It was still raining. He went slowly over the rutted ground—there was always the chance of getting a puncture here and he didn’t want to hang about changing a wheel by torchlight, risking being seen from the road. As he neared the gates, a fox slipped across in front of him, yellow eyes gleaming, caught in his headlights.

Forty-three

“I feel guilty,” Cat said.

The Croxley Oakwas pleasantly busy, with half a dozen people at the bar, two-thirds of the tables full and the first log fire of the autumn. A waiter went past carrying a loaded tray. There was the chink of glasses.

Simon looked at her across the table. They were both exhausted, both in need of exactly this. He didn’t bother to reply.

“Chris should be here.”

“Yes, he should.”

“Will he ever have this sort of quiet evening out again?”

Simon shook his head.

“He might. When he gets over the operation. The radiotherapy will reduce the rest of the tumour for a time, then he’ll get a remission, it might be quite a decent one and we can come here.”

“You should. Do everything you can.”

“Yes.”

“You said we weren’t going to talk about it.”

Cat’s eyes filled with tears.

“Come on.”

The menus were chalked on blackboards at either end of the long room, specials on another board behind the bar. It was one of Simon’s favourite eating places and he hadn’t been here for months.

“Let’s make the most of it. Oh, good, they’ve got mussels.”

Moules marinières and fresh sardines, French bread and a bowl of olives were on the table when Cat’s mobile rang.

“If it’s home answer it, otherwise ignore it.”

“I don’t recognise the number. All right, ignore.”

“When is Karin McCafferty’s funeral?”

“I’ve no idea. Do you know that apart from her bastard ex-husband I don’t think she had any family? She never mentioned them. I wonder who’ll make the arrangements? I’ve known very old people have funerals at which the only attenders were me and the district nurse but that just meant they’d outlived everyone. Karin was only in her forties. I’ll talk to Imogen House, see what they know.”

“You went to see her when she was alive. That’s what matters. Don’t have regrets.”

“I don’t. Jane is the one who has those.”

“Jane who?” He looked blank for a moment.

“Jane Fitzroy. God, it’s been so long since we’ve talked.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Are you on call now?”

“I’m always on call at the moment. What about Jane Fitzroy?”

“Oh, you do remember her then.”

Simon picked a mussel carefully out of its shell with the prong of his fork and put it into his mouth. He did not look up.

“By the time she got here she was an hour too late. Not her fault, but it upset her.”

“She rang you?”

“She stayed the night.”

He poured her another glass of wine.

“Don’t you want to know any more?”

He shrugged.

“She asked after you.”

“Cat. Leave it.”

“Why?”

He shook his head, wiping bread round the plate to mop up the sauce.

“You liked her.”

“Well, yes. So did you.”

“That’s different.”

“Just leave it.”

Cat recognised his expression and his tone of voice. He meant it. The portcullis had come down. She would get no more out of him.

“You’re your own worst enemy, did you know that?”

But the waiter came to take their plates and Cat knew better than to pursue the subject further. For now, she thought. For now.

“Are you taking the kids to the Jug Fair?”

“I think so. Chris will be back home but Dad said he would stay with him. Felix is a bit young. He can stay too.”

“Will you join up with someone else?”

“I’m sure we’ll meet a load of people but Judith said she would come with me. And please do not put on that expression.”

“What expression?”

“Get over it, Si. She’s lovely and she’s good for Dad. Don’t put yourself out in the cold.”

The waiter came towards them with braised lamb shank and pan-fried black bream.

“Simon,” she said, after the vegetables were on the table, “thanks for this. It’s what I needed. I didn’t realise.”

“Trust your brother.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“Oh, I do. On some things.”

She picked up her knife and fork, but as she did so she remembered, remembered the full horror and awfulness of what was happening, remembered Chris lying in bed that afternoon, eating a spoonful of scrambled egg very slowly, his head bound with bandages, eyes tired and defeated. He had already seemed to be receding from her, living a twilight life in a place she could not go to, a place he had to inhabit entirely alone. She swallowed and stared at the food on her plate.

“It’s OK,” Simon said.

But it was not and the tears spilled onto the back of her hand as she tried to wipe them away.

She got up. “I’m going to the cloakroom. When I come back, just talk to me. I can’t. Just talk to me.”

Simon waited, separating the flakes of moist lamb off the bones and eating them slowly, thinking. The bar had filled but they were in a corner at the end, not overheard.

She was a long time but when she returned her face was tearless, her hair brushed back.

“Right,” Cat said, putting the last of the vegetables onto her plate.

“Do you think I’ll ever find the right person to marry?”

She stared at the food piled onto her fork, trying to take the question in. He had never asked anything like it before, had always veered away from the subject when she had raised it. Cat thought she had given up trying to fathom her brother but now she realised that she had not.

“I know you want me to talk about Jane but I’m not sure I can. I’m not sure about anything.”

“I suppose,” she said carefully, “the first thing to know is, do you actually want to be married? Do you see yourself as a husband and perhaps a father, living in a house with a wife, having a totally different domestic set-up from the one you have now?”

“Why? Why would all that have to change?”

“Because now you are a bachelor, you have a pad for a bachelor, you live a solitary life, mostly at work, sometimes away with your sketchbook, occasionally with us. But that would change.”

“Not necessarily.”

“You expect a wife to fit in round the corners? You carry on as you are?”

“No. But you make it sound as if my life would change completely.”

“And you don’t want that?”

“No. Of course I don’t. I love my life.” He knew as he said it that it was profoundly true.

“Then you would have to have either a very remarkable wife or a very unusual marriage or probably both. It wouldn’t change all at once, but in the end it would have to. Marriage is a new life and it’s always a compromise c you just have to make sure that you both want the same compromise.”

“Yes. So perhaps I need to forget it.”

“I’m not saying that. You do have to be sure—perhaps more than most people. They marry for the person but maybe also because they are ready to change and develop and have a new sort of life. They want that actively. You don’t. But you’re not quite forty, Si, you’re not old enough to be so set in your ways.”

He finished the last of his lamb without replying.

Cat thought about the women he had known—the ones she had been aware of at least. Diana, the older, spasmodic mistress—that had worked as far as Simon was concerned because Diana had not changed his life, though Cat knew she had wanted to. Freya Graffham. Yes, he had thought he might be in love with her, even more so when she became unobtainable. Before Diana, there had been one rather fleeting affair with a young woman barrister whom Cat had not liked. Eleanor someone.

And then Jane Fitzroy.

But Jane had been vulnerable, confused in most areas of her life and suffering under the blows which had fallen on her one after another during her short time in Lafferton.