Tuesday morning’s post brought the note from Penn, which Drew read over his coffee and toast.

‘Why bother with a letter when she knows I’ll be speaking to her today, anyway?’

‘Manners, I suppose,’ suggested Karen. ‘And I think she’s got too much time on her hands, all these weeks of holiday from college.’

‘I don’t remember that being a problem for you when you were teaching.’  

‘No, well I had you, didn’t I?’ she gushed playfully. ‘Penn doesn’t seem to have anyone to distract her.’  

‘I could phone her from the office, tell her everything we found yesterday. That could give her something to think about.’

‘You won’t have time,’ Karen reminded him. ‘You’ve got all the preparations for Mr French’s funeral. They’ll want it this week, won’t they?’

‘Thursday,’ he said distractedly. ‘I should think.’

‘And it might be better to wait for her to phone you. Then she’ll be paying for the call.’

‘Good thinking,’ he said, wishing they didn’t have to watch the pennies quite so closely.

‘Look, there’s Maggs,’ Karen changed the subject. ‘Will you do the removal right away? Do you want me to take the phone?’ After a somewhat hostile beginning, where she’d refused to act as unpaid secretary for Peaceful Repose, Karen had very gradually permitted the boundaries between the business and the house to blur, so now she would cover for the times when Drew and Maggs were both out. They had lost business and annoyed several people in the early days, when the phone had sometimes gone unanswered.

‘If you can cope,’ he accepted. ‘You’re not going out, then?’

‘I might this afternoon, if the weather bucks up, but I’m planning a lazy morning. Stephanie’s doing some drawing, with any luck.’

‘We’ve got to go and collect Mr French,’ was the first thing he said to Maggs, in the office. ‘He died at six o’clock yesterday.’

‘Okay,’ she said with no sign of emotion. ‘Let me get the doings.’

She unhooked a tailored black jacket and well-pressed trousers from the back of the door and slung them over one shoulder before disappearing into the adjacent cool room to change. Coming back two minutes later, she gathered up a printed pad of ‘removal dockets’ that Drew had copied from Plants, the undertaker he’d worked for before setting up on his own. Most of the intricate bureaucracy had been dispensed with, but he’d found it necessary to keep a detailed record of removals. On it they noted any jewellery on the body; the name of the doctor who certified death; the exact date and time; mileage travelled, plus full name and address of the deceased.

A folding trolley was kept permanently in the back of the van, as well as the zip-up bag into which the body would be placed, for purposes of delicacy and discretion. Drew had a recurring dream where the van was involved in an accident and dead bodies spilt horribly out all over the road, naked and mutilated in some scenarios.

‘Let’s go, then,’ Maggs chivvied him. ‘The daughters’ll be after us if we don’t bustle.’

The hospice was nearly twenty miles away, so they were out of the office until close to eleven o’clock. Although accustomed to driving around with a dead person in the back, there was always some slightly dampening effect on conversation as a result. Maggs lolled against the back of her seat, apparently lost in thought, and they said little to each other. Drew found himself wondering what Mr French’s last words or thoughts had been. He often wondered how it must be to die, and encouraged stories from relatives which went some way to enlighten him. ‘He didn’t go peacefully at all,’ two or three wives had said fiercely, as if they’d been badly deceived. ‘He fought it every inch of the way.’ Only one person had gone into such graphic detail that Drew had felt he’d been there himself. It was a woman recounting the death of her mother. ‘She howled all night, making a terrible unearthly noise. Full of fear and horror, as if she knew exactly what was happening and couldn’t bear it. The nurses gave her painkillers, but it didn’t make any difference. I sat in the downstairs room and listened for nine hours. She was like an animal in a trap or someone being tortured. And yet when I went to look at her, every now and then, she was lying there, eyes closed, quite relaxed. It was all going on inside, beyond anyone’s reach.’

She’d shuddered. ‘I’ll never forget it. Nobody ever said it could be like that.’

Drew tried to convince himself that the woman hadn’t really been terrified or in awful mental agony. It was just some strange physiological response to the closing down of her system, like the spasmodic kicking of an animal. But it left him uneasy.

The most common story, which he’d heard dozens of times, was the one where the person died unexpectedly at the very moment when their attentive relative had gone out for a few minutes or gone home for a rest. ‘It was as if she did it on purpose,’ said one daughter. Drew generally assured them that this was probably true. ‘I think people do prefer to die alone,’ he sometimes said. ‘Funny as it sounds. Or perhaps they just feel they’ve been released somehow, when their loved ones aren’t there. While they’re being watched over, there’s some kind of link that keeps them hanging on.’ His customers invariably responded well to this sort of remark, as if greatly relieved to have his permission to discuss the taboo subject.

