themselves to tea and coffee, that she spotted it hanging on the wall above the piano.
‘What a lovely painting,’ she said, getting up with her teacup and saucer to take a closer look.
‘It’s Mary Hanson’s dog, Bernie,’ Julia Cobbold told her, keen to be helpful. ‘And it’s oil pastels, I believe, not paint.’
‘It’s very good. Who did it?’
‘Daisy Fane.’
‘Marigold’s daughter?’
‘Yes, that’s the one. She’s been living in Italy, but now she’s back. A love affair that turned sour, I believe. I imagine she must be very sad. She’s a wonderful artist, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, what a surprise. She really is awfully good.’ Lady Sherwood thought a while, her eyebrows knitted, a look of concentration on her face. ‘I wonder whether she’d draw my dogs,’ she said at last.
‘I’m sure she would,’ Julia replied, thinking that, if Daisy Fane was good enough for Lady Sherwood, she might commission her to draw her terrier.
Marigold was in the sitting room at the long table which was set up especially for her jigsaw puzzles. It was too big for the cramped room now that Daisy had put her easel in front of the other window, and Nan was sure to complain that there was nowhere to go for some peace, except her bedroom, but there simply wasn’t another corner of the house large enough to accommodate a jigsaw puzzle of one hundred pieces.
It was a Sunday morning and unusually quiet. Marigold had been for her morning walk and Dennis had taken Nan to church. Suze was spending the weekend with Batty at his parents’ house and Daisy had been invited up to the Sherwoods’ farm to meet their dogs, whom Lady Sherwood wanted Daisy to draw. It was a crisp winter day. The sky was as pale as watercolour and the sun low, shining through the latticework of branches silhouetted prettily against it. Marigold was momentarily distracted by the birds who settled into her garden to feed. Blackbirds and thrushes mostly, and the cheerful little robin who wasn’t at all intimidated by the bigger birds. She smiled as she watched them, knowing that she could spend all day here at the window, absorbed in their coming and going, and not notice the passing of time.
After a while she turned her attention to the jigsaw. She was good at puzzles and the thought of the challenge ahead gave her a frisson of pleasure. She began by drawing out the straight-sided pieces. This took some time. She had to put on her glasses to really study the colours and pictures and try to match them. She concentrated hard, aware that she was exercising her brain. Certain that, with every piece she connected to another, she was somehow reinforcing the connections there, staving off its corrosion, defying time. She felt triumphant as little by little the outside edge of the picture took shape. The top was sky, the bottom snow. It was surely a winter scene. Dennis knew how much snow enthralled her, and she was delighted now by the thought of her husband taking such trouble with her present.
It wasn’t long before she felt thirsty. She went into the kitchen and boiled the kettle. It was cold outside, which made a cup of tea all the more rewarding. The first sip was always the best. She closed her eyes a moment and savoured it. Then she sat at the table, put on her specs and began to read the newspapers.
Dennis and Nan brought in a gust of chilly wind as they opened the front door and stepped into the hall. It raced down the corridor and into the kitchen where Marigold was reading the papers, making her shiver. ‘It’s bitter out there,’ said Nan, bustling into the kitchen. ‘I’m not going out again today. I don’t want to catch a cold, not at my age. It soon turns to pneumonia, you know. My dear friend Teddy Hope died of pneumonia simply because he insisted on popping to the corner shop in cold weather to buy cigarettes.’
‘It might have had something to do with the cigarettes, Nan,’ said Dennis.
Marigold looked up from the papers. ‘How’s that puzzle going?’ Dennis asked.
She frowned. The puzzle! She’d totally forgotten she’d been doing it. She pictured herself coming in from the sitting room to make tea and then sitting down at the table to read the newspapers. ‘I’ve started,’ she said, masking her concern with a smile. ‘It’s a winter scene,’ she added, just to reassure herself that she remembered. ‘I got