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‘There's the signature. There. Come on now, Peter.'

All the way, walking out of the camp, he felt a prickling on his back, the ominous waiting for someone to call him back.

‘Are we going to the Hanburys' now, Maudey?'

‘No, not there, lad. I've quit my job. Mrs Hanbury will have to shift for herself for once.'

He looked up at Maudey's soft face, her mouth set, her eyes wide like the wind that was blowing in them. With a pang of gratitude he saw what Maudey had done. She'd left her job for him.

The bus dropped them off a short walk from the door of the little miner's cottage.

‘This is it then, Peter,' she said. ‘Your new home.'

Maudey lived with her brother. Gruff and taciturn, disposed to be stern since he could see Peter must have done something wrong. Nobody mentioned his school. It was miles and miles to the grammar, and no bus.

‘Time the lad started to pull his weight,' Maudey's brother said.

At the end of the school year Peter was given a job in the office at the mine, on account of his good maths, and shown how to do double entry bookkeeping. Maudey got him a bike to get there each morning, cycling in past the rows of men with creased and caved-in faces, in mufflers and heavy boots, heading for the cage that would take them down into the enclosed world of the pit. And it was reckoned that he was lucky, being handed a job in the office, a boy like him.

It was only weeks later that he learned the price of being with Maudey, of the good food and the job he could go to, of the radio
playing Bach so he could carry on getting to know the names of the music.

He asked Maudey when he could go back and see Kitty and Bill. She went very quiet. Hurt. That was the price of her taking care of him so well. His loyalty should be to her. And it seemed there was something shameful about his old family now, best not to mention things like that.

None of them came to see him again. And there was no way he could find the money to make his own way to Manchester and look them up by himself. The names of his brothers and sisters became secrets, words that mustn't be spoken again, in case they hurt Maudey.

And underneath was another thought, gritty and troubling.

In the end it was his fault. He had carelessly wished them all away, because of what he told Alice.

CHAPTER 20

Fourwinds, 1981

The next day Alice saw that Nicky remained stubbornly hopeful, as if everyone else had yet to catch up with his reality. ‘Something's happened,' he kept saying, unshaven, in yesterday's clothes. ‘This isn't Sarah. This isn't what she wants. It doesn't make any sense.'

When Alice told him that the police were going to drop by with some information – Sarah had been seen a few miles away – he was triumphant. At last, some news, they could begin to sort things out.

A woman police officer called at the house. They gathered in the drawing room. Peter's hand on top of Patricia's, holding tight.

The policewoman told them that Sarah had been seen in the bus station in town the previous day, but after that there had been no further sightings. The woman looked uncomfortable and said that she was sorry, but as Sarah appeared to have left voluntarily she wasn't classifiable as a missing person. There was nothing further that they could do officially, but they were still going to keep a lookout in the area. If they heard anything they would let the family know immediately.

Alice watched as Nicky listened to what she was saying. Sarah had chosen to leave. Voluntarily. The girl had chosen to leave. She could see that he was resisting the words, refusing to let them sink in, stiff and taut and confused.

‘She'll probably get in touch herself once she's had time to calm down,' the policewoman offered.

Nicky nodded.

She was terribly sorry, reluctant to go, as if she personally wanted to do a lot more, her eyes resting on the signs of a wedding that would never happen, the row of gifts wrapped in silver and white paper on a side table, and now a cardboard tray of buttonholes, tiny bunches of paper flowers for the men's tailcoats delivered only a couple of hours ago.

After the policewoman had left, Alice said it was time to let people know. Tell them that the wedding was not going ahead. ‘Of course, some guests will already be on their way.' She closed her eyes for a moment.

Peter said perhaps it was best for them to move into a hotel nearby for a night or so. That way they could have a second phone line and begin working through their guest list.

Alice didn't object. It was after all the sensible thing to do. Nicky looked from one face to the other, dazed.

Peter and Patricia carried their cases down. There was a horrid feeling of something final as they all stood in the hallway to say goodbye. Nicky stood back, hands in his pockets, stiff and removed, his thoughts seeming to float somewhere above his body, a little absent smile. It was all going to come right.

Peter put down the cases and walked over to hug him. ‘Perhaps in a couple of days . . .'

The phone rang. Nicky jumped, moved swiftly to snatch up the receiver. Alice could faintly hear a woman's voice, middle-aged. An accent.

‘But could you tell me where that is?' Nicky said. ‘Can I speak to her?'

The small voice again, apologetic.

‘But would you give her a message?'

Whoever it was rang off. Nicky held the phone, stared at it, then put it down.

‘Where is she?' said Patricia.

‘I don't know. She didn't say. It was somewhere echoey.'

‘Echoey?'

‘A school, or a hotel. I don't know. She wouldn't come and speak to me.'

‘But who is she with?'

‘It was a woman. She didn't say.'

‘You should have let me speak to them,' said Patricia. ‘Why didn't you let me have the phone?' She began to cry.

‘We'd better go.' Outside Peter helped Patricia into the car. Turned to shake hands with Ralph and then Alice.

She hung on to his hand. ‘Peter, when you left all those years ago, I've never really forgiven myself. I should have made a fuss.'

‘Oh Alice, dear, I've forgiven those days long ago. You see, all things work together for the good in the end.'

‘You believe that?'

‘And they will for Nicky and Sarah too.' He leaned over and embraced her.

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

After the Donoghues had left the three of them ate supper in the kitchen, a supermarket quiche warmed in the oven, the onions too sweet.