‘I wonder if Justine’s dead,’ said Maggs, breaking the long silence.

‘The police chap didn’t seem to think so.’

‘He’ll be contacting Penn, don’t you think? For a proper description and the car number. It ought to have been her who reported it in the first place.’

‘I wonder whether she’ll mind that we went to the police,’ Drew suddenly thought. ‘She won’t have been expecting us to do that. And I imagine she doesn’t want me to talk about Justine to Roma.’

‘What?’

‘Because of the rift between them. Didn’t I mention that?’

‘No. What happened?’

‘I have no idea. One of those messy family things. They haven’t spoken for five years. I sometimes think that’s the default position, actually. Look at Mr French’s daughters.’

‘They do at least speak to each other. As far as we know, anyway.’

‘Well, this thing with Roma and Justine seems to be quite heavy.’

Maggs was suddenly excited. ‘Hey, that’s probably got something to do with it, then. Justine going missing, I mean. Don’t you think?’

‘I can’t imagine how. It’s old history, whatever it was that caused the fight in the first place.’

‘You really don’t know what it was?’

He shook his head. ‘No idea. Though I suppose Penn must know.’

Den Cooper had the phrase something and nothing going round his head. A young woman missing, reported by people who’d never met her, and yet had become sufficiently concerned to make a special detour to a police station.

On the face of it, the person who ought by rights to have come in was the girl’s cousin, Penn Strabinski. Slocombe had supplied part of her address with some hesitation, claiming that was because he had difficulty in remembering it. He didn’t have her phone number. It was all oddly tenuous. But Den had been in the job long enough to know that it was a good idea to listen to stories like this; that breaks with normality very often did signal breaks from the accepted codes of conduct. And then there were the mobile phone and the toothbrush. Oh yes, there was plenty of substance here, just below the surface and Den was more than happy to give it his attention, at least until something more urgent came along.

He found P. Strabinski easily enough in the phone book, and was on the brink of calling her, when he decided that a face-to-face visit might be more effective. Leaving a copy of his five-line report on the DI’s desk, and logging himself out, he drove off towards Crediton, where Slocombe had said she lived. Den was fond of this quiet back road, remembering it from his boyhood, when he had a best friend who lived in the village of Bow. Memories of summer days spent cycling to and fro always surfaced when he used this route.

Events of the last year had done much to sour these associations, however. Foot and mouth disease had ravaged the area and the police had been closely involved in the implementation of the appalling culling that had traumatised virtually everybody for several ghastly months, more than two years earlier. Many of Den’s lifelong friends had lost all their animals and the whole nature of farming had changed. Although superficially back to normal after two years, he knew that the spirit of west Devon had been weakened, that reliance on providing leisure activities for uncomprehending townies was the best many people could hope for by way of a livelihood. He knew, deep in his bones, that he couldn’t go on as he was, either; not just because of outside changes or his hopeless love life, but because he was getting so little fulfilment from the job. Perhaps that was the real reason he’d been so attracted by this something and nothing story. It fitted his mood.

Penn Strabinski came to the door warily. As always, there was the flicker of shock at Den’s height before the acceptance came. He could almost hear the thought processes. Goodness, what a tall man. Oh well, tallness is okay, was roughly how it went.

He introduced himself and presented his official ID card, before explaining that he was looking into the apparent disappearance of a Miss Justine Pereira, who he understood was a relative of hers.

Her sudden loss of colour came as quite a surprise. She put a hand to her throat and seemed to find the next breath hard to manage. ‘That comes as a shock?’ he queried.

‘Oh,’ she gasped. ‘Not really. I mean – I didn’t know the police were involved.’ She stared anxiously at his face. ‘You haven’t found her, have you?’

He smiled. ‘Not yet,’ he said, thinking there was considerable ambivalence in her words and manner. Almost as if she did not want him to have found the missing Justine. But he was quite prepared to discover he’d got this wrong. ‘I understand you’ve been worried about her,’ he went on.

‘Drew!’ she realised. ‘Drew’s been to see you. And he gave you my address. At least … it wasn’t Aunt Roma, was it?’

‘Hold on! Perhaps I could come in, and you can tell me all about it? All I seem to have so far is a name and some vague suspicions.’

