranquility in her as well.

“I’ve never done this before,” he said.

“What’s that?” She turned her face to him, laid her head down. Behind her a tiny, bright sliver of moon rose.

“Had a barbecue on the beach-a romantic barbecue on a beach. It’s the sort of thing I’ve always meant to do, but never actually got around to.”

“Shouldn’t the things on your bucket list be slightly more radical? Like sky-diving, or learning to play the bassoon?”

“This is better than learning to play the bassoon.”

“How do you know?” She grinned at him, then moved back to sit beside him, leaning on the smooth side of a huge boulder. “So your wife isn’t an outdoors type of girl, then?”

“Ex-wife. And no-definitely not. She did have some wellies, I think, but they were for getting from door to door without slipping on wet pavements. They never saw mud.”

“And have your wellies seen mud before?”

“I… I don’t even own any wellies. Please don’t dump me,” said Zach, smiling. Hannah chuckled.

“I’d kind of guessed as much.”

“I think I could get the hang of it, though. Country living and all the rest of it. I mean, it’s beautiful here, isn’t it? It has to be good for the soul.”

“Well, come back on a rainy day in January, and see if you still feel the same way.”

“Maybe I’ll still be here in January,” said Zach. For a long time, Hannah said nothing to this, but then she took a deep breath and exhaled a single word.

“Maybe.” She picked up a limpet shell and turned it over in her fingers. “We used to come and have dinner on the beach all the time.”

“Who-you and Toby?”

“The whole family. Mum and Dad, even my grandmother sometimes, when I was still just a girl.”

“Did she live with you then?”

“Yes, she did. She was like you-a city girl by birth. But she married into the family, and fell in love with life down here; with the coast. But it was a quiet kind of love. I think she was one of those people who find the sea melancholy. She died when I was still a grotty teenager, so I never got the chance to ask her about it.”

“There’s so much I’ve never asked my grandparents. Important things as well. Grandpa’s dead now, so that’s him off the hook.”

“Of course-the neglectful grandpa, embittered by rumors of Charles Aubrey’s unstoppable trouser snake,” said Hannah.

“You don’t buy it at all, do you?”

“That you’re one of Charles Aubrey’s bastard grandchildren?” She arched an eyebrow, mockingly, making Zach smile. “Who knows?” Hannah flung the shell away from her and leaned back into the welcoming circle of his arm. Zach kissed the top of her head, noticing the spring of her curls against his skin; the scents of the sea and of sheep’s wool in her hair. They caused him an almost painful stab of tenderness.

They stayed on the beach until it was fully dark, talking about the small things that made up their lives, and the big things that came along to scatter everything else into chaos. Hannah was halfway through describing the various problems she’d encountered with her flock since buying them, from an attack of scab to a ram that wouldn’t mate, when she cut herself off.

“Sorry. I must be boring you to death.”

“No, keep talking. I want to know everything,” said Zach.

“What do you mean?” She leaned away from him slightly so she could see his face.

“I mean, I want to know everything about you.” He smiled.

“Nobody ever knows everything about a person, Zach,” she said solemnly.

“No. I guess life would be pretty boring if they did. It’d be the death of mystery, after all.”

“And you do love a mystery, don’t you?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Yet you’re determined to uncover the truth, as you put it, about Aubrey’s time here. About Dimity’s time with him. Won’t that kill the mystery?”

“It might, I suppose,” he said, puzzled that she should mention it. “But that’s different. And I wasn’t talking about Charles Aubrey. I was talking about you, Hannah, and-” He broke off and suddenly looked at his watch. “Oh, bollocks!” He rose clumsily to his feet.

“What?”

“It’s Saturday. I was meant to Skype Elise at eleven!”

“Well, it’s quarter to now. You’ll never make it back to the pub in time.” Hannah stood up and brushed her hands on the seat of her jeans.

“I have to try. I’ll have to run. I’m sorry, Hannah…”

“Don’t be. I’ll come with you,” she said simply, turning to kick the fire into embers.

“Really?”

“Unless you don’t want me to?”

“No, of course I do. Thanks.”

The pub was virtually empty, and while Zach turned on his laptop, Hannah sauntered over to the bar to greet Pete Murray, who’d been chatting to a solitary drinker perched on a stool. They’d missed last orders, but Pete still poured Hannah two fingers of vodka and put it down in front of her.

“Listen, Hannah,” Zach heard the barman say, “about your tab… I’ve really got to ask you to settle up.” Hannah took a swig of the vodka.

“I will soon, I promise,” she said.

“You said that two weeks ago. I mean, I’ve been patient, but the bill’s gone over three hundred now…”

“I just need a few more days. I’ve got money coming in, I promise. And as soon as it does, I’ll be in to settle up. I give you my word. Just a few more days.”

“Well, all right-as long as it won’t be any longer than that. You’re not the only one with a business to run, you know.”

