For Maisie, try as she might, could not look upon any one of them as a replacement for the mother she had lost, and consequently had been acutely aware all her life of a profound and sometimes insupportable feeling of 'being deprived'. Her sisters could all remember their mother; she could not. And no sense of reality could seep through to her from the one daguerrotype photograph of her which their father kept on the large walnut desk in his study.

But today was her birthday. She did not want to think any sad thoughts today. Today she was happy, and happy she would stay, even if to remind her she must occasionally wriggle her body full-length through the languorous grass till she could peer through the water's gently sliding surface (to where did it go? and why should it want to leave the peaceful loveliness of this place?) to where spears of sunlight revealed the rocks and sands beneath; until the water became too dark to see through any more, but would still occasionally gleam with sudden if minute brilliance from the bellies of minnows as they would abruptly turn in their otherwise leisurely yet mysterious errands. Would she see a tortoise? Today, of all days in the year, being her birthday, she could expect to see almost anything.

Turning on her back she gazed up at the incredibly immense blue reaches of sky with its flocks of near-luminous clouds scudding from horizon to horizon like herded sheep. She hoped they wouldn't turn malicious and mggce her birthday with rain. Perhaps if she turned on her stomach again, would they all go away? She would try it anyway; and this time when she turned, her body complained with an ache and a creak from, she told herself, lying a little too long in the grass. And she said to herself: That's how old people must get to feel, with their grey hair and wrinkled skin sometimes flecked all over with death-freckles.