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fear Hermione could deal with. He had grown entirely bald, his cranium as red as his face, which was hidden from the cheekbones downward by a thick gingery beard. His suit was civil-service grey but shabby as social security now. “So isn’t your father coming?” Edith demanded. “We understood he was.”
    “He said he would.” Lance paused, his pale lips parting within his beard as if he found it hard to breathe. “And then he said he’d left home because of Auntie Queenie, and he wouldn’t have her thinking he’d forgiven her just because she was dead.”
    “We both left home as soon as we were old enough to get away from her living our lives for us,” Keith said. “My only regret was that our parents couldn’t make their escape too.”
    “So Richard sent you instead, did he?” Edith accused Lance.
    “I wanted to come,” Lance said, more sluggishly than before. His slowness was the price of treatment, Alison realised. “I thought someone should, and I wanted to see the family. I hoped you wouldn’t mind.”
    “We’re glad you did,” Hermione assured him.
    “You don’t think it’s cheeky of me to pay my respects, then? I was always a bit scared of Auntie Queenie. I used to feel she knew whatever I was thinking.”
    Hermione turned quickly to the window. “Is that the cars?” she pleaded.
    The limousines weren’t due for half an hour. Derek kept Rowan outside, away from Lance, where she gazed across the bay and pouted because the telescopes had been too expensive. Now and then Derek glanced through the window at Alison, winked at her or made a face like swallowing a slice of lemon by mistake or pretended to jump back from the sight of the family gathering, and she stuck her tongue out at him when nobody was looking: she’d never said that family life had no drawbacks. The family made conversation as best they could, avoiding the subject of Queenie for Hermione’s sake and slowing down whenever Lance had anything to say. The limousines came as a relief.
    Derek, Rowan and the sisters rode in the first grey car, Lance and the others followed. Oldsters by the factories on the coast road stood respectfully until the limousines had passed. A train on the shoreside railway raced the limousines through Glan-y-don, another caught them up at Ffynnongroew, and then the cars turned away from Talacre and its caravans clustering near the disused lighthouse, uphill through Gronant to the churchyard.
    Queenie and her parents had rented a summer cottage in Gronant. When her mother had died there, Queenie’s father had had her buried near the place they most loved. He’d moved into the room at the top of the Waterloo house so that he could see where he would eventually rejoin his wife. Bright as the sun was, he would have seen little on a day like this. The bay was a swarm of blinding diamonds, the sandy coast where Queenie’s house stood streamed like flames.
    The vicar met the party at the door of the chapel, a squat building with plump white walls, and ushered them into the interior, where sainted windows draped colours over the pine pews. It was as calm as Alison hoped Hermione would be. But Hermione peered down the aisle at the coffin. “Who wanted her left uncovered?”
    They glanced blankly at one another. “I’ll have them screw the lid on,” Keith said.
    “We ought to say goodbye,” Hermione said with some bravado, and stepped forward. Alison paced her, expecting grotesquely to see Queenie’s chin first over the side of the casket. The undertakers had tamed Queenie’s features and lent her cheeks a slumbering bloom that reminded Alison of Queenie’s last days, when she had seemed able to make herself look younger by her unshakable faith in herself. At least she looked more peaceful than Alison had ever seen her—but Hermione stumbled forward, her arms trembling by her sides, and stared into the coffin. “Who gave her that?” she almost screamed.

Chapter Four
    He shouldn’t have brought