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Ahead he saw the turnoff for Lower Snaverton, and slowed the car for a left turn. Over the years there had been more traffic build-up than could be believed, but once he was off the main artery and passing the ornate sign for the village with its unlikely coat of arms, the familiar landmarks presented themselves. He was surprised the dress shop had hung on, a bastion of flowery tweeness in a world long moved on to latex and Internet shopping. The post office had closed a decade before, along with the butcher, but the tea shoppe, which looked like something that might have been mentioned in the Domesday Book, was still operating.

One woman, clearly a customer of Viola's Dress Shop, was visible in the window as he drove by. She didn't bother to hide her curiosity at this rare visitor, and she waved energetically to him as he passed. He supposed his aunt had told the village of his impending arrival. It only took one person to be informed for the whole village to know.

Of course, there was a pub, the Queen's Arms, not yet open for gossip. And a church, St Michael's in Glory, limited now to saving souls every other Sunday when the priest they shared with nearby villages came to town.

'He's like a gunslinger in an old Western film,' Beatrice had told him. 'Dropping in every other week to keep the peace.'

He felt at ease as he drove, as comforted by these sights as if this were a homecoming, although his real home of origin was London.

As soon as he reached the edge of the village proper and saw the house, he was taken aback. It looked deserted—as if it had been deserted for some time. It was evident that nothing had been done to keep the place tidy. The garden was over-grown. A shutter hung loose at one of the windows. The brick path had sprouted weeds, and the flowers that could be bothered to bloom that summer had wilted and now lay where they had fallen.

There being no drive up to the house, he parked the Audi by the gate opening into the walkway. The gate, like the shutter, hung by one hinge, and that hinge was red with rust. Beatrice had been expecting him, but he supposed anything like tidying up for visitors was beyond her now. Besides, she would be leaving soon. It did beg the question of who was going to buy a house that looked as if no one had ever cared about it. He sighed. If Beatrice planned to leave the house to him, he might have to oversee its being demolished, which would be a shame. But renovating even a small manor house circa the eighteenth century was a job for mad dogs and Americans with purses bursting with cash, and he couldn't imagine either wanting to live this far from anything.

When his uncle Finneas had been alive, everything had been tended to and tied back, weeded and deadheaded and fed with bonemeal. Gardening had been one of Finneas's joys, and while he lived any screw that needed tightening had been tightened. The sorry state of the roof alone would have had him spinning. He had been the very picture of a retired solicitor living in the Home Counties, reading the Daily Telegraph over his morning oatmeal and harrumphing at the decline in moral standards and the latest absurdity proposed by the Labour Party.

The door to the house inched open slowly as he came up the pathway, as if the heavy wooden door were being tugged at with a great deal of effort. He hastened his steps to help.

He had expected Beatrice to have changed, but the reality was startling. She had always been what might be called a full-figured woman, but she had lost about two stone and two inches from her frame since his last visit. Her appearance would not shock anyone meeting her for the first time, but of course he had years of memories to erase in an instant. Her eyes were clear, however, and despite her obvious frailty, they gleamed with an obvious delight at seeing him.

She leaned against the open door to admit him and he gently embraced her, afraid of breaking her ribs.

'Come in, come in,' she said. 'This is so good of you, Flytey.'

He only allowed her to use the childhood nickname.

'I'm only sorry it took me so long to get here,' he said.

'I've been remiss; I should have come sooner. How have you been coping?'

'Perfectly fine,' she said. 'I'm from a long line of women good at coping. They survived the war; I'll survive this.'

No need to ask what war. For her generation there was only one war. Even though she'd been a baby when it started, the war had taken away a father she'd never got to know. She had been sent to wait out the fighting on a farm in Wales. She'd told Flyte once that she never felt the war was over until, when she was a teenager, rationing finally ended and she was able to buy a new hat.