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In the gloom of the kitchen Evelyn made tea and drank it without tasting it. When she looked down into her cup, the surface of the water was speckled with the detritus that had fallen from her hair. She thought and thought about everything she had heard by the greenhouse, about the state of the garden, about the dust that even now clung to the fingers of one hand.

Lily and the boy arrived an hour later, Lily still chatting quite happily. She went and arranged the boy’s portraits on the dresser and then came and sat down beside him, opposite Evelyn.

“We’ve decided to forgive you,” said Lily.

Evelyn didn’t reply. Lily waited for a moment and then shrugged. She got up and silently fetched one of the blue-and-white china teacups, its rim serrated with years of chips, and poured herself some tea. Lily took a sip.

“Is there anything you’d like to say, Sissie,” she said, “now you’ve had time to reflect?”

Evelyn stared at her through the steam. “There’s a storm on the way,” she said.

Lily raised her eyebrows, drank again, and passed the cup to the boy. “What makes you think that?”

“Haven’t you noticed?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“I suppose not. I suppose you’ve had lots of other things to think about.”

Her sister sighed. “I thought you might have calmed down by now, Evelyn. But I’m not sure I appreciate your tone.”

Evelyn got up and went to the kitchen window with her tea. She surveyed the lawn, imagined them having to dig the whole garden up again. Then imagined having to do it by herself and felt so unutterably lonely that she didn’t know where to look.

She heard Lily push her chair back and walk over to her. She touched her gently on the arm and Evelyn flinched.

“I don’t think we need to worry. The garden can cope with a bit of a dusting. When has it not?”

Lily’s eyes were gray and clear and seemed full of optimism.

“Easy for you to say,” said Evelyn. “You won’t even be here.”

“Won’t I?” Lily smiled. “I thought I had another few years in me. Do you know something I don’t?”

“I know what you’ve been talking about with him.”

“This again…”

“I heard you, Lily. Just now. By the greenhouse. And no, there’s no way we are allowing anyone else in here. And yes, I will lose my temper if you try to convince me otherwise.”

The boy looked between the two of them.

“You were eavesdropping?”

“Thank God I was. The things you were plotting.”

“Well. You know how Mama felt about that. That’s another one of her rules you’ve broken.”

“Don’t talk to me about what Mama would and would not want.”

“You’re a hypocrite, Evelyn, do you know that?”

Evelyn could feel tears coming again, but an echo of her mother’s voice was enough to make her swallow them.

“Am I such bad company, Lily?” she said. “Am I so intolerable?”

“You can be a perfect sod, yes. But that has nothing to do with it.”

“You said you wanted to leave.”

“I don’t want to leave you, Sissie. Of course I don’t.” Lily paused. “But there are other people. Out there. Don’t you think it would be nice to see somebody else? To talk to somebody else? You’re always saying that we won’t be around forever. Don’t you think it would be good for us? After the way Mama went?”

Evelyn threw her cup to the floor, and it shattered. A piece of it skittered across the tiles and came to rest next to the boy’s boot. He lowered his eyes. Lily placed her own cup on the table but didn’t say anything.

“I’ve asked you to stop talking about Mama like that,” said Evelyn.

“I’m only saying what we both know.”

“What you know and what I know are two very different things, sister dearest. I have not had the luxury of ignorance. If you’d seen the things I’ve seen, you would not be quite so quick to jump ship. I can promise you that.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Back to monsters, is it?”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“I know the whole of it, actually. Because he’s told me. Tell her.”

She looked at the boy as if expecting him to explain himself to Evelyn, but he said nothing. He picked up the fragment of the teacup and put it on the table, where it sat, rocking back and forth.

“We’re not having any more visitors,” Evelyn said. “I don’t care who they are. And they won’t find us anyway because your telephone is at the bottom of the lake.” The boy frowned. “And your bag and your gloves and your silly little drawings.”

She could see the boy’s shoulders rising and falling with his breath. He seemed stirred for the first time since he’d been in the garden. An uncharacteristic color in his cheeks.

“In the lake?” he said. “Why?”

“Why do you think? Inviting all your friends here without permission!”

“Telephone?” said Lily. “What telephone?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“Well. Shoe’s on the other foot now. Horrible thing when people keep secrets from you, isn’t it?”

“You sound like a bloody child, Sissie.” She paused. “Does it work?”

“You see!” cried Evelyn, though her triumph could not have been emptier. “That’s why I didn’t tell you! You’d let the world and his wife know we were here!”

“Did you use it?” the boy said.

“Of course not.”

“But did you turn it on?”

“Yes. I’m not a complete idiot. I read the message. Whoever it was from.”

“And you threw it in the water?”

“Yes. Thank God I did.”

They held each other’s stare for a moment.

“No one is coming here,” Evelyn said, “so if you really can’t stand me, then you need to think long and hard and make your choice. You both stay, or you both go. I don’t care which it is.”

It was well into the afternoon, now, and Evelyn realized she had not dressed herself. Could she not even achieve that much, these days? She changed into her jeans and shirt and pulled the belt roughly around her waist, tightened it until it hurt, pricked on by her slovenliness. She was suddenly desperate to be digging and pruning and watering. To set the tone for the days to come. No more interruptions, no more indulgence of Lily’s or the boy’s foibles. They would not leave. They could not. They would stay and they would work, and if a storm came, they would dig everything out, and the garden would go on as it had always done.

She fetched a broom to sweep up the remaining fragments of china and pushed them into a small mound by the doorstep.

“I don’t think it’s as simple as that,” the boy said.

Evelyn had a memory of the shock she’d felt when he’d first spoken in the silence of their kitchen. There was assurance in the way he spoke now, a tone that seemed an affront to her decisiveness and angered her afresh.

“Do you not?” she said.

“I don’t think we can be sure that no one’s coming.”

“I have made sure,” said Evelyn, but her voice faltered slightly.

“No,” said the boy. “If you turned the phone on, then they’ll know where I am.”

“They?”

“And if they know where I am, they’ll come and get me. They’ll probably come and get you, too.”

“Who?”

“The others.”

“What others?”

The boy didn’t answer. He simply heaved a great sigh, then laid his head upon the table, ear to the wood, as if listening for someone’s approach.