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cutting suddenly into her reluctant answers to some probing by her mother, ‘Are you going to take me for a walk this afternoon – I’m feeling energetic – a nice long instructive windy walk, how about that?’
    ‘Oh dear,’ said Laura, ‘are you that kind of person? Outdoor and long walks and so forth. Hugh was, of course. It does rather run in the family.’
    Kate said, ‘Well, he could hardly have been an archaeologist and not been, could he, Ma?’
    Laura turned to Tom. ‘And by the way, do say Laura, won’t you, not Mrs Paxton. I wish Kate would do the same but not a hope – she dropped Mummy for reasons best known to herself and now it’s this horrid “Ma”, I must say I do think that at this point in time Laura would be nicer, but there it is. She’s a stubborn girl, my Kate.’
    ‘Isn’t calling parents by their Christian names rather out of date?’ said Tom. ‘I thought it was a thirties sort of thing. Like vegetarianism and progressive schools.’
    Laura gave a him a look of dislike. ‘Oh, I daresay one is very out of touch,’ she said. ‘It’s just a matter of what one personally prefers. Is something wrong, Nellie?’
    She was laughing, Tom realised, the aunt. You could be forgiven for thinking that odd strangled sound was one of distress, not pleasure. And Kate was grinning at her, a different, normal, relaxed Kate; his Kate, come to that.
    ‘Well,’ said Laura, ‘let’s eat. I’ve spent a lot of time making something rather nice. Kate, will you see to Aunt Nellie while I pop through to the kitchen – Tom my dear, perhaps you’d give me a hand with plates and whatnot.’

    ‘Oh,’ she said, at lunch, ‘I quite forgot to tell you. I had a letter from some television man, a producer of something, Tony someone – they want to do a programme about Hugh. Film it here, and at some of his old digs. Isn’t that fun?’
    Kate put her knife and fork down with a clatter. ‘You never told me.’
    ‘That’s what I’m saying,’ said Laura impatiently. ‘It went out of my head – God knows why, it’s not as though that much ever happens these days.’
    ‘What did you say to him?’
    ‘I said yes, of course. I’d help as much as I can and so forth. P’raps we’ll all be in it, that would be amusing.’
    Kate said nothing; her neck glowed. Tom said to Laura, ‘What’s the programme?’
    ‘Oh, some cultural thing. It’s a series they’re doing on kind of intellectual people of the recent past – people who influenced the way different subjects are thought about. There’s one on that economist person – what’s his name?’
    ‘Keynes?’
    ‘I think so,’ said Laura vaguely. ‘And a poet – Auden, is it? Someone like that. And Hugh, and what’s that person who taught English at Cambridge that nobody liked? Those kind of people.’
    ‘Well, I wish they wouldn’t,’ said Kate with violence. ‘Dad would have loathed it, anyway.’
    Nellie had been silent for a lot of the meal, excluded often by the pace of conversation, though both Kate and Tom had made efforts to bring her in. Now she said, ‘One wonders what it is they are trying to show – something about the man or something about the subject. Quite different things, possibly.’
    There was a silence. Laura said, ‘Oh well, anyway it’s not that important but it will be a diversion, I daresay. Do you want coffee?’

    It was a warm afternoon of late spring. Out of the house, with the great blowy bowl of the landscape around him, Tom felt exhilarated. He took Kate’s hand and said, ‘Where are we going, can you walk to Avebury from here? Let’s go miles, I feel cooped up.’ And then a look at her clamped, dejected face reminded him that this might be less than tactful, and he put an arm round her and hugged her. ‘I don’t mean lunch, and your mum, though I do see what you’re on about now, love – I truly do. I just mean I want air – I’ve got deposits of B.M. grime in my lungs.’ She thawed, and