‘After 1963,’ he was saying, and we are talking Bordeaux here, of course, ‘with its vintage of rain and rot and worthless wines, came 1964, badly undervalued because of the previous year. Nature, having taken away with one hand, now gave its lovely rich rounded elegant wines with the other…’

A tiny movement alerted me to Will’s presence behind me. With my back to him, I said, ‘There are so few people to whom one is joined, cell for cell, understanding for understanding. Far too few to lose or to betray.’

‘Fanny, darling, we’d better check over the papers,’ he said quietly.

We bundled up most of them, and conveyed them back to our house. Together, we worked through the obvious ones, stacking urgent bills and letters into one basket, less urgent into another. Finally, we came to a file with ‘Francesca’ written on it.

‘I’ll look at this later.’ I let my hand rest on top of it.

An eyebrow flew up. ‘I see.’

Will was not stupid. He invited me to share his work, his ambition, and I did not want to share the contents of a file belonging to my father.

Even so, I made sure that I opened the file in the privacy of our bedroom. I don’t know what I expected – legal or financial instructions, perhaps – but certainly not a child’s drawing of a house with a tiled roof, a large front door and pathway leading up to it. In front of the house were three figures: a stick man with a black hat, a stick woman with a bright red skirt and, suspended between them, a stick child with a bow in her hair.

It was a drawing I had done at nursery school.

The file also contained an essay written on lined paper. ‘Show the effect on European foreign policy of America’s isolationist stance during the 1930s, giving at least two examples.’ The mark had been C. There was also a poem, handwritten on pale pink paper: ‘Your absence grates on my skin/Which breaks into scarlet rubies/Until a red river slides towards the sea of my grief.’

I pressed my fingers to hot cheeks. The poem, a relic from a failed love affair – all right, the failed love affair with Raoul – was unutterably bad, but my father had chosen to keep it. Leafing through the remainder of the file’s contents, I discovered a wedding photograph of Will and me, an invitation for my father and me to the Chevalier du Tastevin dinner, which, once upon a time, I had coveted above all else, and a tiny curl of baby hair taped on to a photograph of Chloë at six months.

Eyes brimming, I shuffled them back into order – those small, telling pieces from my past had been carefully assembled by my father, my unsentimental father. As I replaced them in the file, I noticed another piece of folded paper. It was a sketch, made roughly in pencil, not professional. Whoever had been the artist had been impatient, stabbing the pencil far too hard on the paper. But the shape was obvious enough. It was of a house planned round a central courtyard with a loggia at one end. Underneath the sketch were the words ‘Il Fattoria. Val del Fiertino’.

Will was watching the television news.

‘Will…’ I sat down beside him on the sofa. ‘Will, I’ve decided to take my father’s ashes to Fiertino – as soon as I can get a flight. I know that’s where he wants to be. I’d rather not wait till September.’

The newscaster continued to talk.

‘Without me?’

‘Without you.’

‘And…’

‘I would like to go away. Just for a while.’

‘Of course you must, Fanny.’ He did not look at me. ‘If that’s what you want.’

15

Early on the Monday morning, I was almost ready.

I was saying goodbye to Will. A plumber banged away at a dripping pipe in our bathroom. Maleeka’s cleaning materials littered the hallway. The radio in the kitchen was at full blast. Will’s car was in the drive and the driver had kept the engine running. Will had lost his wallet and was rampaging upstairs in the search. In short, everything was perfectly normal – except that the following day I would be driven to the airport to catch a plane, and the scent of an unusual freedom in my nostrils was almost unbearable.

Will clattered downstairs, his briefcase half open. ‘Got it. What time are you flying?’

I tucked a copy of my flight schedule into the briefcase and zipped it shut. My husband’s mouth was set in a tight line, but it was not anger. It was something deeper and more worrying. Will was bracing himself against my going. I kissed him tenderly but with an almost palpable sense of relief, and he kissed me back, almost angrily. ‘Take care,’ he said. ‘You will phone?’

‘Promise.’ I brushed my fingers over the set mouth. ‘Do your best.’

‘For what?’ he said, which was unlike him. ‘Is it worth it?’

I placed my hands lightly on his shoulders. ‘You know what for.’ As I had asked for comfort over my father, he had asked me to shore up his confidence and optimism. It was the least I could do.

His mouth softened, and he smiled down at me. I’m sorry about your father. I’ll miss him too. I’m sure you will find the best… the appropriate place to bury the ashes.’

