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English-speaking neighbour, replied to her letter, sending it, as planned, care of Edgar’s flat.
    ‘My dear Victoria. This has come as a terrible shock. Firstly, of course, I refer to the death of your dear mother. Then I come to a more serious matter. That of your intention to marry. I hope you are entering into this of your own accord; that you are exercising your own free will. You were, after all, very happy here. Are you under any unreasonable pressure? You know the rules, don’t you? Twenty-four of everything. No young lady in my day would have considered anything less. Starting with twenty-four handkerchiefs. I look forward to seeing you here again as soon as possible and I, for one, believe in very long engagements.’
    Before the inner myth that she had woven into herselfexploded, she went back to Italy with the ring on her finger and hoped that once she had a base with Edgar she would take proper painting lessons. Go to art classes; have a baby. Edgar was kind and said he loved her. Seeing her off at the station, Edgar outlined plans. He was to take out an open-dated, special licence and be there and ready to marry her as soon as she returned. He planned to explain to his mother that the wedding was to be private on account of recent death. Then there might be a party at Christmas time.
    She fingered the ring.
    Tears trickling through slits, Elena carried in the breakfast tray and clipped back mosquito nets around the bed although it was late in the season for such insects. So. The
signorina
was going to be married. To that handsome fellow she had spent nights with at the time of the thunderstorm. She and Dante had already waited for four years. Dante had suffered once more in the storm. It had been too rough for fish but more sea horses had been washed up. Shoals of them.
    Laurence probed about in a velvet-padded box.
    ‘I wish I could give you twenty-four of these,’ he said, presenting a brooch; a shimmering stone once worn by his wife.
    There were no more jokes about rash engagements.
    Victoria meditated on her future and on Lettice’s letter. The one telling of Edgar’s very existence. It made her shudder. Her future husband, it seemed, took his mother seriously; a symbol of culture and polish. But a loving son was a good thing to be. Anyway, Lettice might not be as bad in the flesh as she was on paper. There might be a good heart beneath the furbelows.
    Victoria sifted through a heap of letters in answer to various leads she had followed whilst searching for her replacement. A letter of recommendation came from the editor of a literary magazine. His name carried weight with Laurence.
    ‘I write to introduce you to a young cousin of my wife’s. Mungo Craddock. He is just down from Oxford and aspires to write. I think you would take to him. He is sensitive and a Roman Catholic convert. Some priest in Oxford got hold of him during his second year. He is a serious boy and a member of a large family. I think he would fit in. I urge you to give him a try.’
    Laurence waved his much-waved hand.
    ‘Roman Catholic convert! No. No. That wouldn’t do at all.’
    In other ways Mungo sounded suitable.
    Although she was in no real hurry to leave, she knew that she must get on with plans and wrote to the young man – Roman Catholic convert or not.
    Life there was, in many ways, ideal but it stood still as it waited for Laurence to die. His stepdaughter was, anyway, unlikely to have need of her there.
    Mungo Craddock’s well-mannered reply whistled back.

Chapter 9
    I t was late October when Mungo Craddock arrived. Victoria had promised Laurence that she would overlap with him for a week to show him the ropes.
    Taking up a vigil at her window overlooking the porch, Victoria dug her elbows hard down into the crumble of stonework on the sill. She covered her face with both hands and squinted between cracks. Playing for time and willing it to pass, she clasped her fingers together and then quickly parted them