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body is . . . happy.’
    Roly frowns, still stroking Claude who now rolls onto his back so that his tummy can be rubbed. His front paws flop on his chest and he stretches luxuriously.
    â€˜The point is –’ his father is trying to make it clearer – ‘that your mother had a very different life before we got married and you and Mim came along. She was an actress and she had lots of friends who shared that life with her.’
    He pauses. Roly nods encouragingly. He knows all ‘the chums’ and has listened to their conversations about theatres and things called ‘digs’, which make him think of badgers, and people who were landladies but didn’t seem to have anything to do with the kind of land that they have here in Cornwall.
    â€˜Well, she gave all that up to come down here to be with me, you see, and sometimes she misses it, just as I should miss Cornwall terribly if I had to go and live in London.’
    â€˜But she’d rather be here with us than in London with the chums?’ he asks rather anxiously.
    â€˜Of course she would! But that’s what I mean about a balance. Happy though she is with us here your mother is still interested in the theatre, and what is happening in that world, and it is important for her to keep in touch with it. Depending on who we are and what we do, everyone needs a different kind of balance in their lives. That’s why it is essential that when you grow up you choose the right career. I’m lucky to be able to live here and do the job I love.’
    â€˜What shall I do when I grow up?’ asks Roly, interested now in this question of balance. ‘How shall I know about the balance?’
    â€˜We shall have to wait and see,’ says his father. ‘You’re rather young yet to take that decision.’
    A door opens on the galleried landing and Aunt Mary appears, carrying Mim who has been having her nappy changed. She screams with delight as Aunt Mary leans with her over the banisters.
    â€˜Down!’ she shouts at once. ‘Go down!’
    Roly and his father watch as Mim, beaming triumphantly, is carried down the stairs.
    â€˜I wonder what Mim will be when she grows up,’ says Roly.
    His father grins. ‘I can answer that one,’ he replies confidently. ‘Mim will be a proper little madame.’

CHAPTER NINE
    The drive back from Camelford, where Daisy had been to stock up her larder, took much longer than was necessary because of the stops. The first of these was so that a tractor could manoeuvre itself across the narrow lane and into a field. The aged driver raised a fraying straw hat in courteous thanks and, as he climbed down to open the gate, she was rather struck by the incongruity of his braces – a bright, smart City red – worn over a faded plaid shirt. Once the tractor had passed into the field she remained to watch a rabbit, which lolloped to and fro amongst the tall buttercups in the ditch beneath the hawthorn hedge. He was clearly enjoying himself: pausing to sit upright in the afternoon sunshine between dashes amongst the campion and mouse-ear that flowered in the grass. His long, delicate, almost transparent ears, twitching to catch the least sound, reminded Daisy of the glistening pink colour of the inside of sea shells.
    She drove on slowly, passing up out of the deep, rain-scoured lanes to higher ground. No hedges grew here but the high dry banks were laced through with the knuckly bony roots of ash and oak. Moss as bright as lettuce, soft as tiny cushions, inhabited these roots alongside ferns, whose tender green frondy fingers thrust themselves out from rough brown curled fists. Daisy stopped the car and climbed out to peer into a deep hole: at its entrance a pile of fresh earth indicated recent excavation. A very strong rank smell – one that Uncle Bernard would have recognized at once – made her draw back, wrinkling her nose. As she stood, stretching a little