He was entirely unresentful that Alice had declined to set up house with him, and as the weeks wore on he came to think that she had been quite right and that he very much liked his new double life, single in Reading, family at East Cottage. He began, too, to feel first pity and then affection for Clodagh. Without Clodagh, he would not have had these enriching and complementing roles. He made a list of winter projects for East Cottage

- 'Replace gutters where necessary - Clear wilderness behind shed - Start log pile - Replace all lavatory glass with plain, etc. etc.' - which he tacked up in the kitchen so that Elizabeth, who came, astonishingly, for two nights, was drawn back and back to it, to read it over and over as if she couldn't believe her eyes.

The children thought her peculiar, but peaceful, because she did not attempt to be affectionate. She seemed to like East Cottage and professed herself quite prepared to paint window frames, which she then did patiently for forty-eight hours. She declined, to Alice's relief, to have any kind of conversation even approaching a heart-to-heart, and only said, while they were washing up once and the kitchen was noisy with the children, 'Well, you've taken a very long time to work yourself through all that nonsense, and you chose a very strange way out, but you've done it. And that's a great deal.'

When she left, she said she was going to work for the Citizens' Advice Bureau and had taken a flat in central Colchester.

'I should have done it ten years ago. Ann is a very enervating companion. But I'm doing it now, just in time. Don't come and see me, it's a dreadful journey. I shall come and see you.'

When she had gone, James said, 'Was that really a granny?'

'Yes!'

'Oh,' he said, 'I thought she was a school lady.'

From Cecily and Richard, Alice heard nothing. Cecily saw the children when they were with Martin, and they would return to East Cottage with new jerseys and bars of chocolate and books. This enraged Alice.

'It shouldn't,' Sam said. 'They are just the sad symbols of frustrated power.'

'I loved her so much,' Alice said. 'And now I can hardly bear to think of her. She wanted to eat me up.'

'Didn't Clodagh?'

Alice looked deeply distressed.

'Oh,' she said, 'Don't-'

Sam was sorry.

'I didn't mean they were the same. In any way. Oh, Allie-'

But she wouldn't speak of it any more and after a while Sam heard her, in her bedroom, crying.

'Why is Mummy crying?' Natasha said.

'Because she is missing Clodagh.'

Natasha nodded.

'Sometimes,' she said, 'that makes me cry, too.'

/

East Cottage was half a mile out of a village. It was an odd village, without a shop or a pub, and the church only had a service every three weeks. The priest, a young, cadaverous, scowling man, who was deeply frustrated to find himself with five rural churches instead of the inner city parish he had wanted, came to see Alice and sat drinking mug after mug of tea while he told her how useless he felt. He'd had some sort of breakdown - he would not, mysteriously, be precise - and this living was supposed to be his stepping stone back to his real calling. He was called Mark Murphy. Alice liked him. On his second visit - he came for supper and ate as voraciously as he had drunk tea - she told him, as a kind of test, about Clodagh, and he said, 'Love's terrifyingly hard to come by, isn't it? You have to grab it when you get the chance.'

His vicarage was a small, unappealing modern house in a neighbouring village which he said had the soul of a shoebox. He took to coming on Saturdays sometimes, to help Sam with clearing the garden, and when Sam asked him if he shouldn't be at home with his family, he said there wasn't one to be at home with because his wife had left him two years ago and had gone home to Newcastle with their baby.

'I'm sorry,' Sam said.

'Yes,' Mark Murphy said, and sighed. 'So am I. She said she had no idea that the other woman in a priest's life might turn out to be God.'

Sometimes, in the lane going down to the main road to Salisbury, Alice passed a fair girl driving a dented Citroen with the back full of children. They had passed each other indifferently several times and then, by mutual consent, began to smile and wave. The girl left a note in the wooden mail box at Alice's gate.

'I'm Priscilla Mayne,' the note said. 'I live half a mile the other side of the village in the Victorian ruin that looks like a squat. No telephone yet. Come and see me when you feel like it.'

Alice thought she would feel like it very soon. When a postcard came from Anthony - she put it in the Rayburn at once - and one from John Murray-French which said, The new Grey House people are decent and dull. Don't lose touch,' she felt in some peculiar way that the possibilities in the as yet unknown Priscilla Mayne had somehow much more reality than her past, known though it was. Sam told her that this was the stuff of freedom, and that she must learn to drink whisky.

'Why?' she said laughing.

'Robert Burns. "Freedom and whisky gang together." Actually, freedom is headier than whisky but why not celebrate one with the other?'

It was almost Christmas before Juliet came to East Cottage. She came on a wet day when the cottage, still in a state of raw upheaval, presented its most lowering aspect, and Alice came upon her standing by her car and staring at the mountainous, sodden bonfire of Sam's clearance schemes.

'AUie-'

Alice seized her arm.

'Come in. Come in out of the rain. I've just made some unsuccessful bread.'

In the kitchen, Juliet burst into tears.

'Allie, it's all so awful-'

'No. No, it isn't. I like it here.'

'I don't mean here. I mean life in Pitcombe.'

'Don't be silly. We can't have left that big a hole-'

Juliet said, sniffing, 'You've left heaps of holes. Great black ones. People are falling in all over the place. I've been in one for months. That's why I didn't come.'

'Isn't everyone making rather a meal of it?'

'Of course they are. Villages just do. Martin's seeing someone called Sophie. I cannot tell you how suitable she is. She drives a Mini and has a King Charles spaniel. Allie, I really hate you.'

'Yes,' Alice said. ,

'I do. How could you leave us all in the lurch like this? Henry's got so pompous I think I'll have to knife him. It's only kind. I'm calling him Eustace in the mean time so I expect he'll knife me first. Allie,' Juliet said, bursting into fresh tears, 'it's such a relief to see you even if I think your behaviour so detestable that I can't think how it can be.'

Alice poured them both a glass of wine.

'I'm doing the school run,' Juliet said. 'I really shouldn't. Blubbing and booze makes me quite incapable of anything except more blubbing and booze. Are you pleased to see me?'

Tremendously.'

'Have you got new friends?'

'One. And I'm planning another.'

'Don't like them too much-'

That's not very kind.'

'I don't want to be kind,' Juliet said, 'I want to punish you like mad.'

Alice took Juliet all over the cottage and explained what she was going to do with it. Juliet said it hardly seemed worth it.

'It isn't just a cottage,' Alice said.

Juliet said too right, it wasn't. They got Charlie up from his rest and took him down to the kitchen, and he sat in his highchair, damp with sleep, and yawned at his lunch. Alice gave Juliet more wine and made omelettes and they talked about Cecily and Martin and the Unwins, and when Juliet said she really must go, really, truly, she came and put her arms round Alice and kissed her, a thing she had almost never done, and then she drove away in the rain, waving and waving.

When she had gone, Alice took Charlie into the sitting room and put him on the floor with his cars and the garage she had made him out of a grocery carton. Then she brought in coal and wood and newspapers to light a fire before the children came back from school, and knelt by Charlie, blowing at the kindling. When it had flared up comfortably, she sat back on her heels and watched the flames and Charlie crawled into her lap and offered her a police car. She put her arms round him and laid her cheek on his warm head. Even as she sat there, holding Charlie, Clodagh was somewhere above her, above those relentless grey clouds, flying alone to New York. Alice shut her eyes. Clodagh. To be remembered always with pain and thankfulness.

THE END