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lying. I can explain what happened to me last year and how I couldn’t possibly have been in Gloucester to father that child of hers. It’s true I did meet her once, two years ago, but—’
    Adela laid her fingers against my lips.
    â€˜Hush,’ she said. ‘Explanations can wait. Besides, I’ve had plenty of time to think and I’ve realized how wrong I was not to trust you.’
    Oh, dear God! If she had planned for a year how to get her revenge, she could have thought of no better way than to announce her wholehearted (but misplaced) faith in me. She put an arm about my waist and urged me forward. ‘Come and let me introduce you to my cousin, Clemency Godslove. Oh, Roger, such terrible things have been happening. We are in urgent need of your services.’
    For the moment, her words failed to register properly: I was too relieved to have been let off the hook so easily to be aware of anything beyond my own sense of euphoria. And, in addition, Adam, who would be five years old in just over two months’ time, was embracing me around the hips, impeding my progress.
    â€˜Hello, bad man,’ he said. But as this was his customary, irreverent form of address – just to let me know, I suppose, that whoever else was fooled, he at least had my measure – I merely scooped him up in my arms and gave him a resounding kiss on one of his fat little cheeks.
    â€˜Ugh!’ he said, but for once did not wipe it off, beaming at me instead. (It was beginning to dawn on me, greatly to my astonishment, that perhaps my family really did miss me when I was absent, although being torn apart by wild horses would never let them admit it.)
    As we neared the gate, the woman who had been waiting so patiently beside it, looking slightly bemused, stepped forward a pace or two to greet us.
    â€˜Clemency,’ Adela said, ‘this is my husband, Roger. Isn’t it wonderful? He’s come to find us.’
    â€˜And to take you all home again,’ I added firmly. ‘You’ve trespassed on your cousin’s time quite long enough.’
    My wife turned a dismayed face towards me. ‘Roger, no! I can’t leave now. I told you, we need your help.’
    â€˜My help?’ Now I came to think of it, I did recall Adela saying something like ‘terrible things have been happening’.
    My heart sank. I had been hoping to take up Jack Nym’s offer and get us all back to Bristol as soon as possible. We could have been his return freight. I had sufficient money to be able to pay him.
    But it was plainly not to be. Clemency Godslove was inviting us indoors and, most ominously, she and my wife were discussing where Elizabeth and I should sleep and deciding that Hercules would be happy in one of the outhouses with the family dogs.
    â€˜I’ll be sleeping with Adela,’ I interrupted in a voice my nearest and dearest knew well and which meant that I would brook no argument (not that that ever stopped them). ‘And Hercules will sleep in our chamber. He gets upset in strange houses if he doesn’t know where I am, and barks all night.’
    â€˜As you please.’ Clemency Godslove shrugged and I noticed for the first time that she was dressed from head to toe in unrelieved black. She was plainly in mourning. I glanced at Adela and noted that she, too, was wearing dark colours.
    I switched my attention back to my hostess as she led us towards the house, and saw an elderly woman – I learned later that she was in her fifty-sixth year – short but with an upright carriage that made her appear taller than she really was. I doubted that she had ever been beautiful in the conventional sense of the word, but with her high cheekbones, aquiline nose and determined jaw she must always have been striking. Even now, with the lines of age seaming her cheeks and forehead, she would stand out in a crowd. Her best feature was her eyes, a dark blue, set beneath heavy