“Thanks, Pete. You’re a diamond.” She smiled at him, and tipped her glass in salute before draining it.

Hannah waited at a tactful distance as Zach, slightly self-conscious at first, told Elise everything he’d been doing, and heard about everything she’d been doing-including tasting her first pumpkin pie. Then he told her a bedtime story, even though it wasn’t quite bedtime, that involved several silly voices and sound effects. He knew he was drawing attention to himself from the handful of people in the pub, but Elise was giggling uncontrollably, and he decided that as long as she found it funny, he didn’t care how mad he sounded. Afterwards, he smiled sheepishly as Hannah came and sat with him.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“Don’t be. She sounds sweet. Not that I’m much of an expert on children.”

“Me neither, believe me. My learning curve has been as steep as hers these past six years.”

“Well, I should be getting back. Got a horribly early start tomorrow-the lovely people from the organic certification body are coming to do an audit at the crack of dawn.”

“Oh,” said Zach, disappointed. “That sounds important.”

“Big day.” She nodded. “Want to show me your room first?” she said. Zach paused, and glanced at Pete Murray, who was wiping a very dry glass behind the corner of the bar nearest to their table. The barman had a blank look on his face, all his attention on what he was hearing.

“Step this way,” said Zach. He led her along the corridor to the stairs, then looked back over his shoulder. “Well, that’s torn it. I get the feeling that once Pete knows something around here, everybody knows it.”

“So what?”

“Well, I don’t know. I kind of got the impression you didn’t like other people knowing your business.”

“What does anybody really know? I’m not worried about their opinion of me, if that’s what you mean. You’re a reasonably good-looking bloke. Clean. Youngish. Why should I try to hide the fact that I’ve seduced you?” she said. Zach shrugged, pleased.

“Well, when you put it like that…” He opened the door to his small room, wincing at the stuffy air that smelled of sleep and the lime air freshener on top of the wardrobe. Hannah shut the door behind them.

“Cozy,” she said, sitting down on the patchwork bedspread with a bounce.

“So, you’ve seduced me, have you?” said Zach.

Hannah hooked her fingers through his belt and pulled him onto the bed. “Now, don’t go pretending to anyone that it was the other way around. Not even to yourself.”

“I wouldn’t dare.” They made love almost without foreplay, hurried and intent. It was all over with breathless urgency; Hannah locked her ankles behind his back, arching her whole body away from him. Black spots danced in the corners of Zach’s eyes, and while he waited to catch his breath, Hannah extricated herself from his heavy limbs and pulled her jeans back on.

“I really do have to go.” She tied her hair into a ponytail.

“Not yet. Stay for a while. Stay the night.”

“I really can’t, Zach. I do have to be on the ball-and on the premises-first thing tomorrow.”

“Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.” Zach put his hands through his hair and grinned at her.

“You’re welcome.” Hannah glanced at him, then leaned over, kissed his mouth.

“See you later. And thanks-this was just what I needed.” She smiled mischievously and left him there with his shirt still on, tangled threads where two of the buttons had been. “Without so much as a by-your-leave,” he murmured to himself, wondering briefly if this was what he’d needed, and deciding it was pretty close.

The following afternoon Zach set off to visit Dimity, wondering if she would consent to sit for him. He wanted to try to capture the ghost of youthful beauty that haunted her lines and wrinkles, and the way her eyes looked into other worlds, other times. But then, her reaction to seeing his work when she was used to seeing Aubrey’s might snuff out the fragile new spark of creativity he was so carefully nurturing. Zach’s eyes drifted down the hill to where the houses of Blacknowle petered out, ending with an unattractive, sixties-built terrace. A flash of color behind the fence of the nearest cottage caught his eye, and this time he recognized it at once. Lilac. Zach saw the head and shoulders of a large man above the fence, tall and thickset, with a fat neck and barrel chest. He had long brown hair tied back off his face, and an unkempt beard to mask his double chin. James Horne, one of the brothers who had such a bad reputation in Blacknowle. He was talking to somebody concealed by the fence, and it was clearly a serious conversation. The man’s face was like thunder, and he jabbed his finger on some words, to emphasize them. And yet his voice didn’t carry at all. Zach had stumbled upon a hushed argument.

He knew he shouldn’t watch, in case James Horne looked up and noticed him. It was a bad time for him to interrupt. He sped up as much as possible to get past, and tried to look as though he hadn’t noticed anything but the tarmac up ahead. James Horne was big, and he didn’t look friendly. Just then, the argument ended and the man with the lilac sweatshirt turned to watch the person hidden by the fence move away. Zach kept looking straight ahead as he walked past the house towards the track to The Watch. At a safe distance, he glanced back over his shoulder, and was startled to see Hannah stalking away in the opposite direction with her fists clenched angrily at her sides.