She hesitantly led him into a small and rather dark room in her little terrace house. ‘You live here alone?’ he asked casually. The place was sparsely furnished, with little left lying about. Nothing unusual or handmade caught his eye; the furniture was plain and serviceable. No gleam of polished oak or lovingly burnished silverware. Unloved was the word that came to mind.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘I did think of getting a lodger to help with the mortgage, but then I managed to get some extra marking work, which helped. And I’ve got a few private pupils over the summer, cramming for their Common Entrance.’

‘You’re a teacher?’

‘Well, my main job’s at the FE college, but the pay isn’t too good, as you probably know. Luckily, there’s usually some extra stuff for the asking.’

‘Like the cramming.’

‘Right.’

She seemed to be relaxing slowly, as he’d hoped. He remembered Drew Slocombe’s comments about tensions and undercurrents, and thought he knew just what the undertaker had meant. Something certainly wasn’t right.

‘I gather you’ve had a look round your cousin’s cottage, since she went missing? What was your impression?’

She sucked her lower lip. ‘Well, it was untidy, but then that’s not unusual. It did look as if she’d gone out in a hurry. But I’m more worried by the lack of word from her. A phone call at least. And it’s out of character for her to miss a date with me. We were having lunch together last Thursday in Exeter and she never showed up. That was when it all started. By Saturday I was quite alarmed, so on Sunday, when I went to visit Karen and Drew, I decided to ask him to help.’

Cooper cocked his head at her. ‘Rather than come to the police?’

‘I didn’t think you’d take any notice. She’s a responsible adult and there was no sign of a struggle or anything. And I suppose it isn’t really very long since I saw her.’

‘When was that exactly?’

‘Um … the Friday before last. That’s when we fixed up the lunch and a bit of a shopping spree. She was looking forward to it.’

‘Did you know that her landlord, Mr Renton, says she went camping, on the spur of the moment?’

Again she went white and breathless. ‘Oh.’ She forced a grating laugh. ‘That makes me look very stupid, doesn’t it.’

‘You didn’t ask him where she was?’

‘He’s never there. I … um … well …’

Den narrowed his eyes in puzzlement. ‘Go on,’ he encouraged.

‘Camping,’ she repeated carefully. ‘How funny. In the Metro, I suppose? That’s really odd.’ She seemed to be regaining composure. ‘Right. Well, Philip ought to know. It looks as if I’ve wasted everybody’s time, doesn’t it. Philip told Drew she was camping, did he?’

‘That’s what Mr Slocombe says. The farmer found him and his assistant exploring the cottage and confronted them, probably thinking they were intruders. When they told him they were looking for Miss Pereira, he explained that she’d gone off for a few days on her own, presumably with a tent.’

‘Did he say where?’ A look of annoyance crossed her face. ‘And who is Drew’s “assistant”?’

‘A young woman, who works with him. You don’t know her?’

‘I remember now that he mentioned her. I haven’t met her.’

‘She’s …’ he caught himself, with a faint self-mocking smile. ‘She seems quite a talented person. Observant.’

‘So why are you still bothering to investigate?’ she asked sharply. ‘If Phil says she’s gone camping, surely that’s the end of the matter?’ She paused, another idea popping up. ‘And why on earth did Drew go to the police, once he’d been told she was all right? What the hell was he playing at?’ The annoyance was thickening into something a lot stronger.

‘You’ll have to ask him that,’ said Den primly. ‘Meanwhile, since I’m here, it would be helpful if you could supply the model and registration number of Miss Pereira’s car. And a photograph of her, if you have one.’

‘You’re going to carry on searching for her, then?’

‘Just to put our minds at rest,’ he said easily. ‘She might be a responsible adult, but she also sounds rather vulnerable. Wouldn’t you say?’ Without waiting for a reply, he went on, ‘And perhaps I could have her mother’s address as well?’

This time, Penn’s reaction was to flush crimson. ‘What? Why the hell do you want that? Her mother hasn’t set eyes on her for five years or more.’

‘Doesn’t know you’ve been worried about her daughter, then? I understood that you visited her at the weekend. You never mentioned it to her?’

Penn chafed, eyes darting from point to point in the room. ‘Well, I did phone her yesterday, as it happens. I hadn’t the nerve to mention Justine face-to-face. Aunt Roma tends to get into quite a state if the subject arises.’

‘And what did you tell her?’

She lifted her chin and looked directly at him. ‘I said I was worried about Justine, who’d apparently gone missing, and that I’d asked Drew to help me find her. She knows Drew, you see. I thought I should at least warn her.’

