But there were changes in her. She was too thin, and inexplicable illusory veins of regret seemed to lie just beneath the surface of her composure. Nonetheless, she spoke to him much as she always had done.

'Have you been working late? You've not waited up for me, have you?'

'It was the only way I could get your father to go to bed. He thought Tommy might spirit you away this very night.'

Deborah laughed. 'How like Dad. Did you think that as well?'

'Tommy was a fool not to.'

St James marvelled at the rank duplicity behind their words. With one quick embrace they had neatly sidestepped Deborah's reasons for having left England in the first place, as if they had agreed to play at their old relationship, one to which they could never return. For the moment, however, even spurious friendship was better than further disjunction. 'I have something for you.'

He led her through the laboratory and opened the door of her darkroom. Her hand went out for the light, and St James heard her gasp of surprise as she saw the new colour enlarger standing in place of her old black and white one.

'Simon!' She was biting the inside of her lip. 'This is… How very kind of you. Truly… it's not as if you had to… and you've even waited up for me.' Colour smudged across her face like unattractive thumbprints, a reminder that Deborah had never possessed any skills of artifice to fall back upon when she was distressed.

In his grasp, the doorknob felt inordinately cold. In spite of the past, St James had assumed she would be pleased by the gift. She was not. Somehow, his purchase of it represented the inadvertent crossing of an unspoken boundary between them.