BOOK 4

'You don't look old enough to be anybody's mother,' she blurted out before she could stop herself.

'Nice of you to say so.' Betty, who had bent to greet Jim, straightened to accept the compliment. 'I sometimes feel a hundred. . .do come in out of the cold.' She stepped back through a glass inner door, adding over her shoulder as they followed, 'Marie's expecting you.'

So she's called Marie then, Amy thought, and wondered why the name seemed vaguely familiar. Surely she had heard it before, quite recently?

The outer lobby led into a big square hall, itself windowless but with doors leading off it to rooms bright-lit by the late-afternoon sun. A wide, handsome staircase rose to one side, and at the end of a short corridor another glass door showed through its frosted pane the outline of kitchen cupboards. Scents of coffee and baking drifted through the warm air.

Paul commanded Jim to sit and the dog obeyed, though with a beseeching, walk-hungry stare. While Betty took their coats and hu