'I can't. I can't let you. What about you must have family, or '

'No. My brother was shot as a deserter.'

I swallowed. 'I didn't know.'

He shrugged. 'Of course not. Why should you? Oh, don't worry about that, for heaven's sake. It was a long time ago. What I mean is, you're the right man for Tyme's End. There's no one else. I want you to have it.'

'I ' I turned and looked back at the house. The ivy riffled and shimmered in the breeze, and the light glinted on the windowpanes. I thought that I couldn't imagine being the master of Tyme's End, but the thrill of possession rose in my insides, like the fizz of champagne. Mine . . . I cleared my throat. 'But you hardly know me. What about your other friends?'

'I don't think any of them are as . . . suitable.'

'I can't accept it. I won't.'

Jack gave me a long look, then turned aside, smiling. 'When I'm dead you can refuse it, if you want.'

'It's not please understand, I simply can't '

'Then don't.' He was still smiling, as if he knew something I didn't. 'It's all right, Gardner. No one can make you take it.'

I struggled for words, torn between desire and duty and a kind of slippery unease that I couldn't quite put a name to.

I said, in a rush, 'You're not my father, Jack.'

For a few seconds I thought he hadn't heard. His gaze came back to my face and searched my eyes like a scholar looking up an entry in an index. Then he said, quietly, 'No, Gardner, I'm not. Your father was a clerk in a factory. Your father was an unremarkable, anonymous soldier who left you nothing but your good looks and a sense of inferiority. More to the point, your father is dead.'

I felt the air in my lungs thicken, as if it were suddenly liquid and not gas.

'What I am offering you is far beyond what your father could have offered you. I will be much, much more important to you than your father was.' He leant towards me, putting one hand on the side of my neck. 'Don't compare me to him again.'

I tried to hold his stare, but I couldn't. I glanced down at the grass, glowing green at my feet, and remembered the beetle he had torn apart. It should have made me want to pull away from him, but it didn't. I said, 'All right.'

'Good boy.'

He squeezed my neck and dropped his hand. Then we started to walk again. I could hear the rattling of river-water running over stones; it seemed implausibly loud, like a theatrical effect. The sunlight shone through the trees, emerald and gold.

I turned away and started to go back towards the house. Jack said, 'Oliver?' but I didn't reply. Although he started to say something else, I didn't look back, and he didn't follow me as I walked away.

I cannot put into words what I fear for you, if Martin begins to exert an undue influence upon you. Perhaps nothing more than disillusionment, perhaps something worse. When I knew him well he was dangerous . . .

I despised myself for reading the letter again, but it was irresistible, like picking at a scab. I couldn't leave it alone. I sat on my bed and spread the pages out on the nightstand, staring at the words as though I could make them unravel.

After a while I got my diary out, and sat with my fountain pen in my hand, trying to think of something to write. But nothing came. I shut my eyes and scrawled on the paper meaningless shapes at first, and then, as words formed in my head, I found my hand starting to move in unconscious obedience. When I opened my eyes the page was covered with loops and waves, like a child's idea of the sea. A few words were just legible, although perhaps only because I already knew what they said. Jack, Tyme's End. So happy here. Not my father. And then, suddenly clearer, as if something had been guiding my hand, dangerous.

I read the word over and over until my heart seemed to beat in time to the syllables. I turned the pages back so that I wouldn't have to see it, and found myself looking at the entry I had written yesterday. It spoke to me in a dreamy, breathless voice: of a lazy day in the sun, bathing and three-man cricket, and the blue evening sky as I sat by the window in the drawing room to write. It made me feel weary and old.

There was a knock on my door. I ran my hand across my eyes, took a deep breath, and said, 'Come in.'

It was Edie. I'd looked for her earlier, after I'd left Jack on the lawn, but she'd been nowhere to be found. She had an odd, strained look on her face, and her eyes and nose were pink, as if she were hay- feverish. She said, 'I'm not intruding, am I?'

'No.'

'Jolly good.' She came in and closed the door behind her, leaning back against it as though someone might try to break it down at any moment. She held out her hand and I saw an envelope in it. 'You left this downstairs. Anthony started to read it aloud before I realised what it was. He's such a cad I'm furious with him.'

