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combination of excitement and anticipation had caught up with him. She turned off his story tape, and now that she was used to driving Winnie and had more or less mastered the vagaries of the gear-lever - roadworks and stop start traffic on the M25 had seen to that - she relaxed a little and thought how wonderfully free she felt chugging along in the inside lane of the M40 with High Wycombe soon to be ticked off on her mental route-planner. She loved the idea of being able to stop at a moment’s notice, park up wherever and feel instantly at home. It was this that had appealed to her when the idea had first occurred to her to take Ned travelling. A campervan would provide a home-from home environment that would give them a comforting sense of self sufficiency. And certainly, right now, with Ned at her side, she felt as if she had everything she would ever want in the world.
    A car overtook her and the driver gave her a wide smile. She wondered why. But then she remembered what Guy and David had done to the van - most of the streamers had blown away, but the balloons were still tied to the wing mirrors and door handles.
    She switched on the radio. A song came on that she recognised - it was Nanci Griffith singing ‘Waiting for Love’ - and it tugged painfully at her heart. She had first heard it when she was living in America, and it would be for ever synonymous with that period in her life.
    She had only recently arrived there, single and carefree, looking forward to the challenges of a year-long secondment at Phoenix’s headquarters in Wilmington. Determined to work hard and further her career, she had wanted to make the most of the opportunity.
    But it hadn’t been quite the career move she had thought it would be. She had returned home before the end of her secondment with a bruised heart and a pregnancy to explain to her friends and family.

Chapter Five
    Gabriel was up earlier than usual. Last night when he had drawn the curtains the track had fallen down. Dust and bits of plasterwork had showered over him and something had got into his eye. He had tried bathing it with an old eye-bath he had found in the medicine cupboard, but it hadn’t helped. Now, after a sleepless night, his eye hurt like hell and every time he blinked it felt as if the lid was coated with sandpaper.
    Before going downstairs to make himself some breakfast he went into the bathroom and had another rummage in the cabinet, hunting through the shelves of old pill bottles and pots of gunk Val had sworn by. Right at the back, on the top shelf, he found what he was looking for: an ancient eye patch. The elastic had perished but he tied a knot in it, and it held firmly enough around his head. His hands were so annoyingly stiff and clumsy that took him a few minutes to achieve this. He closed the cabinet door and took a long, hard look at himself in the dirty, black-spotted mirror.
    He was presented with an unshaven, grey-haired old man wearing a black eye-patch.
    He smoothed down his thick uncombed hair, which was sticking up all over his scalp, then he turned his head, and decided he looked no better sideways on. The long straight nose Anastasia had described as proud and regal had turned into something that didn’t fit on his face any more; it looked too big, as though he had borrowed it from an older brother in the hope that he might grow into it. His cheeks had lost their firmness and sagged under the weight of so many lines. His mouth had withered into a rigid downward curve. Thick drooping earlobes hung at either side of his face and abundant bristly tufts sprouted from them. Dear God, when had he become such an ugly brute?
    He walked the creaking length of the balustraded landing,
    avoiding the rucks in the threadbare runner, and paused, as he did every morning, to look down on the garden. The sun was still low in the eastern sky, but a pale light shone on the sloping lawn, planted sporadically with daffodils. It stretched down to a thick bank