Suddenly Nicky let his fork clatter onto his plate.

‘I just don't get it. How could she go and say nothing?'

He rushed out and Alice half got up to follow him, but Ralph said, ‘Let's give him some space.'

She knew he was right, sat down. What could she say that would make things better? They finished eating in silence, Ralph glancing at the door, or folding salad onto his fork, lost in his own thoughts.

There was a time when Ralph and she would have talked it through together, come to a shared position, and there would have been comfort in that. How did all that change? Gradually, almost imperceptibly, in the years after they moved into Fourwinds, even as the house had filled with children and their noise, she had found herself increasingly lonely, Ralph drifting further away. But life had been so busy. It seemed that other things were always more important. When there was time, soon, then they would get back to their old intimacy, their old ways, wrapped up in each other's lives.

She thought back to an evening when she'd rushed to get to Nicky's prep school in time for the singing competition. There had been a late session at the county court and she'd been asked to give her opinion on the family concerned. But in the end it had been cancelled, and so she'd arrived at The Merlin School just as the singing competition was beginning.

She'd spent a lot of time coaching Nicky for the evening. She'd picked out a lovely Cole Porter song, ‘Let's Face the Music', and even found a little suit and top hat through a theatrical hire agency. She'd shown him how to do the steps at the end, twirl the cane. It was irresistible. Of all her boys Nicky was the one who could sing. It would be nice for him to win something for a change.

Nicky hadn't really taken to prep school in the way his brothers had. He missed the small village classroom with its array of infants of all ages, boys and girls. He'd been happy there, seemingly doing nothing but crayoning.

She didn't hold with the way the system worked of course, the way it divided people in the village, but if the boys were to go to Repton then they'd need to be at The Merlin first. It was just the way things were. Although Nicky still preferred to play with the boy from the village school, from the row of council houses at the other end of the village, endless games of den-building in the copse at the
edge of the garden. Whooping through the undergrowth, coming home smelling of greenery and cold air.

She nodded at Audrey MacKenzie-Riley, a woman with a startled, bird-like face, as she squeezed along the row to find a seat. Like most of the other parents Audrey was from a rather county set, some more some less. Alice was never sure where she stood in the order of things.

There was an air of organised attentiveness in the audience as the first boy handed his music to the master at the piano. He stood in the centre of the stage as if waiting for an execution. The parents focused.

He sang a song with an interminable number of verses about buying a fine horse at market. Alice ran her eye down the programme. Three boys were singing opera arias. Several religious-sounding pieces, boys whose parents had in mind the distant dream of a choral scholarship to Oxford. She saw with satisfaction that there was only one Cole Porter. Nicky.

Dear Nicky. And he'd been desperate to sing something from Disney. Should she go and check with the music teacher that Ralph had remembered to bring everything: the tails and top hat, the little cane to hold out for the final twirl?

The clapping subsided. An anxious child came on and sang the treble solo from Faure's
Requiem
, eyes wide with terror as each top note approached.

Nicky was next. His Cole Porter solo. She glanced round and finally spotted Ralph, standing at the back. Waved, but he didn't see her.

Three children walked onto the stage in very homemade costumes, their faces covered in thick grease paint. It looked like they weren't following the programme order then. No matter. She crossed one neat leg over the other and looked on fondly. Their
mothers must have let them fish around for costumes by themselves. Probably rather regretted that now. The seen-better-days, woolly balaclava and mittens on the child on the right for instance. Was he a monkey, a bear?

Mr Bowman at the piano gave them a nod of the head and then rollicked into the opening bars of ‘The Bare Necessities' from the
Jungle Book
film that Nicky loved so much. She'd not been the only mother whose child wanted to do something from Disney then.

The child in brown face paint turned towards the audience, held his arms out wide and began to sing out with abandon, the poignant timbre of a boy who only has another year or two before his voice breaks.

An awful realisation was beginning to dawn. The boy was wearing an old brown shirt, very like Ralph's old shirt. And the hat, the terrible old fur hat, wasn't that her old one from the dressing-up box?

It was Nicky. He skipped across the stage in her old brown tights. A monkey in black and a snake in a green dress followed. No, this was wrong. Where was the little suit? Alice felt herself go hot with embarrassment. When, when was it going to stop?

Nicky sang out in his lovely, woody alto, arms outstretched, dancing sideways across the stage with verve, cheerfully advocating that they all forget about their worries and their strife.

She swivelled her head. The audience was clapping, singing along. Finally enjoying something. There was Ralph beaming and mouthing the words along with Nicky.

He knew. He knew Nicky was going to sing this. How could they do this to her?

Nicky finished and took a bow, the audience cheering and applauding enthusiastically, as if they'd just woken from a dreary sleep. The music master stood up at the piano, clapping hard. And of course Alice was clapping loudly, crying because Nicky was so
wonderful, so completely himself, and she was overwhelmed by his energy and presence once more, bursting with pride at how amazing her child was.

Another theatrical bow and Nicky looked out at the cheering audience. Finally he caught sight of Alice. His smile was as wide as she'd ever seen it as she stood and cheered him.

‘I don't mind a bit,' she told Nicky as they drove home in the car. ‘A much better idea. Everyone loved it.'

‘I'm sorry I didn't win.'

‘It doesn't matter a bit about winning.'

Ralph looked sheepish as the boys went up to bed later.

‘Why didn't you tell me?' she said angrily, once they were alone. ‘Were you going to tell me? I simply don't understand why you didn't tell me.'