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enough. Jeremy slipped his arm round her waist. Yes, he’d been sweet to her. A support she badly needed. She was an only child and he felt like the brother she’d always wanted.
    The October air was much milder down here than in London . She wore a dress of white cotton, which a gust of wind flattened against her stomach. In the distance a curlew mewed. She stooped to pick up a baby crab left high and dry by the tide. She loved this place for its tranquillity, but hated it for what it signified.
    ‘Y’know, it’s fantastic that old pile,’ Jeremy breathed, looking back at the house. ‘People would pay a fortune for it today.’
    ‘Not for sale. Belongs to the estate. The one my father managed.’
    Sandpiper Cottage was the only building for half a mile. Almost a mansion, it stood rooted to rocks just above the high tide mark. Solid grey stone, a steep pitched roof and a tall, red-brick chimney for the fires which kept the inside snug. Her father’s fortress. For twelve years they’d lived here, the house being part of his pension.
    He was a recluse, a man dogged by a past he could never discuss. This was his hide-out, a cave where he’d withdrawn from the world to keep his secrets safe until he could take them with him to his grave. And now he was about to.
    He’d been a colonel in the army. Forty-seven when Charlie was born, he might never have married if it hadn’t been for the persistence of her mother, a brigadier’s daughter twelve years his junior.
    Ambrose Cavendish had served in the Second World War as a second lieutenant, but for some unexplained reason wouldn’t talk about it. Only once had Charlotte asked why, when she was fourteen, a day engraved in her memory. The blood had drained from his face, he’d shut himself in his bedroom and not spoken to her for days. Only then had her mother revealed he’d been a prisoner of the Japanese.
    It had shocked her. Not the imprisonment itself, but the fact that she’d never been told about it.
    Across the estuary she saw her father walk from the house to the terrace. She waved, but he couldn’t have been looking. Her mother would lose Sandpiper Cottage when Ambrose died, she realised. She’d have to move. But not in with her. Not at any price.
    ‘We’d better go back,’ Charlotte murmured. ‘Verity’ll be wanting sherry and won’t dare start without us.’ She headed for the bank on which oaks and beeches bore the first specks of autumn gold.
    ‘Just time for a ciggy,’ she said, stopping again. Her mother didn’t allow smoking in the house. Jeremy reached into his trousers for her Silk Cut, gave her one and took another for himself.
    They turned at the sound of feathers on water, a pair of swans struggling into the air. They watched the birds pass low overhead, wings sighing like harmonica reeds, then waded back across the stream.
    They entered the house through a fragrant conservatory stuffed with chrysanthemums. In the pine kitchen Verity was pulling the joint from the oven to baste it.
    ‘Hmm, smells good,’ Charlotte hummed. She rested an arm on her mother’s shoulder.
    ‘Lamb. It
is
Sunday,’ her mother said.
    Verity had spent her life suppressing her feelings, but this crisis over her husband’s illness had all but defeated her. She slipped the meat dish back in the oven and closed the glass door with a bang.
    ‘Another quarter of an hour …’ she gulped, removing her apron and looking away to hide her face. ‘Time for a sherry, don’t you think?’
    Charlie could see her mother needed to talk. ‘Jer?’ She touched Jeremy on the arm. ‘Know anything about cricket?’
    ‘Oh yes.’ His face lit up. ‘Everything.’
    ‘Good. Go and pour my father a drink – the decanter ’s on the sideboard – then talk to him about stumps or silly-mid-whatsit.’
    ‘Aren’t
you
coming in?’ he asked uncomfortably.
    ‘Soon, yes. Just want to help my mum a bit.’
    ‘But everything’s done, dear,’ Verity protested.
    ‘Then we