And now, lunch was over, and she was going to see Lois. She hadn't told them her own family. She'd sat for a while with her dad in the conservatory, talking about David Cameron. Then she'd kissed Mum and Dad and left, but rather than driving to the motorway, and thence home, she'd gone just a mile or so, then stopped and parked outside Lois and Frank's house.

She'd called in the week. She found their number, and just dialled it one lunchtime from her desk, her heart pounding. Lois had sounded warm and friendly, just like she had at the wedding. If she was shocked to hear from her, she didn't say so. Susannah felt more shocked than Lois had sounded, and she was the one who had dialled the number. They exchanged small talk and pleasantries for a minute or two, and then Susannah said she was coming down that weekend for lunch at her Mum's and that she'd love to stop in for a cup of tea, if that worked for Lois. She hadn't known she was going to do that until she heard her voice. Lois said that would be a delight. They didn't have many visitors, these days, she said, and she knew Frank would love to see her. At the end, she added, almost as an afterthought, that Rob wouldn't be there. Maybe she thought it was Rob Susannah wanted to see. Maybe it was. But Susannah said she was coming to see them and rang off, still quite surprised at what she'd done, and why.

She told herself she was doing the right thing. That too much time had passed. She'd known them well they'd been close. It was nice of her overdue, but nice, to go and visit Frank, ill now, and, she imagined, mostly confined to home. It was the decent thing to do.

She knew, though, that it was significant that she didn't tell Amelia. They spoke a lot that week Amelia had her chemo dates, and Susannah had promised she'd be with her. She'd hardly touched her holiday allowance this year, and she had plenty of days still to take. But she didn't mention going to tea with Lois once. Amelia wouldn't have believed the explanation she was trying hard to believe herself.

God, this house was full of memories. She parked on the street, and walked down the drive. Hadn't the front door been blue? She'd always loved it here. From the first time she'd been invited in. Walking across the threshold had always been like walking into another world one that was warm and welcoming and embracing.

Frank was Italian the fourth son of Italian immigrants from Naples, who'd come to England in the 1920s, settling at first into an Italian community in London. He'd moved out of the city when he'd met Lois in the 1960s. She'd grown up a few miles from here. And they'd lived in this house since the year Rob was 16 more than 20 years. Frank (Francesco though he always joked that no one had ever really called him that, except his grandmother) didn't sound at all Italian, but everything else about him screamed it. He had told great stories. His grandparents had lost family in the eruption of Vesuvius in 1906 (who even knew there'd been one ... ?) and most of his male cousins had ended up in New York, in Little Italy. His own parents hadn't wanted to go that far from their homeland hopeful, perhaps, that one day they'd return, though they never had.

The house was furnished with dark, ornate wooden pieces that were slightly too large for the rooms, and full of small oil paintings of the Amalfi Coast. An old-fashioned picture of the Virgin Mary hung in one corner, with Frank's rosary hanging over it. Large photographs in gilt frames lined the walls young Lois and Frank on their wedding day, Rob as a naked baby lying on a sheepskin rug, and as a small boy in shorts and braces. Nothing much had changed since she was here last, it seemed. Rob had always hated those photographs.

She sat at the same round kitchen table that she'd sat at hundreds of times before. They'd eaten here, she and Rob, sat holding hands unseen beneath it, pretending to listen, and longing to be alone. They'd done homework here, night after night, studying for their 'A' levels, fuelled by huge quantities of the delicious cannolis Frank made from an old recipe his parents had handed down to him. She remembered him folding the thinly rolled dough around the squat wooden sticks made especially for the purpose that he'd inherited from his family, lining them up ten at a time in a wire tray and then plunging them into a large pot of boiling lard always lard, Frank insisted on the hob. Sitting here, she remembered the sound and the smell of them frying in the fat. And she could still taste the cannoli cream he'd piped into the cooled tubes from a big white piping bag thick and flavoured with cinnamon and chocolate chips and ricotta. He'd pipe standing beside the table, and then hand them straight to Rob and Susannah, so they could eat them while the shell was still crisp.

