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soon as possible. Talking had calmed Rose down. She went through to tell Christos the news, but stopped in the doorway. He was standing in the middle of the room, naked, holding the equally naked, floppy body of Polly in his big arms. She had come round slightly and had a worn-out ecstatic smile on her face, like the clipframed print of Munch’s Death and the Maiden s he had on her bedroom wall. She looked beautiful. Christos was singing one of her songs to her, stroking her hair.
     
    Seeing them there like that, fitting together like two worn but beautifully jewelled belt clasps, Rose knew that there would never be a house on a cliff for her and Christos.
     
    And she was right: through Polly’s stay in hospital and the media hoo-ha and the rehab, Christos hardly left her side. Rose was forgotten, and all she had of him was that one night. But, in his absence, his best friend and fellow MA student Gareth Cunningham just sort of stepped in. And shortly after that, it was the degree show, and then there was no time for looking back.
     
    Rose could have felt resentful about Christos going off with Polly, but she saw that, once introduced, they had no choice. It was hardly that Polly had stolen him from her – she had, after all, been unconscious when he fell in love with her.
     
    It was just one of those things that Polly did to men.
     
    ‘Why have we stopped?’ Anna had woken up and was leaning forward in the car, tapping Rose on the shoulder.
     
    ‘Who knows. Some sort of roadworks perhaps, or an accident,’ Rose said. ‘Try and get back to sleep.’
     
    ‘I’ll just look out as we go along. I like the lights in the rain.’ Anna leaned back and pressed her face on the cold condensation of the window.
     
    Soon they were off again, crawling along the shining road, the exhaust from the cars around them like a swirling fog.
     
    Rose saw the ambulance lights up ahead, and the swooping blue light of the police cars.
     
    ‘It’s an accident. Look the other way, Anna.’
     
    They crawled past the scene. It looked as if a lorry had ploughed into a people-carrier that had been parked on the hard shoulder, half crushing it, sending it out into the path of the traffic coming behind the lorry.
     
    ‘Look away, Anna!’ Rose yelled as they went past the people-carrier. It was on their side of the road and, despite her better instincts, she couldn’t look away herself. She saw the emergency workers trying to get at the occupants, who looked like a family of puppets with their strings all cut. One small body – it looked like the first to be freed – was being stretchered away under a blanket. Rose looked sharply up the floodlit grass verge and saw a little girl sprawled near the top, one leg bent right under her body, her head at an unnatural angle, her eyes open. A couple of paramedics stood over her. One looked like he was crying.
     

Six
     
    Gareth was in his studio when they finally arrived, two hours later than planned. He didn’t come out to the car to greet them, which Rose chose to see as a good thing. If he was so involved in his work, this was progress, and she wasn’t going to spend a moment supposing that his not showing might have more to do with the fact that he wasn’t keen on seeing Polly.
     
    ‘You go in, it’s unlocked,’ Rose said to Polly and the boys. ‘Anna will show you the way.’ And her little girl led them off down through the herb garden to the front door.
     
    ‘Mind the steps,’ Anna said, looking back, feeling the responsibility. ‘There’s lots.’
     
    Rose unbuckled Flossie’s car seat and lodged the handle in the crook of her arm. She scooped up the bottles of milk she had picked up at the late-night garage on the main road outside the village and followed the others down to the house.
     
    ‘Very nice,’ Polly said, standing dwarfed by the vaulted kitchen ceiling. ‘Must’ve cost a bob or two.’
     
    ‘The house was a wreck, so it was actually quite cheap