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Rani thought hard.

“Does that thought come from these friends you've talked to, or from the letter? That sentence about ‘the business with John.'”

“I think it comes from both, Omkar.”

“Do you mean that something that might have appeared to be a hoax to the outside world was in fact deadly serious and had the desired effect of getting your father out of your mother's life for good?”

“Yes . . . I suppose if I had put my thoughts into proper order that is roughly what I think could have happened.”

“And Jamie Jewell is still not willing to talk about it thirty-odd years after it happened?”

“If he was sworn to secrecy at the time—”

“It would be an oath that surely would have worn thin
by the separation of the two people most closely concerned. You think, don't you, that there may have been later connections between your father and Jamie Jewell, and he's not letting on about them.”

“Yes. That's a possibility, isn't it?”

“Yes. But I'm not sure these two possibilities gel—the possibility of an apparent hoax, and the continued silence of Jewell due to an ancient promise.”

“I think we're just going to have to keep various balls in the air, conflicting possibilities, until we have more information.”

“Fair enough.”

“By the way, I looked at his cartoons. Not wildly amusing or even appealing at this distance of time. But he was getting much sharper as a political cartoonist rather than the ‘aren't people funny' sort of domestic one.”

“Will that be what you look for when you go to Australia?”

“Oh—you've been talking to Collins. I'll look for both kinds, Omkar. I imagine the Australian political scene was so different from the English one that it would take a fair time to adapt that side of his talent. A whole new cast of characters to get accustomed to, a new political situation, with the states and then the federal government. I'd better get a good history of Australia when I get out there to get wise to all the major figures and controversies.”

The waitress came to take their plates away, and Eve thought for a few moments about her strategy. Then she said: “Well?”

Rani stiffened in his chair, ordering his thoughts.

“Things seem to be changing. Not for the better in our
marriage, but in Sanjula's attitude to it. She is spending more time away from home. If I say I'm working late—something all policemen have to do quite a lot of the time—Sanjula takes the baby and goes to stay with one of her relatives, or even with my parents. She has a brother, happily married in Bradford; several cousins, mostly in Keighley; and she gets on well with all of them, including my parents.”

“And I suppose that makes you wonder still more why the two of you can't make a go of your marriage.”

“Not really—not now. I'd realized long ago that we have natures that simply don't mesh. Oil and water.”

“Does she say anything about her visits?”

“Only that she likes the company. Generally she just stays overnight.”

“What's your spin on this?”

“That she's talking to both families about our marriage.”

“But that doesn't worry you? It pleases you?”

“Oh yes. Of course she's not going to win some of them around. My parents, for example. Sanjula knows that. But she's getting people used to the idea that things aren't going right in the marriage.”

Eve's face twisted.

“Don't you think they know that already?”

“I imagine so. Of course I've talked to my parents. But I think Sanjula has taken it a step further. I think she may be preparing the ground for the idea of divorce.”

Eve's face showed her bemusement.

“But you seemed so sure she wouldn't want that, Omkar.”

“I think I was wrong. I've always thought of her as the naive little country girl from backwoods India. Do everything your parents tell you to do. But I should have realized people can't come to live in another country with another way of life without being affected by it. Little by little it seeps into you, particularly if you are a young person, and subtly it changes your way of thinking.”

“And you think Sanjula is beginning to see there is no future in a marriage like yours?”

“I think she has seen it, and is beginning to pave the way for a divorce.”

“You don't think she has met someone else?”

“It is possible. Or perhaps there is someone ‘back home,' as she sometimes calls it, someone whom she would have preferred to be married to but was too weak to fight for when I was proposed. Who knows? And I don't greatly care. I hope she does find somebody.”

Eve knew now she had to tread carefully.

“But you care about getting a divorce?”

“Of course. You know that.”

“But I need to know whether I should care about your divorce.”

He put his hand across the table and took hers. His great brown eyes were liquid, and he spoke softly, with quiet emotion.

“Of course I would like you to care. I think you know that, though we know so little of each other. It's what I want more than anything. But Sanjula hasn't brought her feelings into the open, and that may mean she hasn't made up her mind definitely yet. We have made one little
step forward. Don't ask me to take more steps than I can. I have to be ready.”

“Of course not. You're quite right. I expect it's my age. Old woman in a hurry.”

“Don't mention anything so irrelevant.”

“But of course it's relevant. I'm vintage 1970.”

“And I'm vintage 1979. Does it sound so very much when it's put like that?”

“I suppose not.”

“I think I should go now. Would you think it inappropriate if I gave you a chaste kiss?”

“I should like it very much, Omkar.”

He bent down, reminding Eve of an actor in a period drama, and they enjoyed a brief, stately kiss. Then he stood up and left the restaurant.

Eve finished her coffee thoughtfully. She had enjoyed the kiss, and it remained with her as a promise of what one day might come, when perhaps she and Rani were a rather formal and loving couple, behaving impeccably in the public eye. Then she went up to her room, washed her face, and lay down on the bed. She looked around her. She loved hotel rooms, because you could be anywhere. But not in Leeds. She should not have taken a hotel room in Leeds. She had nearly frightened him. She was going to have to proceed more slowly, more carefully, more caringly. She accepted, almost gratefully, that she must leave the initiative to him.