My mother's letter. I took it, imagining snippets of it in Anthony's drawling public-school accent or, worse, his imitation of mine. Dearest Oliver . . . I must say I find the new vicar the tiniest bit unsavoury . . . I miss you, my darling, and it does seem rather hard that I might not see you before you go up again to Cambridge . . . And would Jack have laughed when he heard it? I wasn't sure. I said, 'Thank you.'

'It simply isn't done,' Edie said. 'I don't know anyone else who would do a thing like that. I should have stopped him as soon as he picked it up, but I had no idea he would '

'It's all right, Edie. I shouldn't have left it lying around. I know what Anthony's like by now.'

She gave me a brief smile, and came away from the door to perch on the back of the chair. My tie was dangling over it, but she didn't seem to notice. She said, 'Your mother sounds perfectly sweet.'

'She is,' I said, ashamed at how little conviction I could bring into my voice. Two weeks ago I would have said the same thing, and meant it. 'We're . . . very fond of each other.'

'It must have been hard for her.' Edie slid her fingertip over the edge of my dressing table, her eyes on the photo I'd leant against the mirror. 'Is that your father?'

I picked it up instinctively, and clutched it to my chest. 'Yes.' I felt foolish, so I laid it flat on the nightstand with my mother's letter on top. The return address caught my eye: Mrs. V. S. Gardner, The Old Vicarage, Peltenshall. The Old Vicarage was a grey, crumbling cottage, full of leaks and flaking plaster, so small it was astonishing how much money my mother had to spend to keep it standing. Compared to Tyme's End, it wasn't fit for human habitation.

Edie followed my eyes, and then looked away. She said, 'Well, I came to say toodle-oo.'

'Where are you going?'

'I'm off. Leaving,' she added. 'I've got thoroughly browned off. Oh, it's not your fault, or Jack's, or even Tony's. I've had enough, that's all. I shall be glad to get back to town.'

'For good, you mean?'

'I don't live here, Oliver.'

'Does Jack know?'

'Of course.' She snorted. 'He didn't object, naturally. Anthony's going later today, after they've finished taking photographs more photographs, it's too tiresome so you'll be alone here. With Jack, I mean. But you won't mind, will you?'

I opened my mouth and then turned to the window, letting my eyes rest on the treetops beyond the curve of the drive. Outside I could hear voices Anthony and Jack, laughing. I spun back suddenly to look at Edie, and in the second before she had time to compose her expression I saw a hint of unease, even I thought of guilt.

She said, in a rush, 'Oliver, when you asked me earlier about Jack, it was only that I thought you were so young, and we drink and smoke an awful lot, and Anthony sometimes takes snow . . . I'm sorry. It was jolly thoughtless of me. Your imagination must have positively run riot.'

'Langdon-Down isn't exactly dissolute,' I said.

She laughed unmusically. 'No. It was silly of me. What harm could you come to with your tutor here and Jack in charge?'

Her voice didn't ring quite true, but I didn't know what to say. I glanced involuntarily at Fraser's letter, where I'd left it on the nightstand, and felt a strange sense of humiliation. I moved over to it and slipped it into my pocket.

'Well. So long, old thing,' Edie said. 'I suppose I'd better be off, if I'm to catch my train. Pip pip.'

I nodded. My mother's address caught my eye again, but this time, instead of seeing the Old Vicarage in my mind's eye, I saw her face: tired, a little gaunt, but smiling, as it almost always was. I pushed the letter aside and my father stared up at me from the photograph underneath, in black-and-white, eyes wide, looking more like me than I cared to admit.

I said, 'I think I shall come with you. If that's all right, I mean.'

'Of course,' she said, 'that would be delightful.'

'Would you give me a few minutes to pack?'

'To ?' Her expression changed.

'I'll be quick,' I said. 'I don't have much.'

'I thought you meant to see me off. Not to '

I started to collect my belongings, dragged my shabby little suitcase out from under the bed and piled things into it higgledy-piggledy. Edie watched me, her mouth slightly open. My hands were shaking, but I kept moving. I was behaving abominably; no matter how much my mother missed me, she wouldn't want me to forget my manners or offend Jack.

Edie said, 'I'll wait for you downstairs.' She left the room, and I dragged open drawers, scooped my belongings into my arms, flung them into the suitcase. I knew that if I gave myself time to think I should change my mind. For the first time I was glad that I'd brought so little with me. In a few moments I had closed the case and was making my way down the stairs and outside. The sunlight hit me like a wall.

