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waiting to hear. ‘I came from Geneva this time,’ she said, ‘but before that from Hong Kong and before that from Rome. Not that way round.’
    ‘How did you do that?’
    ‘Well on a ship and a train, of course. I might have flown but it seemed better.’
    ‘Not on your own.’
    ‘Of course on my own, why not? Did you have to have someone to bring you, like an escort.’
    ‘I came in charge of the guard.’
    ‘Oh yes, I’ve done that. I came in charge of stewards and so on.’ She bounced off the bed. ‘Your mother’s dead.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘What did she die of?’
    ‘I’m not sure. No one has ever said.’
    ‘Goodness. My mother’s alive, so is my father, but somewhere else. At the moment my stepfather is called Claude. I hope he stays, I quite like Claude, but, of course, he won’t, they never do for long.’
    He caught sight of her face then and it was strange and sad and distant.
    ‘We could go out into the garden.’
    ‘Why? Is it interesting? I don’t expect so. Gardens aren’t usually.’
    ‘Our aunt found some jigsaw puzzles.’
    Leonora was at the window.
    ‘Shall I get them out?’
    ‘I don’t want to do one but you can.’
    ‘No, it’s all right. How long did it take you to get here?’
    ‘Two days. I slept on the boat train.’
    ‘Were you sick?’
    He had gone to stand beside her at the window and he saw that he had made her angry.
    ‘I am never sick. I am an excellent sailor. I suppose you’re sick.’
    ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Some people are, some aren’t and you can’t die of being sick.’
    Her eyes seemed to darken and the centres to grow smaller. ‘Where do you think people go when they die?’
    Edward hesitated. He did not know how to behave towards her, whether she wanted to be friendly or hostile, if she was worried about something or about nothing.
    ‘They go to heaven. Or … to God.’
    ‘Or to hell.’
    ‘I’m not sure.’
    ‘Hell isn’t fire you know.’
    ‘Isn’t it?’
    ‘Oh no. Hell is a curse. You’re forced to wander this world and you can never escape.’
    ‘That sounds all right. It’s what – you wander this world. You’ve wandered to all those places.’
    He could sense something in her that needed reassurance and could not ask for it. He did not know, because he was too young and had never before encountered it, that what he sensed in Leonora was pride. Later, he was to understand, though still without having a word for it.
    ‘Do you remember your mother?’
    ‘No. Aunt Kestrel does but she didn’t want to talk about her.’
    ‘What, because it might upset you? How could you be upset about a mother you don’t remember?’
    ‘No. I think it – it might have upset her.’
    ‘Oh.’
    That was something else he would come to know well, the tone of her voice that signified boredom.
    ‘Tomorrow we’ll play a trick on that woman,’ she said next. ‘I’ll think of something she won’t like at all.’ She sounded so full of a sort of evil glee at the idea that she alarmed him.
    ‘I don’t think we ought to do that.’
    Leonora turned on him in scorn. ‘Why? Do you want to be her favourite and have her pet you?’
    He flushed. ‘No. I just think it would be a bad thing to do. And mean.’
    ‘Of course it would be a bad thing to do. And mean. How silly you are.’
    ‘I don’t think she’s very nice but perhaps it’s because she hasn’t any children of her own or doesn’t know any.’
    ‘Aunt Kestrel hasn’t any children but she doesn’t hate us.’
    ‘I don’t think Mrs Mullen would hate us.’
    ‘Of course she hates us. And I am going now to think about what trick to play.’
    ‘Where are you going?’
    But she had already gone. She came and went so silently and completely that he wondered if she did not move at all but simply knew how to just appear and disappear.
    He did not see her again until the bell rang for supper and then, just as he was going across the hall, she was there, when she had not been