But she had to complete this task. Forty-five minutes to go. The picture of Tad on the rosewood side table could stay. As twinkly eyed, white-haired and pink-cheeked as a clean-shaven Selfridges’ Santa, a patron saint of goodwill and constancy: the irreproachable, dead, final husband. He had given the photograph to her, in a typical gesture of ingenuous egotism, as a wedding anniversary present. What could be more uxorious? The one photograph in the flat that she had framed herself, clipping it between two Perspex squares bought from the stationer’s, was safely out of range of reportorial eyes, on her bedside table. The summer sun had bleached the boy’s untidy thatch of hair, and his shirt was coming loose from the woven belt girding his shorts. Honor, wearing a polka-dot frock cinched at the waist with a patent belt, held his hand a little too tightly. Behind them was the solid Georgian bulk of Glenbuidhe Lodge, with dripping candelabra of fuchsia by the front door and, in full sail in the drawing-room window, a ship in a bottle, another appeasement offering from Tad.