He always did most of the cooking. Susannah remembered trying to imagine her own father standing over the pans on the stove tasting a sauce from a wooden spoon and deciding whether to add more rosemary or more basil. Her mum would have a heart attack if he'd done so much as open the fridge, much less take ingredients out and do something with them. Washing up was his limit, and that was restricted to high days and holidays. Were these the same doilies Lois had always had? Susannah fingered the delicate white crochet nervously.

Lois wasn't Italian, but she'd embraced life as Frank's wife. She once said to Susannah that her own life had been so bland before he came. That the day she met him she'd known life would be more fun if she went through it with him. At the time, Susannah recalled feeling the exact same way about Rob, and loving Lois all the more for having that in common with her.

Susannah remembered a lot of laughter. It wasn't that her own parents weren't happy. They always had been, she imagined and they certainly still were. It was just that the Rossi family was a rich, dark chocolate gelato, compared with her own family's Lyons vanilla ice cream.

Until she walked back through the door, she'd forgotten just how much she'd loved not just Rob, but being a part of this family. Today, though not much else seemed to have changed, there were no cannolis. There was a plate of cakes and biscuits, but they were all store-bought.

Frank shocked her. She didn't know much about the illness that had struck him, except that it was horrid, and she hadn't known what to expect when she saw him. She might not have recognized him if she'd passed him on the street. He looked so old. He'd been a big man broad-shouldered and muscular but now he was too thin, and most of the muscles had wasted away. He wasn't in a wheelchair she thought perhaps he might have been but he struggled to get out of the armchair and hug her hello, and through the open door to the dining room, where there had once been a walnut table and sideboard, she saw a single bed with a blue candlewick bedspread on it. She supposed stairs were too much for him. He didn't so much shake, as sort of strike out periodically with particularly his left arm and leg. When he said her name, his voice was slow and slurred, almost like he was drunk. It made her want to cry. Rob must hate this. They'd always been so close, so similar.

Lois busied herself boiling the kettle and chattering away. By contrast to her husband, she seemed unchanged. A little rounder, perhaps, but the same energetic whirlwind warm and welcoming that Susannah remembered. On the wall between the two windows in the kitchen was a picture of Rob in full dress uniform, taken years ago, flanked by his parents, both looking giddy with pride.

Lois nodded towards the picture when she saw her looking. 'That's my boy. The uniform suits him, doesn't it?'

Susannah nodded in agreement and smiled. It always had. She thought referring to the picture was Lois trying to put her at her ease.

Lois had a lot of questions. Was she married? Had she had children? Was she working? Where was she living? Susannah relaxed and let herself be grilled, wondering why it felt faintly embarrassing to admit that she was neither married, nor a mother. Lois smiled was there a little sympathy in her expression? and brushed it off easily, claiming marriage was an old-fashioned institution these days, and that stepchildren were a great responsibility and joy. Susannah wasn't convinced she actually believed either statement, but it was sweet of Lois to try. Frank sat quietly while the two women talked. She thought, at one point, that he'd nodded off, but then he opened his eyes and smiled at her.

She had questions of her own. 'And Rob? Is he married?'

'No.' Lois shook her head. 'Like you. Not married. So my dream of grandchildren is still just that a dream.'

'I expect that's the life he's led?'

Lois shrugged. That wasn't it. Most men in the services managed to meet girls, have families.

'He never found anyone he loved as much as he'd loved you.' It was the longest sentence Frank had uttered since she arrived. He sounded more like his old self as he said it.

'Frank!' Lois admonished him gently, putting one hand over his on the table and squeezing his fingers.

'Well, it's true. I'm too old and too ill to mess around any more. You know it's the truth. She was the love of his life.'

Lois looked at Susannah apologetically. 'I'm sorry, love.'

'I never did know what happened to you two young people. I know that's what you were young. I know it doesn't always last. But it's lasted for Lois and me, and we were no more than your age when we started up, and I'd have put a bet on you two. I really would.'

'Stop it, Frank. Please. You're making her uncomfortable.' Lois almost squirmed with embarrassment.

'It's fine. Really.' Susannah laughed it off. So, he'd never told them what had happened. He couldn't have done.

