I.
The nursery at Ashcombe had the best light in the house, and Hester Bennett had come to think of that as a kind of apology.
It faced south-east, over the long lawn and the line of copper beeches, and in the mornings the sun came through the tall window in a dozen bright panes and laid them across the floorboards like a game of hopscotch someone had forgotten to finish. It fell on the dappled rocking horse with his worn red saddle, on the stack of books by the window seat, green and crimson and blue, and on the long patterned curtains, birds and briars on a cream ground, that reached to the floor. In the afternoons it softened and went gold. It was a room someone had loved very carefully, once, and then left.
At half past two on a Tuesday in October, it held Hester, a basin of warm water, and a small girl with jam on her fingers.
"Hold still," Hester said.
"I am holding still."
"You are holding still the way the rocking horse holds still when you are riding him."
Rose considered this and allowed her hand to go limp. She was five and a little more, light brown hair escaping its ribbon, white smock spotted with the evidence of an apricot tart that had not gone entirely into her mouth. Hester knelt on the rug in front of her and worked the cloth between each finger in turn, thumb last, the way her own mother had done for Kit when he was small.
"There," she said. "Clean enough to turn pages."
"Will you read the duck one?"
"I will read the duck one if you can tell me where you put it."
Rose looked at the books, and then at the ceiling, which was where she looked when she knew perfectly well.