Ursa’s room has a lovely view, in one direction looking across the vegetable gardens and over the topiary hedges that have been cut abstractly into swooping curves by Ursula, and in the other direction across the pasture fields where cattle—another family’s cattle, now—stand under broadly spread trees, under crabbed and lateral branches, looking as if they’ve been painted in oils. Henry found the arrival of other people’s livestock difficult: if the land was put to crops that wasn’t so hard—there had been hired tractors in the fields for decades, but livestock was a different matter. The world was advancing and encroaching; it had them surrounded. Recently a bull had leaned against the wall and bowed it and parts of it had fallen. Mog was watching the stonemason at work, making his complicated jigsaw, picking up and discarding, picking up and fitting. She was sitting on the window seat, along its length with her feet up, leaning back against the shutter. Gazing out of the window had proved successful in slowing down the rate of questioning, but she was beginning to feel bad about this failure of hospitality, so she turned her attention back into the room. Rebecca had lifted and was admiring a picture of her grandmother from the chest of drawers, one of Ursa on her bike, hitching a ride down the drive, holding onto an umbrella hooked onto the back of her father’s antique car, her face delighted, showing her small teeth and a pink rim of gum. She rode her bike everywhere, even into town 12 miles away, and sometimes there was a dog in the front basket.
“Do you think the laws of physics were different then, that kept dogs in bicycle baskets?” Mog asked, earning a quizzical look from Rebecca. The world was different then, I said to Mog once, when we were looking at the photograph together, and people seemed happy in a way they just don’t any more. I used to say that kind of thing, but now I see that nostalgia is just a kind of cowardice.
Rebecca came and leaned over Mog and looked down into the garden, where George was standing with a hoe and mopping his brow.
“You look so disapproving,” Mog said.
“Do I? I’m sorry. But it’s obvious he’s struggling.”
“As far as George is concerned this is his garden. Don’t listen to Alan. George refuses to retire, point blank. He said to me once that he wants to die on the lawn in high summer, just after mowing it into stripes. He doesn’t do it all on his own, you know. Alan does most of the heavy work and my father helps with the grass. He says it’s good for inexpressible rage.”
Rebecca was straight onto this. “Why would he be in a rage?”
“He doesn’t need a reason,” Mog told her. “It’s innate. Plus, Ursula helps with the borders. George says she has a gift for pruning. She even gets to do his roses.”
“But it’s obvious he’s struggling. Can’t anything be done?”
They heard a car coming down the drive; Pip had arrived. Rebecca said she had things she needed to do, so Mog went out alone to meet him. Pip was sorting through things in the boot.
“The painting’s turned up,” Mog said to his back. “And also Johnnie.”
Pip lifted out the bags, slammed the lid shut, and walked away from her and up the steps.
“Beastly journey, thanks,” Angelica said, following him. She appeared to be wearing jodhpurs. “Caravans nose to nose on the A9. Accident at Drumnadrochit.”
“Nose to tail you mean.”
“No, these were nose to nose, which is worse.”
They followed Pip into the hall. He’d come straight from the office and was still in the chalk pinstripe, the pink shirt. His shoulders and upper arms were bulky in the jacket, but infant blond curls whisped onto his jacket collar at the back. He put the bags down.
“Johnnie’s here,” Mog said.
He paused, mid-hang of jacket on hook. “Johnnie?”
“My ears are burning,” Johnnie’s voice said, and then he was there, emerging from the picture gallery hand in hand with Ursula. Both of them had a bright-eyed unfocussed look. Now that she had come to a halt, Ursula seemed to be having trouble keeping upright, adjusting her feet as if she were sailing in a gale. She’d changed out of the dress into a white shirt, black tux trousers with a satin cuff and Johnnie’s old school tie.
“You’ve met my brother, I see,” Pip said, straight-faced. “And how is he?”
“He’s fine but his stuff’s too expensive,” Johnnie told him, equally deadpan.
“Will we be seeing Jet this weekend?” Pip took Angelica’s coat.