‘Warn her? You think there might be bad news on the way for her?’

‘Well, I did think something like that. But now …’ she almost shouted at him, ‘now we know she’s gone camping, everything’s all right, isn’t it? You can just forget the whole business.’

‘We’ll very likely do that in a day or two,’ he soothed her. ‘Just bear with us while we give the matter a bit of attention first. If you’ll give me those details, I’ll be on my way.’

He found himself whistling, albeit rather a mournful tune, as he went back to Okehampton. There most definitely was some sort of case to answer here; something unusual and complicated. There were so many undercurrents you could be swept out to sea by them if you didn’t watch out. And – happiest thought of all – he had every reason to see Drew Slocombe again. Drew Slocombe and his charming, good-looking, observant girl assistant.

Laurie Millan was never very comfortable in his own company. He paced the living room restlessly, waiting for Roma to come home from the shops. ‘Got herself arrested this time, for driving with the dog on her lap,’ he muttered. He didn’t know what to do with himself while he waited. He’d already carefully laid out a pad and pen on the dining table, to make it look as if he were about to write a letter. The moment Roma’s car turned in through the gate, he would sit down and start writing, glancing up as if distracted from something absorbing, as she came in. It was important that she should never realise just how needy he was at times like this.

She was taking much longer than expected. Even if she stopped to natter with one or two women she knew, she wouldn’t be as late as this. Fiercely he quashed the idea that she’d had an accident. Somebody would have phoned him by now, if that was the case. She was just thoughtless, dawdling around the country lanes, maddeningly self-sufficient, not considering him at all. It made him angry and very frustrated because he could never reveal his anger. This was one of their many unspoken agreements.

When Pereira had buggered off, after years of towering arguments and broken crockery, Roma had rapidly discovered the many pleasures of living alone. It had been a revelation. Life became peaceful and easy, and she vowed, loudly and often, that nothing would ever induce her to live with a man again. For thirteen years, she stuck to her vow. Then Laurie had come along, and slowly persuaded her that he would never get in her way, would give her company without making demands; would listen to her complaints, and make no attempt to change her views. He would cook for her, and sleep with her, and go on holiday with her. All he wanted in return was someone to accompany him on his dream retirement to the country. Someone who would make the house feel alive, and give him something on which to fix his attention. Roma had protested that it was unfair; that all the benefit accrued to her, but he’d insisted, and eventually she could not resist the offer.

His persona was of a mild, harmless chap, in a tweedy jacket and carpet slippers; that was why Roma had married him. He was a sort of glorified servant, a butler-cum-gardener, who also provided reliable companionship and a listening ear. Nobody paused to ask themselves what was in it for him. Or if they did, they found easy answers in the present-day balance between the sexes. Men were essentially drones, after all. They earned their billet by being affable, pleasant company, keeping out of the way, and never ever showing the slightest hint of violence. This last was punishable by the most cruel sanctions. One thoughtless slap, and they were cast into the outer darkness, sans virtue, sans money, sans hope, sans everything. Laurie never forgot that. He would never never slap Roma, that much was certain. The fact that she had slapped that horrible little beast in her school carried no implications for how she behaved towards him. He wholeheartedly supported her in her view of the matter – that society had gone mad, that there was no justice, and it was a perpetual unforgiving scandal that she had lost her job over it.

She arrived eventually, breezy and liberally besmirched with black smudges on hands and face. Laurie looked up from his writing pad, a questioning smile on his lips. ‘Did something happen?’ he asked mildly.

‘Oh, not really. There was a man with a flat tyre, on the bypass, and I stopped to help him. It was raining,’ she added, as if that explained everything. ‘He had no idea where the doings were. It was like my old Renault – remember? You had to turn a bolt from inside the boot, and that released the spare tyre from underneath. Impossible to guess, if you didn’t have the handbook. Poor chap was going mental, bashing the thing with a club hammer he happened to have with him.’

She spoke breathlessly, good cheer sparking from her, at her piece of charity. Laurie sighed. ‘It could only happen to you,’ he said fondly. ‘Was he grateful?’

‘I suppose so. A bit embarrassed, me being a woman. The old habits aren’t quite dead yet, more’s the pity.’

‘Did you get my stamps? And the lightbulbs?’

‘Of course. Everything that was on the list.’ She was unstoppable in this mood; so proud of herself, so sure she had life by the ears and could make it go any way she wanted. Laurie could only hope that it would last. ‘I’ll go and get some soup started, shall I? Must be nearly lunchtime.’

