Sir Keith didn’t share Louise’s interest in Expressionist art and, for all his lavishness in other directions, seemed to begrudge the money she spent on it. She and a school-friend, Sophie Marsden, began dabbling as collectors to see if they could make more than their husbands earned from sound and sober investments. They didn’t, of course, but they enjoyed becoming expert amateurs and started trying to spot unrecognized talent before it acquired the price-tag to match. Oscar Bantock was more of a has-been than a might-be, but Louise did her best to make something of him, arranging exhibitions at small but select galleries where the right sort of people might realize what they were missing.

One such exhibition was held in Cambridge during Sarah’s last year at King’s College. Her presence at the private view was virtually mandatory and it was there she met Bantock for the first and last time. “A short and stocky man with white hair and a bushy beard. A bit cantankerous, of course. A bit ‘Why am I dressed up like a dog’s dinner sipping warm white wine with this rabble of Philistines?’ But you could see he was trying to behave well for Mummy’s sake. Which was ironic, since the event was supposed to be for his benefit, not hers. He was nice to me, probably for the same reason. Even to the man I’d brought with me, who made some pretty cringe-inducing remarks I remember. But old Oscar just grinned and twinkled his eyes at me. They were a quite startling blue. Pale yet bright at the same time. And he had this low rumbling suppressed voice. Like some operatic baritone singing a lullaby. You know? Power on a short leash. Energy waiting to be released. I can see him now so clearly. It’s no more than five months ago. But in other ways it seems like five years.”

There it was. The same dead end we couldn’t avoid coming back to. Take any path you liked through the maze. Admire any vista you pleased over the hedge en route. It was still waiting. If not round the next corner, then round the one after that.

“Why did he do it?” she asked later. “I mean, if he was just a burglar, as they seem to think. Why murder? Why rape?”

“One thing leads to another, I suppose. Probably high as a kite on drugs. And your mother…”

“Yes?”

“Was a very beautiful woman.”

“You make that sound almost like an excuse.”

“It’s not meant to be. Just an explanation. His type see something lovely and precious and want to destroy it. Looking-even touching-isn’t good enough for them. What they can’t have they smash.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “And the rest of us are left to pick up the pieces.” She walked on down the tree-lined avenue of the park and I stood where I was, watching her for a few seconds, before following. Her head was bowed, her shoulders almost visibly sagging. She was doing her best to gather up the fragments of her life-and her sister’s and her father’s too. But there were so many. They were so widely scattered. And so sharp that those who touched them were bound to bleed.

I didn’t analyse the assumptions and prejudices Sarah and I shared that weekend until much later. They were there, of course, underpinning everything we said and thought. Long before we knew all the facts, long before a court of law had weighed and tested the evidence, we were sure we knew exactly what had happened. Above all, we were sure Shaun Naylor was guilty.

According to Sarah, the police had only caught him thanks to a tip-off. From whom she didn’t know. A wife. A girlfriend. A mate he’d boasted to. It didn’t really matter who or why. The evidence must have piled up against him since. Otherwise he’d never have dreamt up such an implausible story. Would he?

I took Sarah out for dinner that night to my favourite Italian restaurant, Castello Banfi. She gave me a sharp lesson in her determination to be beholden to nobody by threatening a public scene if I didn’t let her pay half the bill. But she did let me walk her back to the Hilton. There it could easily have been goodbye, since she was flying home the following afternoon and I’d been invited to Sunday lunch by some Eurocrat friends in Waterloo who were concerned for my sanity. But, unsure whether I wanted to face them anyway, I claimed to have no commitments and offered her a ride to the airport, which she accepted.

As I walked away from the hotel, I glanced across the boulevard at the frontage of the Toison d’Or cinema complex. One of the films whose illuminated titles glared back was the latest Harrison Ford thriller: Presumed Innocent. But I can honestly say that the irony registered with me for no more than an instant before I pressed on towards rue Pascale, devising an excuse for my friends in Waterloo as I went.

Something else I chose not to analyse was my reluctance to let Sarah Paxton vanish from my life so soon after entering it. Such analysis might have revealed whether the attraction I’d begun to feel was to her or the part of her that reminded me of her mother. Perhaps we always chase ghosts or tokens or chance resemblances. Perhaps everyone we’re ever drawn to is really only a pallid version of the real thing we’ll never meet. But, if so, it doesn’t help to confront the fact.

It was only when I was sitting with Sarah in the airport coffee bar an hour before her flight, in fact, that I thought to ask what life-what immediate future-she was going back to in England. And only when I heard her answer did I realize that keeping in touch with her needn’t be so difficult after all.

“A year at law college before I take articles. I’d thought of postponing, but… what would be the point? Life, so they tell me, must go on. So, I’ve enrolled to start at Guildford next month.”

“Guildford? But that’s not far-”

“From Steep? No. Not a million miles. Actually, it’s why I chose it. I didn’t realize then, of course…”

“Will you commute from London?”

“Ideally, no. I really want somewhere local to stay during the week. But… it’s been hard to concentrate on practicalities like that recently. By now, the best places will already have been snapped up.”

“If they have…” I hesitated, then decided it was just a suggestion she might find helpful. Nothing significant hung on whether she did or not. How could it? “My sister-in-law-my brother’s widow, that is-has a large house with plenty of room to spare in Hindhead. It can’t be more than twelve miles from Guildford. And she’s looking for a lodger. She told me so herself. You’ve both suffered a loss recently. Perhaps… Well, it might be worth considering.”

“Yes,” said Sarah thoughtfully. “It might.”

When she left, ten minutes or so later, it was with Bella’s address and telephone number recorded in her diary.

The following day, at Brussels’ largest stockist of English language books, I bought a collection of Edward Thomas’s verse. I soon found the poem Sarah had recited and others too to haunt me with their resonance of things half seen and understood but never grasped or named or known for precisely what they are. Whether because I’d ignored them before or simply not been ready for them, his poems came to me now with a sort of revelatory force. How could they fail to, when so much of my own experience seemed embedded in the verse? And how could I not think of Louise Paxton-or her daughter-when I read such lines as:

After you speak

And what you meant

Is plain,

My eyes

Meet yours that mean,

With your cheeks and hair,

Something more wise,

More dark,

And far different.

Especially when Thomas seemed to have foreseen even our meeting on Hergest Ridge.