'I must be pushed before I fall,' he said as Lynn sternly led him up the stairs.

'Is he all right?' I asked Lynn when she came back down, alone.

Lynn was a handsome a.s.sured woman, immaculately turned out in a dark velvet skirt and jacket.

'He's involved in a restructuring of the trust,' she said. 'It's been rather stressful.'

'Sackings?'

'Downsizing,' she said.

I hoped she would elaborate but she started offering sympathy and I lost interest. As soon as I could, I left Lynn and joined Jerome, who was still looking sullen, and Hana. He responded to my questions in monosyllables. I moved across to Theo who was staring into the fire. I touched him on the shoulder and he started.

'Sorry,' I said.

He turned but hardly seemed to see me.

'I'm thinking of the silliest things,' he said. 'When she was younger, eleven or twelve, we used to do cartwheels, in summer, when the gra.s.s was dry. The only way I could ever do cartwheels at all was to do them really quickly. She used to laugh at me and say that my legs weren't high enough. She would do them and her skirt or dress would fall down, over her head sometimes, and we I mean the boys would laugh at her. But she could do them slowly, the way they're meant to be done. Down on your hands, then one leg slowly up, then the other leg following it, like two spokes in a wheel. Then down. They were perfect and we were too proud to tell her.'

'I don't think she minded,' I said. 'She always knew what she was good at.'

'And I remember when she used to sit reading, over there in the window seat, she always looked cross. That was what she looked like when she was concentrating. Cross. It was funny.'

I nodded, unable to speak. I wasn't ready for all this.

'You know that old cliche of coming back from school and finding your little sister has turned into a woman? It was a bit like that when she was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. I'd come back from school in the holidays and she'd be going out with people she used to play with. And then Luke, remember?' I nodded. 'I felt strange about it. Not good, in a way. It was the first time in my life that it had occurred to me that we'd all be growing up. And that I'd see Natalie grown up and a mother and all that and I never did.'

He turned towards me. His eyes were wet. I took his hand.

'I remember that cross look,' I said softly. 'That awful summer when it rained all the time and she said she was going to learn how to juggle and she spent day after day with three of those b.l.o.o.d.y beanbags or whatever they were. She had that cross look and her tongue out of one corner of her mouth, day after day, and she did it.' I was just inches away from Theo now. We were murmuring to each other like lovers. 'I remember her lying in front of this fire. The flames in her eyes. I was next to her, right close up. And we'd giggle if anybody said anything to us. G.o.d, we must have been irritating.'

Theo smiled for the first time. 'You were.'

The spell was broken. Claud was in the background somewhere opening a bottle of port. The thick purple liquid gurgled softly into a trayful of gla.s.ses. He held up a hand and the murmur in the room ceased. 'To the cook,' he said, and smiled ruefully at me across the meal's debris. This dinner suddenly felt like a farewell. I wondered what would happen now, and I felt scared of the future.

'To Jane,' echoed everyone.

'To Alan and Martha,' added my father. I could tell from his voice, which slopped around its normally precise edges, that he was a bit drunk.

'And to Claud who's organised it all,' shouted Jonah above the hubbub.

'To Theo, who found the parasols,' said someone at the back.

The sweet and melancholy spell was broken.

'To us all,' said Alan.

'To us all.'

Four.

My car didn't start at first. The morning was cold and the engine wheezed and died several times before coughing into life. I wound down the window. My sons were there, looking bleak. Robert was coming with me.

'Bye, Jerome, bye, Hana. Ring me when you get back to London. Drive carefully.'

Hana came up and kissed me through the window. I blew a kiss at Rosie, who pointed a finger at me which she then inserted into one nostril. Paul was loading an improbable amount of luggage into their car. I called to him. He waved. Alan and Martha stood side by side to see me off. I leant out and took Alan's hand and squeezed it.

'Alan,' I said, 'shall we meet next time you're in London?'

I felt awkward, as if I were asking if we could keep in touch. He ruffled my head as if I were still a teenager.

'Jane,' he said, 'you'll always be our daughter-in-law. Isn't that right, Martha?'

'Of course,' she said, hugging me.

She smelt so familiar: powder and yeast and wood-smoke. Martha had always managed to be gloriously s.e.xy and rea.s.suringly homely all at once. There were tears in her eyes as she kissed me, and for a moment I wanted nothing so much as to undo everything I had started: the separation from her son, the wretched plans for the cottage which had uncovered the remains of her daughter. Then she squeezed my hand.

'Actually, Jane, you're more a daughter than a daughter-in-law.' She hesitated, then added: 'Don't let me down, my dear.'

What did she mean? How could I let her down?

Claud came out of the house carrying a neat suitcase. He started to walk towards us, then stopped. He would be dignified about all this. He'll not give up, though, I thought as I looked at him: such a familiar figure. I knew where he'd bought his jeans, and in what order he'd packed his suitcase. I knew the music he'd put on in the car, and how he'd keep the needle just under seventy, and I guessed that when he got back to his small new flat in Primrose Hill, he would first of all phone me to make sure I'd arrived safely, and then pour a whisky and cook himself an omelette. Beside me, Robert sat quiet and tense. His pale, smooth face was quite blank. I put a hand on his for a moment, then lifted it to wave at Claud. He nodded.