‘It is,’ he agreed, slowly packing away his small collection of writing materials. ‘And it looks as if the rain’s stopping at last.’

Sheena Renton had been late home on Monday; so late that Philip was already in bed and made only a token grunt in greeting. Tuesday morning, however, seemed unusually relaxed, given her normally hectic schedule.

‘Good God, it’s eight fifteen!’ Philip cried, on waking. ‘Why are you still here?’

She stretched lazily. ‘Nigel said we could take a few hours off after last night. The meeting didn’t finish till past ten. We got everything sorted, though. I feel great.’ She looked at him through her lashes and pouted. ‘You haven’t got to be anywhere, have you?’

He couldn’t pretend to miss her meaning, although he really didn’t like sex in the morning. Too sober, too relaxed, too much light streaming through the window. But Sheena was deftly determined and her conjugal rights were satisfactorily claimed.

‘Isn’t it great without Georgia,’ she purred afterwards. ‘At least for a few days.’

‘Mm,’ he concurred, before rolling back the duvet and flopping heavily out of bed. ‘Cup of tea?’ he offered.

‘Okay.’

By the time he got back with two mugs of tea and a few rounds of buttered toast, she was asleep again, rather to his relief. He quickly dressed and left her to it, the tea cooling beside her.

He wandered aimlessly out of the house and stood in the empty yard. It was eighteen months or more since there’d been any animals on the farm, but he could still hear the ghostly sounds of cows and calves and pigs. They’d been culled as ‘dangerous contacts’ with a foot-and-mouth-infected pig farm, because Philip’s father had bought in three new sows just at the wrong moment. He hadn’t been able to forgive himself for it, despite everyone insisting he couldn’t possibly have known the risk. He’d forced himself to participate in the slaughter, as some kind of penance. But not penance enough, it seemed. Only self-destruction had relieved him of his misery and remorse, his helpless rage and loss of hope.

Philip had watched impotently, his own memories just as terrible. He too had taken part in the cull. The cows had gone passively enough, but the pigs had been frantic. He still heard their screams in the night and supposed he always would.

Sheena used the whole catastrophe as justification for returning to her full-time-plus job, even though Georgia had been barely a year old at the time. Philip had wanted to talk her out of it, but could never find a convincing argument. He’d thought it was obvious: a mother’s place was with her child. But Georgia made no complaint, despite a gruelling routine under the care of a day nursery where the staff seemed to change every week. Gloria, the blowsy woman in charge, never seemed to remember which one Georgia was when Philip turned up to collect her. He knew it wasn’t the right way for a child to grow up; she was so quiet and withdrawn it was often as if she wasn’t in the house at all. The only times she seemed animated and happy were when Justine was around.

The household became a haphazard business, with food snatched at odd times and Justine drafted in to babysit at short notice much more often than originally intended. It had begun to feel as if they were mere automata, running round in mechanical circles, with no idea of why, until Philip had woken up one morning uncomfortably convinced that it couldn’t go on like that any longer.

Sheena was right that it was much more relaxed without Georgia; in some ways, at least. Never an attentive mother, she had jumped at the suggestion that the child spend a week or two with her granny on the Isle of Wight. Leaving all the arrangements to Philip – after all, it was his mother, who had moved to the island with a close woman friend after she was widowed – Sheena hardly seemed to notice the absence of her little girl. Philip observed this with a painful knot of tangled feelings, but made no comment. Time enough for all that when his wife decided Georgia should come home again.

At least he’d dealt with those people looking for Justine without rocking any boats. He was pleased with himself about that. The next problem was going to be Penn. But Philip’s policy was always to take things one step at a time. It was surprising what you could do, how much you could bear, if you broke it all down into manageable slices. It had been like that through the foot and mouth nightmare. He’d gone through the daily motions, inventing routines for himself, slowly incorporating ideas for the new business, making new contacts, until it came to Christmas and he could look back and feel he’d triumphed over the horror of it all. He’d done it then; he could do it again now.

Helen Strabinski was losing the battle against her curiosity. Something was obviously going on, to do with Roma and Justine and Penn, and she wanted to know what it was. The drizzle was depressing, thwarting the plan she’d had to do some outdoor work. She’d promised she’d have a dozen stills for the tie-in book the BB C were producing, to accompany a gardening series. The garden in August was supposed to be full of lush sunlit borders, dahlias and gladioli and red hot pokers, all epitomising high summer. Instead, everything was damp and bedraggled and completely unsuitable. She could get on with a few indoor mock-ups, but she wasn’t in the mood. It never really worked, anyway.

