THE NEXT MORNING, Hugo had gone across to school by the time I came down for breakfast, and in the afternoon he was refereeing a football match, which he did for fun, not because he was on the sports teaching team. Benedicte and I went out into the Suffolk countryside looking at churches, and ended up at a bookshop which also served teas. Over a pot, and some excellent scones, I asked her if Hugo had mentioned my brief spell of panic attacks, and whether he ever had a recurrence of them himself.

‘No and no,’ she said, looking surprised. ‘Adam, poor you. People often laugh at such things, but they are truly awful. No, his breakdown was over and done. But I wonder, now you say this, if there was anything connecting you?’

‘Runs in the family, you mean?’ I shook my head. ‘I doubt it. A lot of people have what I had.’

‘And have you an idea why you had? Is there not always a reason?’

I hesitated, then shrugged.

She smiled. ‘Well, it is all over now I hope?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘That’s good. Because for Hugo too c nothing ever came back. He is now very strong and sane.’

WE DROVE HOME through the darkening lanes, talking a little about music and books, more about Katerina and her prospects for getting into Cambridge to read medicine, and as we did so I felt a strange sense of lightness and well-being. The ghost story my brother had told me had explained a great deal. That the small child who had accidentally drowned should have returned to the place and wanted to be with other children seemed natural and I knew people had taken ‘photographs’ of ghosts. I had even seen one, a whole-school photograph with a ghostly master on the far end of the back row – though I confess I had always thought it some sort of fake. But those fakes, easy now with digital cameras, were once not so readily accomplished and as far as I could remember the boy had not looked in any way ghostly in the photograph the old woman had shown me. If he had, surely I would not just have accepted him as a third boy – our unknown ‘friend’.

As I drove, I thought of the small hand, which I now believed to belong to the drowned boy. I had ventured into that place and he had caught hold of me. Had he found me every time I went near water and especially near pools? It seemed so. But why did he urge me forward? Why did I feel such fear of what might be about to happen? I shivered. It seemed beyond belief that he had such ghostly will and power that he could urge me to fall into water and drown and so join him. But what other explanation was there?

We turned into the town and drove down past the main school buildings towards the house.

Well, it was over. The ghostly power had faded. The only puzzle that remained was my visit to the White House when I had met the old woman. Had she been a ghost too? No, she had been real and substantial, though odd, but then, surviving alone in that near-derelict place would drive anyone mad. The drowned child had been her grandson and perhaps he haunted her too, perhaps she felt the small hand in hers, perhaps he took her down those gardens which led out of one another, to the place where the pool had been and that was now just a fairy ring in the ground. Poor woman. She needed help and care and company, but the world often throws up slightly deranged people like her, living on in a dream world, clinging to the past among ruins of its places. Presumably she would die there, alone, starving or ill, or in the aftermath of some accident. I wondered if I could return and talk to her again, persuade her to accept help, even to leave that dreadful, melancholy place in which her whole past life was bound up but which was not somewhere a once handsome, successful, celebrated woman should end her days. I determined to do that. And perhaps at the back of my mind was the thought that I would ask her, gently and tactfully, about her grandson, and whether the photograph was indeed of him as he might have been a few years after his death. And if she was visited by the small hand.

Even though it had left now, and I was quite free and quite unafraid, I could not yet forget the feel of it holding mine, or the effect its power had had on me.

AS WE WENT in I started to wonder if I could make the journey down to Sussex again. In any case, I expected to have news for Sir Edgar Merriman about his psalter, though I might have to take another trip to New York first. New York in the fall has a wonderful buzz, the start of the season in the auction houses, lots of new theatre, lots of good parties, the restaurants all full, but the weather still good for walking about. I felt a small dart of excitement.

AFTERWARDS, I WAS to remember that delightful sense of anticipation at the thought of New York, my last carefree, guilt-free, blithe moment. Aren’t there always those moments, just before the blow falls that changes things for ever?

I went into the house behind Benedicte, who was saying that it was strange the lights were not on, that Hugo must be having a drink with the footballers, though he did not usually linger after a match. It had been a pleasant autumn day but there was a chill on the air as we had come up the path, as if there might even be a frost that night, and now I sensed that the house itself was unusually cold.

‘What is c’ I heard Benedicte’s voice falter, as she went into the sitting room. ‘Oh no c has there been a burglar in here?’

I went quickly into the room. The French windows that led to the garden were wide open. Benedicte was switching on the lamps, but as we looked round it was clear that nothing had been disturbed or, so far as we could see, taken.

‘You stay here,’ I said. ‘I’ll check.’

I went round the entire house at a run but every room was as usual, doors closed, orderly, empty.

‘Adam?’ Her voice sounded odd.

‘Nothing and nobody there. It’s all OK. Maybe you forgot to close them when we went out.’

‘I didn’t open them. Nobody opened them.’

‘Hugo?’

‘Hugo had gone to school.’

‘Well, maybe he came back. Forgot his kit or – something.’

‘He took his kit and why would he open these doors even if he had not?’

‘He’ll tell us when he gets back. I can’t think of any other explanation, can you?’

There was something in her face, some look of dread or anxiety. I led her into the kitchen and opened a bottle of red wine, poured us both a large glass.

‘What can I do to help with supper? Potatoes to peel, something to get from the freezer?’

Benedicte was always well organised, she would have everything planned out, even if the time we would eat was uncertain.

‘Yes,’ she said. I could see from her face that she was anxious. ‘Some potatoes to wash and put in the oven. Baked potatoes. Sausage casserole. I thought c’

I went over to her and put my hand on her shoulder. ‘You haven’t been burgled,’ I said. ‘No one has been in here. Don’t worry. Hugo will be back any minute. He can look round as well if you like. But nobody’s here.’

‘No,’ she said.

We made preparations for supper and then took our drinks into the sitting room. I had closed and bolted the windows and drawn the heavy curtains. Benedicte switched on the gas fire. We talked a little. I read some of the paper, she went back to check the oven. Everything was as usual.

The phone rang.

‘Adam?’

She did not look worried then. Only puzzled.

‘That was someone from school. They wanted Hugo.’

‘Yes?’

‘Gordon Newitt.’

I did not understand.

‘The Head of Sports. He wanted Hugo. I said he was probably still having a drink with the team. But he said Hugo wasn’t refereeing anything this afternoon. There was only one match and that was away. He wasn’t there.’

She came further into the room and sat down suddenly. ‘He wasn’t refereeing any match.’ She said it again in a dull voice, but her expression was still one of bewilderment, as if she were trying to make sense of what she had heard.