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Lithuania, when somebody dies on a day like this? They say that God loved them so much that he lit all the lamps of heaven to guide them on their way.’

Three
    A little after eight o’clock, Lloyd drove himself back to North Torrey. He switched on the car radio but KFSD was playing ‘Un Bel Di Vedremo’ from Madame Butterfly and he couldn’t bear it; it had always been Celia’s favourite. He drove the rest of the way home with tears running down his cheeks.
    As he turned into the driveway, a lantern was alight on the front verandah, and the living-room lights were shining, but only because they had been tripped by automatic timers. There was nobody waiting for him, and now there never would be.
    He parked his white BMW in the driveway and killed the engine. He stayed behind the wheel for three or four minutes, trying to decide if he really wanted to go inside. She was dead, but all of her clothes would still be there, her towel would still be hanging in the bathroom. Her photograph would still be smiling at him from his night-table. Most painful of all, he would still be able to smell her. Red, by Giorgio of Beverly Hills.
    He had opened the BMW’s glovebox to find the remote-control for opening the front gates, and her sunglasses and her lipstick had been lying inside, just where she had last tossed them. He had opened the lipstick case. Cantata Red.
    The evening was growing shadowy. The air was thick and warm, and there was a strong smell of eucalyptus and pine. Up above him, it looked as if God had stirred boysenberry jelly into the sky, the way Lloyd’s mother used to stir boysenberry jelly into his milk when he was a kid. I prefer boysenberry to any ordinary jam, somebody sang in the back of his brain.
    At last Lloyd climbed out of the car, slammed the door, and walked up to the house with the terrible reluctance of true grief. The ocean gleamed knowingly through the ferns—that peek of the North Shore for which they had paid so much, and about which they had teased themselves so often. They had even considered renaming the house Peek House.
    He opened the front door and went inside. The house seemed so pillow-silent that he was almost tempted to call out, ‘Hello? Celia?’
    His shoes barked across the hallway, which was floored in bleached and polished oak; but were silent across the living-room, which was thickly carpeted in cream-coloured wool. He walked right to the middle of the living-room and looked around, as if he hadn’t been here for years. There was a strong smell of oak, and new rugs. I prefer boysenberry to any . . .
    The living-room was painted plain pottery white and furnished with tasteful sparseness. Celia had always preferred simple furniture, open spaces. If only Lloyd had known how complicated her mind was. There were two couches, upholstered in pink-and-blue glazed cotton; two French-style armchairs; and a coffee-table with a driftwood sculpture on it, as well as a neatly marshalled stack of Opera News and Musical America.
    On the walls hung vivid oil paintings by local artists. A view of the Presidio, domed, white-walled, in shimmering sunlight. Next to it, a portrait of a Mexican woman, standing by an open adobe, selling lemons from a basket. The portrait was entitled, Who’ll Buy My Lemons?
    But the centre of visual and emotional gravity in the living-room—in fact the centre of visual and emotional gravity in the whole house—was Celia’s ice-white Yamaha grand piano, which Lloyd had given her when they first moved in. That piano had meant commitment, and permanence. A house of their own, a relationship which was going to last. ‘After all,’ Lloyd had told her, ‘you can storm out of the door with an overnight bag, but you can’t storm out of the door with a grand piano.’
    Fatally burned.
    Lloyd went over to the piano and picked out two or three plaintive notes. All those years that Celia had practised. All