“Where would she have gone?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps she didn’t either. Perhaps it was sufficient just to strike out on her own. A few days with Sophie, then… If she really meant to go to Sophie’s, that is.”

“You’re not suggesting she and Oscar Bantock-”

“No, no. I’m sure not. But… perhaps some other man I never met was waiting patiently. Somebody she’d known years before, still carrying a torch.”

I remembered the man who’d nearly driven me down in Butterbur Lane and was tempted to describe him to Sarah in case she knew him. Then resentment of her honesty overcame me. Why say anything to support her theory when she’d kept it from me so long? Why reinforce a suspicion I wanted no part of? “You could be wrong about this, couldn’t you?” I asked, silently willing her to agree. “As a lawyer, wouldn’t you say the evidence was purely circumstantial?”

“Oh yes. I could be wrong. Easily. I hope I am wrong. I love my father. I don’t like to think of what he must have gone through if I’m right. To learn Mummy had deserted him only a few hours before he learned she was dead. And then not to be able to tell anyone. To love her and to lose her. Twice over. That’s real suffering, don’t you think?”

“I think you’ve all suffered. In your different ways.”

“And Rowena responds by trying to commit suicide. While Daddy makes a fool of himself with a glamorous widow.” She smiled, mocking me as well as herself. “Where does that leave me, Robin?”

“It leaves you taking it in your stride. Apparently.”

“Don’t you think I am?”

“You tell me. Being the strong dependable sister can’t be easy. If you’ll forgive me for saying so…”

“Yes?”

“You look… just a little stretched.”

“Rubbish.” She reddened and took a sip of her drink. “Absolute rubbish.”

“Is it?”

“I believe in facing facts.” She tossed her head, the haughty public schoolgirl peeking from behind the composed professional. “If necessary, facing them down.”

“But these aren’t facts, are they? Only suppositions.”

“Exactly.” She stared at me impatiently, as if I were being irritatingly obtuse. “That’s why I want to protect Rowena from them. Because what can’t be proved can’t be disproved.”

“Then stop worrying. She’ll learn none of this from me.”

“No. I don’t suppose she will.” She sat back and studied me intently through narrowed lids. “You’re a puzzle, Robin. You really are.”

“In what way?”

“Why do you care about us so much? We don’t give you much encouragement. We’re not even as grateful as we should be. When you met Mummy on Hergest Ridge- By the way, that was the first time you’d met her, wasn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“It’s just… well… we only have your word for it, don’t we? That it was a chance meeting, I mean.” Yes. They did. So did I. Only my word. Only my fallible recollection. And now, worming its way into Sarah’s mind, was the half-formed thought that had already strayed into mine. I’d met Louise Paxton by chance. The purest of chances. It couldn’t have been anything else. Could it? “Go on then, Robin. Say that’s what it was. Why don’t you? What’s stopping you?”

“Nothing.”

“But still you don’t say it.”

“Because I can’t prove it. To you. Or to anyone else.” Her eyes were open wide now, staring at me in amazement. This was the last reply she’d expected. And the last one she’d have wanted to hear. “I can’t prove it, Sarah. Even to myself.”

Waiting for the train at Temple Meads, sobered by cold air and the rowdy dregs of a football crowd further down the platform, Sarah and I looked sheepishly at each other. We both regretted the turn our conversation had taken. We were ashamed of the accusations we’d almost levelled, the inner truths we’d almost revealed. They were intimacies we weren’t ready for. Arenas we weren’t prepared to enter.

“I’m sorry,” she said haltingly, “for some of the things I… Forget it. Please. All of it.”

“Consider it forgotten.”

“But it isn’t, of course, is it?”

“No.” I risked a smile and she bowed her head in understanding. “Shall we agree… simply not to mention it again?”

“Let’s.”

“If there’s anything more I can do to help Rowena… or you… you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

“If you’re sure you want me to. Wouldn’t it be safer… to walk away from us altogether? Safer for you, I mean.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But I can’t. So…”

“I’ll remember the offer.” She looked round. “Here’s your train.” Then she leant up and kissed me. “Safe journey, Robin.”

Sarah was wrong. I told myself so over and over again as the train sped towards Reading. She was wrong, even though her explanation fitted the facts with greater exactitude than any other. She was wrong, even though, in my weaker moments, I feared she might be right.

My mother’s death deprived the Timariot family of a centripetal force I’d never realized she embodied. This first became apparent over Christmas 1991, when the traditional mass gathering at Adrian and Wendy’s went by the board. I spent the day alone, tramping the lanes around Steep and wondering whether I oughtn’t to feel deprived or deserted-rather than strangely content.

On Boxing Day, I drove down to Hayling Island to see Uncle Larry. He lived in a chalet bungalow overlooking Chichester Harbour, with a telescope permanently erected in the bedroom window to study the comings and goings of sea birds on the mud-flats. His other passion-cricket-was evident in the daffodil ranks of Wisdens on his bookshelves and the desk-load of notes and documents he’d been trying for ten years or more to distil into a definitive history of Timariot & Small. But the company’s future, not its past, was what he wanted to discuss with me.

“I had lunch with Les Buckingham the other day,” he announced. (Les Buckingham had been his opposite number at one of our biggest rivals in the bat-making business.) “He said something about Viburna Sportswear that worried me. I didn’t know what to make of it. He’s probably got the wrong end of the stick, but, according to Les, Viburna are very much in Bushranger’s pocket. Bushranger Sports, that is.” The clarification was unnecessary. Bushranger Sports of Sydney and Auckland had been making cricket bats for less than twenty years, but had already carved out a large chunk of the Australian market for themselves. “He doesn’t see how they’d let Viburna get away with selling our bats under their very noses.”

“They can hardly stop them now we effectively are Viburna.”

“That’s what I said. But Les… Well, he was unconvinced. Reckoned Bushranger had… ways and means. Couldn’t say what ways and means, of course. That’s why I thought he was just flying a kite. But I wanted to check you’d heard nothing similar. We’ve invested a lot in this takeover. And borrowed to do it, Jenny tells me. With interest rates where they are at the moment, we can’t afford to have it turn sour.”

“I agree. But it’s not going to turn sour.”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, Adrian, Jenny and Simon are sure. So I am too. As for Les Buckingham, now he’s retired, isn’t he bound to be just a bit… out of touch?”

“Like me, you mean?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, you may be right. You’ve all got your heads screwed on. I suppose I ought to just let you get on with it.”

“Probably.”

“And stop worrying?”

“Yes. Believe me, Uncle, there really is nothing to worry about.” But there was, of course. Plenty.

The truth emerged in progressively more disturbing morsels during the first few months of 1992. Rumours no more substantial than Les Buckingham’s began to coagulate into doubts nobody quite seemed able to pin down or dismiss. Unexplained problems delayed-then prevented-placements of Timariot & Small bats in Viburna’s retail outlets. Technical hitches, according to Greg Dyson. Rather more than that, I began to suspect.