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Eve was conscious of George's deep, dependable gaze being fixed on her. She was conscious too that she had not been telling him the whole truth. She was, if necessary, going to invade her mother's posthumous privacy.

“I'll write down the chappie's address for you,” said George. “He's Indian, from a Hindu family. I apologize if the spelling is a bit haywire.”

The moment had passed, and Eve was glad it had.

She looked around. Aunt Ada had consumed her last egg-and-cress sandwich and had her last slice of fruitcake and was departing alone through the door. Eve bade her no farewells. She felt suddenly hungry herself and went and sampled the cake, the apple sponge and one last sandwich, a corned beef one, just beginning to turn up at the edges. Soon she was the last person in the room, and there was no excuse for not going home.

Eve was not happy with herself. That warning from George Wilson had been a reproach, and she felt the need to justify herself to herself, and yet couldn't. She did want to find out the truth about her mother. Had May lived a lie throughout her adult life? If so, she, Eve, did not blame her. The blame should be attached to the times May had lived in, to the people who cherished old prejudices, to the popular press, so strident and vicious in Great Britain.

And blame was, in truth, no part of Eve's plan. She wanted to find out the truth about her mother simply
because she wanted to
know
. And she wanted to know because she thought she should have been told.

She suddenly realized she did not want to go back to her job. She never wanted to see Wolverhampton again. She never wanted to persuade herself that the Midlands countryside was quite as beautiful as West Yorkshire. She wanted to stay in Yorkshire, where she had grown up.

It occurred to her that she had left here to be independent, to have her own secrets, to get away from a much-loved mother who expected to know everything about what her daughter was doing. Now the positions were reversed, and she was trying to find out what her mother had got up to all those years ago around the time of Eve's birth.

Eve had no weapons to combat the emptiness of an evening at home after a funeral. She would have liked to go to a pub and sit alone with her thoughts over a couple of drinks, but there was no pub in the vicinity of Crossley where she was not likely to encounter somebody who had memories of Blackfield Road and its headmistresses, and she had no stomach for a long drive. In the end she put jacket potatoes in the oven, then made a meal that could be cooked from frozen, and ate alone with a glass of wine. Alone. It seemed to strike the keynote of her life at the moment. Well, alone was better than being with Aunt Ada. But not better than being with Grant, that she had to admit. With all his pomposity and dogmatism, he could be entertaining and was almost always stimulating. She put the thought from her: that was a part of her past. She sighed aloud. She had only old, failed relationships to meditate on, not the prospect of future ones.

Faced with the yawning waste of the rest of the evening, with nothing but cheap trivia on television and
cheap chat on radio, she fished in her handbag and brought out the slip of paper given her by George Wilson. The name of the stamp expert was Omkar Rani, and he lived at 23 Butterfield Road, Bradford. His phone number was 01274 867210. What had she to lose?

The voice that replied to her ring was female, and not speaking English.

“Could I speak to Omkar Rani please?”

“He not in.”

“Could you tell me when he will be in?”

“He home eight o'clock.”

“Thank you. I'll phone sometime after that.”

When she did phone, at half past, the voice that answered was sharper and brighter, and hardly at all accented.

“Omkar Rani speaking.”

“Oh, hello. Er . . . I rang you earlier—”

“Yes. My wife told me.”

“It's rather difficult. I'd better say at once it's not a police matter. It is a philatelic one.”

“Good. I almost never get rung on police matters at home, but it's pleasant that it's a philatelic call. What are you interested in?”

Eve quickly put her thoughts in order.

“I perhaps should explain from the start that I'm not in the least interested in stamps. I believe you went to Blackfield Road school. You probably remember my mother, who died ten days ago. May McNabb.”

“Oh, Mrs. McNabb. I remember her so well, and I was so sad about her dying. Sixty-seven is no age these days. And I have so many happy memories from that school.”

“I'm glad. Many people have told me that. The fact is, I received a letter a few days ago—it was a letter to my mother from someone who had not heard of her death. I don't want to go into what upset me, but I would like to know the area it comes from. There is no address on the letter or on the envelope, no surname either in the signature. There is only the postmark.”

“Yes. Isn't that enough?”

“It's very faint, almost nonexistent. Part of the circle, just one letter of the place, and a barely legible
SE
for September. It's one of the old style of postmarks.”

“I see. They often are almost illegible these days. Well, if you would care to bring it round—”

“I feel very cheeky. Of course I'll pay you for your time.”

“Mrs. McNabb's daughter? Absolutely not. If I can help you, it will give me the greatest pleasure. But, Miss McNabb—that is your name?”

“Yes it is. Eve.”

“I think you will not want to show me the letter. But could you copy down anything in the letter that you do not mind me seeing. There may be indications there—I speak as a policeman now, not a philatelist—that we could take with the postmark and we may get a step or two further on.”

“I'll do that. Could I come around to your home? Or you come to me?”

“Come around here. I may need books and catalogs. I finish work at six tomorrow. Could we say seven thirty?”

“Seven thirty it is. And thank you in advance.”

Eve rang off, somehow feeling greatly heartened. When
the next evening she rang the doorbell of 23 Butterfield Road, a small street of late-Victorian houses, rather small and depressed, and close to a monster-size roundabout, the door was opened by Rani's wife. She was holding a baby, and looked terribly young. There was also, Eve thought, a prevailing uncertainty, and perhaps an unhappiness, that mystified her. The woman opened her mouth, but she was forestalled by the door to one of the front rooms opening and a young man coming out.

“This is the lady I told you about, Sanjula. We'll be in the sitting room. I don't know how long we will take.”