“Why are you asking me?” Johnnie said sourly. “I’m just a customer.”
The two of them eyed each other up like dogs kept apart only by leashes, their hackles up.
“So you’ll be leaving now,” Pip told him. “You must know you’re not welcome.”
“Oh, but I am. I’m installed at the inn and I’m Ursula’s invited guest. Her date”—he paused, enjoying the foreignness of the word—“Her date at the party.” Ursula was nodding.
“Have you given her something?”
“What do you mean?”
“One of Jet’s special cigarettes.”
“No, I haven’t. I suspect she’s always like this.” Ursula did a little twirl and curtsied low to the ground. “Actually I think she did have a small one.”
Ursula was laughing. She went out onto the terrace and Johnnie followed her out, saying, “Pleasure, as always.”
“Ursula high,” Angelica said. “Doesn’t sound good to me.”
Mog was looking at Pip. “What will happen?”
“Happen?”
“Will she be alright? Isn’t she likely to . . .” Her eyes flickered towards Angelica. “Never mind.”
“I’ll talk to you about it later,” Pip said.
Angelica sighed noisily, half-sigh and half-growl. “You two. School playground mode again. Secrets, secrets. It does get tedious.”
“Somebody has to go after her,” Pip said. “Sorry, Mog.”
“That’s fine, I’m used to it,” Mog said, only mildly resentfully. She went out onto the terrace and spoke out towards the garden—the two of them had gone off in the direction of the folly together—her voice projecting: “Ursula, you need to come in, your mother’s looking for you, she needs your help.” These words were always effective and Ursula returned.
“Stay away from her,” Mog instructed Johnnie, who continued standing as if awaiting his own orders. “As you wish,” he said. “I’ll be at the inn, but I’m coming for supper as Ursula’s guest. She asked your mother. Sorry.” He didn’t sound remotely sorry.
Mog had been asked by Angelica if she could leave them to unpack and to rest, so Mog retreated to my room, something she does at moments of anxiety. She was reading poetry that I’d left there in the bookcase, reading my own margin notes first, speaking some of them aloud, lying on her side with the book propped up. She fell asleep, and when she woke jumped straight up, leaving the Elizabeth Bishop crushed spine-flat on the bed—the art of losing isn’t hard to master—and went along to Pip’s room, but there was no answer to her knock. Pip’s phone went straight to message. Nor were they in Angelica’s room up in the garrets; ordinarily Angelica would be housed in a bedroom on the family floor, but she’d been asked by Joan if she would mind, just this once, giving way to elderly guests who’d been offered a billet for after the party, and had been gracious in agreeing; she wasn’t intending to sleep there anyway. Her official room was empty, empty even of her belongings, and the bed still crisply made. Mog returned down the kitchen stairs—spooky stairs, they’ve always seemed to me, haunted by a particular hopelessness—along the corridor, up to the main hall and up again to Pip’s room. The door opened onto bags and belongings deserted half-handled: Angelica’s suitcase was open on the bed. Mog went to the door and peered out, then returned to the case and rifled through it, lifting out hold-up stockings with lace tops and tiny, translucent slivers of underwear, balanced weightless in her fingers. She looked in the wardrobe and found two dresses, and tried them against herself in the mirror: one of them a dark silky green and the other sheer and black with deep bands of velvet sewn into it. She examined the pills on the night table and read the backs of the books stacked beside them before leaving the room.
When the dinner bell rang Mog had been back and forth to the mirror on the landing a dozen times. Izzy came to her aid, providing a stretchy red dress and scarlet lipstick and heavily outlining her eyes. “We’ll show him,” Izzy said, pushing up her kimono sleeves and pulling a vast trunk of clothes out from under her bed. “This was meant to be worn loose but it’s going to look good on you, I think.” Mog’s sandals were vetoed. “What did you do,” Izzy asked, casting them aside, “buy these out of the back pages of a colour supplement?”
