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have you remembered anything else? I don’t want to pressure you, and I’m sure your memory will come back as soon as it wants to, but it’s a magnificent mystery.’
    ‘Nothing much,’ I said, avoiding her eye. ‘Bits of my childhood, really. My father – I lived with him, and my mother died when I was born. I don’t think I’d really forgotten those things though.’
    ‘But nothing of how you came to be out on the road that night?’
    I shook my head.
    ‘No, and no names or places of where I lived. I’m so sorry. I hate to be an imposition.’ I felt so guilty I began to cry. The hot tears stung my eyes but I couldn’t wipe them away as my hands were occupied in twisting my skirts into thick ropes. In my anguish, I considered that I was creating the means to hang myself. The skin of my palms began to burn and I released the fabric, my fingers trembling slightly as I focussed all of my energy into keeping control of myself.
    I deserved none of their kindness, and in return I was just lying to them and allowing them to harbour a wanted murderer.
    ‘Now then, no need to worry, dear.’ Edwina glided over onto the sofa and took me in her arms. ‘It must be so difficult for you, and I want you to know you can stay as long as you like. As far as I’m concerned, it’s so nice having someone young around the place I don’t mind if you stay forever. All I’m worried about is you having a family out there who miss you and are scared about what’s happened to you.’
    After a few minutes of sobbing into her shoulder, I managed to calm my tears, and felt an awful lot better, even though I knew I shouldn’t.
    ‘My feet are nearly better now, and my head doesn’t hurt half so much as it used to,’ I told her. ‘So please – let me make myself useful. There must be something I can do to repay you.’
    Edwina looked at me closely, and I worried for a moment she would refuse me.
    ‘Well,’ she said at length, ‘the garden could do with a tidy. I don’t have the knees for weeding any more, and Jane’s far too busy to spare any time for upkeep. Tristan tries, bless him, but I hate to tear him away from his painting. I do what I can, but it’s getting a little beyond me – even the herb garden.’
    ‘Could I?’ I had longed for a garden, even while my mind had been too preoccupied with other things to register that longing. Tending to the cottage garden would be heaven.
    ‘It seems to me that it would be the perfect solution.’
    The day was sunny but cool, so I carefully climbed the stairs in search of a wrapper. Edwina offered to fetch me one, but I felt that wouldn’t really be the best way to start my repaying her kindness, by having her do yet more for me.
    I passed Tristan on the stairs, a smudge of paint on his face and his blonde hair escaping the ribbon he had tied at his neck. He bounded down the stairs like I’ve seen dogs lope across fields. I pressed myself against the wall as he passed me, not least to keep my balance. He threw a smile in my direction as he strode into the kitchen, calling out to Edwina about sandwiches.
    He had left the door to his studio wide open, and as I passed on the way to my own room, I could not help but look in. The overall impression was one of mess, with dust sheets and paint cans and brushes strewn all over the floor, yet it was a clean mess. All the cans were tightly closed, and the brushes were, if not pristine, clean and their bristles were unmatted.
    From the doorway I could see the corners of piles of paper, and a table with a few broken twigs of charcoal scattered across the surface. I looked down the stairs and strained my ears for sounds of movement. Then I went in.
    The light was peculiar, I suppose because there was nowhere else in the house quite like it. While the studio, like the sitting room, faced over the garden, its height meant that it wasn’t shaded by the trees. The light was pure sunlight, white as anything, and set the whitewashed walls to