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taking her myself. Then she might stay a fortnight, if I got her really settled in, and I could go and fetch her and take her home.”
    They smiled and parted then, and the conversation passed from Rosemary’s mind as she went about her usual duties, whichdid not get any less onerous. It was over a week later, when Selena Meadowes’s name came up in conversation with Paul over dinner, that Rosemary said:
    â€œI didn’t realize she had an elderly mother, going towards senility.”
    â€œReally?” Paul said, looking up. “That is sad. I met her once, a year or two ago. Perfectly spry and interested in everything—I wouldn’t have said she was more than sixty.”
    Rosemary knew, from more than one case in the parish, how sadly early Alzheimer’s disease could strike. It was a horrific stalking-horse, a terror more actual to most than AIDS. She said no more, but the subject of Selena’s mother—or, more particularly, Selena’s motives—remained in the back of her mind.
    She rang her own mother that evening, while Paul was out at a Parochial Church Council meeting. Her mother was a lively old lady living in Lincoln, very much taken up with clerical controversies and quarrels, of which there were an inordinate number in Lincoln. Rosemary had been keeping her loss of faith from her, but thinking of Selena Meadowes’s mother made her decide that this was the sort of misplaced consideration that the old could do without—that it was, in fact, positively insulting. Her mother took the revelation in her stride, was almost dismissive.
    â€œProbably your time of life,” she said. “It will pass. It’s probably due to your having so much to do with Christians. They can be very depressing, you know. How are the children?”
    The question made Rosemary think how much more sensibly her mother had reacted than her son. There was a lot to be said for experience—she hoped Mark would be able to learn from it when it came to him. She was just telling her mother about her son, and trying to keep her irritation with him out of her voice, when the front doorbell rang.
    â€œMust go, Mother. Someone at the door.”
    It was half past nine—late for a parishioner to visit. She put down the receiver, hurried to the door and put on the front light. Not a shape she recognised. But she had no apprehensions and opened the door. It was Stanko, an appealing, apologetic smile on his face.
    â€œRosemary, can you help me please? I am in much trouble.”

CHAPTER SIX
Place of Safety
    R osemary drew Stanko inside and led him through to the living room. She looked at him in the better light there.
    â€œYou look tired,” she said, “and hungry.”
    â€œA little,” said Stanko. “I was told I must go middle morning. I went to do packing—” he gestured towards a pathetically small and ill-filled knapsack—“and then I said good-bye and went to coach station. Coach is cheaper, you see. When we get to Leeds I have great difficulty finding bus to Abbingley—everybody very kind and try to help but I go wrong.”
    â€œWell, sit down. I’ll get you a hot drink, and then I’ll make you an omelette or something.”
    Rosemary found she rather enjoyed fussing over Stanko, as he had fussed over her in the dining room at Cliff View. She lit the gas fire because the evening was getting chilly, made him a pot of coffee, then made a big mushroom omelette with a salad and opened some tins to make some kind of sweet. She was just sitting down opposite him and saying, “Now,” when she heard Paul’s key in the door. She smiled at Stanko encouragingly, said “Don’t worry” and slipped out into the hall.
    â€œWe have a visitor,” she said.
    An unexpected visitor was not an unusual occurrence in a vicar’s life. Paul nodded and waited.
    â€œIt’s the waiter at the guesthouse in