***
In the drawing room everyone else was assembled and drinks were being dispensed. As Mog opened the door she heard Joan saying, “Don’t fuss, Euan, we can easily set an extra place.” Euan muttered something inaudible and there came a crisp reply: “On the other hand it might teach her a useful lesson about life.”
Ursula was there and also Ottilie. Ursula was there and also in the same room there was Ottilie. This was a first, the first time they’d coincided purposely in 13 years, though Ottilie was sitting with her back to her sister. Perhaps the concession was made on the basis that the situation was too tricky to explain to visitors. Johnnie was there, too, in one of the threadbare velvet chairs, looking meditatively out with a glass of sherry in his hand. Joan had demanded formality and he, Pip and Henry were wearing dinner jackets. Euan, a tuxedo refusenik, was dressed in his usual putty-coloured suit, the usual brown shoes, his neck rough and pink from hurried shaving. Vita, widowish in black and weighed down by many long ropes of fake pearls, was told by Rebecca that she looked like Coco Chanel and was unamused. Once Vita had observed that it was good to dress for dinner as they used to always, and Mrs Hammill had chipped in with her usual remark about slipping standards at home being emblematic; once these rituals had been observed, a silence descended—one of those mutually disempowered silences that feel as if they might obliterate the occasion. It settled and deepened as they drank their drinks. Vita saved the situation by speaking to Johnnie. “I see you have been admiring that picture.”
“It’s very fine. And I think it might be of you, done when you were young. Am I right?”
“Quite right, quite right.” Vita was delighted. “The artist was a family friend. I sat for him on Saturdays. It was terribly dull. He kept coming over to reorganise me and had the most dreadfully bad breath. And wandering hands. Tell me, because I’ve never understood about tits; what is it exactly about them—”
Edith fired a warning shot. “Mother.”
“He also did the sketch above the fireplace,” Johnnie said. He’d been in here earlier with Ursula asking questions, and was well informed.
“You have quite the eye. Ruskin, you know, said drawing was as important to the development of the soul of a child as writing. Imagine if that were true. What a shameful negligence in the schools.”
“I don’t like that one much” Johnnie said, gesturing with his glass towards a landscape on the opposing wall. “It’s almost photographic, and what’s the point in that? Take the photograph.”
“I do so agree,” Vita said, showing all of her remaining teeth.
“When I look at a painting”—Johnnie leaned forward, his expression earnest—“what I’m looking for is proof of life. Do you know what I mean? Of individual life, an individual soul.”
“Unbelievable.” Mog had spoken and all eyes turned to her but she was looking at the carpet. “First internment and now this.”
Johnnie continued unabashed. “Proof that people were once that alive, were passionate with colour, had doubts, were in love, feared death. People long dead. They’re still alive in the picture. The brushstrokes are just done and drying. I like to think of them and their painting day, the arrangements, the travel, the easel. It’s . . .” He looked for the word.
“Completely thrilling,” Vita offered. “A kind of time travel.”
Johnnie offered her something in return, one of his special and exclusive smiles.
“Mog and I were in the National often, in Edinburgh,” he said. “Many, many happy hours.” He took a handful of peanuts and tossed them into his mouth one at a time.
Henry handed Mog another drink. Gin and tonic. No bubbles remained in the tonic. Henry kept it in the bookcase.
“He’d pin postcards up on a board, ones I chose, and get me to talk him through them,” Mog said, continuing to talk to the carpet.
“But that reflects well on both of you,” Euan said. “Surely.”
“You sound so unhappy,” Johnnie told her, his voice without emotion. “I’m sorry if I’m the cause of that.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“As I recall they were happy times, mutually enthusiastic. But forgive me if I haven’t given the tutorial aspects better credit.”
Mog looked at him. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you,” Johnnie said. “But you refuse to hear me out.”
“I’m not interested in anything you have to say,” Mog told him.
Johnnie smiled towards Euan and Joan. “Do you know that I proposed marriage? I proposed and I was refused by text message. By text message. Mog’s refused to talk to me since.”
“I’m so very sorry to hear that,” Euan said.
