Paul invited him to the party that evening, suggesting they could drive back together now; Gerald said he was busy in the afternoon. I'll let you know. I might come over later.

Elise worries about you. She thinks you're in a bad way.

I was in a bad way. I'm feeling better. Elise persuaded me to wash, which was a place to start, for which I'm grateful. And she drove over here when I was at your place, to get my pills for me.

Paul pretended he hadn't known this. She came in here?

She dropped something actually. Will you take it for her?

Gerald hunted through the heaps on his desk until he found a printed silk scarf Paul recognised. It smelled of Elise.

Did the pills work?

They did what they do. Under the nuanced cultural variation, the blunt chemical truncheons. It's not a fine science.

Elise complained that he'd been gone for hours; Paul didn't explain where he'd been. It was his job to get the fire going in the big barbecue that Elise had built out of stones from one of the ruined outhouses, the grill made by the local blacksmith. Becky and Joni arrived home with the first contingent of guests, children and parents from the school. The gang of children was soon running wild, looping around the house and garden, a few tiny ones staggering after them, down to the river where Becky womanfully scooped up the babies to safety and Joni swung from the branch of a tree to show it was hers, kicking out her legs over the water. Then they ran back again. Their parents shouted warnings and prohibitions.

Elise had made a summer punch, with mint and borage and strawberries floating in it, served in a gla.s.s jug frosted from the freezer. She had showered and washed her hair, and looked composed and demure in the new flowered shirt. He heard her tell the otter story as if it was funny, that he and the girls had wanted to stay on, staring at nothing in the dark, while she was frozen stiff. At first he could tell she was careful not to drink too much, because she had to manage heating the patties up in the oven and getting them onto serving plates, while keeping watch over the barbecue; once everyone had had something to eat, she allowed herself to be more reckless. One or two of the smallest children had fallen asleep by this time and been put into the beds upstairs; the rest were playing hide-and-seek all round the house and garden and in the fields. Light was withdrawing behind mauve bars of cloud on the horizon; a fume of shadow spread under the old apple trees in the meadow, the children's skulking or speeding forms indistinct in it, their noises amplified: a thud of footsteps if they were going for home, or the sudden yelp and relinquishment of defeat. The older children were organising this game, one of Ruth's boys and a girl. Joni didn't grasp the rules, or refused to play by them; she kept on running and squealing even after she'd been touched.

I needed this, Elise said, swallowing mouthfuls of the punch thirstily, relaxing, dropping against the back of her cane chair. I've been looking forward to this drink all day. Isn't this perfect? What a perfect evening!

Perfect food too, everyone agreed.

Paul was talking to Carwen, a friend who was the education officer for the nearby conservation area, about what he'd been reading that afternoon, in the book on elegy, about the asymmetry in complex systems how painstakingly long it took to construct them, and how almost instantaneously they could be destroyed: as true of social and cultural systems as it was of living organisms.

It's tragedy, built in to the very structure of things.

You could choose to look at it like that, Carwen said. But if I'm allowed to be a brutal scientist, destruction is also cleansing, it liberates the way for new systems.

Isn't that how tyrants have justified their wars? asked Ruth.

We can't afford to see it in that time scale, Paul said.

Don't you hate that word tragedy? said someone else. Everything's a f.u.c.king tragedy nowadays. They use 'tragedy' when they just mean an accident, or anything sad.

Don't spoil things, Paul, Elise said. Don't be all doom and gloom.

But in fact he was enjoying himself. He was buoyed up by his hopes for his new book. And he felt affectionate towards these people, even some of them he didn't know very well, even Ruth. Ruth looked pretty, she was wearing some kind of long patterned smock over jeans and it made her seem less b.u.t.toned-up, more girlish. She had been nice to him since their vigil waiting for the otters as if she withdrew somewhat from her solidarity with Elise, and felt sorry for him.

He took a call on his mobile, hurrying farther down the garden, where the signal was better. Elise tensed in her seat when she heard it ring, and he knew she was distracted from her own conversation, trying to work out who it was: afterwards he beckoned her to come over, so they could talk. Unsteady on her high heels when she stood up, she slipped out of the shoes and came in her bare feet across the gra.s.s. Bats were sketching their flight across the grey air. In the dusk her face was blurred, he could only clearly see her pale clothes, the dark of her cleavage where the top b.u.t.ton of her shirt was undone.

Who was it? Was it Gerald? Is he coming?

Her speech wasn't slurred, but aggressive; some layer of concealment had been stripped from between them. Where their feet bruised it, the gra.s.s sent up its yearning green smell, tugging at his emotions. He seemed to guess how Elise felt, eaten up as if something essential was pa.s.sing and she was prevented from reaching it, so that all she had to give, all her bloom, was going to waste.

It's Pia, he explained. I have to go. Something's up, I don't know what, I don't know exactly where she is, but she's left the flat, she needs me to drive and pick her up.

Oh, s.h.i.t, Paul. s.h.i.t! You can't drive anyway. You're drunk.

I'm not. I've only had a couple of gla.s.ses.

Why can't she go to Annelies?

