‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Freda, surrendering as she had suspected she would, and getting up and going into the hall. As it happened Hubert had just got home from work, and was standing at the front door in his bowler hat, almost throwing two brown suitcases into the house. He said,

‘I brought these up with me in the van.’

‘Oh, they must be Cecil’s,’ said Freda. ‘Yes, “C. T. V.”, look. Do be careful…’ Her elder son was a well-built boy, with a surprisingly ruddy moustache, but she saw in a moment, in the light of her latest conversation, that he hadn’t yet bloomed, and would surely be completely bald before he had had the chance. She said, ‘And a most intriguing packet has come for you. Good evening, Hubert.’

‘Good evening, Mother,’ said Hubert, leaning over the cases to kiss her on the cheek. It was the little dry comedy of their relations, which somehow turned on the fact that Hubert wasn’t lightly amused, perhaps didn’t even know there was anything comic about them. ‘Is this it?’ he said, picking up a small parcel wrapped in shiny red paper. ‘It looks more like a lady’s thing.’

‘Well, so I had hoped,’ said his mother, ‘it’s from Mappin’s-’ as behind her, where the garden door had stood open all day, the others were arriving: waiting a minute outside, in the soft light that spread across the path, George and Cecil arm in arm, gleaming against the dusk, and Daphne just behind, wide-eyed, with a part in the drama, the person who had found them. Freda had a momentary sense of Cecil leading George, rather than George presenting his friend; and Cecil himself, crossing the threshold in his pale linen clothes, with only his hat in his hand, seemed strangely unencumbered. He might have been coming in from his own garden.

3

Up in the spare bedroom, Jonah settled the first suitcase on the bed, and ran his hands over the smooth hard leather; in the centre of the lid the initials C.