'No, it's not.' Lois was agitated. 'It's years ago. You've finally come to see us, and now you'll probably never come back again, if he's going to be raking all this up again. And it's been so lovely to see you again, dear. Really, it has.' Her voice was tremulous now. She leant forward and took both Susannah's hands in hers. 'You were always such a lovely girl.'

Susannah nodded, not knowing what to say.

At the door, Lois hugged her. 'Sorry about Frank. Speaking to you like that. It's part of what's wrong with him. Doctor calls it disinhibition. I call it a bloody nightmare. You never know what he might say.'

Susannah laughed. 'That must make life difficult.'

'You've no idea, love.' Of course she hadn't. What a stupid thing to say. As if that was the worst of it.

'It must be very hard.'

'What is really hard is watching how much he hates it. You remember how he was? He was always so strong and ...'

'I know.' Susannah didn't know what else to say.

Lois seemed to shake herself out of it. 'But he's here. And while he's here, and I can take care of him, we'll be fine. I'll be fine.'

'He's lucky to have you.'

'I'm the lucky one, Susannah. I've had him.'

God. There it was. A simple declaration.

Lois looked into her face. 'Are you happy, sweetheart?'

It was a strange, unexpected question, but then Lois had always had an unusual directness about her. Susannah nodded, and tried speaking, but her throat was suddenly constricted, and no words came out. She nodded again, vigorously, horribly afraid that she might cry.

'I hope so. You should be happy.' Lois kissed her cheek one last time, and waved goodbye, entreating her to return whenever she wanted to.

1989.

They'd planned a holiday to celebrate the end of 'A' levels, and their eighteenth birthdays. Susannah had officially become an adult earlier, in February, but Rob and Amelia had summer birthdays. They'd all been working to earn money, except Rob, who'd been away. And they all felt an impending sense of everything changing ... They'd decided to spend some of what they'd saved on a few days away at the end of August. They'd either celebrate or commiserate away from their parents, and their homes, and their rules.

To celebrate her eighteenth birthday in the winter, Mum and Dad had taken her and her brothers, along with Rob and Amelia, for dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Covent Garden. She hadn't wanted a party just this just the people she loved most. It felt completely grown-up having Rob there with her parents. It had seemed so weird, ordering a drink in front of her mum and dad, although they'd been letting her have a glass of wine with dinner since she was sixteen or so. Dad who was proud, and excited made an embarrassing fuss about it, loudly telling the waiter it was her first drink as an eighteen-year-old. Alastair, Dad and Rob had drunk beer, with Dad muttering about the wedge of lime that came shoved in the neck of the bottle, but Amelia had insisted Mum and Susannah choose something more exotic than wine or beer, off the cocktail menu so she'd asked for a Margarita, and drunk it all, feeling she should finish her first cocktail, though she hated the acrid taste of the salt around the rim of the glass, and hadn't much loved, either, the strong, sharp taste of the tequila and Cointreau in the drink itself.

Mum and Dad had taken Alex home after dinner. The four of them Alastair and Amelia, Susannah and Rob agreed to have one more drink and follow on the next train. Alastair who'd come home from Exeter for the weekend seemed absurdly pleased to be with Amelia, though Susannah was completely sure he stood no chance at all with her. Amelia had once confessed she could never go for him.

With a sibling's mock indignation, Susannah had asked why not.

'I never fancy anyone who is so clearly interested in me,' Amelia had laughed. 'Where's the fun in that?'

They'd gone to the Punch & Judy pub, and had two more, then walked down to the river, although it was so cold your breath came in clouds and your feet felt like they might shatter in your shoes if you stepped too heavily. She remembered thinking that freezing or not if this was drunk, drunk was good. She felt a little dizzy, a little dreamy, and so, so happy.

Rob had given her a necklace, then, by the river. An art deco-style rose gold locket, engraved with a pattern of flowers, with a tiny picture of the two of them, no more than an inch in diameter inside. His fingers had fumbled, numb and icy, chilly against the skin under her hair, as he'd fastened it around her neck.

And Amelia had kissed Alastair in the moonlight, even though she could never fancy him. Back when kisses didn't really mean much.