She's already somewhere on her way here. She was. .h.i.tching, she's at a service station but she doesn't know which one, she's going to phone me back.

Can't she get a bus or something?

She's pregnant, El. And I don't even know what's happened, to make her leave. I'm afraid for her.

All right. OK.

I'll come and make my excuses to everyone.

XI.

Before he started the car, he checked his phone for messages from Pia. He saw that he had missed a text from Gerald, saying he was on his way to the party. He didn't see any need to pa.s.s this on. Gerald would be there in person soon enough.

Paul was sure he was all right to drive, although he had probably had more than the couple of gla.s.ses he'd owned up to. He liked night-driving. The empty roads weren't ba.n.a.l as they were in the day drawing the cover of darkness around them, they were transformed as if he was speeding through a different landscape, charged with mystique. He was full of apprehension for Pia. He had no idea what the matter was. She had refused to go into detail over the phone, she had been tearful, terse, desperate. Had she found out something about Marek, which she couldn't live with? Perhaps he had been arrested, or they were going to deport him; perhaps it was something private, worse, some worm of deviancy or cruelty that he, Paul, had lived alongside and not detected. Perhaps Marek had only waited until Paul was out of the way to reveal himself. When he tried to imagine the man he had liked, he came up against the locked door of Marek's unknown life. Already the time in that London flat was receding as if it had never belonged to him. When he thought about it from his perspective at Tre Rhiw, he was shocked at the casual drug-taking, the unfocused future, the lack of any genuine preparations for the baby's arrival.

These anxieties circled round and round in his mind, but he also experienced a certain exhilaration: here he was, flying through the night towards his daughter when she needed him. This rescue seemed a simplifying and cleansing thing; a pure demand that he could meet and live up to. On the motorway he found himself, even at this late hour, backed up behind slowed traffic at some point after he'd crossed the bridge into England, funnelled into one lane. At least the traffic never stopped moving, and it didn't take him too long to reach and pa.s.s the cause of the delay: there had been an accident, long enough ago for an ambulance to have arrived and for the police to be in charge. Two small cars were slewed across the road, facing the wrong direction altogether; the barrier along the central reservation was buckled, debris and broken gla.s.s strewn everywhere. Superst.i.tiously, and out of respect, Paul didn't look to see if anyone was badly hurt; he was aware that among the fluorescent jackets of the rescue services a few dazed young people stood around, woken up out of their lives into this disaster. He accelerated into the emptiness of the motorway ahead. When his phone buzzed, he pulled over onto the hard shoulder, more scrupulous after seeing the accident than he might have been. Pia texted that she was at Strensham services, and Paul answered that he'd be with her in less than an hour.

At that time of night the service area was ghostly: the staff outnumbered the customers, they looked around in the foyer from where they were grouped together, talking, when he walked in. One man was pushing a bucket on a wheeled trolley, washing the floor. Paul saw Pia in the cafe at once, bundled up in a windcheater with her back to him, her hair in two bunches, rucksack propped against the table beside her. The sight of her alone there, so intensely familiar, pierced him, and he hurried forward to claim her. When she turned around he saw that she had put the stud back in her lip. She was very pale. She hadn't made up her face, and her sulky expression reminded him of her childhood.

G.o.d, I couldn't have waited here another moment, she said. They're all staring at me.

I expect they're only concerned about you. A pregnant young woman waiting here alone, late at night. You're a bit of a mystery. And what were you thinking of, hitch-hiking? You should have called me, right away.

I had a lift with a guy in a lorry, but he was turning off here. It's better if you're pregnant, they don't try anything.

I didn't realise you'd hitch-hiked before.

She shrugged. Well, I never told Mum when I did it, obviously.

When he bent down to put his arms round her, she leaned her head submissively against his jacket.

What's happened with Marek? Why have you left?

Nothing happened.

But you're all right? He hasn't hurt you?

She pushed her empty cup angrily across the table, and he didn't ask anything more about it for the moment.

Do you want another coffee, or anything to eat, before we set out?

Pia only wanted to get going. In the car she rifled through the CDs in the glove box and announced he hadn't got anything decent to play; she put on the radio, which he had tuned to cla.s.sical music, then turned it off again. Restless and uncomfortable with the seat belt round her, she arched her back and shifted in the seat; he remembered Elise doing this when she was pregnant. He felt triumphant, driving home with Pia sitting beside him as if it completed whatever mission he had begun weeks and months ago, when he first went to look for her. He was bringing his daughter home, he would look after her.

Don't get the wrong idea, Pia said, shifting again, as if the accusation erupted out of her physical irritation. Nothing happened.

Something must have happened.

I changed my mind. That's all.

Something must have happened to make you change your mind.

She turned her face away from him to stare out of the window. This stretch of motorway was lit, the tall stems of the lamps flicking past and the hanging veils of light giving the s.p.a.ce an empty grandeur, cathedral-like. Then they came out on the bluff above the flat estuary valley, and saw ahead the two lit bridges coiling over the water into Wales. Paul was careful not to speak, in case he deflected whatever was coming. If she had found out something shameful, she wouldn't want him to have guessed at it.

It was me, she said. It was my fault.

