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childhood in which she had frequently been old enough to be party to information that her siblings were deemed too young to understand. She turned her back to the window.
    “Dad, about Mum’s ashes,” she said. “We don’t have to scatter them this weekend if you don’t want to.”
    The usual grief that arced across Rowan’s face upon hearing Lydia mentioned was this time corrupted with something else that Sophie could not identify.
    “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Forget it, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
    “No, it’s time,” he said.
    “OK.” She gestured to the garden. “The obvious place is out here, I suppose. We could plant a tree, maybe? Or even another orchard. Or we don’t have to plant anything, we could just say a few words and . . .
when
should we do it? I don’t know, Dad, what do you think?”
    “Mooorniiiing!” Tara bounded into the kitchen. “I’m starving. Shall we get breakfast on?” Her exuberance closed the possibility of serious discussion.
    Sophie knew that the smell of a full English breakfast beckoning its way up the stairs would rouse the sleepers. She threw some rashers in a pan, melted a knob of butter for eggs. The grease worked its way into her skin and hair, but that smell would soon be overpowered by wood smoke.
    Rowan watched Tara run a breadknife through a loaf of unsliced white and said, “I can’t believe that, in women of your generation and of your education, it’s still you who do all the cooking and the men who come downstairs and eat it.”
    “Not true,” said Tara. “Will and Matt are doing some big supper thing later. And anyway, not
all
the women are downstairs cooking.”
    Rowan looked blank.
    “Felix has brought a girl with him,” said Sophie.
    Shock stole the color from Rowan’s cheeks so that the full force of his hangover showed on his face. “But I thought . . . I thought it would all be
family,
” he said.
    “Matt’s not technically family,” said Tara.
    “That’s different. I
know
Matt. And I knew he was coming. This weekend is—I just didn’t bank on having to deal with a stranger.” He peered into his mug as though the answer lay in the tea leaves. “What’s she like, then, this . . . ?”
    “Kerry,” said Sophie, cracking an egg into the pan. “She’s . . . quiet. Pretty.”
    “She’s not
pretty,
” said Tara. “You’re pretty. She’s
stunning
. It’s like the Phantom of the Opera has pulled Helen of Troy.”
    Rowan raised his eyebrows, whether at the news that Felix had a beautiful girlfriend or Tara’s uncharacteristic breaking of the omertà surrounding her brother’s looks, it was impossible to tell.
    The cooking smells had worked their magic and suddenly the kitchen was full of pajamaed kids and hastily dressed adults fighting for a place at the table. Toby was engrossed in a tattered book about maritime disasters, open on a page about the
Mary Rose.
    “Did you know that one theory about how the Tar Barrels began is that they’re connected with the beacons that warned the Spanish Armada was coming?” said Rowan.
    “The
Mary Rose
wasn’t in the Armada,” said Toby. “She sank in 1545.”
    “I knew that.” Rowan laughed. “I was testing you.”
    “Well, I passed.”
    “Tobes, it’s bad enough that Grandpa wants to be a teacher on holiday,” said Jake. “But it’s all kinds of wrong that you want to be at school.”
    Rowan sat at the head, with Will opposite, everyone else cramming onto the long refectory benches so like the ones at school.
    “All these children, it’s enough to instill misanthropy into the most open of hearts,” said Felix cheerfully, hoisting Charlie onto a bench. “Will, you’re a walking advertisement for the benefits of vasectomy.”
    “I haven’t had a vasectomy.”
    “Exactly.”
    Will and Sophie’s children had, by chance, arranged themselves in age order. The color of their hair ran the spectrum from Edie’s white-blond to the dark sand of