They couldn't get away for long now just a few days, not even a full week after the results came out in the middle of August, and their respective fates were decided. God forbid any of them ended up in the clearing system, but you never knew, and they needed to be home until then. They began as a foursome: Susannah, Amelia, Rob and Matt a guy from school, who'd started hanging around with them a lot in the last year. Then Alastair, home from Exeter for the summer, and at a loose end, butted into a planning session in the Hammond family kitchen and invited himself along.

It had been a strange, bittersweet summer. The huge relief they all felt at being finished with exams and liberated from college was tempered by fear of the unknown, and a definite air of melancholy that this stage of their lives was coming to an end. The weather was customarily lousy. They were all working at dull jobs to earn money for university all except Rob, who was off for a seemingly endless six weeks with the RAF as part of his sponsorship, getting his private pilot's licence before he started at Cranwell in September. Susannah missed him horribly. She felt disconnected from him, too, a little. He clearly loved what he was doing, and he didn't sound like he was missing her nearly as much as she was pining for him. She was a little bored, and a little in limbo and, if she was honest, just a little resentful about it.

The girls took the bus to town every morning. Susannah was working in Marks & Spencer, stacking the shelves and working the tills in the food department. Amelia as always the cooler one, who didn't really need to work in the first place had a job in Top Shop three doors down (which she'd started after two sun-soaked weeks in Corfu with her parents). Alastair was doing day shifts in the pub in the village, and working some evenings washing up in the French restaurant on the high street. Matt was packing boxes in a factory.

They rented two relatively cheap caravans on a site near Minehead in Somerset, and drove down one Monday morning in two cars Frank's dad lent Rob his, and Amelia borrowed her mum's runaround. The sun came out halfway down the M4, and by the time they arrived at the site, it was almost hot. Amelia and Susannah were to share a two-bed van and the boys were next door, with a pull-out sofa in the living room for Alastair. At least, that was what they had all told their parents. Susannah wasn't actually sure what might happen.

Amelia had asked her, on the bus home from work one day before they left, slightly incredulous that it hadn't happened yet, whether she would sleep with Rob ('at long last', as she put it) on the holiday. Susannah wasn't sure. Everything was about to change. She wanted to, of course she wanted to. She wondered why it felt such a bigger step to her than it seemed to other people, and she wondered if Rob assumed it would happen. He hadn't said so, either before he left or when they'd spoken on the phone.

It was exhilarating to be so free they were all a little giddy with it. Alastair had been away from home for a year already, but for the rest of them, it was their first real taste of self-determination and liberation, and a very welcome respite from a summer of drudgery. Rob, fresh back from his flying course, was high with the excitement and triumph of his first solo flight. He seemed pleased to see her, but they hadn't been alone at all he'd only arrived home quite late the night before they left. They spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the small town and the harbour, shopping for food and beer in the Spar near the seafront. It was still warm well into the evening. The caravans came with little lean-to gazebos and small charcoal grills, and on their first night they drank beers and cooked sausages which they ate with baked beans, sitting in deck chairs, laughing and joking. Alastair had started calling Rob 'Biggles', and hummed the theme tune to The Dam Busters whenever Rob walked past him. Amelia was flirting as usual, with Matt and Alastair indiscriminately, and Susannah was just happy happy to be here with Rob, her brother and her best friend. She liked Matt, too, though she didn't know him very well. He'd applied to Bristol as well, to read History. Susannah would be reading Law, so they'd be together next year it would be nice to have a friend there.

Later, Susannah and Rob went for a walk along the cliff-top near the site, leaving the others playing poker in the van. He put his arm around her shoulder, pulling her close.

She held on around his waist, feeling at home there. 'It's so good to see you. I missed you.'

'I missed you, too.'

'Did you?'

'Course I did. Why ask me that?'

'You sounded so happy, that's all. I felt miserable and you didn't sound that way at all.'

'Don't be daft, Susie. I thought about you all the time.'

'Good.' She squeezed his non-existent love handles. 'That's what I like to hear. Pining.'