“Oh no,” Joan said, putting her hand to her forehead.
Mrs Welsh came in and said that the supper was laid out ready and that they should come through. They seated themselves in the dining room. Joan had provided name cards, and Ottilie found that she had been placed at the other end of the table to Ursula. They’d been seated on the same side so that they didn’t have to see or hear each other: an arrangement that Joan described as enemy positions.
Mrs Hammill, glorious in a vast blue taffeta tent, had a hip flask secreted away in her evening bag. She wasn’t always discreet about dipping into it.
“Well, this is terribly nice,” she said.
“Yes, isn’t it; no Jet, though.” Pip was helping himself to soup. He looked around. “And no Izzy either.”
Euan had made the gazpacho with too much garlic, and not chopped up enough for Vita, who chewed each spoonful gamely. Henry confined himself to toast, which he tore off a mouthful at a time, spreading each slice thickly with cold butter.
“I called in on Jet earlier,” Edith said. “But he wasn’t feeling at all well. He’s terribly pale. I worry about him, keeping so much to himself.”
It was a sombre sort of table. Mrs Hammill slurping her soup, adding more sherry to it. Vita lost in her own thoughts. Edith talking to Pip about the bank.
“Pip and I have been decorating,” Angelica said to Joan. “You must come down and see.”
“I can’t imagine that,” Edith said. “Pip with a wallpaper brush.”
“You misunderstand, Mother,” Joan said, sharing a half-smile with Angelica. “They got the decorators in.”
Vita was looking flustered. “At my flat, she means,” Pip said to her, leaning into her ear. “At my apartment in Edinburgh.”
“But when are you to marry, Peter?” If it was “Peter” it must be serious.
“It’s our apartment, it’s to be ours when we do, so I’ve been helping choose the furnishings,” Angelica explained. Vita was protected from the scandalous fact of their having lived together for over a year. Her libertarianism was largely theoretical, set aside for the past.
“Well, hurry up and choose a date. I want a great-great-grandchild before I go.”
“You’ll outlive all of us,” Pip soothed.
“It’s awful, not knowing when,” she said to him. “Every morning has a question mark in it. I’m not afraid of death itself, because that’s nothingness, like the time before birth, but pain, yes. I’m afraid very much of pain. I don’t want to be frightened. I’m frightened of being frightened.”
“Oh, Mother, you don’t give it a moment’s thought,” Edith said. “Please don’t drink any more wine.”
“So this is where you’re all hiding.” Izzy came into the room, Terry trailing a little shyly. “Hello everyone, hello, hello. Oh, we’re seated formally, lovely. I won’t have to exchange any more stiff pleasantries with Terry: what a relief.”
Terry cuffed her gently around the head.
“I’m not kidding, that time it really hurt,” she said, rubbing the place. She cast her eye around the company as she took her seat. “Goodness. Did anybody else die? No? Good. I hate to miss things.”
She turned to Henry. “Sorry about being late. Traffic. Masses of traffic. Terry shook his fist at it but it didn’t seem to help.”
“You’re forgiven,” Henry said.
“So tell me, somebody, do. What’ve I missed? Scandals? News? No? That’s very boring of you all. Does anyone know a really filthy joke?”
“Izzy,” Euan said in his admonitory voice.
“Euan,” she returned in the same tone. She scanned the table again. “We’re all looking very overdressed and uncomfortable, that’s good, that’s very good, bodes well. And Johnnie’s still here, I see. We haven’t set the dogs on him yet.”
“He’s Ursula’s guest,” Edith told her quietly.
Johnnie succeeded in catching Euan’s eye. “I bought a copy of Membrane.”
Euan was surprised. “Where on earth did you find it?”
“I ordered it from your publisher online. I liked the poem ‘Meniscus’ very much. The unseen line, the unseen door, the happy blindness of the day; processing sightless the imagined road.”
Euan tried and failed to prevent himself from looking pleased. “I’ve just finished the new collection. Auto-Didact.”