'Goodbye Jane,' he called, and climbed into his compact car.

We left the Stead together, and for miles, as I drove through the Shropshire countryside, I could see Claud's small blue car and his dark head in my mirror. When we got to the motorway Robert put some loud music on, I put my foot on the accelerator, and we left Claud far behind.

Cigarettes are wonderful. Every morning I showered and went downstairs in a dressing-gown, where I ground some coffee beans, poured fresh orange into a gla.s.s, and lit up. I'd study my plans for my new project with a cigarette. I'd smoke whenever I lifted the phone. I'd smoke in the car G.o.d, how Claud would have hated that. I often smoked in the dark, at the end of a day, watching the glowing tip making lines in the air. I measured out my days in little tubes of nicotine. I smoked each morning when I thumbed through newspapers to see if there were any more references to the discovery of Natalie's body now that she had been identified, solely through her dental record. 'Tragic daughter of Angry Young Man,' said the Guardian. Guardian. 'Martello Tragedy,' the 'Martello Tragedy,' the Mail. Mail. Alan gave interviews, and they were usually accompanied by library pictures of him as a younger and more successful man. Alan gave interviews, and they were usually accompanied by library pictures of him as a younger and more successful man.

I returned to London on the Sunday and at the end of that week I was phoned by an officer from Kirklow CID. They wanted to interview me purely as a matter of routine. No, I wouldn't have to come up to Kirklow, a couple of officers would be in London next week. I arranged a time and the following Tuesday morning at 11.30 sharp there were two detectives sitting in my front room. They were Detective Sergeant Helen Auster, who did all the talking, and Detective Constable Turnbull, a large man with red hair combed flat on his scalp, who sat with an open notebook not taking notes. I made us coffee and Turnbull and I smoked as well.

Auster was dressed in a businesslike grey flannel jacket and skirt. Her hair was light brown and she had startling yellow eyes, which seemed to be focused on something behind my head. She wore a wedding ring and she was young, almost ten years younger than me, I guessed. As we sipped our coffee, we exchanged trivial observations about how big London was. They didn't seem in a hurry to get down to business and I was the first to raise it.

'Are you doing the rounds of the family down here?'

Helen Auster smiled and looked at a notebook. 'We've just come from your father, Mr Crane,' she said. She spoke in a light Birmingham accent. 'After lunch we're meeting Theodore Martello at his office on the Isle of Dogs, then we're going on to the BBC Television Centre to see your brother, Paul.'

'You'll spend most of your day in traffic,' I said sympathetically. 'Do you expect people to remember anything after all this time?'

'There are a few questions we have to ask.'

'Are you treating Natalie's death as murder?'

'It's a possibility.'

'Because she was buried, I suppose.'

'No, there is some evidence that is consistent with strangulation.'

'How can you possibly know that just from her bones?'

Auster and Turnbull exchanged glances.

'It's just a technical detail,' said Auster. 'Strangulation almost always fractures a bone called the hyoid bone which is at the base of the tongue. The hyoid bone of the deceased is fractured. But of course it's been in the ground for a long time.'

'Somebody must have buried the body,' I said.

'Yes,' said Auster.

'And that person must have killed her?'

'Maybe. At the moment we're just trying to collect information. As you probably know, it was a.s.sumed for some considerable time that Natalie Martello had run away from home. The last reported sighting was on the morning of 27 July 1969.'

'On the day after the big party, yes,' I interrupted.

'It was only months later that statements were taken and the inquiry didn't proceed very far. Natalie Martello remained registered as a missing person.'

There was a pause, which I leapt to fill as usual. 'I'm afraid the trail must have gone awfully cold by now. How are you going to find out anything?'

'What we're trying to say to people is, if you remember anything, however small, let us know.'

'Yes, of course.'

Auster looked down at her notebook once more. 'The last sighting of Natalie was by a local man, Gerald Francis Docherty. He saw her by the side of the river that runs along the northern edge of your parents-in-law's property. Obviously, we would like to hear of any later sightings.'

'I think we were asked this at the time. I didn't see her after the party.'

'Tell me about the party.'

'You must have heard about it from my dad. It was Alan and Martha's twentieth wedding anniversary. They'd been away on a cruise somewhere and my dad met them off the boat at Southampton on the day of the party and drove them straight up to Shropshire. The family had arranged a large celebration. There were lots of guests, and dozens of them stayed the night, in the house or in nearby houses. Lots of them slept on the floor, I think, in sleeping bags. I mainly remember the preparations. Claud and I had been running errands, I remember that collecting various things, food, gla.s.ses. Natalie had too, I think. The party itself was on a lovely evening, very warm with that baked feeling you get at the end of a summer's day. We had a barbecue. Claud did that, with Paul helping him; why do men always do the barbecue, handle all the dead meat? Natalie was wearing a sleeveless black dress, I think. She always wore black that summer; I imitated her; so did Luke. That was her boyfriend, as you must know. They were very trendy; they were kind of skinny and sulky; they made me feel clumsy, rural, even though I was the one who lived in London. I'm rambling. What do you want me to tell you?'