'Pining! Don't push your luck ...' In a deft movement, Rob hooked one of his legs behind hers and felled her, slowing her fall to the ground with his strong arms, and cushioning her. He straddled her on the grass, and forced her arms above her head with one hand, tickling her under the arms and across the belly with the other, until she begged him to stop, and then he kissed her, gently at first, but soon his mouth was hard, more urgent against hers, and for a few moments they lay in each other's arms, their legs entwined, oblivious to anything beyond each other. Then a middle-aged man with a bulldog on a lead walked past, about ten feet away. He let the dog come almost right up to them and sniff at their feet, and they sat up, breathless and a little embarrassed, as he finally pulled at the lead and walked off.

When he was out of earshot, Rob laughed ruefully. 'Story of our lives. Always getting interrupted.'

She leant into him. 'What about here? The caravan ... we could ... here ...' She felt shy saying exactly what she meant.

He looked at her, searching her face for her intentions. 'Do you want to ... ?'

'D'you?'

'I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about it. The whole time I was away from you.'

'Apart from when you were flying, of course.'

'Of course. Very distracting, that would be ... But on the ground ... all the damn time. Had some very nice dreams about it, too, actually. But it's up to you. It has to be right for you.'

At that moment, Susannah thought she knew. She put her hand in his and nodded decisively. 'I want to.'

Rob lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it tenderly. 'Are you sure?'

'Yes!' She was almost shouting. 'Stop!'

They walked slowly, hand in hand, back to the site without talking much. She was unbelievably nervous suddenly. They'd done stuff before lots of stuff. But this was different. This was huge. He'd never seen her naked. She knew she was putting too much pressure on herself, and she was afraid she might ruin it by doing the same thing to him. She kept thinking about Amelia's 'perfect' first time with that boy on holiday. That's what she wanted. If Amelia could have that with a guy she hardly knew, she and Rob they should definitely achieve 'perfect', shouldn't they? This wasn't exactly the big white bed Rob had spoken about, but it was a double bed (barely), in a room with a door that locked. There was no one around to 'catch them' or even to disapprove. What else was there to wait for? It felt like it was time.

The coals on the barbecue were glowing embers by the time they returned. The others had disappeared, leaving a box of empty beer bottles. Rob opened the door to the girls' caravan, and held it while she climbed the steps inside.

Amelia was obviously in bed already. The door to her room, barely six feet from the door to Susannah's in the back portion of the caravan, was closed. At first, Susannah was relieved. She didn't want to have to explain anything to her friend tonight, or to be watched going into her room with Rob. But it very quickly became apparent that Amelia wasn't asleep, and she wasn't alone. Rob started to speak but Susannah heard something, and held a finger up to her lips to quieten him. At first it was only Amelia's low, rhythmic moans that Susannah could hear, and they froze her to the spot. Then she heard a male voice a groan at first, a whispered 'yes', then another, then something more guttural. The thin walls of the caravan rippled. With a sickening feeling, Susannah realized that it was Alastair's voice she was listening to. Her brother was making love to her best friend barely two feet away from where she was standing.

She couldn't get out of the caravan fast enough. Rob followed her. She sat down hard in a deck chair without speaking, and he pulled over a coolbox and sat beside her.

'What the hell is she playing at?'

'I didn't know things were happening between them. How long was I gone on that course, anyway?' Rob was trying to make light of it.

But Susannah couldn't. 'Things weren't happening. Nothing. Nothing I know of, at least.' For the first time, Susannah wondered if Amelia had been sneaking around with Al behind her back. She shook her head. She couldn't have been. They'd been together every day. She'd have noticed ... something.

'So, they're fast movers.'

She snorted. It was embarrassing she didn't even know why. She and Rob had been together for ages, and they hadn't slept together. Amelia and Alastair weren't even in a relationship, but they were already in bed. Her hands formed fists, and she banged them on her knees.

'Why are you so angry?'

'I'm furious. Amelia knows he has a thing for her. He always has had. She shouldn't be doing this.'

'How do you know she hasn't got a thing for him?'

'Because I know. This is Amelia we're talking about she doesn't internalize a damn thing. If she felt it, believe me, I'd know about it. She doesn't like him not that way.'

'But surely that's Al's problem. He's what nearly twenty? He knows her he must know what he's getting into, mustn't he?'

'But it's not fair.'

'It's nothing to do with us, though, Susie.'

She rounded on him. 'It's everything to do with us.'

'I don't see how.'

'He's my brother. She's my friend. This won't work out.'