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  ‘And then there’s the children,’ he went on.

  ‘All right,’ Louise said. ‘I’m convinced.’

  Andrew glanced at the clock. ‘I have to go and see Rose, I promised I’d be on time.’

  ‘What’s she planning now? It’s not like her to run a tight schedule.’

  Andrew smiled. ‘I wouldn’t know. She’s a law to herself.’

  They went out into the yard and Louise held the gate open for the Land-Rover. Two weary policemen straightened up in their patrol car and fixed them with a suspicious stare. ‘I hope they don’t stop me,’ Andrew said. ‘There’s a thousand things wrong with this van.’

  He drove with elaborate care down the lane towards Louise’s cottage. In the little wood on the right-hand side the foxgloves were showing purple tips on the proud spikes of green and the rhododendrons echoed the colour with their buds. Louise rested her hand on Andrew’s shoulder and knew herself to be content.

  He turned into the drive and switched the engine off. He walked around to Louise’s side and freed her from the stuck door. They went together down the path to the little van. Rose’s tidying out had continued in their absence. All around the van were heaped boxes of papers and bright material. There was a thin sharp smell of petrol. There was no smoke showing from the chimney, the dog was tied to the steps in his usual place, but he did not sit up at the sound of their footsteps. His feathery tail stirred in the grass and daisies but his head drooped and his ears stayed down.

  Andrew stepped out of his Wellington boots at the foot of the steps and tapped on the door. There was no reply. He made a sudden exclamation and stepped back and pulled out from under the van a red can of diesel. Then, without a word to Louise, he put his shoulder to the door and pushed it inwards. The van rocked as Andrew fell inside. Louise waited on the bottom step, looking in.

  Rose was lying on her back in her little bunk bed, gloriously arrayed at last in the scarlet chiffon negligee. Her eyes were closed, her hair washed and brushed gleamed white and smooth on the meticulously clean embroidered pillow slip. Her face was serene, her mouth slightly smiling. She looked like a virtuous old woman deeply asleep after a day of good deeds. Only the extreme whiteness of her skin and the blueness around her mouth and eyelids showed that she was dead. On her pillow was an envelope addressed to Andrew.

  The caravan was immaculate. Everything that could burn had been taken outside and soaked in diesel. Everything else had been thrown away during Rose’s great spring clean. Nothing was left inside the van at all except the little bunk bed, as small as a child’s bed, and the pure white linen sheets which Rose had been saving for this occasion.

  Andrew took up the envelope, then he stepped forward and kissed both her cold cheeks. It seemed impossible that Rose, so infuriating, so vital, should lie so still and her skin should be icy cold. ‘Goodbye, Rose,’ Andrew said softly. ‘I’ll do it as you wanted.’

  He turned and came to the doorway. Louise stepped back to let him out and he shut the door gently behind him.

  ‘Go up to the house,’ he said quietly to Louise. ‘I have things to do here.’

  ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was she really ill, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Louise put her hand to her mouth. ‘I thought she was pretending. I was horrible to her. I accused her of faking it.’

  Andrew shook his head. ‘She was an old rogue. Sometimes she was pretending, sometimes she was telling the truth. Sometimes she didn’t know herself where the lies began and truth ended. She didn’t think you were horrible. She had you picked out as a wife for me. She told me to court you. She thought she’d done a good job bringing us together and she was pleased with herself when you came to me. If she’d wanted anything from you she’d have told you; and if you’d refused her she would have taken it anyway. You don’t need to feel guilty.’

  ‘I’ll telephone for the doctor,’ Louise offered. ‘He’ll have to come out to write the death certificate.’

  Andrew shook his head. ‘We’ll do this as she wanted,’ he said firmly. ‘You go into the house and fetch the things you wanted or make yourself a cup of coffee or something. Leave me with her.’

  Louise put a hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry. You loved her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Andrew said.

  Louise went to the window of her study, where she had first seen Rose’s van just eleven days ago. Andrew was standing outside the van, his cap stuffed in his pocket, reading Rose’s letter. When he had read it through he folded it carefully and tucked it inside his jacket. He untied Rose’s dog and led him on the string to the Land-Rover and ordered him to jump into the open back. The dog, tail between his legs and head down, did as he was told.

  Andrew walked slowly back through the orchard to Rose’s van, and took up the red can of diesel fuel. He went up the steps and into the van. Louise watched it rock as he moved around the inside, and then saw him come out, the fuel spilling in a smooth stream from the spout on to the floor. Slowly he walked around the van, soaking the boxes with the clear liquid. Louise put a hand to her cheek. She still thought that the doctor should be called, and an ambulance, and perhaps the police in a case of sudden death. But she knew also that Rose had a right to order this final chapter of her life as she wished, that she had spent her whole life living as she pleased and that it would be wrong if Louise’s conventional sense of good behaviour spoiled things for Rose at the very end. Besides, Andrew had given Rose a promise, and would accept no interference.

  When the can was empty he stepped well back from the van and checked the overhead boughs of the apple trees and the prevailing light southerly wind. Then he went to the Land-Rover and fetched matches from the cab. Carefully and without haste he lit and tossed half a dozen matches into the nearest two boxes. They ignited with a soft explosive blast which shot flames up into the air, blistering the old blue paint of the van at once. Within moments the other boxes had caught and Louise could not see the van at all for the dancing bright flames and the heat haze which turned it all into a shimmering wall of fire.

  A thick cloud of black smoke billowed and seeped through the branches of the apple trees. Louise could hear cracking noises as the metal expanded suddenly in the heat. Andrew stepped back from the fierceness of the blaze, shielding his eyes. There was a hot acrid smell of burning and then a sudden roar as something inside the van went up. The first blast of flames lasted only a few moments but then the van was solidly alight, burning steadily. As Louise watched, the roof which had been patched and repaired with filler and plasterboard collapsed inward in a shower of sparks and a bright plume of flame spurted upwards.

  Louise thought of Rose in her hard-won red chiffon gown going heroically into the afterlife like a Viking chieftain on a burning boat and she felt suddenly freed from anxiety and triumphant. The flames were like a beacon: they showed that a woman could be born into any society at any time and still carve out her own path. She could choose her life and her death. All that was needed was a remorseless individualist determination to run her own life and defy the conventions and the sly damaging punishments that the conventional world can devise. Louise found she was laughing with a wild delight at the thought of the intractable old lady and how the manner of her going – illegal, inconvenient, and joyfully dramatic – suited her life. She opened the study door and walked down the garden path to where Andrew was standing leaning against the gate. She put her hand on his and when he turned to her his eyes were wet; but he too was smiling.

  ‘Quite a blaze,’ he said. ‘She would have been pleased.’

  They stood hand in hand, watching the van burn. The first bright heat of the flames was dying away but the structure of the metal glowed bright red and the inside of the van was burning steadily and hot.

  From the lane came the whine of sirens. Andrew sighed at the prospect of imminent trouble. ‘She wrote a note to me,’ he said. ‘She wanted you to have Lloyd George.’

  ‘Lloyd George?