Helen Auster looked a little blank and embarra.s.sed. I don't think she really knew what she wanted me to tell her.

'Do you remember what Natalie was like at the party?'

'How do you mean?'

'Did she seem depressed? Angry? Exuberant?'

I felt my cheeks flush. When I thought of the party, it wasn't Natalie I remembered, it was Theo.

'I don't really remember seeing much of her. It was a very big party, you know. There were about a hundred people there.'

'I thought you were her closest friend.'

'I know, but it's hard to remember with parties, isn't it?'

'Yes,' said Helen Auster. 'What happened on the next day?'

'The party sort of continued, I think. Lots of the guests hung around, or returned. People went for walks and things, and then everyone started drinking champagne at midday.'

'Were all the family there for the party?'

'For the party itself, yes. Typically, having organised the whole thing, Claud left before dawn on the Sunday morning and went down to London with his best friend, Alec, to catch a flight to Bombay. He spent two months going round India with about twenty pounds in his pocket. Claud and I always meant to go there together. That seems unlikely now. I should explain that we're getting divorced.'

'I'm sorry.'

'That's all right. Brought it on myself. People were scattering throughout the day. I imagine it would be completely impossible to reconstruct who exactly was where at any one point on that day.'

'Except for Natalie, by the river, shortly before one o'clock. Was there any particular reason why she should be there?'

'None that I can think of. I mean, no particular reason, except it doesn't seem so odd that she should have been. I'm sorry, I don't think I'm being much help.'

'That's all right. Anyway, I gather that you were indirectly responsible for the body being found. Why were you building the cottage just there?'

I explained that I'd originally wanted to build the cottage only then it wasn't going to be a cottage, but a structure further down the hill, but had changed my plan when I'd found that a small tributary of the river flowed just beneath that area. Drainage would have been difficult and very expensive. I told her about the digging, and how we'd unearthed Natalie's bones.

'Why did you a.s.sume that it was Natalie?' she asked.

'I don't know,' I replied, slightly taken aback. 'I suppose it was just that Natalie disappeared, and I always thought she must be dead though Martha would never believe that-so when there was a body next to the house, well...' I trailed off, then tried again. 'I've always thought that one day we would find Natalie's body. So in a way I've been waiting for that, and I think that perhaps we all have. But I never thought that, well, that she'd been killed. I a.s.sumed she'd had an accident or something. So finding her, it was awful, not just because it was her, but because somebody must have buried her. In fact, that's what I wanted to ask you about. Don't you think it's a peculiar place to bury Natalie in the garden, just a stone's throw from where she lived?'

Auster smiled across at her colleague. 'We were talking about that, weren't we, Stuart? It could be seen as a very clever place to hide a body. Most murderers aren't very good at hiding bodies. Remote areas of scrub or moorland might seem like a good idea, but they are places without much activity and it can be easy to see that digging has taken place. A garden is constantly being dug up.'

'But there are lots of people around in a garden,' I protested.

'Yes,' she said, with an obvious lack of interest. She clearly had no wish to sit debating theories with me. 'As I said, if you remember anything that might be significant, please get in touch.'

She looked at her watch and asked if there was a pub nearby. I said there was one at the end of the road and she asked if I would like to join them for a bite of lunch. I loathe pubs and I wasn't hungry but I said I'd have a drink. Turnbull said he wanted to go to Oxford Street on the way to the Isle of Dogs, so Helen Auster and I walked along the road to the Globe Arms, where she ordered a pint of bitter and a lasagne and I toyed with a tomato juice and smoked cigarettes. I began to take to Helen, as I now called her. She talked about being a female officer and the canteen culture, and about her husband who was a delivery coordinator in Shropshire for Sainsbury's. She asked me about my divorce and I confided a few ba.n.a.lities. When it was almost time to go, I returned to the case: 'It's all too late, isn't it?' I said. 'You're not going to be able to find anything out.'

'There are one or two possibilities, but it will be difficult.'

'It looks like you drew the short straw.'

'I thought so. Now I'm starting to think that the Martellos are an interesting family.'

Helen gave me a card and wrote her direct line on it. As we parted on the pavement on Highgate Road, I told her that she must get in touch the next time she was down in London and she promised to. Is it possible that I could become friends with a policewoman?

'Don't you think it's time you gave up smoking?'

Kim was sitting across the table from me; a candle on the paper tablecloth cast shadows on the pale triangle of her face. She skewered some swordfish with her fork, swilled it back with a gulp of wine.

'How many are you on now? Thirty a day?'