He was a good-looking young man—young, but by no means as young as his wife: perhaps twenty-eight or thirty. He led Eve through to the sitting room, furnished in a slightly ornate style, and shut the door behind them. He gestured Eve toward one of the easy chairs.

“I hope you weren't eating,” she said. “I really don't want to inconvenience you.”

“No, no—I'd finished—all I wanted to eat. Now let us have a look at this mysterious envelope—made mysterious by our wonderful GPO.”

“Well, yes,” agreed Eve. “But the writer didn't put an address on it, or on the letter itself.”

“Presumably because she knew the recipient—dear Mrs. McNabb—was perfectly aware of what it was.”

Eve suddenly gave voice to a thought that had come to her on a walk that afternoon, but had not been closely examined.

“That seems most likely. But isn't it just possible that she knew my mother was dead, that the letter would be read by me and that she didn't want me to contact her?”

Rani nodded, but unenthusiastically, as if he thought she could have picked holes in that theory very easily if she had thought it through. Then he switched on a strong light and looked at the envelope through a magnifying glass.

“We can forget the
SE
for September. Typically the most useless information is the clearest . . . The one letter in the place-name that is clearly visible looks as if it could be the last—looking at it in relation to the month . . . It seems to me it's a
D
—would you agree?”

“Yes, that's what I thought.”

“And then—which you couldn't see with the naked eye—there's just a shadow of another letter here . . . Just a stroke crossed by—or perhaps met by—another, shorter stroke.”

Eve was leaning over his shoulder now.

“Oh yes, I can see. But that could be quite a lot of things, couldn't it?”

“Yes, it could. I'll need to consult my books to investigate the possibilities . . . Now, what about the letter itself—the parts you will let me read?”

He said it neutrally, without a shadow of reproach. Eve took out the copy she had made of the parts of the letter she felt no qualms about his seeing.

“I've left out the last two paragraphs. Somehow it's too—”

“Don't upset yourself.”

“There's mention in the last bit of ‘the business with John.' John was my father's name—John McNabb of course.”

“Of course. Women always took their husband's name
then, didn't they?” He took the two pages of notebook paper and began reading them. When he finished, he sat for a moment, thinking. “Pardon me—I should know this—but isn't
Hay Fever
a pretty well-known play?”

“Yes. It's Noël Coward. Dating from 1925 or so—it's a very twenties play. They would have to be very good amateurs to bring it off.”

“When did Noël Coward die?”

“Oh, 1970 or thereabouts.” Eve was bemused. “Why do you ask?”

“Still in copyright. They would have to get permission and pay a fee to his publisher or agent, and the money would go to his heir. I think if you got in touch with his publishers, you would find they probably keep records.”

Eve looked at him.

“What's the matter?” he asked.

“All of a sudden there's a road ahead.”

Rani looked shy.

“It was really very simple.”

“Not to me. It'll be Samuel French or one of those play publishers.”

“Phone them. Tell them you're the secretary to a new amateur drama group, and you're thinking of putting on
Hay Fever
. You want to know if any amateur or professional group has put it on in West Yorkshire in the last year or two.”

“Perhaps I shouldn't mention Yorkshire, though. She could have been talking about anywhere.”

“That's true. But if it's a popular play with amateurs, you could get a whole string of names and places. You'll have to play it by ear.”

“I think I shall enjoy doing that. How long do you need to look at the postmark?”

“I'm off tomorrow. And if you ring the publisher of
Hay Fever
tomorrow, we could confer in the evening. The point is, the two things go together. There could be a large number of places whose names could fit in with the postmark, but the play and the groups that want to put it on may tell us which one it is likely to be.”

“Could you come to me? Then we wouldn't be interrupting domestic routines.”

Rani seemed to be about to say something, then just murmured that he would like that, and noted down the address and time. On her way back to the car, Eve was conscious of a spring in her step and a feeling of promise even in the darkness of the autumn night.

The next day she went early into Halifax, went to the library, and found out the name of the licensing agents for Coward's plays. When she rang them in the middle of the morning, they couldn't have been more helpful, and obviously were used to similar queries. A young man and his computer worked wonders in seconds.

“
Hay Fever
? It's up there with
Private Lives
and
Blithe Spirit
as one of the favorite Cowards. But we find that more groups say they're going to do it than actually do. It's fiendishly difficult—full of good parts that need first-rate playing. If you're a new group, you may find something a bit more straightforward would suit you better.”

“We've got a lot of very experienced actors—amateur actors, of course,” lied Eve.

“With
Hay Fever
it's a big advantage if they've acted together before . . . Let's see. Newton Abbot Players in
2005, Pitlochry Festival, Fishguard Amateur Dramatic Society—all well out of your region. This year Aylesbury, London West End with Judi Dench—now
that
was a performance—Penzance, Derby—getting closer. Oh yes: the Huddersfield Comedy Club, with performances due in November, and Middlesborough—performances this month. Those are the nearest to you. Especially the Huddersfield.”

“Yes,” said Eve. “We'd better put our thinking caps on again. Thank you so much for your help.”

That afternoon she went to the one Crossley supermarket and bought several different fruit juices, some cans of beer, and a good white wine for herself. She was conscious of being much more lighthearted than she had been since her mother died—more happy than she had ever been, in fact, since she broke with Grant. “He's a married man,” she told herself, “and years younger than you.” But that didn't stop her feeling happy, and anticipating with something approaching excitement his visit in the evening. He was something different, something outside her everyday experience. In Evelyn Waugh's distinction between cars, between those that illustrate “being” and those that illustrate “becoming,” Eve decided she was obviously one of the latter. She was always looking for experiences, people, destinations that could change her, develop her, deepen her understanding of herself and of the world.