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‘I’m sorry,’ she said and it wasn’t to apologize, it was to qualify. ‘It’s just it sounded like you don’t want me here.’
    ‘It’s not that,’ her mother said, ‘but I really don’t know what you’re even doing here.’
    For years, Oriana had felt better about her relationship with her mother by believing, quite categorically, that her mother had been in the wrong. Now it was obvious that in this current situation, Rachel was actually quite right. ‘Why
have
you come back?’ she asked. ‘Why give up a charmed life? What happened to Casey – I’m assuming you guys are through?’
    Oriana sighed and shrugged as if it was no big deal and just a tiresome topic. ‘It was time for a change,’ she shrugged. ‘It was hard for a while – but I’ve moved on. And I don’t really want to talk about it.’
    ‘And you’re OK?’
    ‘It was my call. I’m
fine
.’
    ‘You’re sure?’
    ‘Look at me!’
    ‘You’re thin.’
    ‘Thin’s good! I’m fit.’
    ‘You’re too thin – for you.’
    ‘Nonsense. I eat like a horse – you’ve watched me! Two poached eggs and toast for breakfast. Seconds at supper. Bernard’s “nice biscuit” at regular intervals throughout the day.’
    ‘You look like you’ve been in the wars,’ Rachel said in Bernard’s voice. Her transatlantic accent might have been tempered by four decades of Derbyshire, but some phrases would simply never suit her.
    ‘Mother, I’m
fine
,’ Oriana said. ‘Casey is fine too. We’re still great friends – but I had to come back. You know – work, tax, stuff. And I’m thirty-four.’
    ‘Time waits for no man.’ Rachel channelled Bernard again. She felt irritated. Her daughter had just said emphatically, convincingly, that she was fine. The thinness, the paleness – perhaps that was just how Oriana in her thirties was meant to look. ‘Now you’re back – for good – will you go see Robin?’
    The name hung like a dead man on the gallows, and silent, loaded looks swung back and forth between mother and daughter.
    ‘Now you’re back – you ought to.’
    ‘Why would he even know that I’m back?’
    ‘He doesn’t. He wouldn’t.’ Rachel paused. ‘But this isn’t a holiday, a flying visit. You have a duty.’
    Oriana had to take a moment. A knot of accusations and retorts were loaded onto the tip of her tongue and aimed dangerously at Rachel. She bit it.
    ‘You don’t keep in touch? At all?’ Rachel said.
    ‘You know I don’t. You know that.’
    ‘I just thought—’
    ‘Well,
don’t
.’
    ‘You’re a lot older now, Oriana – and he’s not getting any younger.’
    ‘What’s that meant to mean?’
    ‘It means—’
    ‘Have
you
seen him?’ Oriana made the notion sound just as preposterous.
    ‘No – but that’s different.’
    ‘How so?’
    ‘He’s your father – for all his faults, he is still your father.’
    How long? When was the last time? Oriana rifled through fading memories, their chronology confused, as if sifting through a disintegrating pile of documents.
    ‘Louis Bayford’s funeral,’ Oriana said.
    Her mother paused. ‘That was the last time I saw him, myself. But you didn’t stay. You left straight after the service. You disappeared. He never knew you were there.’
    Nor did Malachy or Jed. Oriana plucked at the seam on a scatter cushion. That funeral. Five years ago? Six? She had sat at the back of the church, away from everyone, hiding down into her coat, fighting the urge to stare at the backs of their heads, Jed and Malachy; praying neither would turn and see her. She couldn’t even remember seeing her father there.
    She’d left as soon as she could – to avoid him not so much as them.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The doorbell had never worked and the knocker had fallen off many years ago. There had been a cowbell once – but that was now by the hearth because Django McCabe found it the perfect surface off which to strike Swan Vestas when lighting the fire. A bitterly cold March day