And you complain that I make your life out to be miserable. Grace, lying in the narrow camp-bed in Mrs Shield’s spare room with the seconds ticking by on the old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock, could hear that journalist, Nell Gordon, like some busybody imaginary friend.

This is an interior monologue, Grace said. That means I speak and you don’t, so bugger off out of my head. She turned on her stomach and put the pillow across the back of her head, folding the sides down like flaps over her ears. At last she slept.

But sometime in the early hours of the morning she sat up with a start, not sure what it was that had woken her. Her head felt heavy and the room was stuffy. She got out of bed and, pulling back the curtains, opened the window wider, breathing in the night air. She slept well through the constant noise of a London night, but the countryside was different, its thick silence suddenly pierced by branches hammering on your window, an owl hooting, a fox crying out like a child in pain. And if you slept through that there was always the cockerel who, contrary to popular opinion, has no idea of time but just likes to pass the lonely hours crowing. Grace had not spent more than four consecutive nights in the country for twenty years. ‘Don’t you miss it?’ Mrs Shield was always asking her. ‘No,’ was Grace’s answer.

Grace was about to go back to bed when she spotted a pale figure moving out from the moon-shadow cast by tall oaks. Sleepy still, Grace lit a cigarette and leant against the window looking out. Somewhere a dog barked and the figure turned round and vanished back into the darkness, leaving Grace with an impression of silver moonshine rippling down a slender back. Grace stubbed out the cigarette, having waited in vain for the figure to return.

‘Could be Edna,’ Mrs Shield said the next morning when Grace told her. ‘And I don’t mind telling you that I didn’t sleep a wink myself, not one wink.’

‘I’m sorry. How are your ribs?’

‘Not good. I’m in considerable pain.’ Mrs Shield did look pale. As Grace searched for the painkillers, she raised her hand, grimacing. ‘I’ve taken them already. They don’t help, not one bit. Anyway, Edna’s hair is dark – and short. I keep telling her that very dark colour is all wrong for an ageing face, much too harsh, but she won’t listen; oh no, she goes and gets all huffy instead.’

‘Maybe it was Noah’s ghost?’

‘And combined with such a deep shade of red lipstick she’s beginning to look like Baby Jane. The older you get the less makeup you should be wearing, that’s what everyone says. Although in your case, Grace, I think you could do with some more. You look awfully pale.’

‘I am awfully pale. I always have been, remember? That’s why all my childhood you used to run after me and feel my forehead saying, “Are you running a temperature, Grace, you look awfully pale.” Anyway, I do wear make-up; I’m just subtle about it.’

‘Well, there comes a time in a woman’s life when subtlety isn’t the answer.’

‘You’re contradicting yourself.’

‘Am I, dear? I don’t think so. I would love another cup.’

‘Have you seen him, Noah? What is he like these days?’

‘We saw each other in the churchyard the other day. He looks just the same to me. Then you all do. He was putting flowers on his grandfather’s grave and I was visiting your father. Of course he didn’t recognise me, not at first. But when he did he asked after you. Anyway, you’ll see for yourself. I’ve arranged for us to go over there today so that you can ask about your artist. Some people seem to have nothing better to do than lie in bed all day; he was really quite offhand when I called earlier on.’

Grace glanced at her watch. ‘It’s only eight o’clock now. Anyway, you should rest, shouldn’t you, not run around the village.’

‘I’m perfectly all right if we take it slowly, dear. And you have the car anyway. As long as I don’t have to bend or lift.’

‘I still think it was Noah’s ghost I saw.’

‘Of course you don’t.’

Grace got to her feet. ‘You’re right; I don’t.’

* * *

But for his eyes, an amber colour not easily forgotten, Noah Blackstaff looked nothing like Grace remembered. Had he been a photograph, she thought, she would have suspected him to have been a composite. There was Pete the Poet’s sensitive delicate face on Steve the Strongman’s body. The effect was far from unattractive, just a little unusual. They made as if to embrace and ended up shaking hands. Grace thought, I don’t know if you are married, if you have children. I don’t know what you do for a living, how you decorate your home, yet I’ve hugged you when you cried. I know that shellfish makes you puke and once, when we were scared, we shared a bed. She said, ‘You’ve grown.’

He looked sideways at her and grinned. ‘Come into the kitchen.’

‘I’m sorry about your grandfather.’

‘Thank you.’ There was the kind of embarrassing pause that occurs between two people who know they should have a lot to talk about but actually have nothing to say. Then Noah thought of something. ‘I hear Finn lives in Australia.’

‘Yes, yes, he does. Married, two kids. Sadly, we hardly ever get to see each other.’

‘It’s not as if Australia is that far away,’ Mrs Shield said from her chair. The sun shone in through the window, warming her face. She sighed happily and closed her eyes.

‘I read about you in the paper; well done.’

Grace frowned. ‘What do you mean, well done? Or is public humiliation, and being described as a pathetic loser, quite a coup where you come from?’

He looked at her in a measured thoughtful way, as if he was inspecting her for faults. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, that was not what I meant. I was congratulating you on winning the Unibank. It’s an important award. I never knew you’d won it.’

As it happened Noah was a journalist: politics, mostly television. ‘I can see you being very popular with female viewers,’ said Grace.

‘That’s a pretty sexist comment, don’t you think?’