Instead, she resolved on paying an unannounced visit on her sister. If she took her camera, she could claim to be searching for a cover shot for a new Glorious Gardens magazine; yet another glossy monthly to squeeze onto the shelves. A number of photographers had been invited to submit possible shots for the cover, and Helen was determined that they’d choose one of hers. She thought Roma’s beehives might add an original touch – if she could pluck up the nerve to approach them.

It was a forty-mile drive, but there wasn’t a lot of traffic on the small roads she chose. Twice she stopped to take pictures: first of an old barn with its roof falling in, and later of a field full of glossy-looking red-and-white cattle. Made a change from the ubiquitous black-and-white ones, she judged.

Roma had always been one for dramas, of course, since they were children. Six years older than Helen, she’d forged her way through school, making enough of a mark for teachers to shudder slightly at the name of Willowfield. ‘Not Roma’s sister?’ they’d asked hopefully, only to sigh when she nodded. ‘But I’m not at all like her,’ Helen had learnt to say, brightly.

It was true – she was nothing at all like her sister. Roma had been fearless, argumentative, noisy. Helen was altogether different. And their brother had been different again – older than them, neurotic even in his teens, and very poor company.

Laurie was standing in the doorway, before she was even out of her car, as if he’d been watching out for her. There was no car in the driveway, suggesting that Roma was out. ‘Hiya!’ she greeted him cheerily. ‘Thought I’d drop in for a bit. Sorry to arrive so late. Must be nearly teatime, but you don’t have to feed me.’

His face looked dark, somehow, as if in shadow, and yet he was standing in the open. He smiled a welcome, but nothing changed in his eyes. ‘Helen,’ he said, as if he hadn’t been able to remember her name at first. ‘Haven’t seen you for a while.’

‘Roma writes to me,’ she said. ‘I gather things are a bit frazzled at the moment.’

‘Are they?’ Laurie looked alarmed. ‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

‘Well, Penn said …’ She stopped herself. Something in Laurie’s face made her insides clench for a moment. A bleakness, mixed with a flash of anger, told her to shut up and wait for Roma.

But she had to talk about something. ‘Is Roma well? No more of that sciatica?’

‘That was ages ago,’ he dismissed. ‘It only lasted a week or so. She hasn’t got time for anything like that. She’s insanely busy all the time.’

‘She always has been. It makes her feel important,’ Helen said automatically. ‘Though it’s a bit difficult to see how she manages it, stuck in this quiet spot.’

‘Bees, shopping, garden, gossip, reading circle—’ he rattled off, marking each on his fingers. ‘And there’s much more. Every time she comes home, she’s made a new friend, and heard their entire life story. I can’t keep up with it all. She makes me feel old.’

‘Poor Laurie. Isn’t it like you expected?’

He forced a laugh, and raised his eyes to the hills beyond the garden. ‘Oh, it’s fine. It’s a lovely spot, and I don’t let anything disturb me. She’s getting me a greenhouse for my birthday. That’ll be fun.’

Helen found herself wishing the weather was better. ‘I did wonder whether I could take a few pictures of the hives,’ she ventured.

‘Oh?’ He didn’t seem very interested. ‘Bit murky for that. There won’t be many bees working with it like this. House-cleaning weather, Roma calls it. The workers knuckle down to making new cells, mucking out debris, that sort of thing. I assume you’d like a few actual bees in the pictures?’

Helen shivered. ‘Not particularly,’ she said.

Laurie looked at her. ‘Oh, that’s right – you’re scared of them, aren’t you. Roma mentions it from time to time. Seems funny, her being so fearless with them. Did something happen to put you off them?’

It was Helen’s turn to stare. ‘Surely she told you?’

He cocked his head questioningly. ‘Told me what?’

‘Our brother, Conrad. He died of bee stings when he was small. I was only a few weeks old. Roma must have been six. She was there at the time. If there’s anything odd, it’s her becoming a beekeeper now. Some people might think it very perverse.’

‘I’m certain she’s never uttered a word about that,’ he said wonderingly. ‘Poor little chap. How did it happen?’

‘He was playing with a dog from next door. A great big daft thing, an Old English sheepdog. It knocked the hive over and the bees came charging out, furiously angry. He had a hundred stings, and died of shock. My mother was distraught, of course.’

‘How awful for you,’ Laurie said, passionately. ‘She can’t have had much emotion to spare for a baby after that.’