“Ursula’s been reciting bits of Paradise Lost to me,” Johnnie said. “It’s staggeringly beautiful.”
An uncertainty crossed Euan’s face. “You are staying at the inn, though?”
“I’m staying at the inn. Three nights. I’ve booked a table at L’Assiette for Sunday. I’m hoping Mog will consent to dinner. Dinner at the least.”
“I’m not going to have dinner with you,” Mog said. “That’s stupid,” Joan piped up.
“At least hear him out,” Euan said.
“Look, I brought the ring with me,” Johnnie said, producing a black velvet box from his pocket.
“He’s lying to you, he didn’t propose,” Mog said. “He just likes to play games with people.”
“Oh honestly, Mog,” Joan said.
“He didn’t propose; I challenged him about something and he hit me with a chair.”
“Hit you with a chair?” Joan couldn’t help giggling.
“For crying out loud,” Euan said.
“It was an accident,” Johnnie said. “Of course, though technically she’s absolutely right. We’d been to a dance and went back to mine, and I was trying to pass a chair over the kitchen table, avoiding the candles, and it hit the light fitting and broke it, and cack-handedly I dropped the chair and it hit Mog on the head. I’ve said sorry a hundred times. The thing she challenged me about, by the way, was that I was only after her money.”
Joan clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh no. That’s the funniest thing.”
“We had a row. About my being a gold-digger.” He rotated his expensive watch on his wrist. “Well, I don’t have to tell all of you, it’s not exactly the likeliest scenario. She’s been unwell. We won’t dwell on that now: you know about her unwellness. I was just trying to move a kitchen chair across the table, and broke the light fitting, and got a jolt, and the chair flew out of my hand and knocked her flying. I’ve apologised and apologised and I don’t know what else I can do.”
“Well, quite,” Euan said. “It’s hard to know.”
“The thing is, that I love her, heart and soul,” Johnnie said. “I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her.” He looked imploringly towards Mog. “My proposal still stands. I think that it will always stand, whatever happens.”
“Oh that’s lovely, isn’t that lovely?” Joan said.
Johnnie opened the box and a vast shiny ring sparkled out of the dark plush interior. There were general gasps of appreciation.
“Do I have to go down on one knee?” Johnnie said. “I’ve come all this way to do this. I want to get it right.” He slid off his chair and into position.
Mog looked at the open box, at the vast and sparkling rock. “I recognise it: it’s his brother’s girlfriend’s ring” she said.
“It may be similar,” Johnnie said, looking at it more closely. He closed the box. “Well, that’s put me in my place.” He got up onto his feet again. “Goodness. This is embarrassing.”
“Oh, Mog; Mog,” Joan said, sounding ashamed.
Euan put his cutlery down with a clatter.
Johnnie stood up. “I’m sorry, I think I should leave.”
“Please don’t,” Euan urged him. “I’m so sorry about this scene. It’s very unfortunate.”
Now Ottilie was on her feet, and was pointing with her wine glass at Euan. “Why would you do that, why? Side with someone so dubious against your own child? You’re such an irredeemable arsehole.”
Johnnie excused himself and swept out. Pip followed him, saying he was no longer hungry. He went down the back stairs to the yard and found Johnnie waiting for him there.
“Come to challenge me to a duel?”
Pip took his cigarettes out. “Come to smoke,” he said. “Pistols or swords?”
Pip looked closely at the packet. “Filter-tipped, I think.”
“Wanker,” Johnnie said, curling his lip and turning away, then turning back again. “It was true, by the way, about the chair. I don’t know what story she told you. But that’s how it was. Sorry to disillusion.”
“Mog’s not a liar.”
“Depressed, though. And attention seeking. Good story I’m sure. Unstable boyfriend with a violent streak.”
“Your words, not mine. Why did you come here?”
“I was invited.”
“Oh, come off it.”
“Mog wrote a letter and I wanted right of reply. But she won’t hear me out. I’m going away to write it instead. It will be long and forlorn.”