Zach doubled back and jogged slightly to catch up with her.

“Hannah, wait!” She spun around and Zach was shocked by the expression on her face. She looked furious, and frightened. When she saw him, she blinked, and though her mouth twitched, she couldn’t seem to smile.

“Zach! What are you doing here?”

“I was just going down to visit Dimity. Are you all right? What was all that about?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I was just… Are you going back to the pub?”

“No. To Dimity’s, like I said… But I can come back with you, if you-”

“Good. Let’s walk.”

“All right, then. That was James Horne, wasn’t it?”

“What was?”

“That man you were talking to. That was James Horne.”

“Getting to know all the locals, I see,” she muttered, striding along rapidly at his side.

“He was in the pub the other night, giving Pete a bit of stick. Well, his brother was, anyway. And I thought I saw him on that fishing boat you were watching the other day, off the end of the jetty,” said Zach. Hannah scowled, but didn’t look at him.

“You might have done. He is a fisherman, after all.”

“It looked like you were arguing, just then.” Zach had to walk quickly to keep up with Hannah’s implacable pace. She ignored his statement. “Hannah, wait.” He caught her arm and pulled her to a stop. “Are you sure you’re all right? He wasn’t… threatening you, was he? Do you owe him money or something?”

“No, I bloody don’t! And I’d hardly go knocking on his door if I did, would I?”

“All right! Sorry.”

“Just… forget about it, Zach. It’s nothing.” She started walking again.

“Clearly not nothing…” Zach said, but fell silent at the look she shot him. “All right, fine. I was just trying to help, that’s all.”

“You can help me by buying me a pint and not worrying about James Horne.”

“Okay! How did the organic audit thing go this morning?” Finally, Hannah slowed her pace. They were nearly at the Spout Lantern, and she paused to look down towards the sea, and her farm. There was color high in her cheeks, and her nostrils flared slightly as she caught her breath. For a second she seemed lost in thought, but then she smiled; a smile of genuine delight.

“It went well,” she said, and they went inside.

Over a glass of beer she told him all about the inspection, but he found himself only half listening some of the time, distracted by her connection to James Horne and why she might refuse to talk about it, speculating about what they could have been arguing about. He pictured the way she had stood at the end of the jetty while Horne’s boat-and he was sure it had been his-had swung slowly across the bay. The flash of light he’d seen, as though someone onboard had binoculars. As if she had been marking that spot, demonstrating the end of the submerged platform. These thoughts worried him, but he couldn’t shake them. They caused a deep, ugly unease to settle inside him, increasing all the while.

It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that Zach made his postponed visit to The Watch. As he’d promised, Zach didn’t ask Dimity anything about the Aubreys. They talked instead about his own past, his career and his family, and inevitably the subject of his lineage came up. Dimity’s voice turned guarded, almost surreptitious when she asked about his grandmother.

“That summer your gran was here, that was 1939, yes? Well, that was the summer Charles and I were finally together, you see. So don’t you think I’d have known if there was another woman as well?” She picked at a loose thread on her mitten with her thumb and forefinger.

“Yes, you’re probably right,” said Zach, thinking that a man like Charles Aubrey could easily charm a woman into believing she was his only one.

“What was your granddad like? Was he a strong man?”

“Yes, I suppose he was.”

“Strong enough to keep a woman at his side?”

Zach pictured his grandpa, who would sit for hours after Sunday lunch with the newspaper across his knees, and wouldn’t let anybody else look at it until he’d solved the crossword, even though his eyes were shut and his chin dropping down. He tried to remember seeing tenderness, affection, pass between him and his wife, but the more he thought back, the more he realized how rarely they were even together in the same room. When he was in the sitting room, she was in the kitchen. When he was in the garden, she went into her dressing room to look at her Aubrey picture. At dinner they sat at opposite ends of a seven-foot table. Surely it couldn’t always have been like that? Surely it had taken sixty years of marriage for such a distance to grow between them?

“Tell me this,” said Dimity, interrupting his thoughts. “If your granddad really did think she had an affair with my Charles, why on earth did he go ahead and marry her?”

“Well, because she was pregnant, I suppose. That’s why they had to bring the wedding forward.”

“So he must have thought the baby was his.”

“At first, yes. I suppose he must. Unless he was just being… honorable.”

“Was he that kind? The chivalrous type? I’ve known few enough men that are. Not really.”

“No, I suppose that doesn’t seem quite right… but he might have done it to, you know, take the moral high ground.”

“To punish her, you mean?” said Dimity.

“Well, not exactly…”

“But that’s what it would have been. If he knew, and she knew he knew. What better way to remind her of it every day of her life, and to make her suffer for it, than to marry her?”

“Well, it backfired on him, if that was his plan. She made no secret of how pleased she was about the connection. About the scandalous rumors.”

