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head.
    â€˜Isn’t it horrid?’
    I turned to find Sarah beside me.
    â€˜And it’s Saturday too!’ she added disgustedly.
    So it was. The days had all seemed the same since I arrived. Matthew had offered me one of my ‘free evenings’ the other day, but I had no plans, and since we were at an interesting point in the book, I hadn’t bothered to take it. However, the thought of working on a Saturday night was not very pleasant, even if I had nothing better to do. I could at least go down to Chapelcombe to the cinema.
    â€˜And,’ Sarah was continuing, ‘I go back to school on Wednesday. Next year, when I’m nine, Daddy says I’ll probably board.’
    I must have looked surprised, because she added naively, ‘I get in his way rather.’
    My heart contracted, ‘I’m sure you don’t – he hardly ever sees you!’
    â€˜I think it’s because I remind him of Mummy,’ she went on, in her old-fashioned little voice. ‘Not that I really look like her – Mummy’s very beautiful – at least, I think she is – but I suppose just because I’m here it makes him think of her, and he doesn’t like that.’
    â€˜Do you miss her, Sarah?’ We were still standing at the window, and I put my arm round the thin little shoulders and pulled her against me.
    â€˜Not really. I didn’t see her much, either. She was always working or at parties.’
    â€˜Working?’
    â€˜Yes, she writes, like Daddy, but on a newspaper. Tammy says she’s very clever.’
    My heart ached for the child, rejected by both her parents.
    As though she knew what I was thinking, she looked up at me with a smile, ‘I’m not lonely, though. I have Tammy – she was Mummy’s nanny once – did I tell you? – and Uncle Mike is much more fun than Daddy! Daddy’s always so solemn – he never laughs.’
    â€˜Perhaps he misses your mummy too.’ I hadn’t thought of that before.
    â€˜Yes, I suppose he does. But they always used to shout at each other when she was here, so ...’ she lifted her shoulders in an almost foreign little shrug.
    I thought gratefully of my own happy family, and half-changed the subject. ‘You say she’s beautiful – what does she look like?’
    â€˜Would you like to see her picture?’
    â€˜Yes – yes, I would.’
    â€˜Come upstairs, then.’ She tugged at my hand and I turned readily from the depressing view and went with her up the stairs and into her bedroom. It was next door to mine and roughly the same shape, decorated with a wallpaper covered in teddy bears and rabbits.
    â€˜It’s a bit babyish,’ Sarah apologized matter-of-factly, ‘but I quite like it really.’ It was uncanny how often she answered a thought in my mind.
    She knelt on the floor before a little roll-top desk and opened one of its drawers, from which she took a photograph album. She laid it on the rug in front of the gas fire. ‘Let’s be cosy!’ she said, ‘Could you light it?’
    I knelt beside her on the rug, and the cheerful glow spread over us. Sarah rolled onto her stomach and opened the album at the first page. On it was pasted, somewhat crookedly, a blurred snap of a young woman in a long skirt, holding a baby. My heart sank. If this was to be the quality of the photographs, I would be no nearer knowing anything about Mrs Haig. There was a preponderance of glue, which shone dully all round the snap and even in a few spots on the print itself.
    â€˜That’s Mummy and me, but you can’t see it very well.’ Sarah turned over. ‘There!’ she said triumphantly. This page was certainly more promising. There was a photo of Matthew standing with his arm round a girl. They were both laughing, and I was so surprised at this revelation of him looking young and happy, that it was a moment before my eyes passed to the