“But you’re already hooked up with someone else, aren’t you. That’s the truth of the matter. You’re already sleeping with someone else. Why play these weird games?”
“A person has to find his entertainment where he can,” Johnnie said, as if sincerely.
“I think you’re the one who’s a trifle unwell, mate,” Pip responded.
Johnnie looked disgusted. “Oh, fuck off. You’re so arse-numbingly boring.”
“Okay then,” Pip said, turning away, then swivelling back to say, “Mog tells me you spent your childhood in foster homes and I’m sorry for you.”
Johnnie was shaking his head. “Just part of her myth of me, I’m afraid to say. My mother’s still alive and she’s a doctor. Sorry.”
“I particularly liked the term spent being unimpressed by Harvard, and the charity walk in Nepal.”
“The charity walk’s for real. Don’t diss that. Don’t you dare. Those children in the hospice. Wanker.” Johnnie was already walking away, his middle finger raised above his head.
***
Izzy found Mog in the linen room after dinner.
“Everybody’s worried about you down there,” she said.
“Are they? That’s nice.”
“What now?”
“Now, nothing. Now, hiding. Tomorrow, keeping a low profile. The day after, skulking about the house. The day after that, forced jollity. That’s the usual pattern, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want to let anybody down.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Huh.”
“You shout, they shout back. It’s how it goes.”
“I always feel like I’m in the wrong. Especially when I’m right.”
“It’s because you get emotional. That gives them ammunition.” She got up. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To see Ursula. She insisted on going back to the cottage, had the screaming abdabs. Dad was all for locking her in, or rather locking out He Who Shall Not Be Named, but Gran wasn’t having it. She called the inn about an hour ago and spoke to Johnnie, apologising for the ruckus. Really, it was her way of checking he’d gone back to the village.”
“So why are we going to see her?”
“Just checking. Said I’d check.”
The grass was saturated and cold, their feet damp and the world tranquil. The stable block, greenhouses and garden walls: all looked foreign in the dusk, the grey sky streaked with flashes of gold. They ran through the orchard, where fallen early apples like small round rocks were bruising under their soles, and where they disturbed an owl that in its haste flew right at them, almost colliding with Izzy, before emerging onto the lane. One of the cottages was brightly lit but it wasn’t Ursula’s. The Dixons’ house, too, was all in darkness. It was the holidaymakers who were up and uncurtained, their harshly lit sitting room revealing a man in an armchair reading a book, and a woman standing talking to him holding a map. Jet’s curtains were closed but illuminated by the unsteady blue light of a bedroom television. All was quiet at Ursula’s cottage. The shadows at the side of the sitting-room curtains were uneven, and then the unevenness was revealed as a person, and the person was revealed as Johnnie. Mog hung back and let Izzy go forward. Mog went and crouched behind the hedge, listening.
The door opened before Izzy could knock.
“Hello there; want a drink?” Johnnie’s voice.
“No,” Izzy said. “What I want, what all of us want is for you to go back to the inn right now. You shouldn’t be here. Go back to the inn and go home in the morning. You’re not welcome here.”
“This is disappointingly dreary.”
“Where’s Ursula?” Izzy pushed past him into the kitchen. “Ursula?”
“What?” a bad-tempered voice responded from upstairs. “Are you alright?”
“That’s a stupid question. What do you want? Go away.”
“I’m taking Johnnie with me,” Izzy shouted back.
“It’s all about not making a fuss,” Izzy told Johnnie, speaking more quietly. She could hear Ursula coming down the stairs, a step at a time. “You’re the latest thing not to make a fuss about. But everyone will be relieved when Sunday comes and you’re gone. You are going on Sunday, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t booked a table at L’Assiette, then.”
“I haven’t,” he conceded.
There was a noise from within, a human noise, a small explosion of dissent, and Ursula appeared, striding past Johnnie and ignoring Izzy and making off towards the house.
“Though that may be an unpopular decision,” Johnnie said, and then brightly, “Can I interest you in a nightcap?”
