“I did indeed.”

As he followed his father into the kitchen, Simon caught a glimpse of her again, her back to him. Only the way she had done her hair was new. Meriel had always worn her hair upswept. Elegant. She had always been elegant. Even in old gardening clothes, elegant.

Meriel was dead. Meriel had been dead for—

“Hello.”

She turned round.

Her hair was quite different and she was far younger. But she was tall, like his mother, and with the same way of speaking. Odd.

“I don’t think you’ve met. Judith Connolly: my son Simon.” Richard paused and his voice took on its usual faint edge of sarcasm. “Detective Chief Superintendent Serrailler. He’s a policeman.”

“I know,” she said. Smiling. Coming over to him. She held out her hand. “Hello, Simon. I’ve been wanting to meet you.”

There was a smell of cooking. Something simmered on the stove. Since his mother’s death, the kitchen had lost some of its warmth and the small touches that had made it special. There had always been flowers and flowering plants on the window ledges; there had been notes pinned to a cork board, reminders about meetings written in Meriel’s striking italic hand and bright blue ink; there had been a row of musical scores on a shelf next to the cookery books, and photographs of them all as children next to new ones of Cat’s sons and daughter, stuck up everywhere. But the plants had died and never been replaced, the music had gone to Cat; some of the photographs had fallen down or curled at the edges. The notice board was bare. Simon hated going into the kitchen. It was the one room where he missed his mother beyond bearing.

Now he noticed some scarlet geraniums on the ledge, neat in their pots with saucers beneath. There was an unopened bottle of wine on the table. Glasses.

Who was this?

“I take it you’ve seen your sister,” Richard said.

“Of course. They’re back and fully functioning. It’s brilliant.”

“I’ll telephone Catherine tomorrow.”

“Don’t you think you should drive out there, Richard, not just telephone? They’ll be longing to see you.”

Simon looked from the woman to his father and back again. Richard said, “Oh, I doubt that.” But he was smiling.

“Will you stay for supper, Simon? I’ve made a chicken pie that will feed half a dozen. I always cook too much.”

Who was this? What was she doing, cooking in his mother’s kitchen, inviting him to supper, telling his father where he should go, who he should see? Who was this?

She handed him the bottle of wine. “Would you open this?” Smiling. She had a warm smile.

She was—what—late forties? Tall. Light brown hair with some careful, fairer streaks. Straight. Very well cut. Pink shirt. Necklace of large almond-shaped stones. Large mouth. Slightly crooked nose. Who was this?

His father said, “Should we eat in here or shall I lay the table in the dining room?”

“It’s so comfortable in here. Simon, do stay. We don’t have any holiday snaps to bore you with.”

Holiday?

His father was avoiding his eye.

Simon picked up the bottle and went to the drawer for the corkscrew but she had it in her hand. Held it out to him.

Her look said, Don’t ask now. Later. He will tell you later. I will see to it.

He took the corkscrew. She smiled.

Tall. But not like his mother. Not his mother.

In his mother’s place. In her house. Her kitchen. Cooking in her kitchen. Not his mother.

He wrenched the cork hard out of the bottle.

Sixteen

The evening air smelled of bonfires. Cat Deerbon walked towards the east door of the cathedral in the gathering dusk and the woodsmoke drifting on the air was nostalgic of childhood, school satchels, her first year as a junior doctor, running across to the hospital from her room to answer a bleep when the groundsmen were burning the leaves. And her mother in the garden at Hallam House, tall and elegant in jeans in her mid-seventies, pushing the debris of the summer borders into the glowing heart of a small, neat and well-controlled bonfire.

Cat stood for a second catching her breath at the vividness of the memory, wishing she could go there now, make a mug of tea, chat, catch up.

The cathedral was still and almost empty at the end of the day. Two vergers were changing the candles in the great holders on the high altar. Someone was brushing the floor at the far end of the chancel with a rhythmic scritch-scratch of bristle on stone.

There was no service. Cat had had to drop in a letter to the New Song School and she always took the chance to sit in the cathedral for a few moments when she could, centring herself, reflecting, bringing some of her patients and their problems with her to leave in the peace and holiness of the building. She had only just returned to the practice. There were new patients, old ones returning with new problems, nothing dramatic yet. Her energies were going into opposing some changes, learning to work with others, battling the system. Chris, still not fully recovered from a lengthy jet lag, was refusing to argue, refusing to compromise, unusually irritable. But she was determined to win on one front, determined to do some nights on call, seeing her own patients when they needed her most. It would all settle down.

She closed her eyes. Her mother was there again, rekindling the bonfire with a handful of sticks and weeds.

“What would you do, Ma?” And the voice replied, “What your professional conscience dictates, of course—tempered by common sense. And don’t call me Ma!”

Cat smiled. Footsteps down the aisle beside her pew. She looked up and nodded to the verger. The smell of guttering candle wax reached her as it wove its ghostly way down the nave. She bowed her head, prayed for a few moments, then left, pausing as always to look up at the glory of the fan-vaulted roof, the stone angels on the tops of the columns blowing their gilded trumpets.

She had missed a lot of things during their time in Australia and this cathedral perhaps the most.

As she walked out into the warm evening, her phone beeped for a text message from the surgery.

Urgent ring Imogen Hse re Karin M.

Karin McCafferty. The last time she had spoken to Cat was before Australia, but she had sent a couple of emails. She was fine, she had said, still fine, scans all clear, two years after her diagnosis, the oncologist at Bevham General was “surprised but delighted.” “Dare say that goes for you too!” Karin had ended.

Karin had refused all forms of orthodox treatment for a late-diagnosed and aggressive breast cancer and had embarked, against Cat’s best advice, on a journey through all things holistic, naturalistic, alternative—both familiar and what Chris called “wacky.” Karin’s husband had left her to live with another woman in New York, but her business as a garden designer and horticulturalist had flourished and so had she. Against the odds and the medical advice, she had got well and stayed well.

Chris called it a statistical aberration, Karin called it a triumph. Cat had been both delighted—and furious. She had found it hard to talk about—and had replied only briefly to Karin’s last email.

Now she stared at the message on her phone.

She went back to the car, texting as she walked. A message to Chris that she was going to the hospice, Get curry out freezer.

How strongly did a doctor want to be proved right when being right meant a patient’s terminal illness and death? How much had Cat wished for Karin to be both wrong, totally and utterly and profoundly wrong, and yet cured? What would her mother have said? She desperately needed to know, but Meriel’s image was no longer vivid in her mind. Meriel had faded. She was leaving her to sort this one out by herself. “You don’t need me,” she heard her say.