She got her few things together and checked out of the Radisson. The girl at reception asked her if her room had not been satisfactory, and Eve said it was fine, but she'd
had a message on her mobile that she was needed at home. On the last train to Halifax, almost alone on it, and in the car on the journey to Crossley, she thought about her situation, and thought that, though she knew she had made mistakes, and would make more, on the whole she felt very happy with her evening.

Two mornings later, after a day to catch up on developments, to adjust her thoughts to the present position of things, Eve settled down to action. She was going to have to do something about Mrs. Southwell, the former headmistress—whenever a very old person was an object of attention, a degree of urgency entered the picture.

However as Eve was putting her bedroom to rights after a breakfast of toast, jam and tea in bed, she looked out of the window and saw that Mrs. Calthorp next door was already at work in her garden. She was conscious of having talked to her about the May they both knew—the middle-aged and the elderly May—but not about the young May. When had Mrs. Calthorp moved next door? She seemed to Eve always to have been there. When she went out of the back door and over to the hedge between the houses, Eve got the impression that Mrs. Calthorp was glad for an excuse to straighten her back and have a view of something other than ground elder.

“Hello—taking a day off today? You have been awfully busy.”

“Yes, and I will be busy later today I hope.”

“So much to do, I suppose. You're lucky you can get time off from work.”

“Yes, I am. Though I'm thinking of not going back to Wolverhampton at all. Of stopping here, in fact.”

“Oh
really
! That would be nice. Strangers always take a while to get to know.”

“I wouldn't necessarily remain in this house. I'd like it, but it is very large for one person. Maybe I could let the upper floor. I'd still have acres of room downstairs.”

“You used to have a . . . boyfriend, didn't you?”

“Yes. That's over . . . Mrs. Calthorp, when did you move into your house?”

“Nineteen seventy-three. I was carrying my second son—Jason. You remember? You used to play with him, nurse him a bit. You were about four years older.”

“Oh, I remember Jason very well. So by the time you moved in, my father had moved out.”

“Well, yes. He'd gone to Australia for the sun. Weak chest, your mother said.”

“That's right. Did you talk to my mother much about him?”

“Well, no. I didn't get any sense that she wanted to talk about him. She shut down, changed the subject. People
were
still sometimes embarrassed in those days if their marriage broke down. And I thought she might be jealous of me, with a husband doing well in the world and a growing family.”

“Yes . . . But I don't think it was that . . . When did she tell you he was dead?”

“Oh dear me, that's a difficult one. I think it was about two years later. Just mentioned it one day, saying I'd probably hear people talking about it. It was all rather odd . . .”

“In what way?”

“Well, when I asked if he'd be buried out there and if she'd go to the funeral, she said yes he would and no she wouldn't. She didn't want to take you on a long, difficult plane flight and she was unwilling to leave you behind. She saw I thought that a bit odd, as I say, and she said: ‘You know we haven't been close these last few years.'”

“I don't suppose that was a surprise to you.”

“Well, no it wasn't. I thought there might have been something in the way of a trial separation. But this was the first time it had come out into the open.”

“Do you remember anything else about that time?”

Mrs. Calthorp thought.

“A little, thin, black band sewn onto the jacket of one of her suits . . . Going in to work every day as usual. I used to see her when I was washing up the breakfast things. Everything was pretty much as usual. Didn't she tell you much about him?”

“Not much more than she told you. I'm finding that my work here is trying to find out anything about him—personality, work, views.”

“But why would you want to do that?”

“Because I'm getting a feeling that he may be still alive.”

As she turned to go back to the house, she saw Mrs. Calthorp's jaw dropping. If she had suspected something about a separation, she had obviously not been suspicious about John McNabb's supposed death.

When Eve, in her search for Mrs. Southwell, got on to the Internet (the computer was not much used, she guessed, but waiting to be used when necessary in her mother's study), she found several nursing homes and residential care homes but only a few that seemed to offer to their residents supervised independence in small flats such as the chief superintendent had mentioned. The one that appeared to fit most closely Superintendent Collins's half memories was Autumn Prospect. Most people love autumn views, but here Autumn seemed to be a euphemism for winter.

“Yes, Mrs. Southwell is one of our residents,” came a comfortable male voice. “Would you like to speak to her?”

“Yes, I would, please.”

“Could I have your name? We have to be a bit careful.”

“Of course you do. It's Eve McNabb. She might remember it. I'm May McNabb's daughter, tell her.”

She waited, then was rewarded with a “Yes?”

“Mrs. Southwell, I don't know if you remember—”

“Of course I remember. I'm not senile, you know. Autumn Prospect does not take dementia sufferers. You're May's daughter. And you were named after me.”

“Really? You're Eve too?”

“Evelyn. I suppose May preferred the shorter version to distinguish us, though to my ears it sounds a bit too biblical and penitent female.” The voice was rich, but with a
hint of stridency or aggression that now began to soften. “I was sad to hear of May's death. I did send a wreath.”

“Of course you did. I had to think a bit to remember the name,” lied Eve. “I believe you've recently had your—which was it?—your eightieth birthday?”

“Eighty-fifth. I'd lie if I could, but the newspapers all got it right.”

“Congratulations, anyway—”

“Birthdays become just water under the bridge. So what can I do for you, Miss McNabb?”