I watched Will trudge towards the waiting car, fling his briefcase into the back and climb in after it.

Almost immediately, the phone rang.

‘Raoul, I’ve missed you.’

‘I’m sorry, Fanny, that I did not make the funeral, but you knew why.’

‘You were in Australia. Did it go well?’

‘I’ve got a nice deal shaping up that I will tell you about at a better time.’

‘How are the family?’

‘Larger and much more expensive. Thérèse says she feels a hundred but she doesn’t look it.’ His laugh was full of energy and conveyed deep admiration. ‘My wife is a beautiful woman.’

‘If I was very nice to her do you think she would tell me her secret?’

‘Living with me, clearly. We are going to Rome for a couple of years. Did I tell you?’ Like the Rothschilds of old, the Villeneuves frequently despatched their family members all round the wine world to consolidate business contacts.

‘Wonderful.’

He cleared his throat. ‘I need not ask if you miss your father. I want to tell you that I will very much. He was a good friend and I valued him the more because he was from an older generation. One does not have many such friends, and I am grateful for the trouble he took with me.’

‘Actually, tomorrow I’m taking his ashes back to Fiertino. I think that is where he would wish to be.’

To my surprise, Raoul did not endorse the plan – and, in the scheme of things, only Raoul, because of his friendship with my father, had the right to question my decision. Are you quite sure? Alfredo was a great romantic in many ways, Fanny, but his life was in Stanwinton. Perhaps… you are right. It will give you time. Give yourself a moment to investigate the wine. I would like your thoughts on the super Tuscans.’ He paused. ‘I would like to talk to you about the business. Will you contact me when you feel better?’

I promised I would.

The plumber called me, and I went upstairs to find out the worst, which was nothing much, but he charged royally for it. I wrote him a cheque and ushered him out of the house.

I was searching in the chest in the hall for my passport and came across a bundle of out-of-date ones roosting under a selection of scarves no one ever used. I had a particular fondness for Chloë’s old passports because I loved the photographs. The first was of a tiny minx with plaits. Then the half-formed teenager who glowered and sulked at the camera. Chloë had taken the up-to-date model with her, of course.

‘If you want to be a real friend,’ I begged Elaine, who had driven over the day before to console me over my father (Elaine had understood when I explained that, with my father’s death, I had been ordered up from the rear to the front line), ‘help me clean Chloë’s room. Please I couldn’t face it after she left.’

After lunch we went upstairs. As a pile of discarded clothes hindered complete access, I had to push hard on the door. I dumped them on the landing. Elaine surveyed the blasted heath. ‘Seen it before,’ she said. ‘It’s probably radioactive. Can’t Maleeka do it?’

‘She could, but she wouldn’t emerge for at least a year.’

Elaine picked up one of the Barbies that had migrated into a Barbie gene pool on a shelf stuffed with childhood objects that Chloë refused to relinquish. This one had long blonde hair, cone breasts, a wasp waist and nothing on. Elaine manipulated one leg up above the head. ‘I could sort of do that once,’ she said wistfully.

I laughed. ‘Chloë cherished great hopes of the Barbies, but they let her down. She never got over the fact that their legs wouldn’t bend into ballet positions.’

Elaine leant against the window-frame and looked out across the sunny lawn and the border, in which a few opportunistic delphiniums raised their plumes. ‘I am nearly forty-two,’ she murmured, ‘and I keep asking myself, “What else is there? Is this… me as I am now, is this all there is to life?”’

‘All’ is a big word and a foxy one. Ever since the Liz episode I had been wary of it. What did Elaine or I or Will expect from ‘all’? I don’t know. ‘All’ can mean soft, funny and silly memories placed side by side, like pieces of mosaic, which make up a picture that adds up to a great deal. They are precious, those memories. Chloë singing in her cot. Chloë winning the egg-and-spoon race at school. My father holding a glass of wine up to the light and asking, ‘What do you think, Francesca?’ Will lying with his head in my lap, at peace and drowsy…

I dropped a kiss on the minx in the earliest passport and tucked it away under a dark blue scarf patterned with red cherries that Chloë had once treasured and pulled out my own.

A movement made me turn round, passport in hand. It was Meg. ‘Fanny? Fanny, I’ve been thinking. Can I come too? I need a holiday. I wouldn’t mind seeing this place you and your father talked about so often. This special place.’