‘Oh, well, I think I was a sort of haven. If anything, she over-protected me, hung over me in case some other dreadful accident happened. It was far worse for our older brother. I don’t think he was ever quite right afterwards.’

‘You mean the invisible Ninian? The one who went off to Japan and was never heard of again?’

Helen laughed. ‘That’s the one.’ She was quiet for a few moments, and then went on, ‘You can imagine the frenzy every time a flying insect came into the house. Bee, wasp, bluebottle, they all caused havoc. The whole family behaved as if they were the most lethal objects imaginable. Like poison darts, or something.’

‘Well, Roma’s not a bit scared of them now. Not bees or wasps.’

‘No, well. Roma regards fear as an intolerable weakness.’

‘That’s true,’ Laurie agreed quietly.

Roma arrived home to find them sitting in the small conservatory with tea and biscuits. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ she breezed. ‘Couldn’t think whose car it was. Giving yourself a day off?’

‘Something like that,’ Helen smiled. ‘Laurie’s been looking after me.’

‘So I see.’

‘This place is lovely, even when it’s raining. You were clever to find it.’ Helen gazed over the garden and field, much as Laurie had done earlier.

‘It suits us,’ Roma nodded. ‘It feels much more remote than it really is. You can’t hear any traffic – have you noticed?’

‘What about people? Have you made any friends? Laurie says you get plenty of chance for a gossip.’

‘I never gossip,’ said Roma stiffly. ‘But I do discuss things with people in the village. I joined the Probus Club, and we have very interesting meetings. There are two or three women I get on fairly well with.’

‘You always were one for women friends,’ said Helen. ‘Do you still keep up with Caroline? And Fenella Frobisher. I used to hate Fenella Frobisher when she came to our house.’

‘We write two or three times a year,’ said Roma. ‘They’ve got quite boring, to be honest. All about grandchildren and Caribbean cruises. They don’t seem to care about things any more.’

‘Getting old,’ said Helen unfeelingly. ‘Though I did think you and Caroline would go on marching and protesting till you dropped. I’ll never forget seeing you on telly when there was all that carry-on at Greenham Common.’

Roma sighed. ‘A million years ago,’ she murmured.

Laurie disappeared into the kitchen for ten minutes, before inviting the sisters to join him for an early supper. He’d laid out an impressive assortment of salads, with cold chicken and hard-boiled eggs. ‘Wow!’ said Helen. ‘You’re a magician!’

‘He’s very good with food,’ said Roma complacently. ‘We’ll eat in an hour or so. Come and see the garden first. You’ve got your camera, I see.’

Helen remembered her picture ideas and glanced at the sky. ‘Can I do a few shots with the beehives in the background?’ she said. ‘I don’t need to get too close, with the long lens.’

‘They won’t hurt you,’ Roma said coolly.

Helen spent twenty minutes trying to capture the roses and mallow and potentilla in the foreground, with the hives still visible in the distance. She seemed to be having problems. ‘What’s the matter?’ Roma demanded.

‘The depth of field’s all wrong,’ Helen muttered. ‘The hives are so out of focus, nobody’s going to know what they are.’

‘Can’t help you there,’ shrugged Roma.

‘I know!’ Helen squatted down low in the long grass just inside the field beyond the garden. ‘These grass heads are gorgeous when you see them up close. And it’s long over there too, by the hives.’

‘Careful!’ Roma teased. ‘Don’t get too close.’

Helen threw her a savage look. ‘It’s not something to joke about,’ she spat. ‘It’d serve you right if you got stung to death yourself, one of these days.’

‘Well I won’t. You can bet everything you’ve got on that.’

‘I probably can, too,’ Helen glowered. ‘But that’s my shot, all the same.’ She eyed the hives. ‘I probably need to be about twenty feet away.’ Bravely she covered the distance, leaving Roma to watch in amusement. She refused to acknowledge to herself that the bees were always tetchy in August, with their honey stores to protect and the atavistic awareness of the impending end of the summer. The hive-robbing wasps wouldn’t have improved things, either. There was, in short, a fair chance that her sister would get stung if she approached too closely – especially if she was wearing any sort of perfume.

But all was well. Lying on her stomach, the camera held awkwardly in front of her, Helen took her time in framing her shots. At last she returned triumphant. ‘Brilliant!’ she enthused. ‘There was even a butterfly in a couple of them.’

‘I should charge you a fee for using my props,’ said Roma sourly.