Izzy produced a key from her pocket. “I’m going to close the door now and lock it, so if you have anything of yours here you had better get it now.”
“Fine, fine,” Johnnie said, putting up his hands and stepping out into the garden, onto the lane and towards the village.
***
Izzy went to play cards with Ursula in the kitchen and make bacon sandwiches, and Mog went to the drawing room, hearing Rebecca’s voice coming from that direction. She stopped outside the half-open door, listening. Pip was talking now.
“They never got along. Ottilie disapproved of him as a husband for Mum, and Mum thought she was jealous. It was much worse when Michael went.”
“How’s that?”
“He won’t ever be forgiven, for things he said to Ottilie on the day.”
“That it was Ottilie’s fault that he’d gone,” Pip said. “That she wasn’t a good enough mother, not attentive enough.”
Mog went into the room. She told Pip that she needed to talk to him, and Rebecca absented herself immediately. “About Johnnie,” Pip began, but Mog cut him off.
“It’s not about Johnnie. I want to talk to you some more about the picture, and about Alan.” As she was speaking she was closing the door, returning to sit by him at the fireside.
“What do you want to do?”
“I think we should tell Henry.”
“I could tell him on the phone. In person he’ll be shocked and will probably shut down. Might be better on the phone.”
“On the phone? For heaven’s sake.”
“That’s how it is. There are things that Henry can say to me, in the early hours.”
“How early?”
“This insomnia of his is a real problem. Sometimes it’s five in the morning when he rings and often he hasn’t yet slept. I tell him that I’m awake then, in the summer when it’s light, that I like getting to the office early. It’s worth it. I don’t mind.”
“I didn’t know he had trouble sleeping.”
“He hides it well, even from Edith.”
“In the same room.”
“It’s been a problem for a long time. He barely sleeps at night.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You know where Henry is, the afternoons we think he’s out on the hill? Asleep, usually. Can only sleep in the daylight. Curls up on the sofa in the study, locks the door.”
“I thought the locked door meant he was out.”
“Everybody does. But that’s the point. When he comes in at teatime looking so tired with stories from the hill, sometimes they’re true but generally they’re invented. Henry, I’ve discovered, can tell a story. He’s tired because he’s just waking up. Sets his phone alarm for a quarter to four.”
“And Edith doesn’t know this? How could she not know?”
“He doesn’t think she does, but let’s be real, what are the odds?”
Joan came into the room holding a glass of red wine. “I need to speak to you, to the two of you.” She shut the door behind her.
“What is it?” Pip asked wearily.
“Your father went to the pub, after the scene at dinner. He was upset.” Her eyes rested momentarily on Mog. “He’s just phoned me. Alan was there. Alan said he’d met Johnnie at the loch this afternoon. Johnnie and Ursula together.”
“What about it?”
“Alan was thrilled to pass on the news to your father that Johnnie was asking Ursula about Michael. Mog, did you confide in Johnnie? I need honesty and a straight answer.”
“No, of course not.”
“Not even a hint?”
“No.”
“That’s odd, because Johnnie said to Ursula that you thought he was dead.”
“I brought him here. I brought Johnnie here in the spring. We talked a bit about Michael going missing, possible solutions to the mystery. We all talk that like to people.”
“I don’t.”
“No, Mother,” Pip interjected. “We know.”
“You brought Johnnie here? Why didn’t you say? Why didn’t I get to meet him?”
“You weren’t here,” Mog told her. “You were off shopping. And all I said to him was that we thought Michael had gone out to the wolf.”
“For god’s sake, not that again.”
“It’s the kind of thing we say all the time to people,” Pip said, raising his voice. “That we suspect it may have been suicide. It would be odder not to talk about it, in my opinion.”
Joan said, “But you see, my darlings, Johnnie asked Ursula what she thought.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she wasn’t able to talk about it, that she’d promised not to. Which is tantamount to a confession.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We need to keep them apart. Johnnie and Ursula. There’ll be a rota for tomorrow and for tomorrow evening, and she’ll sleep here until he’s gone.”