Edie was standing with Anthony and Jack, her weekend case in her hand, halfway through a sentence. She said, 'I shan't need them urgently, so have them sent whenever is convenient.' Then she glanced round.

Jack raised one eyebrow. 'Are you going somewhere, Gardner?'

'I Jack, I'm so sorry, I have to go home. My mother '

'Does she miss you too much, ducky?' Anthony said.

'She's had an accident. It's not serious, but she's hurt her ankle and can't walk. I'd rather not go, but there you are.'

Jack was giving me a steady look, but all he said was, 'Well, under the circumstances, of course you must go. Will you make your connection to Peltenshall?'

'I should do, thanks.' I couldn't meet his eyes; I wanted to drop my suitcase on the grass and blurt out that I was lying and in any case I'd changed my mind. 'You've been most hospitable. Thank you.'

Anthony said, 'I'll get the motor car out when I leave later. Perhaps you'd like to stay until then?'

'No, thank you. I don't have much luggage. Edie and I will walk to the station together.'

'Very well,' Jack said. 'I'm sorry you have to go, of course, but it can't be helped. I shan't forgive you if you forget to write to me, though.'

I cleared my throat, and then had to clear it again. 'I won't.'

'Good man. Well . . .' He glanced at Anthony and a look passed between them, too quick to read. Then his eyes dropped to Anthony's camera, and he said smoothly, 'I'll send on a copy of the photographs if you want. You were in a couple, weren't you, the other day?'

'I'd like that. Thanks.'

We stood awkwardly, looking at each other, until Edie said, 'Well, buck up or you'll miss your connection.' She kissed Jack's cheek, nodded at Anthony, and stood waiting for me a few feet away.

I shook hands with them both. Jack's handshake was cool and brief, but he said, 'I meant what I said, by the way,' before he turned back to Anthony, already grinning at something Anthony had murmured to him.

I said, 'Goodbye, Jack,' and followed Edie up the drive and out of the gates, leaving Tyme's End behind me.

We walked in silence. We were almost at the station by the time Edie said, 'What did he mean?'

'What?'

'Jack,' she said, looking up dreamily at the sky, as though she would hardly notice if I answered. 'What did he tell you?'

'Oh.' I shifted my suitcase into the other hand. The handle was sticky with sweat. I glanced at Edie, wondering if I was at liberty to tell her. Surely Jack would have told me to keep it under my hat if he hadn't wanted . . . ? But I said, 'Nothing, really.'

There was a silence. We turned the corner, made our way through the ticket office, bought our tickets and went through on to the sunlit platform; but when I caught Edie's eye she was frowning, as if she was still waiting for an answer to her question.

We sat down on the bench and I lit cigarettes for us both. I felt odd inside, as though I had swallowed a mouthful of ice. I said, 'I hope you don't mind if I catch a later train, so that I don't have to change at Tunbridge Wells West.'

'Of course not,' she said, taking the cigarette without looking at me. Then she seemed to register what I'd done and looked at me with a half-smile. 'What happened to the boy who didn't smoke?'

'Gone for ever.'

'Jack's doing,' she said.

There was a pause. There were only a few minutes left before her train. The air was full of birdsong, as it had been the day I arrived.

'He said he was going to leave Tyme's End to me,' I said, suddenly wanting to laugh. 'He said he'd been to his lawyer this morning to change his will.'

Edie turned to look at me sharply, but she knew immediately what I was talking about. 'He said what?'

'It's extraordinary, isn't it?' I said. 'I can hardly believe it myself.'

'Hardly? You mean you do believe it?'

'I don't think he was joking,' I said. 'I know what he's like when he's making fun. He was . . . different. Serious.'

'He can't possibly have been. Tyme's End? For God's sake, he's hardly known you three months.'

I said, stung, 'That's what I said.'

She gave a mirthless little giggle. 'Did he say he was in love with you?'

'No, of course he '

But she ignored me. 'It's a rather cruel joke, that's all. How perfectly beastly of him. He must have thought that you'd get thoroughly overexcited.'

I closed my eyes. I said, slowly, 'I really, truly don't think he was joking.'

She twisted round to look at me. Then she leapt to her feet, dragging her hair away from her face with one hand. She stared at me for a long time. 'My God,' she said, at last. 'You scheming little fiend.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'You vile, manipulative worm. My God, to think that all this time I thought you needed protection from him.'

'I didn't Edie, I had no idea he was even considering it and I told him I couldn't accept it '