‘I had a letter from Penn,’ Helen began, over the salads. “She seems worried about Justine.’ Helen had promised herself that she would not be intimidated by Roma’s sensitive areas. Where other people tiptoed around her and obeyed unspoken taboos, Helen steeled herself and plunged in. Having survived the bees, her courage levels had risen. Roma might be her big sister, argumentative and irritable, but she seldom turned the full force of her rage or sarcasm onto Helen.

‘Oh, yes. Nobody seems to know where Justine is. Penn even got me worried about it for a few minutes. But really, I think it’s a fuss about nothing. If there’d been some sort of disaster, we’d have heard about it by now. The thoughtless creature has just gone off without telling anyone. To be perfectly honest …’ she paused, apparently having second thoughts. ‘Well, Penn seems to have been seeing an awful lot of Justine. I wondered whether she felt she needed a bit of space.’

Helen sifted this jumble thoughtfully, overlooking the implied slight against her own daughter. ‘I’m surprised you think you know anything about your daughter’s motives. It’s at least five years now, isn’t it? She’s probably a completely different person by this time.’

‘Have you seen her?’ The question was abrupt.

‘Once. She came to us for a weekend with Penn, a couple of years ago. Her hair was so short, it was like an animal’s coat. She looked very strange. But Penn tells me it’s long again now.’

‘Hmm,’ Roma uttered, as if quite uninterested.

‘So you’re not bothered that she’s gone missing?’

‘It doesn’t make any difference to me, does it? She’s been dead to me for years anyway.’

‘Dead? Do you think she’s dead?’

Laurie, at the end of the table, cleared his throat. ‘She doesn’t really mean that,’ he said softly, as if the suggestion upset him. ‘She’s more worried than she’ll admit.’ He twinkled fondly at his wife, but she did not seem inclined to twinkle back.

‘Don’t speak for me, please,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone how you were feeling.’

‘Sorry,’ he put up his hands defensively. ‘You’re quite right.’

‘But are you worried or aren’t you?’ Helen demanded. ‘Why haven’t you gone to the police? Why’s it all been left for Penn to investigate?’

‘It hasn’t. There’s a chap doing it for us.’

‘Oh?’

‘It sounds a bit odd, I suppose. He’s married to Karen, which is a coincidence, because I happen to know him as well.’

‘Karen? You mean Sebastian’s niece?’

‘The very one. I imagine you knew her as a child. So it’s all in the family.’

Helen went dreamy for a moment. ‘I haven’t seen Karen for – must be twenty years.’

‘Well, go and see her now, why don’t you? She lives in North Staverton, this side of Bradbourne. It’s only about six miles. She’s bound to be there. She’s got two small children.’

‘No,’ Helen decided. ‘I won’t go now. But I’m glad I’ve caught up with what’s going on. I hate feeling left out.’

‘Nothing’s going on,’ Roma said irritably. ‘It’s typical of Justine, getting everyone running round in circles. She always was thoughtless.’

‘Poor Justine,’ Helen muttered. ‘She could never do anything right, could she.’

‘She was perverse. She deliberately went against me, every chance she got. It was so stupid. That’s what I can’t get over. Like a brainless sheep, insisting on getting tangled in the densest brambles, when there’s a perfectly good path right beside it. That’s just how I see Justine – ramming her head into bramble thickets, just because I told her not to.’

‘She was just a normal teenager,’ said Helen quietly. ‘You over-reacted at every little thing. You made her far worse. All that foolishness about her turning out like our poor Uncle Angus. Either that or Carlos. You wished bad things on her with your nonsense. You made it happen.’

‘I lost interest,’ said Roma brutally. ‘I got terribly terribly bored by it.’

‘Don’t fool yourself,’ Helen said. ‘It certainly wasn’t boredom that caused all the trouble. What’s more, the way I heard it, it wasn’t even you who made the break in the end.’

Roma scowled and said nothing to that. Helen began again on a lighter note. ‘So what  happens now? I don’t think Penn’s going to let it drop. It’s not particularly common for a woman of twenty-six to go off without telling anybody.’

‘It’s a lot less common for her to be abducted and murdered,’ Roma flashed back.

‘Well, I hope for Penn’s sake that she shows up soon. My dear daughter doesn’t cope very well with mysteries. She gets scared.’

‘She didn’t strike me as scared when she came to see us last week. She seemed to be on rather good form, actually.’

‘Well, she would with you,’ said Helen. ‘Not that you’d notice if she was having a breakdown in the middle of your patio. You’ve never been aware of how anybody was feeling.’

‘Phooey,’ said Roma, with finality.