“Well, that was Charles, you see. If she…” Dimity paused, and pain splintered her expression, robbing her of words for a second. “If she loved him, she’d have been proud, never ashamed.” She hung her head for a second, and rubbed the thumb of one hand over the opposite palm. “So… perhaps she did. Perhaps she did love him, after all.”

“But I’m sure…” Zach took one of Dimity’s restless hands and squeezed it. “I’m sure that didn’t mean he loved you any less. Even if she loved him… it could have been unrequited. He may well have thought nothing of her,” he said, feeling an odd pull of loyalties to speak that way about a grandmother he loved.

Zach was struck by the idea that Aubrey was the kind of man women were proud of. He thought back and tried to identify a time when Ali had been proud of him-proud to be his woman, his wife-but what came instantly to mind were her expressions of disappointment. That slow exhalation through her nose as she listened to his explanation of some mishap, some missed opportunity; the wrinkle between her brows that she was often wearing when he caught her studying him. With a slight shock, he realized he’d seen the exact same expressions on his mother’s face, before she’d left. While his grandfather had been criticizing his father for something trivial; while the three of them had roamed the footpaths of Blacknowle, years ago, and his dad had searched in vain for answers. Was it in the blood, then? Would men like Aubrey always make men like the Gilchrists seem the poor alternative? Zach was troubled by this idea-that he would inevitably disappoint the women in his life, including Hannah.

“Haven’t you brought any pictures with you this time?” said Dimity, as Zach stood up to leave. “Pictures of me?” There was a hungry light in her eyes.

“Yes, but I didn’t think you wanted to talk about that this time?”

“Oh, I always want to see the pictures. It’s like having him here in the room again.” Zach rummaged in his bag and withdrew the latest set of printouts he’d made. Several drawings and one large oil canvas of a crowd of figures, kicking up dust with their feet. There were blue and red mountains behind them, and the ground was orange-brown, the sky above a vast, clear swath of green and white and turquoise. The people were wrapped in loose robes, some of the women veiled as well, with only their eyes left naked. In one corner was a woman with her hair piled up loosely on her head and many strings of beads swinging around her neck. She was standing, calm and nonchalant, her face turned towards the viewer. She wore no veil, and her eyes were heavily kohled, catlike. She was wearing a cerulean caftan, which billowed in a hot breeze that the viewer could almost feel; the fabric clinging to the shape of her thighs and hips. It was not the Mitzy Zach knew from the early sketches, nor the Mitzy standing in front of him now. It was a fairy-tale version of her, a vision; a desert princess with her face standing out from the crowd like a single flower in a field of grass. The painting was called Berber Market, and it had set the record for an Aubrey painting when it sold in New York eight years ago. It was easy to see why. The painting was like a window into another world.

Zach handed the picture to Dimity. She took it with a small cry, lifted it up to her face and inhaled, as though she might be able to smell the desert air.

“Morocco!” she said, with a beatific smile.

“Yes,” said Zach. “I have more drawings of you from there as well, if you’d like to see them… Haven’t you got copies of these? In books, or as prints, I mean? Copies you can look at?” Dimity shook her head.

“It didn’t seem proper, to gaze at myself like that. Vanity, I suppose it seemed. And never the same as seeing the real thing, of course, and knowing that your hands were touching where his touched before… I haven’t seen this since it was painted. And even then I never saw it finished.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Charles…” A shadow dulled her delight. “Charles went up to London to finish it, once my part was done. He had… other business there.” She studied the image of herself closely and smiled again. “That was the first time, you know,” she said conspiratorially.

“Oh?”

“The first time we… were together. As man and wife, I mean. As we should have been. The first time we realized how much in love we were… I’ve never been back there. To Maroc. Some memories are too precious to risk, do you see? I want it to always be as it is now, in my head.”

“I understand, yes.” Zach was surprised to hear her use the French pronunciation: Maroc. “How long were you over there with him?”

“Four weeks. The best four weeks of my life,” she said.

Dimity shut her eyes and in front of them was a light so bright that everything glowed red. That was her first impression of the desert, the first thing she remembered. That and the smell, the way the air tasted. Nothing like the air in Dorset; different in the way it touched the back of her throat, and the inside of her nose; in the way it filled her lungs and ran through her hair. She felt heat scorch her skin, even as she sat at her own kitchen table with its sticky linoleum top pressing into the heels of her hands. She tried to find the right words. Words that could somehow convey all the things she’d seen and felt and tasted; bring them back to life. She took a slow breath in, and Valentina’s voice echoed angrily down the stairs, Morocco? Where the bloody hell is that, then? In a flash she saw Valentina’s eyes, bloodshot and bewildered, trying to work out how much such a trip was worth. And how in God’s name has this come about? Was it her mother, she wondered, who cursed the trip? Was it Valentina’s envy and spite that made the best four weeks of her life also the worst?