‘I’m sure it was just Grace’s clumsy way of paying you a compliment,’ Mrs Shield said. ‘She hasn’t really changed very much since you were children.’

Noah looked at Grace. ‘Oh, she’s changed, all right.’

Grace remembered that she was there to ask a favour. ‘Then again, some of my best friends are journalists.’

‘In fact,’ Noah said, ‘one could say that you are one yourself. You have done photo-journalism.’

‘I stopped,’ Grace said.

‘She still has the most awful chip on her shoulder,’ Mrs Shield said. ‘I can’t understand why. She comes from a loving family.’

Grace smiled stiffly. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Noah, but I’ve brought my own Greek chorus.’

‘You know, Mrs Shield,’ Noah said pleasantly as he switched the kettle on, ‘you’re right: Grace hasn’t changed. She’s just as rude. Coffee, Mrs Shield? Grace?’

‘Tea would be lovely, thank you so very much,’ Grace said.

For such a big man Noah was surprisingly light on his feet as he moved round the kitchen filling the kettle, decanting milk, outing cups on saucers.

‘A mug will be fine,’ Grace said.

‘I’m afraid we don’t have any.’

‘And what about you, Noah?’ Mrs Shield said. ‘Are you married?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I suppose it’s all right for a man. You have time on your side. Grace of course had to go and waste herself on the one man who wouldn’t marry her, and I don’t mean her husband. No, I’m talking about that American: Patterson. And here she is, in her forties and no family.’

‘Thank you, Evie,’ Grace said. She turned to Noah. ‘When it comes to information, Evie is a communist, private ownership being strictly against the rules.’

Mrs Shield ignored her. ‘Six years; that’s a long time in a woman’s life if she wants a family.’

‘You just wait until we get home,’ Grace said to Mrs Shield, who laughed delightedly. ‘He died,’ Grace told Noah. ‘I always think that gives him an excuse.’

‘And that was not the reason, as well you know.’ Mrs Shield turned her attention back to Noah. ‘So tell me, why did you never marry?’

‘I’m like Grace, I’m afraid; I lose people.’

Mrs Shield assumed the alert look of a dog who knows its dinner is on the way, but if Noah was about to expand on the subject Grace stopped him. ‘It’s wonderful to see you again after so long and all that, but, as Evie probably explained, I wanted to ask you something. Just the other day a painting came into my possession. I fell in love with it. If I know anything, and as it happens I do, it’s a serious work of art, yet I’ve never heard of the artist. I’ve checked my reference books and looked him up on the Internet but nothing – oh, apart from a man in Milwaukee who carves animals out of bone. I was going to take the picture round the shops in Chelsea – it was bought there apparently – but then Evie had her accident.’

For several minutes the conversation dealt with Mrs Shield’s fall and the painful night she had passed, then Grace managed to get the subject back to her painting. ‘I thought you might know something, especially if you’re doing all this research on your grandfather. It’s dated Northbourne House, 1932 and I absolutely recognise the gardens and bits of the house; give or take the sea and a beech tree, it’s unmistakable. It’s odd that he’s painted in the sea but then it’s not that representative a picture. But why is there no information about the artist? He can’t have done just one painting and nothing else, before or after.’

‘Maybe your grandmother knew him.’ Mrs Shield made them both turn round to look at her.

Noah raked his fair hair with his fingers, making it stand up in a cockscomb and said, ‘She might but the problem with Granny is that she wasn’t very aware. Of course I’m fond of her, but if ever there was a person with her sights firmly set on the household minutiae of life, it is she. I can’t remember her ever showing much interest in Grandfather’s work.’

The biography had been Noah’s Aunt Lillian’s idea. She had been talking to the son of Donald Argyll, Arthur’s old agent, about a retrospective exhibition. The book had grown from there. Lillian’s next good idea was to contact her nephew in Canada. As a journalist and fond grandson, Noah was much the best person for the job. ‘People seem to assume that because you write for a living you can toss something off just like that. I’ve had to take two months off work to do all the research. She of course decided that she was needed back at the mission and off she waltzes back to Tanzania leaving it all to me.’

‘Diddums,’ Grace teased.

‘And you want me to help you find out about your artist.’

‘Did I say diddums? Absolutely not. Anyway, if you really don’t want to do it, just tell your aunt she’ll have to find someone else.’

‘It’s not so easy. Lillian had already told Arthur about her plans. He, the old show-off, got incredibly excited. He even went up to London and ordered a suit.’ Noah smiled and shook his head. ‘He died before it was finished.’

‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Shield said. ‘I do hope they didn’t charge him.’

‘So it ended up being a bit of a deathbed promise.’

‘Now I’m here I would still like to say hello to your grandmother,’ Grace said.

‘I’m sure she’d like to see you too, although, well she is very old. She’ll probably remember you …’

‘That means you think she might not, and why should she? Some kid that hung around the place a quarter of a century ago.’

‘I should have come to the funeral, your grandfather’s that is,’ Mrs Shield said. ‘But I was still in Selbourne. I know it’s not very far, but by the time I read the obituary it was too late. Of course if someone had thought to tell me. Your grandmother must be quite lost without him. She was never one to be out and about or get involved, was she? I always thought of them as a pair of birds, him all showy colourful plumage and her the little dull-feathered female at his side. Although she isn’t little at all, is she?’