As if he had a.s.serted something different, she insisted that Marek was a good man, he and Anna were kind, generous people. And Marek really loved her. She was sure that he wanted to have a family with her, he meant it.

I don't know why I did what I did.

What did you do?

It was so stupid, Pia said. She had pretended that the baby was Marek's.

That wasn't really as bad as it sounded. When they first got together she hadn't had any idea she was pregnant. She had liked Marek, he used to come into the cafe to see Anna; she liked his way of making a fuss of her, it seemed romantic. He was different from the English boys she was at university with, grown-up compared to them. And he was the first one to realise why she was being sick; he asked her about her periods and everything. As soon as she understood, she knew Marek wasn't the father, because she'd been feeling these things for a few weeks before anything had happened with him. But he had taken it for granted that the baby was his, naturally enough. And she hadn't put him right. At first she'd thought if she was going to get rid of it anyway, there wasn't any point in putting him right. But then she hadn't got rid of it. The dates they'd given her at the hospital had confirmed what she already knew; she had lied to Marek and Anna about these.

A momentary spatter of rain made Paul switch the windscreen wipers on.

So, who is the father?

Who d'you think? James, of course.

Oh. Paul considered this. Does James know that he is?

She shook her head. No.

He drove without saying anything for a while. They pa.s.sed the site of the accident he had seen on his way over: there was still single-file traffic past it, but the emergency services had all gone and men were manoeuvring the smashed cars onto a breakdown truck.

You're mad at me, Pia said. I knew you'd be mad at me.

I'm not mad at you.

But he did feel obscurely hurt, and disappointed. He had been ready to feel outraged by Marek and Anna, and now instead he felt uncomfortable and guilty, as if he was implicated in Pia's deception of them. She had seemed steady a steady, fair English girl and she had not been. He had imagined her given over in good faith to her adventure; now he couldn't help picturing their surprise, or disgust, or distress, when they read the note she said she'd left behind. Pia said they wouldn't know how to find her they didn't have her mother's address, they only knew Paul lived somewhere in Wales. She would change her mobile. She had never told them anything about James. And anyway, they wouldn't want to find her.

Her voice was small and bleak.

I want to feel free. I just want to be my own person again.

On the approach road to the village, she asked him to drive her to Blackbrook and drop her off there. It had not occurred to Paul that she wouldn't be coming with him to Tre Rhiw, at least for this one night. At the idea of arriving home without her he lost his temper, stopping the car, pulling it into the gra.s.s verge so that shoots of bramble grazed along the window on his side.

You're being unreasonable, he said. It's two o'clock in the morning. We can't wake them up at this time. There's nothing that can't wait until tomorrow.

We can ring the bell on the extension. Only James will hear. I've tried his phone but he's got it turned off.

I think you ought to listen to me, after I've driven you this far.

Pia undid her seat belt and opened the car door, clambering out heavily. A blast of night air disrupted the warmth inside the car; the drift of fine rain pa.s.sing over, damping the baked earth, had roused a rank vegetable stink. Paul knew where they were: beyond the dense invisible hedgerow of hazel and blackthorn, the green shoots were standing a foot high in Willis's fields.

I know my way from here, Pia said. It's easy.

Don't be ridiculous. It's pitch dark.

I have to talk to James.

Talk to him in the morning.

She set out walking ahead of the car along the road, visible in his headlights, enc.u.mbered, obstinate, her back set in resistance to him, then stumbling over something, a pothole or a stone. Cruising after her, he wound his window down.

What about your rucksack?

I'll get James to come for it tomorrow.

OK, I give in. Pia, get in the car. I'll take you.

She was breathing heavily when she climbed back in. He thought she was crying; she wound the window down on her side, and pressed her face out into the night. Where the drive forked at Blackbrook, Paul took the lower track, leading towards the converted outbuildings where James had his room. As he drew up outside, a security light clicked on and a dog barked up above them, at the main house. Paul thought how he hated Willis's conversion, featureless and glaring with its new ceramic roof tiles and plastic windows, the old barn's soul exposed and dissipated.

This is a really bad idea, he said.

Don't worry.

You know Willis is a nutcase. And he hates me.

Everything isn't always about you, Dad.

They got out together and Pia pressed the doorbell. They waited while she pressed it twice more, hearing it ring inside. Crouching at the level of the letter box, knees apart, she called through in a voice that she tried to make subdued and penetrating at once.

James! James!

Someone inside thudded down an uncarpeted wooden staircase. Pia only just scrambled up in time before the door swung inwards; Paul saw how, expecting James, she sagged forward in relief. But it was Mrs Willis instead who stood behind the door: stout, stubby, grey-black hair cut short so that it stood up on her head like a brush. She didn't look her best, roused from sleep presumably, glaring and defensive, in an incongruously feminine pink nightdress.

What's up?

I'm really sorry, Susan, Pia said. I didn't think you'd be sleeping over here. I didn't want to wake you. I wanted James.

Did you now!

The woman's intelligence came awake behind her eyes and darted between Paul and Pia's face blotched with tears, her swollen shape. Behind Susan Willis the hallway and staircase had the neutrality of a holiday let, with no comforting accretion of belongings or mess.